by Holly Rayner
And then the doors are opening for a final time, and Leah stands there in a simple white dress, looking more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her. Her blond hair tumbles loose around her shoulders. The dress is delicate and soft-looking, nothing like that ornate one she wore at our last wedding, but the simplicity of it allows her natural beauty to shine through.
She walks slowly, looking from side to side at our gathered friends and family, taking the time to enjoy the moment. And even as I feel the urge to run down from the altar to her side, to meet her where she is, I know that I would wait here forever and watch her make her way to me.
Finally, she reaches me. Her smile is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and I can’t help it—I step down from the altar to her side. She takes my hand and we turn to face the officiant, ready to recite our vows and begin the rest of our lives together.
The End
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Married by Mistake
Time for a tease!
Up next is the first chapter of the previous book in my Billionaires of Europe series, Married by Mistake
Happy reading!
Holly x
Copyright 2019 by Holly Rayner
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.
All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Dani
I’m right on time for Sandy’s bachelorette party, walking into the hotel lobby and claiming my key to the room at six p.m. on the nose. The hotel Rhonda chose is loud and brassy, just like her, with tacky decor and a lobby full of squealing slot machines. I smile as I gather my things and make my way across the lobby to the bank of elevators. This is going to be a ridiculous weekend, and I am fully intending to love every minute of it.
I’ve never been to Las Vegas before, and it’s already a trip. The street outside was like a carnival, with people walking around in elaborate dress and drinking out of novelty souvenir cups that look like they were meant to be sold to children at theme parks. People darted from one casino to the next, crossing the street, diving in and out of doors to try their luck at new places. I imagine all of them must be roughly the same on the inside. But then, what do I know?
This place Rhonda picked out for us is mostly decorated in lurid pink. There’s a gift shop on my left, just between the registration desk and the casino floor, but it takes me a minute to realize that the gaudily dressed mannequins are part of a shop display and not simply more of the decor. I wander past them and out onto the carpet that denotes the start of the actual gambling, the line you aren’t allowed to cross if you aren’t of age.
I tear my eyes from the slot machines and turn back to the elevators. Our room is on the twelfth floor, which I like; as exciting as I find the idea of having a casino running all night just below us, I’m glad we’re going to be high up enough that we won’t have to hear the bells and whistles when we’re trying to sleep.
I find our room number—1232—and knock. I could use my key to gain entry, of course, but if the other girls are here already, I don’t want to just walk in and freak them out.
It’s Sandy who answers the door, whipping it open and diving into my arms with a squeal.
“Dani! You’re here! You came! Oh my God, this is going to be the best bachelorette weekend ever! Vegas, can you even believe it?”
I laugh a little. “Of course I can believe it! I helped plan it, silly.”
“You are the best.” She hugs me again and stands back to let me in.
I scan the room quickly. Sandy has her hair in twin braids and is wearing a flowered sundress, looking like she just got back from roping cattle and is ready to pour us all some lemonade—I can see that she must be adjusting well to having a farmer for a fiancé. Behind her is Rhonda, sporting a look that couldn’t be more different from Sandy’s—a deliberately tacky leather jacket with rhinestones on the collar over a jean skirt and ripped T-shirt featuring a new-wave band from the eighties.
Over on one of the hotel room’s beds are the twins, Molly and Melanie, arguing hotly about mascara. Molly and Melanie are the kind of sisters who make everyone around them wonder why they’re friends at all. They couldn’t be more different if they tried. Molly is a swimmer and a basketball player, and when she isn’t actively participating in sports, she’s training. She’s extremely physically fit and highly focused. Melanie, conversely, is a painter. She exhibits her work in coffee shops and hangs around all day, reading novels and eating scones, in case somebody buys one.
The toilet flushes and the final member of our group, Liz, emerges from the bathroom. Liz is tall, whip-thin and studying to become a lawyer. Rhonda likes to joke that it’s a good thing we all became friends in college, since one day she’ll need Liz to get her out of trouble. Liz never laughs at that joke, probably because she’s afraid it’s the truth.
Now, she hugs me. “Dani, you made it.”
“Good to see you.” I hug her back. “How are things in Boulder?”
“They’re good,” she smiles. “A little exhausting, mind you. I’ve been looking forward to this weekend all month.”
“I hear that,” Rhonda cuts in. “Tonight, we are dressing up, we are drinking cocktails, and we are going to fritter away our hard-earned money. And this one”—she tugs Sandy into a close embrace—“isn’t paying for anything all night, girls, so I hope you loosened your purse strings.”
Sandy has gone bright red. “You ladies really don’t have to do that. I have some money, too. Ian gave me some when he found out where we were going.”
