Stealing the Bride

At his own bachelor party, the woman my fianc had chased for five years leaned across the table and asked him one question.

If I crashed your wedding and told you to leave with me, would you come?

The whole room went quiet.

Dorian looked her dead in the eye. Yes.

No pause. No flinch. Like I wasn't sitting right there beside him.

You should understand who Dorian Vance was. In our circle he was famous for exactly one thing: worshipping me. Three years of it. He turned down an arranged marriage for me. He kept a running list of the foods I couldn't stand so he'd never order them. He never let a night out run past ten, because he wanted to be the one to drive me home.

And he said yes without thinking about it.

I kept my hands flat on my knees so they wouldn't shake, slid my phone out under the table, and texted the one person on earth who would come without asking why.

Me: [Get me out of here. As fast as you can.]

Seven minutes. That's how long it took Brooke to come around the corner in her Bugatti, tires screaming against the pavement.

She took one look at my face and didn't ask a single question.

"I have been telling you this for years." She threw the passenger door open. "A face like that, a heart like that, you were supposed to marry into money and let them spoil you stupid. Instead you went and picked him."

She tipped her chin back at the building like the whole place smelled.

"My brother's gorgeous. My dad's still got it. Pick one. Either one's an upgrade."

Chapter 1

The wedding was three weeks out when Dorian's friends threw him a bachelor party.

Everyone in his little circle knew the truth about him. Dorian was hopeless about me. If anyone wanted him to actually stay out, they had to invite me too. So this time, they did.

I felt it the second I walked in. Something was off.

People greeted me a little too warmly. Then their eyes kept sliding sideways to Dorian, passing a look around the table like a note in class.

I didn't get it. Not yet.

We'd all sat down by the time the last guest arrived, a tall, lean girl with short hair, breezy and bright.

"Sorry! Traffic was a nightmare."

Beside me, Dorian went rigid.

I had never seen that exact look on a person's face before. The look of a man whose body forgot, for one second, how to keep a secret.

The girl put her hand out to me, all warmth. "You must be the bride. I'm Vivienne."

And just like that, I understood everything.

This was her. The one Dorian had wanted for five years.

Back then, the story went, he wasn't the steady man I knew. He chased her like it might kill him. Roses by the thousand laid out in the courtyard below her window. A hundred yards of fireworks down the beach. His whole young life was her, right up until three years ago, when she packed up and chased some other guy overseas instead.

That was the stretch when I met him.

He came toward me across a bar full of hazy gold light, and I had had exactly half a glass of wine and somehow I was already a disaster. I grabbed the nearest friend for any scrap of information about him, and by the time they shoved me in front of him my tongue had tied itself in a knot.

"I'm Quinn," I said. "And you are, Mr. Vance?"

The whole table howled, because I'd just used his name.

And the crease that had been sitting between Dorian's brows for months finally smoothed out.

After that, he poured every soft thing he had into me. He memorized the foods I loved and the ones I couldn't touch. No matter how late I worked, he came to pick me up himself. Every holiday, a gift he'd actually thought about. He put me all over his Instagram and introduced me to every last person he knew.

Even his friends got jealous.

"You walked in at the perfect time, Quinn," one of them said. "Dorian chased the hardest girl alive, leveled himself up into the most thoughtful man in the room, and then you came along and inherited the whole package."

It never got under my skin.

Because they all said the same thing. I was nothing like her, not in looks, not in temperament. I wasn't standing in for anyone. And because I could feel it: Dorian loved me.

Three years together, and he'd gotten down on one knee.

I thought we were about to get the easy, happy ending. The kind that just blooms.

That was when Vivienne settled into the seat beside me, easy as anything, and reached into her bag.

She pressed a bottle of perfume into my hands.

"A little wedding gift. It's a very sophisticated scent. I've worn this one for years."

She smiled until her eyes folded into crescents.

I'll give her this. She was graceful. Likable, even. The gift was for me, the bride. Not for him.

I took it. I thanked her.

Then she pulled out her phone and followed me on Instagram.

