He waited for the pained look on Ryan’s face to relax a little.
It didn’t. If anything, the crease between his cousin’s brows deepened.
“It’s not a tabloid,” Ryan said. Then he uttered the only three words powerful enough to tear Zander’s thoughts away from Allegra Clark dressed in bridal white tulle. “It’s the Times.”
This had to be a bad joke. The New York Times had won more Pulitzer Prizes than any other paper in the world. “Good one. You almost had me. But the Gray Lady is a New York institution. It’s a serious publication. They’d never run a story about a hotel being cursed.”
“Think again.” Ryan lifted a sardonic eyebrow. “The Society section would.”
Zander swallowed, longing once again for the smooth burn of vodka, vermouth and a little olive brine sliding down his throat. Things were apparently worse than he’d anticipated.
The Times, for God’s sake. Only the society page, but still...
It wasn’t just the society page, though, as Zander soon realized.
Ryan took a deep breath and lowered the boom. “Specifically, the Vows column.”
Zander clenched his gut. “The Vows column? From the Sunday Wedding section?”
“The one and only.” Ryan sighed.
Having the hotel lambasted on the front page would have been better than the Vows column announcing that the Bennington was cursed. People all over the damn world read the wedding announcements in the Sunday edition of the Times. Like every other luxury hotel in Manhattan, a sizable portion of the Bennington’s business came from the wedding industry. Moonstruck brides and grooms.
He shook his head. This couldn’t happen. Not after he’d worked so hard to restore the Bennington to its former glory. “I don’t understand where this is coming from. Why would a columnist from Vows think we’re cursed?”
Ryan frowned. “You seriously have to ask?”
“I do, actually.”
I do.
The instant the words left his mouth, he remembered Allegra saying the same thing while she stood in front of him, looking like she’d just walked out of a fairy tale.
He’d taunted her. You even sound like a bride.
Now reality was finally coming together with horrific clarity.
Damn. He groaned. “We’ve had another runaway bride, haven’t we?”
“Bingo.” Ryan seemed to be fighting a smirk. “The bride who crashed your birthday party just now was the latest. You know, the one you assumed was here to strong-arm you into marrying her.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Now he did, anyway.
Zander sighed. No wonder Allegra had laughed in his face. She hadn’t turned up to make good on their deal. She’d been on the run from her own wedding to a completely different man.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. But the timing seemed awfully fortuitous. It wasn’t as if he’d wanted to believe she’d come back for him.
You sure about that?
Beneath the surface of his desk, Zander’s hands curled into fists. Of course he was sure.
Ryan’s gaze narrowed. “What’s the story there, if you don’t mind my asking? The two of you were engaged once?”
“No,” Zander said with a little too much force. Then, more evenly, he added, “It wasn’t like that.”
Ryan stared blankly at him, waiting for more.
Zander was in no mood to oblige. “Back to the matter at hand. We have two weddings on the schedule this weekend. Which one just went belly-up?”
Zander didn’t personally handle the hotel’s wedding-planning details, but as with everything else that went on beneath the roof of the fabled building, he supervised with a watchful eye. It was his job to know what was going on, and he definitely would have noticed if they’d had a wedding on the schedule with a bride named Allegra Clark.
Ryan took a beat too long to answer. “The big one. The Warren wedding.”
The Warren wedding, as in Spencer Warren, city councilman and mayoral candidate for the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. No wonder the Times had already taken notice.
The hotel roster had listed the bride’s name as Ali Clark. So Allegra was going by Ali now?
Zander wasn’t sure what he found more surprising—the fact that Allegra had changed her name or that she’d ever considered being a politician’s wife.
It was time to face the facts. He no longer knew her. Allegra was a stranger now. She wasn’t even Allegra anymore, and she didn’t want to marry him any more than he wanted to marry her.
He also had far more pressing matters to deal with at the moment. “This is our third runaway bride in the span of a month.”
Ryan nodded. “We also had one about twelve weeks ago.”
No wonder the Times thought the Bennington was cursed. “Once the Vows column goes forward, no one will want to book a wedding here.”
“We’re screwed,” Ryan said.
“No, we’re not.” Zander gave his head a slow, methodical shake. “We’ll just have to prove them wrong.”
He wasn’t going down without a fight. He’d worked too long and too hard to let a runaway bride bring him to his knees.
Even a runaway bride he’d once been foolish enough to love.
* * *
Allegra woke the next morning when the first rays of soft pink sunlight peeked through the ruffled curtains of Emily Wilde’s guest room. Her first conscious thought was how pretty the cozy attic space looked, with its white barrel-vaulted ceiling and antique pedestal sink in the corner. Her second conscious thought was that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had such a good night’s sleep.
It defied logic. She was homeless, for all practical purposes. Stuck in New York with no belongings, no job and no fiancé. No plan. Yet, she felt more at peace than she had in months. Maybe she’d actually done the right thing, for once. She’d made a good choice in coming back...coming home.
Except this wasn’t home. This was Zander’s mother’s house. His mother’s room. The pale gray flannel pajamas Allegra had slept in didn’t belong to her either. They were at least three sizes too big. She could only guess they’d once belonged to Zander’s father.
Still, it felt nice here. Peaceful. She peeled back the curtain and watched the snow float down from the sky. Slowly, softly, like feathers shaken loose from a pillow. A tiny black kitten tiptoed its way through the white fluff on the sidewalk down below. Everything was so picturesque that Allegra’s heart gave a little lurch.
Don’t get used to it. You can’t stay here. You cannot.
Except where else could she go?
Somehow she’d thought she could figure it all out after she got some sleep. But nothing had changed. Not really. The hotel was booked. Even if they’d had a room and even if she’d managed to locate her purse, her debit card would have only been good for two or three nights. Four at the most. She’d spent every last dime on her dream wedding. There’d been the fancy caterer, the string quartet, the flowers...
An image of her extravagant bridal bouquet falling to