The Wedding

by Sian Ceinwen

  “Very sensible. I know you care about him very much,” Zoe’s tone was calming, “unfortunately I need to go as I have a client due in a few minutes. I’m pleased that you called me to discuss this, though. I know that the nightmares haven’t stopped, but you are making progress, Heather.”

  It was nice to have that validation. Heather thanked Zoe and hung up the call. After that, she dove right back into her work. Simply focusing on each cut, each stitch she needed to make, and seeing the clothes come to life in front of her eyes allowed her to pass the time until her phone buzzed at a quarter past one with a text from Ariana.

  We’re here.

  Heather hadn’t realized how late it had gotten. It took her a few minutes to clear up, and Rachel offered to finish up for her as she shot a text back letting Ariana know that she would be out soon. Thanking Rachel profusely for her help, she made her way to the entrance where Callum met her and escorted her to the waiting SUV.

  There were no paparazzi here, today. Heather was amused by that fact, knowing that she was about to get into a car with Gabriel, Ariana, and Sebastian in it. They would’ve been salivating over the idea of catching them all together.

  After she’d gotten inside, Callum got in the passenger side of the car to sit next to Daryl Kelly, Sebastian’s bodyguard, as he drove them to Cooper’s office. Because there were so many of them together today, it had been decided that Callum would come along as well.

  Heather did wonder if the choice to have her own bodyguard come instead of Gabriel or Ariana’s was a purposeful one to allow her to be slightly more comfortable at the meeting. If it was, she was grateful. Callum had become one of her favorite people—he was good at his job, and she always felt safer when he was around.

  The danger that she was going to face today wasn’t a physical one, though. It wasn’t something that Callum could ever protect her from. This danger was one that she had prepared to face with Zoe in her counseling sessions, and now was the time to find out if the things she’d learned would keep her safe today.

  “Hi, darlings,” she greeted them as she buckled her seat belt, and Ariana gave her a hug.

  The mood in the car was a somber one, and as Ariana ended their hug, she asked, “Are you ready for this?”

  “Are any of us ready for this?” Heather asked with a hollow laugh.

  “We’re here with you, lover,” Sebastian said with a kind smile in her direction, “no matter what we find out, we’ll all be with you.”

  “Thanks, Seb. I can’t thank”—she stopped as she choked on her words, took a second, and then continued—“I don’t know how I could ever have survived all of this without you guys. I know you’ve been…helping Harrison as well. Keeping him safe, as much as he’ll let you. That’s almost more important to me than what you’ve been doing for me. Thank you, guys.”

  Heather felt the tears starting to flow, then, as Ariana put her arm around her and hugged her close once more. Gabriel grabbed a tissue from a packet that was next to him and handed it to Heather. Sebastian kicked her leg gently to get her attention as she wiped the tears from her eyes, and she looked up at him.

  “We all love you, Heather,” he said gently.

  “Thanks, I know this must be hard for you guys, too. You’ve all been through so much. I really appreciate you all making so much effort just to support me.”

  The trip to Cooper’s office didn’t take long, and when they arrived, Heather was horrified to see that there was a group of paparazzi collected at the entrance. She wondered how they had gotten wind of this meeting. Had they seen Harrison and Hayden entering the building before them? Oh, god, had Maddy arrived as well? Or were they the first to arrive?

  Callum and Daryl got out of the car, came around and opened the curbside door for them to exit. Sebastian was the first to leave the car, followed by Gabriel, then Ariana, and, finally, Heather herself. They stood there for a second, before the paparazzi noted the entire group and descended as Daryl closed the car’s door.

  The questions she’d had about whether or not they were the first to arrive were answered swiftly as the first person called out a question to her, even though she was at the back of their group.

  “Hey, Heather! Harrison is here with Madeline Turner! Is he marrying her in May instead, then?”

  It seemed to be the cue for the other reporters to add their questions to the fray. Ariana held Heather’s hand as they made their way slowly through the throng.

  “Gabriel! How did you propose?” Somebody else called out.