"If anyone ever gives you a hard time, you come straight to me." She leaned in like she was handing me a secret. "I grew up with Dorian, sure. But don't you worry, I'm not on the in-law side. Anything happens, I've got your back."

Around the table, people actually clapped.

"That's our girl. Still the fiercest one in the room."

Everyone at that table was charmed.

I was the only one who'd watched my fianc forget how to breathe when she walked in.

Chapter 2

Vivienne paused, then looked right past me, straight at Dorian on my other side.

"Hey. What's with you? Three years gone and suddenly you've got nothing to say?"

Around us people drank, people watched, half of them pretending not to. Nobody wanted to miss a frame of it.

The tops of Dorian's ears went red. I watched it happen.

He couldn't even turn his head to look at her.

Three years with a man teaches you his body. The set of his jaw right before he lies. The way his thumb works the rim of a glass when he'd rather be anywhere on earth but here. I knew all of it.

Tonight every last tell was firing at once.

He kept his eyes on his drink and reached for a joke. "It's not that I've got nothing to say. We just lost touch. I don't know where to start."

"So it's my fault, for going quiet on you for three years?" Vivienne laughed and lifted her glass. "Fine. We'll fix it. We'll talk all the time now."

Dorian shot me a glance. "I'm basically a married man. You want to reach me, there's a process. You clear it with my wife first."

They clinked glasses, both of them wearing that warm, all-is-forgiven smile.

Everything out in the open. No code, nothing buried. Honest as daylight.

So I couldn't tell you why my chest pulled tight, why I had to keep reminding myself to breathe around it.

The drinks kept coming. Somebody sang. Somebody started a round of rock-paper-scissors.

By the tail end of the night everyone was a little wrecked.

Dorian lost a round to Vivienne and chose Truth.

And Vivienne, who had been so well-behaved all evening, finally let herself be reckless.

She tipped her head, tipsy and sweet and just a little cruel, and asked him:

"If I showed up at your wedding and stopped it, would you walk out with me?"

The half-drunk table lost it.

"Oh my God, FINALLY. You two can drop the act."

"Right? This is the energy I came for."

"Answer her. Would you go, or not?"

Dorian's eyes were red at the corners from the wine. He looked at her, and something moved behind his face, rising up and turning over.

"Yes," he said.

The table detonated.

"I KNEW it."

"Steal the bride. Steal the bride."

The cheering yanked every head in the room around toward us.

I sat between the two of them and felt the air thin out. My breath went shallow and quick. If a patient had walked into my office breathing like this, I'd have known exactly what to say to talk them down. Sitting in the middle of it myself, I had nothing.

My hands had started to shake where they rested on my knees, a fine tremor I couldn't stop.

So I said I needed the restroom, and I left.

In the hallway I held the tears exactly where they were and texted Brooke.

Me: [Can you get me out of here. As fast as humanly possible.]

She called instead of texting back.

"What happened. Did those people do something to you?"

"No. Don't ask yet. Can you just come get me?"

I was about to lose it, and we both knew it.

That set her off like a struck match. "Stay right there. I'm coming. Ten minutes. No. Seven."

"It's really not that urgent. Drive slow. Be careful."

"Don't you dare tell me how to drive."

Seven minutes later Brooke tore up to the curb in her Bugatti, the tires spinning hot against the asphalt.

The second I saw her, I lost the fight with my own face. My eyes went hot.

She caught my hand and held her temper on a very short leash.

"How. Did you. Bully her." Then she turned on the room. "Dorian. Are you actually dead? She is standing here in pieces and you can't see it?"

Brooke is old money, loud about it, and she walks into a room like she's already bought the building.

The whole crowd went still the moment she opened her mouth.

Chapter 3

Brooke's eyes found Vivienne and sharpened to a point.

"Well. Look who it is."

Vivienne stood and reached for my hand, her whole face going soft and friendly.

"We were just playing a game. Did it really hit a nerve? I run my mouth, I'll own that. It's my first time around a girl this delicate. I misjudged it. That's on me."