“Oh my God,” Molly says. “Does he give you an allowance?”
“It’s not like that,” Sandy says. “It’s just that he earns all the money and he pays all the bills, so he’s the one who knows when there’s some to spare. When that happens, we usually split it equally.”
“But you’re a kept woman,” Molly chuckles.
“I am not!”
Sandy throws a pillow at her. Molly shrieks and chucks it back, and for the next several minutes, everyone but Liz and me are occupied with throwing pillows at each other.
Liz turns to me, one eyebrow raised. “I guess some things don’t change.”
“Well, it’s what we love about them. Somebody’s got to be the silly one, right?”
“Four people, in this case. How was your drive?”
“Fine, and your flight?”
“I never enjoy dealing with airports, of course, but other than that, it was fine. Actually, the trip gave me some time to catch up on my podcasts, so that was nice. I’m listening to a true-crime one now.”
“I’d have thought that you’d want a break from crime, after studying it all day, every day.”
“It’s what I’m interested in.” She shrugs. “Speaking of which, how’s the shop?”
“It’s good.”
She means Bell Body Shop, the auto body and mechanic’s shop I inherited when my father retired. I’ve worked there since I was seventeen under my dad’s tutelage—aside from the years I was away at college—learning to rotate tires, mend fenders, and repair car frames after a collision. Finally, three years ago, my father pronounced me ready to take over the business full-time. He said he’d been waiting to retire until he was sure I could handle it, and now, he was sure. Since then, he and my mother have spent most of their time going on cruises. In between vacations, though, I’m able to see a lot of them, since they still live ju
st outside Riverside.
“Still having a lot of success?” Liz asks.
“We’re one of the most successful shops in the city,” I admit proudly. “I credit our website. I had a local kid help me with the design, and then I hired a freelancer to optimize it so it would be the first thing search engines turn up when people search for an auto mechanic in Riverside.”
“Pretty smart,” Liz says.
“Well, it seems to be working.”
“And you’ve got the skills to back it up. Give yourself credit, too.”
I grin and lean my shoulder into hers. “Thanks.”
“How long has it been since we’ve all seen each other?” Sandy asks. She’s still floating around the room as if she’s on an orbiting cloud, drifting from one of us to the next and landing each time in a hug. Because she’s the bachelorette, I know we’ll accommodate her touchy-feely ways all night, but a part of me is already itching to start drinking. I’ll feel a lot more warm and fuzzy with a few vodka cranberries under my belt.
“It seems like just yesterday we were all moving out of the old apartment,” Melanie says, referring to the apartment the six of us shared during our junior and senior years of college. The place was a couple of blocks off campus, across the street from a popular student bar, and it was our two-year cohabitation that cemented our status as best friends.
Even now, despite the fact that we hardly ever get the chance to see each other, I think of these women as my closest friends in the world. It was Rhonda who taught us all how to drink, back in the day, and Liz is the only reason any of us passed statistics. Melanie used to cook for us at least once a week—elaborate dishes that she looked up in real cookbooks, and it was a good thing Molly was always happy to be on clean-up duty. We all did yoga together in the living room, stretching on cheap mats and correcting each other’s form. All of my best memories are with these women. Seeing them again now feels like coming home.
“We need to get ready to go out,” Rhonda says. “None of you are dressed for a night on the town.”
Molly laughs. “You’re not ready either, Ronnie. You look like a hair metal groupie. You said it yourself—we’re dressing up tonight. Glamour. Elegance. Not punk-rock.”
Rhonda groans good-naturedly. “None of you have ever understood my aesthetic.”
“Show me what you brought,” Molly insists, and trails Rhonda over to the closet to examine her selection of dresses.
A knock comes at the door, and Liz, who is closest, answers it.
“Your champagne,” says the man with the room-service cart, handing us a bottle and a tray bearing six flutes.
Liz tips him and hands me the tray, which I carefully carry over to the bed.
“Dani,” Molly says, as Melanie starts pouring and distributing glasses, “you’re going to have to let us do your makeup.”
“Makeup?” This is more than I bargained for. “I don’t wear makeup. You know this.”
“Tonight, you do,” Rhonda says briskly. “It’s a special occasion, and if I have to put on formalwear, you have to put on makeup. No debate.”
“This is cruel and unusual,” I say as the girls cluster around me with brushes and powders in hand. “I don’t wear makeup for a reason, you know.”
“Because you don’t know how,” Sandy says, holding my hair out of my face so Melanie can do something to my eyes. “Trust us, Dani. You look great like this, and Rhonda’s right. It’s a special occasion. Everyone has to dress up.”
