Another wish would have been to go back in time and stop this fiasco before it began. But she couldn’t do that, anymore than she could cancel out any of her past mistakes. So she was doing the next best thing—canceling the engagement three weeks before the planned New Year’s Eve wedding in the old chapel on the grounds of the chateau just south of Paris.
“I can’t do this,” Brittany said, her tense voice echoing slightly in her father’s study on the ground floor of the chateau. It had been her favorite room until that moment. With its rich wood and leather, the scent of books all around, memories of sitting in here when she was little, reading while her father worked.
“What do you want me to do, go ahead and marry you, then destroy everyone’s life when it doesn’t work? Because it’s not going to work.”
Sean came closer to where she stood by the inlaid wood desk near the French doors. He was only two inches taller than her own five foot, ten inches, but she felt very small right then. He took a breath, making an obvious effort to talk rationally. “Can’t we rethink this and try to work it out some way?”
She knew the repercussions of her decision were going to explode all around her, and for a fleeting moment it was tempting to think of stopping it before it did. But she knew that things would only be worse if she let it go on. And it would hurt her father even more than this all would now. How could she have thought she loved Sean, that she loved him enough to marry him, to do the “forever” thing with him? “I don’t see how we can work this out,” she said, her voice sounding small and uncertain in her own ears.
But Sean wasn’t going to be put off. He came closer to her. “Brittany, love, this is a wedding. It’ll be fun, and we can deal with other things when they come up. It’s all in place, all arranged. And any arrangement can be worked out.”
Brittany felt fire stain her cheeks. An arrangement? And here she’d been worried about realizing that she loved Sean, but wasn’t “in” love with him, while he’d been looking at their wedding as an “arrangement?” Arrangement?
“Sweetheart, what did you think the prenup was all about? There’s a lot of money involved in this, the Lewis and the Briggs money. But just because we’re practical doesn’t mean that we can’t or won’t have fun, and a really good time.”
She stared at him. “Fun?”
He was even closer, his voice getting more and more intimate all the time. In his gray-on-gray shirt and suit, he looked even darker and even more like a stranger, a stranger she’d almost married. He didn’t touch her, but his gaze flicked provocatively over her, skimming over her loose cotton shirt, her jeans, all the way to her bare feet before it lifted to her face framed by her flaming hair drawn up into a simple ponytail. “You’re lovely to look at, even in these clothes. You’re intelligent, well connected, sexy as hell, and we can make this work.”
His words sank deeply into her. No wonder she didn’t love him. He didn’t even make a pretense of loving her. And she suddenly felt more bold, more justified in what she was doing. There wasn’t anger, just relief, and all she wanted right then was to have him gone. Her first broken engagement had been wrenching, filled with tears and pain, easing only with a trip to Switzerland for almost six months to forget her foolishness. Her second engagement had been easier to walk away from, after a flashing moment when she’d realized what a mistake she’d been making. Her then-fiancé had been almost as relieved as she’d been with the cancellation, and she’d gone off to enroll in art school in Vienna. But this was horrendous. Number three was not the charm, and Sean wasn’t giving up gracefully or any other way.
“We can’t make this work,” she said, trying very hard to keep her voice even.
“Tell you what, this is prenuptial nerves, and I think I know what to do. We’ll go away for a few days, someplace remote and private, and you can let me show you how good things can be. If we’re together, I know you’ll feel better.” His voice dropped. “Much, much better.”
She swallowed sickness at the idea of being alone with Sean. “No,” she said, shaking her head as she backed away and twisted the ring off her finger, a five-carat creation of diamonds and sapphires that felt like a millstone to her at that moment.
“Come on, Brit, everything’s in place.” His tone was starting to edge with exasperation now. He wasn’t used to not being able to talk a woman into anything he wanted. “It’s too late. Everything’s in place. All the invitations have gone out, the parties have begun and my mother’s got her gown on order from Dior.”
“I’m sorry about your mother’s gown, and everything else,” she said as she held out the ring to him. “It’s over. I’ll explain everything to the others. I’ll take care of it.”
His expression hardened with each passing second. “I guess you have plenty of experience doing that very thing,” he muttered.
“I said I’m sorry.” She opened her hand, offering him the ring on her palm. “Just take this.”
He reached for the ring, snatching it out of her hand, but he didn’t keep it. Instead he stared at her, then very deliberately dropped it in a leather trash container by her father’s desk. “That’s where it belongs,” he muttered, then turned on his heels, crossed the room and left, slamming the heavy wooden door behind him.
The sound cracked loudly in the study, followed by total silence for a long moment before the door opened again. Bracing herself, she looked at the door, afraid Sean was back for a second round, but her father was there. “I just passed Sean in the hallway.”
“He’s leaving.”
He stepped inside, a tall, slender man with a shock of white hair, wearing a dark suit he’d put on for what was supposed to have been an engagement dinner. “I take it it’s over?”
He’d always been able to read her mind, or maybe he just knew her too well. “Oh, Dad, I’m so sorry.”
“What was it this time?” he asked, closing the door quietly behind him as he came into the study. “What was the sign that came to you that told you not to get married?”
She turned from him, moving to the French doors and staring out into the early evening, across the stone terrace to the rolling hills of the centuries-old vineyard on the property. “I had a dream last night, and I couldn’t shake it. I knew this was all wrong.”
“A dream,” he said from behind her somewhere. “That’s a new reason. I laughed at the first excuse, the ‘he eats steak and animal products’ one, considering you’re a vegetarian and all. Not compatible at all, of course. Then the second time, there was the ‘it came to me in a blinding flash when I was getting fitted for my bridal gown’ reason. That was more dramatic, and who could ignore a blinding flash?”
“Dad,” she muttered, staring hard at the distant hills. “Daniel not only thought I was ridiculous for being a vegetarian, he raised beef, for heaven’s sake. At first I liked him too much to let it bother me, but then, well…And William, well, I just knew suddenly that it was wrong.”
He was right behind her now. “What a mess,” he said in a low voice.
“I wouldn’t exactly call this a mess,” she said quickly, but knew it was exactly that…a mess.
“Three broken engagements in four years,” he murmured. “A third wedding gown put in storage. I don’t know what you’d call it, but I’d say this is becoming a full-time job cleaning up the fallout, a real father-child thing, I guess.”
“I’m twenty-seven years old, and hardly a child,” she muttered.
“You could have fooled me.”
It had been just him and her for years, ever since she was nine and her mother had “gone away for the weekend.”