Brooke swept me behind her with one arm.

"Who said you could put your hands on her?" She looked Vivienne up and down. "And you don't run your mouth. You play dumb."

By then Dorian had sobered up. He rubbed the space between his brows and stood. "Quinn's tired. I should get her home."

Brooke laughed, cold. "I'm already here. What do I need you for? You go right on playing dead."

The whole crowd stood around looking sheepish while Brooke gathered my things, narrating the entire time.

"I have told you this. A face like yours, a heart like yours, you marry into money and let them spoil you. But no. You had to go suffer in some nouveau-riche family." She zipped my bag shut. "That world is all knives and two-faced smiles. You really think that's a place for someone as straightforward as you?"

For the record, Dorian's family was worth nine figures too.

A nine-figure family, written off as nouveau riche. Niche little insult. But coming out of Brooke's mouth, nobody in that room dared argue it.

She finished packing, lifted my bag, and spotted the perfume sitting inside. The pretty little bottle.

She pulled it out without a word and dropped it on the floor.

"What is this dated thing? The nerve, handing that to someone as a wedding gift."

The bottle rolled in a slow arc across the tile and came to rest against the toe of Vivienne's shoe.

For the first time all night, Vivienne's face didn't hold.

Brooke took my hand and walked me out.

Dorian followed us to the door and caught my arm.

"Quinn, don't be angry. In that whole atmosphere, when she dropped that question on me, my head just went blank."

I looked into those warm, devoted eyes of his, and every bit of strength went out of me.

"You're telling me it was instinct. That somewhere in there, you actually want to be with her."

"Of course not. Quinn, it was a game. If I'd said no, she'd have lost face in front of everyone."

"So to protect her face, you'd put my dignity on the floor and step on it."

"I gave her a graceful answer. What I'm giving you is a marriage."

I twisted out of his grip and laughed, because there was nothing else to do with it.

"Oh. So I came out ahead." I shook my head at him. "Three years, Dorian. Three whole years, and I never once noticed you moonlight as a diplomat. You'll keep every last person in a room happy. Everyone except the one you're supposed to be marrying."

Dorian's mouth opened. Whatever was supposed to come out of it didn't.

Brooke pulled the car up and leaned on the horn.

Dorian reached for me again. "Just let me drive you home. We can talk it through on the way."

Brooke frowned out the window. "If you've got that kind of time on your hands, take that car of yours and go run a couple Uber fares. Might clear your head."

Dorian choked on it.

His Bentley. For the first time in its life, it had managed to humiliate him.

I opened the door and got in. Then I turned back to him.

"Let's cancel the wedding." My voice came out level and clean. "I think we both have some serious thinking to do."

On the drive home, I opened Instagram.

Vivienne had posted twice.

The first one.

Vivienne: [She really is nothing like me. But don't you think that just makes it more obvious what he's trying so hard to cover up?]

The second one.

Vivienne: [If you spent these three years trying to prove I was wrong to let you go. Congratulations. You proved it.]

Chapter 4

Everything I'd held down all night came apart at once.

I cried until there was no sound left in it.

Three years. Three years of meaning every bit of it, and it had bought me nothing.

I'd thought the way Dorian doted on me came from love. Every food he'd memorized. Every ten-o'clock pickup outside the hospital. None of it had ever been aimed at me. It had all been a performance, and the only seat in the house that ever mattered had her name on it.

Brooke is a straight shooter. She does not know how to say the soft thing. She solves problems.

"Stop crying. Men are everywhere. Just grab a different one." She flapped a hand. "My brother's gorgeous. My dad's still got it. Take your pick."

I cried myself dry, and then she made me laugh.

"Brooke. Am I pathetic? That even now, you're the one out here fighting my battles for me."

She patted the top of my head.

"Don't talk stupid. Everybody's built different." She sat back. "My family lost my mom early. The three of us left are all a little broken. Not one of us can say the loving thing out loud. I was the rebellious one, a headache from the jump, never much use to anybody."

