All Chapters of Bride by Default: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

(Sienna)My sister’s wedding collapsed because of me.Two hundred guests watched it happen.The priest was halfway through the vows when the groom stopped the ceremony, walked down the aisle……and chose the wrong woman.Me.The worst part wasn’t that he chose me.The worst part was that six weeks earlier I had ridden him in a hotel bed attached to Heathrow Terminal Five.Hard.Twice.Possibly three times.***I stopped in the doorway of St. Bartholomew’s Cathedral and stared down the length of the aisle.The organ was playing something slow and reverent. Sunlight spilled through stained glass windows. Two hundred guests turned politely toward the entrance as I slipped inside late and breathless, smoothing the creases from the navy dress I had changed into in a Singapore airport bathroom.None of them mattered.Because at the altar, standing tall in a morning suit, dark hair precisely arranged, shoulders broad and unmistakable—Was him.My brain stalled.My feet faltered.No.That wasn’

(Sienna)The vestry smelled of old wood and fresh disaster.Five minutes earlier Adrian Swift had walked me out of the cathedral, holding my hand, while two hundred guests watched my sister’s wedding collapse around us.Now, everyone was talking at once.My father's lawyer had his phone pressed to one ear and a contract open on his tablet. My father stood grey-faced and very still, like a man discovering a load-bearing wall had just given way.Celeste was crying. Beautifully. Because Celeste did everything beautifully.But the tears were real and that was the part I couldn't look at directly.Adrian stood near the window with his own lawyers, speaking quietly, as though he hadn’t just detonated a society wedding in front of 200 witnesses. His morning suit remained immaculate. I had no idea how that was possible.I positioned myself near the door and started listening.It took about four minutes to get behind what was not being said out loud.This was a dynastic marriage. A neat way to

(Sienna)The wedding guests were being offered champagne and careful reassurances while four lawyers rearranged my life in a vestry office.I sat across from Adrian Swift, my sister's former fiancé, my accidental one-night stand, and apparently my imminent husband, and watched two legal teams work with focused efficiency, billing by the minute.My father sat beside me, grey and diminished, signing things when directed. I had stopped expecting him to object to anything approximately twenty minutes ago.Adrian's terms came first. It didn’t need much altering from the prenup he had drawn up for Celeste.Public appearances as required. Shared residence at his Mayfair townhouse and city penthouse. One year minimum, though the covenant stipulated five, and everyone in the room understood which number actually governed. No infidelity, stated with the brisk neutrality of a parking restriction.I listened. I took notes on my phone.I did not let my eyes drift to his face. Because his face was d

(Sienna)"You forgot about him, didn’t you?" Maya said.Not an accusation. Just a fact, delivered quietly, which was somehow worse."Not forgot," I said. "I just—" The sentence didn't have an ending that helped me. "There wasn't time to—""Sienna.""I know."Shit. I screwed up. Big time. And I had no words to make it right.“Please tell me that you were at least in an off-again situation before today?” She asked then. Because she was trying to give me an out for forgetting all about the fallout being a replacement bride at my sister’s wedding would cause with my on-again, off-again boyfriend of three years.I nodded eagerly. Tragically.Maya looked at me with no mercy."He was in the cathedral. Left more or less the same time Celeste did."Which was long before we said “I do”.The thought of stately Oliver Atwood, who only let me call him Ollie, sitting in a pew, processing the same wreckage as two hundred other guests, settled over me like cold water.He wouldn't be shouting. That was

(Sienna)I woke up in a bed that wasn't mine, in a room that was too quiet, in a life that had been someone else's yesterday.For exactly three seconds I didn't remember.Then I did.The wedding. The vestry. The contract. The kiss. The photos already multiplying across umpteen outlets before Jolene had finished her second sentence.I lay still for a moment and let the weight of it settle.Then I got up, because lying still had never once made anything better.Adrian's penthouse operated the way I imagined Adrian operated. Things were already in motion before the rest of the world had caught up.By the time I found the kitchen, there was coffee made and a tablet on the counter open to a briefing document. A schedule had been printed and placed beside it with the kind of quiet efficiency that suggested either Adrian had done it himself at six in the morning or Jolene had remote access to his printer, which I was not prepared to rule out.I preferred tea in the mornings. But I poured coff