  “Show us your ring, Ariana!” Heather squeezed Ariana’s hand for comfort, her ring safely hidden between them.

  There were already pictures on the internet of Ariana wearing her engagement ring, but Heather had little doubt that today wasn’t the day that her friend would want to do a show and tell with the media. They had almost reached the building when one reporter called Sebastian’s name to try and get his attention.

  “Sebastian! How does it feel to finally be free to be with Harrison’s girl? It’s what you’ve always wanted, right?”

  It was rare for Seb to lose his cool with the press, but he rolled his eyes, spun around, and strode over to the man as he snarled “Get fucked. You piece of shit.”

  Daryl reacted almost instantaneously once Sebastian had moved. He stepped in between the two men as the reporter’s eyes gleamed with joy at the reaction he’d succeeded in getting, “Ooh, did I touch a sensitive spot, Sebastian? You and Heather are screwing, then!”

  “I am not screwing Heather, and even if I was, it would be none of your god damn business. Just leave her the fuck alone, you miserable failure of a human being.”

  Callum and Daryl took hold of one of Sebastian’s arms each and forced him away from the man, then back over to their group, and they finally made it inside. As soon as he was inside, Sebastian kicked a chair that was sitting near the door, and it went flying across the room.

  “Fuck!” he yelled loudly.

  Cooper’s receptionist, Stephanie Jennings, stared at them in complete shock, “Um, hello. Can I help you?”

  There was silence within their group for a second, before Gabriel spoke up, “Hi, Stephanie, it’s good to see you, again. We’re here to see Cooper.”

  Stephanie nodded and left the room, presumably to get Cooper.

  “Are you okay, Seb?” Gabriel asked him, going over to him and putting a hand on his shoulder.

  “No. Fuck. I shouldn’t have done that”—he turned back to face them all—“I’m sorry, guys. They were just being such assholes, and I’m over it.”

  “It’s okay, Seb,” Ariana said, “we’re all stressed, and it’s like they know exactly what buttons to push when they want a reaction.”

  Sebastian looked at Heather, “Are you okay? I probably just made it worse for you, I’m sorry.”

  They were all on edge, she realized. Every one of them had probably been as stressed as she had been since Cooper had contacted them all this morning and told them about the meeting today. Sebastian’s reaction just now was the culmination of not just one day of stress, but almost four months of it since they were drugged. That reporter had caught him at precisely the right moment to be able to get him to snap.

  “Hey, what woman doesn’t want Sebastian Fox as her overprotective lover?” She grinned at him, trying to lighten the mood, even just a tiny bit.

  He blew out a breath of air, “Man, I thought you were going to be pissed at me.”

  She walked over to him and gave him a hug, “No, but you should apologize to Stephanie. I think you might’ve scared the living daylights out of her!”

  Sebastian looked over at the chair, laying on its side in the middle of the room and cringed. He walked over to it, picked it up and placed it back where it had been before he’d kicked it, just before Stephanie and Cooper walked into the room from a hallway at the back.

  “Sebastian, what the fuck is your damage?” Cooper glared at him, obvio
usly infuriated.

  “My ‘damage’ is getting harassed by shitheads when all I want to do is get in the fucking building,” Sebastian said though gritted teeth.

  Gabriel walked over to stand next to Sebastian, crossed his arms over his chest, and said coolly to Cooper, “Get better security, Cooper, or at least let us know if there’s a horde of paparazzi at your front door.”

  “I was too busy dealing with the police chief sitting in my conference room that’s flown to Chicago just to give us a debrief. I didn’t realize that Sebastian was going to have a temper tantrum because he had to deal with a few fucking photographers,” Cooper seemed to be fired up.

  Heather realized that he, too, was clearly stressed out. She had almost forgotten that he was a victim in the drugging, as well. Hell, he’d suffered the worst of them that night, physically, at least.

  She was standing next to Sebastian and Gabriel. Heather stepped forward toward Cooper and kept her tone calm and soothing as she said, “Okay, we’re obviously all stressed. Shall we go do what we came to do?”

