Everything looked perfect. Until she turned her attention to the expectant guests, all waiting slightly less patiently than they had been twenty minutes ago, and felt her stomach twist.
Because the only thing missing now was the groom.
Dawn ducked back behind the screens that the venue staff had put in place to keep the bridal party’s arrival a secret until the last moment. Behind her, her four sisters whispered amongst themselves, their rose-pink silk bridesmaid dresses rustling with them. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but then she didn’t really need to.
Can you believe this is happening again?
No. They were wrong. Justin loved her, he wanted to marry her. He’d hated even having to spend last night in a different hotel—although he’d insisted they had to, for tradition’s sake. He’d be here any moment. Probably.
Dawn bit back a sigh. It wasn’t as if this exact thing had happened before, anyway—whatever her sisters were whispering. She’d never got quite as far as the altar with any of the others. They’d all called it off before it reached this point.
Two broken engagements—one at the rehearsal dinner, but that still wasn’t the actual altar, right?—three long-term cohabiting relationships that had never even got as far as the ring and now Justin. Forty minutes late for his own wedding.
It wouldn’t be quite so bad if every single one of her boyfriends hadn’t gone on to marry someone else within twelve to eighteen months. Including, in one particularly soul-destroying case, marrying her own sister.
‘The Dry Run.’ That was what her sisters called her. Dawn was the woman that guys tried out settling down with before they picked the woman they actually wanted to spend the rest of their lives with. And for some reason that woman was never Dawn.
But Justin was different. Wasn’t he?
From the moment they’d first met, she’d felt it. She’d been at a work event, one held at an estate not unlike this one, with vineyards stretching back from the gleaming white house. She’d been standing on the terrace, looking out at the sunset, when he’d approached her and made some comment about the hosts that she could barely remember. All she had taken in was his smile and his charm. They’d talked all evening—well, okay, mostly he’d talked, but he had so many interesting things to say! Then, the next day, he’d sent flowers and a note to her office, asking her to meet him at some ridiculously exclusive bar across town.
She went, and the rest was history. They’d announced their engagement four months later and, now, here they were.
Or rather, here she was. Justin’s whereabouts were still a mystery.
The whispering behind her grew louder and Dawn turned to see the best man, Justin’s older brother Cooper, striding across the lawn from the main house towards them. He wasn’t smiling. Then again, she hadn’t seen him smile yet in the twenty-four hours since they’d met, so that might not actually be a sign.
Dawn sucked in a breath and braced herself.
‘He’s not coming.’ Cooper stood a few feet away, his expression blank. As if he hadn’t just torn her whole world apart with three little words.
She’d suspected that Cooper didn’t like her since she’d first met him at the rehearsal dinner. But then, he’d never seemed particularly enthusiastic whenever Justin had talked to him on the phone either. And, really, what best man didn’t make the effort even to attend the engagement party?
‘Way to break it to her gently,’ her sister, Marie, said sharply. She wrapped an arm around Dawn’s shoulders as their other sisters made sympathetic cooing noises.
Dawn would probably have felt a lot more comforted if Marie hadn’t married her ex-boyfriend two years ago.
She could feel all the usual emotions swelling up inside her—the anger, the despair, the gaping emptiness—but she clamped down on them. No. This wasn’t going to happen again. It couldn’t.
And, if it did, she wasn’t going to give any one of her perfect sisters—or Justin’s sanctimonious brother—the chance to see it break her.
‘Is that for me?’ Dawn pointed to the envelope in Cooper’s hand, proud of how steady her voice was. Her finger didn’t even shake.
She could almost believe she wasn’t actually dying on the inside.
Cooper gave a short nod and handed it over—but not, she noticed, before removing a second envelope. One that had his name on it.
Apparently Justin had more to say than just to the bride he’d stood up.
Focusing on keeping her hand steady, she took her letter and untucked the envelope flap. So like Justin, to write an old-fashioned letter. He wasn’t the sort to dump a girl by text message—like her second fiancé—or even by email, like boyfriend number three. Justin was a gentleman.
Or he had been, until now.
Inside the envelope she found a single sheet of creamy paper covered in his block print writing—one that Dawn was pretty sure Justin must have taken from the elegant writing desk in his mother’s immaculate front room. She scanned the words quickly, then folded it up again and pushed it back into the envelope, making sure not to let her expression change at all.
They were not going to win.
‘Right. Well, it seems we won’t be having a wedding today after all.’ Her voice didn’t even sound like her own.
‘Oh, Dawn!’ That was her mother, of course, who’d come to find her father to see what the delay was. ‘Oh, not again, honey!’
Dawn kept her gaze fixed on Cooper’s face, even as he raised one eyebrow at the word ‘again’.
‘Will you help me tell the guests?’ she asked neutrally.
‘I believe that unfortunate task does fall to the best man, traditionally,’ Cooper said.
Traditionally. As if this happened at everyone else’s weddings, not just hers.
‘Great. Okay, then.’
‘Do you want me to send them home?’ Cooper asked, his voice as bland and unemotional as ever. ‘I believe there was a dinner planned...’
And an open bar, actually. That might be important later.
Dawn thought of the tables of canapés and champagne, the four-course meal that Justin’s family had insisted on paying for. There wouldn’t be any refunds at this point, of course, but it wasn’t as though the Edwards family couldn’t afford it. And a lot of these people had travelled a long way to be with them on their not-so-special day.
Well, the least she could do was feed them. And give them a good story to tell on the dinner-party circuit.
‘No,’ she said as firmly as she could manage. ‘I’ll go tell the venue to get the bar open and prepare to serve dinner. Everyone else should enjoy the day, at least. Excuse me.’
And with that Dawn hitched up her heavy, lace-covered skirt and made for the mansion as fast as she could in her satin heels.
She needed a drink, and a toilet cubicle to hide in, fast.
That way, no one would be able to see her fall apart.
Again.
* * *
Cooper watched his brother’s jilted bride make her way towards the ridiculously fancy mansion she’d chosen for what was supposed to be her big day. She seemed strangely composed for someone who’d just had their entire future torn away from them.