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His hand closed around her elbow and she jolted back to the present. She pasted a sickly smile on her face as people applauded while they walked hand-in-hand down the aisle. Well, Ben walked, Lilah half-stumbled in his wake, remaining upright thanks only to the firm grip he had on her arm.
Guests had lined up outside, armed with tiny bottles of suds, and there was a flotilla of shiny bubbles to greet them as they exited the chapel. Ben kept his head down, barreling toward the waiting white limo, while Lilah managed a dazed smile for the clapping and cheering crowd. Not wanting any of them, especially her grandfather, to realize anything was amiss.
It soon became clear that he had no intention of stopping until they reached the car, and Lilah was forced to dig her heels in. She finally created enough drag to bring his unrelenting forward momentum to a stop, causing him to whip around and level a fierce glare at her.
“Th-they’re expecting pictures,” she managed to croak out despite her dry throat.
“The very last thing I want to do is stand here pretending to be happy,” Ben said, the low growl meant only for her ears.
The words served as brutal confirmation of everything that she’d merely suspected before.
“Ben…” she whispered. She hated the whining note of pleading she heard in her voice, but—while she wasn’t in any mood to stand here forcing smiles for the camera—she also wanted to delay the inevitable conversation they were bound to have the second they were alone.
Ben’s eyes scanned the crowd, before coming to a halt.
“Fuck.”
Following his line of sight, Lilah spotted her grandfather at the top of the stairs, looking a bit confused as he watched them.
“Fine, but only a few. I want to get this farce over with as quickly as possible.”
Farce.
The word hit her hard. That’s what he thought this was. All along, while Lilah had been planning every special detail of a wedding to the man whom she had adored for more than half of her life, he’d thought of it as nothing but a farce. An absurdity to be endured.
Why?
Surely this couldn’t be what Gramps wanted for her? Surely, he couldn’t have coerced Ben into this?
“A little eager to get her all to yourself are you, Ben?” someone from the crowd called. The laughter that followed was ribald and more comments in a similar vein were bandied about.
Lilah could barely force a smile for the cajoling photographer, and when she snuck a peek up at Ben, his face remained expressionless. Jaw rigid, eyes burning.
The photographer was trying to convince Ben to swing Lilah up into his arms, while her husband—it gave her a jolt to think of him as such—glared at the man. It was the first emotion she had seen from him since she had spoken her vows nearly half an hour ago.
“Enough,” he snapped through tightly clenched teeth. “We’re leaving.”
More teasing from the crowd, but Ben barely seemed to notice. Instead he grabbed Lilah’s arm in the same tight hold as before. He pushed through the crowd—making his way to the car—while impatiently swatting at the bubbles floating all around them.
The driver had the door open and waiting. It would be a twenty-minute drive from the chapel—which was built on the expansive grounds of their home in the affluent suburb of Constantia, located in the heart of the Cape Winelands of South Africa—to the hotel where they were having the reception. The prospect of that drive now felt like torture to Lilah, who longed to dash across the grounds toward her home, where she could lock herself in her bedroom, and hide from this man who confused and frightened her with his inexplicable fury.
Ben ushered Lilah into the spacious back seat, before sliding in beside her. Her organza and tulle skirt took on a life of its own, filling the space, seemingly everywhere at once. It wrapped around Ben’s long legs, despite the distance between them.
As soon as the driver shut the door, Ben pushed the button to raise the privacy screen. Lilah immediately felt claustrophobic, hating how silent the car had become. The interior of the Rolls Royce Phantom was completely soundproof and they couldn’t hear the crowd outside at all anymore.
Ben was staring at Lilah, making her feel like an insect pinned on a display board.
“Drink?” he asked abruptly and Lilah jumped at his voice.
“No, thank you.”
He made a noncommittal sound. She loved his voice. It was a deep and velvety rasp, more suited to a rock singer who had been belting out epic ballads for twenty years, while subsisting on a diet of straight whiskey and cigarettes. It wasn’t the voice one expected the future CEO of the fourth largest shipping company on the planet to possess.
She watched as he poured a couple of fingers of brandy into a crystal tumbler and tossed it back. He grimaced as he swallowed, but all too soon the tumbler was empty and Lilah was once again the focus of all that formidable attention.
