Chapter 2

　　(Sienna)

　　My stomach dropped.

　　This was it.

　　If he said yes, everything that had happened between us would disappear into the quiet graveyard of bad decisions made in airport hotels. And every future family Christmas will be the the kind of material novelists retired on.

　　Adrian didn't answer immediately.

　　A small crease appeared between his brows.

　　Celeste squeezed his hand lightly, her smile perfect.

　　The entire cathedral waited.

　　I realized I had stopped breathing.

　　"Adrian?" the officiant prompted gently.

　　Adrian turned his head.

　　And looked directly at me.

　　The silence that followed felt like the entire room had fallen into a vacuum.

　　Then he released Celeste's hand.

　　"Stop."

　　The word cut cleanly through the cathedral.

　　The organ faltered mind-note.

　　Two hundred guests froze.

　　The officiant blinked in confusion.

　　"I'm sorry?"

　　Adrian stepped back from the altar. His movements were unhurried. Controlled. As if the destruction of this wedding was simply another decision he had already thought through.

　　A low murmur rippled through the pews.

　　Celeste's fingers tightened around her bouquet.

　　"Adrian?" she said, her voice thin now, the brightness gone from it.

　　He didn't look at her.

　　Instead his gaze swept the cathedral once more, and settled on me.

　　Stayed there.

　　Then he spoke.

　　"She's not the one."

　　All hell broke loose.

　　Gasps tore through the room. Someone in the back actually laughed before thinking better of it. Near the altar, the man standing beside Adrian hadn't moved, but the faint lift of one eyebrow said he'd seen this coming and had chosen to say nothing.

　　I looked at Celeste. Her face had drained of color.

　　"What do you mean?" she whispered.

　　The question hung unanswered in the vaulted air.

　　Adrian stepped down from the altar.

　　One step. Then another.

　　The aisle stretched out ahead of him, impossibly long, lined with people twisting in their seats as he passed.

　　"Oh my God—"

　　"What is he doing—"

　　"Is this a joke?"

　　I heard my mother say my name under her breath beside me, sharp with warning.

　　"Sienna—"

　　But I couldn't look at her.

　　I couldn't look anywhere except at the man walking toward me with the same calm certainty he'd had six weeks ago in the airport lounge. The same certainty he'd carried through a hotel corridor, a key card pressed between his fingers, like the outcome had never been in question.

　　Behind him, Celeste made a small, broken sound.

　　Oh no.

　　My brain was still trying to process the fact that the man approaching me through a cathedral full of horrified wedding guests was the same man who had dragged my hips to the edge of a mattress and made me want to scream his name—

　　Except I hadn't known his name.

　　Until now.

　　Behind him, Celeste let out a small, broken sound.

　　"Adrian, what are you doing?"

　　Still he didn't stop.

　　Still he didn't answer.

　　He reached the front pew and stood directly in front of me.

　　Up close he was exactly as devastating as I remembered. Dark eyes. Steady breathing. A faint tension in his jaw that hadn't been there at the altar. But beneath it something else, something deliberate and long-decided, as though this moment had been building since long before the organ started.

　　His gaze locked onto mine.

　　"You remember me," he said quietly.

　　My throat closed. Every coherent thought I had scattered.

　　"Yes." I breathed out.

　　Behind him the cathedral had fractured into noise. Celeste was crying now, real tears, the kind that had nothing to do with performance. My father's voice had risen near the altar. Someone was arguing with the officiant in urgent, hissed syllables.

　　None of it reached the charged space between us.

　　Adrian didn't turn around. Didn't acknowledge the shouting or the shock or the woman he had just left standing at the altar in her cathedral lace.

　　He simply held out his hand.

　　"Come with me."

　　It wasn't a request. It was inevitability. A statement dressed as an invitation.

　　For one suspended moment I sat completely still, staring at the man who had just dismantled my sister's wedding in four words and was now looking at me like I was the only sensible conclusion.

　　Then I placed my hand in his.

　　And stood.

　　Because the truly horrifying part, the part I would spend weeks trying to forgive myself for, was that the same instinct that had followed him upstairs at Heathrow was whispering again, low and certain beneath all the chaos.

　　Yes.

　　And somewhere beneath the shock and the guilt and the sound of my sister weeping, I had the dizzying, nauseating feeling that Adrian Swift had known exactly which woman he was choosing long before today.