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Chapter Three
Jack and Rosie descended the impressive sweeping staircase to be met by a frantic Lauren, hopping from one foot to the other like a toddler in need of a visit to the bathroom.
‘No sign of her! It seems Little Miss Superior has melted into thin air, the selfish…’ Lauren flicked her eyes from Rosie to Jack and relented on her character assassination of the errant bride-to-be.
‘Don’t worry, Lauren. Will you escort Dad to the garden for me? Try and placate Jacob and the rest of the guests.’ Rosie checked her mother’s silver Tiffany watch – her most adored possession. ‘Technically the ceremony is not due to start for another thirty minutes so there’s nothing to panic about yet. I’m sure she’s just taking a quiet moment to prepare herself for the most important day of her life.’
Rosie heard the expulsion of air from Lauren’s lips and saw the smirk around her mouth. She swapped a grin with her friend. Hannah adored being the centre of attention, and had been milking every opportunity to loiter in the limelight. It was inconceivable that she would hide away for even a second. Rosie had been genuinely concerned that, despite her promises, her sister would be unable to resist a quick visit to Jacob’s suite in her bridal gown. Indeed, she suspected that was where she was now.
She shooshed Lauren and her father out of the French doors. Her eyes swept the congregation assembled on the lush, manicured lawn of Stonington Meadows Country Park Hotel; the venue Hannah had dreamed of during her childhood forays into planning her perfect wedding celebrations. It had been an incredible surprise to Rosie when Hannah had shunned Jacob’s offer to pay for their wedding to be held at the Plaza, but then, as Hannah explained, everyone had their wedding there. To her right, in neat white picket chairs, every seat was occupied by Jacob’s extended family, friends and business connections. Their elegant attire, like the car park, oozed dollars. To her left sprawled a more eclectic gathering of those connected to the bride. Rosie spotted Arnie and Dot, her parents’ closest and dearest friends, along with a smattering of Stonington Beach friends that her father had invited to share his daughter’s special day.
She turned on her heavily sequinned heels that had cost almost a month’s salary – which she planned to return to their box and hide at the back of her wardrobe so they never saw the light of day ever again – and headed back up the stairs to the hotel’s elegantly appointed bridal suite. She knocked, then knocked again more loudly, and when there was no reply, she pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Gosh, her sister could bring chaos to an empty room! Her belongings were strewn on every available surface, and she had even opened the drawers of the pretty kidney-shaped dressing table to drape her discarded hosiery over. Unfortunately, a quick survey of the suite told Rosie that Hannah was not there, and yet her wedding dress still hung in its plastic carrier on the front of the gaping wardrobe door.
Where on earth was she? Wherever she was she must still be in the cream silk kimono Jacob had presented her withthe previous evening, her hair in the huge Velcro rollers their hairdresser, Carl, had fussed over that morning.
Rosie dashed over to the window and peered down into the garden. Everyone was there now and had taken up their positions ready for the imminent arrival of the bride. Even the minister, a local ginger-haired man with a comical comb-over who had christened both Rosie and Hannah, was surreptitiously checking his fob watch.
‘Oh God! Trust Hannah!’ Rosie muttered, her heart drumming at her ribcage and her breath quickening as panic began to swirl through her veins, depriving her lungs of essential oxygen. ‘The only thing she had to do was put on her dress and turn up on time!’
Was that too much to ask?Yes, she guessed it was.
She sprinted out of the suite and into the corridor, cursing as she wrenched her ankle running in her unfamiliar shoes. As she reached down to rub the pain away, a tinkle of laughter emanated from a door at the end of the corridor which Rosie had assumed was a linen closet next to the glass cube masquerading as an elevator.
She paused, straining her ears, and her heart softened. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. Hannah was most likely snatching a few moments before the craziness of the wedding with the guy who had swept her off her feet. They must have got carried away and forgotten the time. Hannah alwayshadoperated on a different time zone to everyone else. She replaced her smarting foot on the floor and tiptoed towards the door. As she drew nearer, her hand hovering over the ornate brass doorknob, a loud groan floated to her ears.
Rosie froze. Why had level-headed, reliable Jacob agreed to bunk off from his duties of herding his relatives into theirallocated seats for a snatched sojourn of delight with his fiancée, a mere thirty minutes before the ceremony?
Oh God! And here she was about to blunder in without even knocking!
Her face glowed with embarrassment as she cracked open the door and pulled it towards her, momentarily mesmerised by the muscular bronzed back on display in front of her. She opened her mouth to announce her presence, but the words refused to form in her scrambled mind as she gawped at the scene like a gobsmacked goldfish. She began to retrace her steps until her shoulder bumped into the door jamb forcing out a gasp of pain, not from the collision but from the dawning recognition of the owner of the unclothed torso.
‘God, Sis, don’t you ever knock?’
The man coiling his arms around her sister’s body twisted his head towards the interruption and mirrored Rosie’s horrified expression.
‘Edward!’
Chapter Four
She was told later that it was the engagement of the “fight or flight” reflex – a mechanism that primes the body to either attack or run away when under extreme threat. A harsh whooshing sound reverberated through her ears and the urge to evacuate the contents of her stomach became almost irresistible.
Rosie spun on her heels, ignoring the splice of pain in her injured ankle and her shattered heart, and shot back down the corridor towards the staircase. Perspiration prickled at her temples and the back of her neck, yet her mouth was dry as she struggled to swallow the rising bile. A clamp closed around her heart, squeezing out the air from her lungs until she was forced to pause on the landing to catch her breath.
Breathe, breathe.
Perhaps that solitary yoga session that Lauren had managed to drag her to six months ago would have some benefit after all. No, she was definitely going to vomit if she remained still. A maelstrom of dizziness threatened to subsume her in its depths and a small part of her brain urged her to relent and to sacrifice herself to the desire for unconsciousness.
Think calm, breathe in, breathe out.
With a gargantuan effort to hang onto her breakfast, she reached her suite, groped for the handle and pushed her way in. The cloying perfume of the stargazer lilies Hannah had insisted adorned every available horizontal surface assaulted hernostrils and scattered her senses even further. She swooned and slumped down onto the bed, resting her aching head against the mountain of pillows.
What was she going to do?
She had orchestrated every aspect of the forthcoming nuptials, personally supervised every aspect with as much attention to detail as she applied to any work project, right down to the texture of the table linen and even the bride’s honeymoon lingerie. Every second that she had not spent nose-to-screen, swinging through the corporate jungle where money is king and its accumulation the only goal worth pursuing, she had spent scouring the cathedrals of bridal consumerism. The day would run like clockwork, or it should if only her miserable, self-centred sister could keep her eye on the ball and her crazy libido in check.
A cold tremor invaded her chest as the full realisation of the treachery of the man she had given her heart to dawned on her. Hannah was about to get married! How could he?