She looked at me.

"You came out of the womb a soft touch. Every day around you feels like good weather. You've also got the steadiest hands in the building, the one doctor in this city whose needles don't hurt. When I was admitted, if you hadn't sat with me every single day, talking me down like I was worth that kind of patience, I never would have gotten through it."

It landed exactly where I needed it to.

Whatever had caved in on my sense of myself slowly started to stand back up.

"I mean it," Brooke said. "You really won't think about marrying into my family?"

She had said it more times than I could count.

I met Brooke because she got sick. The chief of medicine took her case himself and I was the resident on it. But I spoke gently and my needles didn't hurt, so Brooke pitched a fit and decided I was going to be her doctor, end of discussion. That was the start of one very deep, very ride-or-die friendship.

I was already with Dorian by then, and Brooke spent every day slapping her own knee over it.

"Why couldn't I have gotten sick a few months sooner? Back then you were single. I still had a real shot at bringing you home as my sister-in-law."

The unwitting subject of all this was Callum.

Brooke's brother, who had flown back from overseas on leave for the sole purpose of sitting at her bedside.

He heard it, and his face went dark as a storm front.

After enough of Brooke's relentless campaigning, Callum and I were frozen out from the very first day. Every time we crossed paths I ducked my head and he tilted his face away, both of us pretending the other one wasn't there.

Not long ago he'd finished up abroad and joined our hospital. The office right next to mine, of all places.

The arrival of one cold, untouchable, ice-carved genius set the entire hospital on fire. Women invented reasons to walk past his door twice a day. Sick days mysteriously dried up.

Meanwhile I held my own bladder hostage through whole shifts, terrified that one too many trips down that hallway would land me face to face with him.

Watching me sit there saying nothing, Brooke lit up.

"You've gone all quiet. Are you actually considering it? Well? My brother, or my dad?"

My mouth twitched. "If those are the only two options, I'd take your dad."

Brooke got even more excited.

"Yes! See, that's exactly what I think too. My dad's old, he'll go early, you inherit the estate nice and young, and the two of us hire male models seven days a week. My brother's no good for that. The man eats clean and keeps a sleep schedule, he's disgustingly healthy, I'm scared you'd never outlive him."

I had nothing.

The next afternoon, Brooke showed up at the hospital to drive me home, right on time.

We passed Callum's door.

She caught my wrist and pulled me straight in.

Chapter 5

"Hey. You working late tonight?"

Callum looked up from his computer.

Six foot three. A hard ridge of brow, a blade of a nose, eyes that ran cold and pulled at you anyway. A face cold enough to forget it was beautiful.

He glanced at me, and the glance was nothing. Flat. Cold.

"No."

Across the desk, Dr. Cho's head came up, startled. "Dr. Sinclair, weren't you"

Callum cut him one look.

Dr. Cho froze, then swallowed whatever it was right back down.

"You going out to eat, then?" Brooke asked.

Callum considered it with a touch of ceremony. "I could."

Then he stood, brisk, and squared the papers on his desk.

Brooke lit up. "Perfect. You eat out tonight, because I'm taking Quinn home for dinner. Works out great. She gets weird with you around."

Callum went still.

He raised his head, slowly, and looked at his sister.

There was something in his eyes I can only call murder.

"Then why not just take her out somewhere?" His face had gone thunderous. "Our food isn't anything special anyway."

Their housekeeper, Yolanda, had started out tending the grounds. When she got too old to dig, she put in for a transfer to the kitchen. Her cooking was, well. Healthy.

Brooke went up on her toes and put her mouth to his ear.

"I'm taking her home to meet Dad." A delighted little whisper. "Heh. You might be getting yourself a stepmom. Happy? Surprised?"

Callum straightened, slow.

He looked at his sister the way you look at a body on a slab.

A few seconds passed. Then he hauled her up by the arm and started marching her toward the CT suite.

"Come on. Let's get a scan. See if they scooped your brain out by mistake last time you were admitted."

Brooke's protests rang all the way down the corridor