“Is that glitter?” I sputter, ducking my face away from a pot of sparkly gel as Sandy brandishes it at me.
“This is Vegas, Dani,” Molly says. She’s taken a seat on the hotel room’s desk, with her feet up on the chair and a flute of champagne dangling loosely in her hand. “You don’t want to look like you just fell off the turnip truck.”
“I do not look like I just fell off the turnip truck.”
“Of course you don’t,” Melanie soothes. “We all like your natural look, Dani. But everyone’s going to go crazy tonight. You’ll see. I brought my six-inch stilettos.”
“Six inches? Really?”
“They hurt like a mother, and I’ll probably be barefoot by nine. But what’s the point of having six-inch stilettos if I’m not going to wear them to something like this, right? I mean, when else am I going to wear them?”
“I guess you have a point,” I admit.
“Of course I have a point. Finish your champagne before I do your lips, okay? I don’t want it to smudge.”
Half an hour later, when everyone is made up and dressed and bedazzled to within an inch of our lives, we make our way out into the hallway and toward the elevators. Melanie is tottering precariously on her stilettos, although I have to assume the bottle of champagne we chugged has something to do with her lack of balance, too. Sandy is walking with her arms wrapped around Molly and Rhonda, giggling and trying to remember our college alma mater song, which I’m not sure any of us ever knew in the first place.
I catch glimpses of myself in the brass plates on the hotel room doors we pass and barely recognize the face looking back at me. All my features have been amplified, made intense and dramatic by the makeup. Once inside the elevator, it’s all I can do to keep from staring at my reflection in the mirrors that surround the tiny room on all sides.
Stepping out into the lobby feels ten times more exciting than checking in did. Suddenly, the casino floor doesn’t seem like a cacophonous maze anymore—it’s an exciting playground where anything might happen. I remind myself firmly that I have a gambling limit tonight. I shouldn’t get carried away.
“I’ll go find us all some drinks and meet you at roulette,” Rhonda says, and disappears into the crowd.
I lose sight of her almost immediately, but my eyes catch on someone else. He’s tall, solidly built, maybe about forty, with slightly greying but very full dark hair. He’s dressed in a tailored suit and holding a martini glass.
And he’s looking back at me.
For a long moment, he holds my gaze. I’m unable to look away. It’s as if he has some strange power over me, some way of keeping me fixated on him.
Then, Sandy grabs my arm. “Dani, come on! Everyone else is gone!”
“What?” I break my stare and focus on Sandy. “I’m sorry, what’s going on?”
“Everybody headed over to the roulette wheel, but you were off in space! What’s going on?”
“Oh,” I say. “Nothing, I’m sorry. There’s just…a lot to see here. A lot to take in.”
“Well, let’s go play.”
Sandy takes me by the hand and pulls me out into the maze of slot machines and blackjack tables, and by the time I look back over my shoulder, I can’t even see the lobby anymore, much less the mysterious man with the captivating stare.
Married by Mistake is available on Amazon now
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More Series by Holly Rayner
BILLIONAIRES OF EUROPE
Fake Bride Wanted
Single Dad, Billionaire Boss
Big Greek Baby Secret
His For A Price
First Time Lucky
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The Sheikh’s Small Town Baby
Seduced by the Sheikh Doctor
Bought by the Sheikh Next Door
Bought by the Sheikh Single Dad
The Sheikh’s Second Chance Lover
YOU CAN’T TURN DOWN A SHEIKH
The Sheikh’s Surrogate Bride
The Sheikh’s Unexpected Twins
The Sheikh’s Secret Princess
The Sheikh’s Bride Bargain
Indebted to the Sheikh
The Sheikh’s Forbidden Baby
MORE THAN HE BARGAINED FOR
The Sheikh’s Twin Baby Surprise
The Sheikh’s Triplet Baby Surprise
The Sheikh’s Quadruplet Baby Surprise
The Sheikh’s Quintuplet Baby Su
rprise
The Sheikh’s Sextuplet Baby Surprise
The Tycoon’s Triplet Baby Surprise
The Sheikh’s Borrowed Baby
The Prince’s Triplet Baby Surprise
The Tycoon’s Temporary Twins
THE SHEIKH’S NEW BRIDE
The Sheikh’s Priceless Bride
The Sheikh’s Bride Bet
The Sheikh’s ASAP Bride
Sold To The Sheikh Bidder
The Sheikh’s Stolen Lover
The Sheikh’s Bought Ballerina
The Sheikh’s Secret Child
SAN BRAVADO BILLIONAIRES’ CLUB
Second Chance Twins
Nanny For Hire
The Baby Bargain
Accidental Triplets
Take My V-Card
Bought By The Boss
Four Secret Babies
