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1
I’d never get used to hearing gossip vloggers talk about me.
Did anyone? I held my phone in my hand, watching as they dissected me for public scrutiny. I tried to not get in the way of the people whose job it was to make me look pretty for this blessed occasion.
Pictures of myself in various outfits parading around at important events passed over the screen as the gossip website queen spoke about it in animated tones.
“I’m told that today is the day.” She had a little bit of a lisp and squealed on the last syllable of the last word—day. I couldn’t decide if her affectations were put on or really a speech impediment that she’d tried to have fixed but hadn’t entirely corrected.
Getting that video already uploaded was an impressive feat for Amanda Hill—her name, according to her website. It must have been a slow entertainment day in the world if thousands of people and growing—according to her view count icon in the corner of the screen—viewed her talk about my wedding day.
I was famous, but notthatfamous. It wasn’t lost on me that I added to her number of views this very second by watching it myself.
“One of our fourfavoriteredheads is marrying her Prince Charming today. Well, if her version of a Prince Charming has a coke problem. I mean…who does coke these days anyway? It’s so passé. At least he has theprincelybank account.”
Again with that squeal on the last word. I shook my head and then stopped when my hair person glared at me. Whoops. Kit’s people were going to threaten the gossip site to get that last part down fast. Inside my own head, I rolled my eyes instead of shaking my head at her description of Kit’s coke problem. Passé?
Using the wordpasséwas sopassé. It was two in the morning where she was in New York City, since it was eight in the morning in Paris—where I was currently sitting. She must really have wanted this story for her vlog to go out fast. The watch count was up a hundred just since I’d started viewing. I sipped my iced coffee while the woman who was doing my hair talked fast to the woman who was plucking my eyebrows. I’d had all of this done before I left Manhattan, but apparently, we’d missed a spot on my left brow. I should have been grateful they’d found the stray hair. I would certainly read about, hear about, and have to endure having it analyzed over and over online if I looked anything but perfect today. Find the hair. Pluck the hair. Comb the hair.
My best attribute was my red hair. They called my familythe redheads, after all.
It wasn’t like I could really be upset about the hair thing. I was famous for no other reason than I was born into my family and all of us had our late mother’s red hair. Being very rich and one of a set of triplets with a notorious father had been enough to garner interest in everything about me since I was born. And before today—my wedding day—it had never irked me.
But it was right now. Big time.
The door flung open, and my future mother-in-law, Laura Allard, strode in, followed by my sisters Hope and Bridget. They were already in their matching bridesmaids’ dresses. Well, my sisters were. Not my future mother-in-law. I’d had little say in how this wedding was put together, not even picking out my own dress or the violet ones my sisters wore. Kit’s family, led by Laura as a true matriarch, was old money. They had class in a way that we didn’t—according to Laura. When I married Kit, one of the things I’d be gaining for my family was a certain Allard cachet we didn’t currently have, since Dad had earned his money in investments and not had any growing up.
Well…we’d be getting the old-money reputation that meant we were classy all of a sudden and about thirty billion dollars in estate money Laura and her husband Bill would probably invest in my father’s fund of funds very quickly. It was a great merger, sorry marriage, for all of us.
“Turn off that trash.” Laura Allard, nee McKinny, took the phone from my hand and set it aside, turning off the app entirely. She’d always treated me like I was beneath her. The whole new money problem. Laura liked to forget that she had no money before she’d gotten pregnant with Kit and forced Bill to marry her, lest they have a scandal on their hands. The woman, who had been his—gasp—secretary before that, had become the filter on who and what was acceptable ever since. She might want to forget her less than auspicious stride into wealth and privilege, but the internet had a long memory and Wikipedia had been my friend when I needed information about her.
Any second now, she was going to launch into her latest speech. The Allards always did this, always did that. I was sick to death of listening to it. Kit assured me the pontificating would end after the wedding—the last thing she would get to dictate. The Allards always got married in Paris, France. This time, itwas going to be in Palais Royale followed by a reception on the rooftop of the Hotel Raphael. All of it just small enough that neither family could invite everyone they knew. That was how we kept it exclusive. I’d been to neither place, hadn’t even let myself google them to see what they looked like, and paid little attention when we’d marched in here two hours ago to start the process of making me look acceptable. What was the difference? None of this would have been the wedding I would have chosen.
Kit was my choice. I loved him.
I swallowed. Fuck me. Didn’t I? I loved him. I did. Right?
I’d met him when I was seventeen but hadn’t dated him until I turned twenty, two years ago. That was after a drunken night at a club where he’d confessed to me that he was in love with me. And Kit was gorgeous. Tall, dark haired, with green eyes that a girl could get lost in. I used to, all the time. He could be truly wonderful.
At his heart, Kit was an artist. He painted. Not that he could talk about that very much. Allards weren’t painters. No, they were lawyers and business people who didn’t particularly go to offices but still had titles and the look of respectability. His father was drunk every day from about two o’clock on after playing golf, badly, every morning. And Kit was going to be exactly the same way after he finished getting his MBA that he would do nothing with.
My body went cold.
“Time to get you in your dress.” Laura clapped her hands together and grinned at me. For all that she disapproved of me, she equally loved the idea of me being her daughter-inlaw. They’d never had more attention to her so-called charities as she had the last months since Kit put the ring on my finger.
My own truth, what I should have known already, hit me hard like someone had taken a bat and struck me over the headwith it. I. Wasn’t. In. Love. With. Christopher “Kit” Allard. Not even a little bit. I couldn’t even stand him.
And he pretty much hated me, too.
I laughed, covering my mouth, and all eyes were suddenly focused on me.
“That’s funny?” Laura looked from me to my sisters as though they could explain my outburst. How would they do that when I couldn’t even speak the words myself?
Hope walked over to me. She and Bridget wore matching up-dos today, which was so strange looking because they’d never let themselves be styled remotely the same, not since they’d had a say in what the nannies laid out for us to wear. I’d liked it, dressing like them. I’d liked it a lot longer than either of them had.
Why was that?
I blinked as Hope took my hand. “Babe? You okay?”