  The tension in the room eased a little bit, and Heather was pleased with herself. She’d been learning a lot from Zoe, besides missing the head-tilt thing, that was straight out of her therapist’s playbook. Hopefully, she could deal with the rest of what was to come just as well.

  Cooper nodded and turned without another word to walk back down the hallway. As they passed Stephanie, Heather heard Sebastian mumble an apology to her for scaring her. It was the opposite to the way they’d gotten out of the car—Heather was leading the way behind Cooper now, with Ariana just behind her, while Gabriel and Sebastian brought up the rear.

  Callum and Daryl followed at a distance, and Heather knew that they would stand guard at the door to the conference room. Sure enough, Michael was standing there already and nodded at Heather as she approached him. Her heart leaped right into her throat when she saw him. The paparazzi had been right, then, Harrison was already here.

  As soon as they reached the glass wall to the conference room and she could see inside the room, Harrison was the first person she saw. It was like her body knew instantly that he was in the room; she yearned to walk over to him and kiss him. Every fiber of her being was aching to be in his arms, to find her way to the place that she had always called home.

  Harrison looked up and caught her gaze as she walked into the room. It was as though time had stopped. As though they were talking without words. She could feel his love for her, his guilt over what he had done, his desire to be with her. He looked as beautiful as he always had, even though he looked like a wreck. He was completely gaunt, unshaven, and had slight bags under his eyes.

  It broke her to see him this way. He might be feeling guilty for his one night’s mistake, but she felt guilty for all the nights since. Heather hated herself for the nightmares she was still having. A part of her had started to hope, after Cooper had called her this morning, that maybe this was the thing she needed to get over them. Some sort of resolution from the police case and an arrest.

  With that thought, Heather looked around the room as she took a seat on the opposite side of the table to Harrison. A part of her had thought that she should sit somewhere else, but her inner masochist wanted to be able to watch him. Helen Powell was sitting to Harrison’s right, and Cooper sat down next to her.

  Hayden was sitting on the other side of Harrison, and as Heather caught his eye, he gave her a tight smile, “Hi, Heather.”

  “Hey, Hayden.” She smiled back at him.

  There was a spare seat next to Hayden, but in the one next to that sat Maddy. Heather couldn’t bear to even look at her; the other two members of Cooper’s team were beside Maddy. Again, Heather had forgotten amongst everything, that other people had been drugged as well.

  Heather was sitting in between Ariana and Sebastian, while Gabriel sat on the other side of Ariana. At the front of the room, a man in a very fancy police uniform with a lot of badges on it was standing and talking to a man that was next to him and wearing a suit.

  “Now that we’re all here,” Cooper said, “we can probably begin, Aaron.”

  The man in the police uniform nodded and shook the hand of the man in the suit, who went to sit next to Cooper.

  “My name is Aaron Hamilton. I’m the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Firstly, I want to express my sincere regret that any of you had to go through what you went through. You were guests in our city, and it’s awful that this happened to you.

  “We’ve had a task force on this since the day it happened, and we made arrests on Monday morning with charges being filed on Tuesday afternoon. We’ve already received one full confession, and we may receive more information, but that was enough to build a very firm case.

  “I’m here to debrief you, and I’m going to assume that you will probably have some questions. If you can hold them until the end, I may cover them during the debrief. We suspected from the outset that someone from the hotel must have been involved. It could have been the catering company, and we did investigate that angle heavily, but ultimately came to the conclusion that no one from the company was involved.”

  This made sense to Heather—someone working for the hotel would have access to both the wine, as well as the room to take a picture of Harrison and Maddy. She glanced across the table and saw that Harrison wasn’t looking at the police chief, he was looking at her, with a look of such pure love on his face that she caught her breath.

  Heather stared back at him, losing track of what was being told to them and was unable to look away until Harrison broke their gaze. She closed her eyes and took a slow breath, god, she missed him so much. It hurt like hell to be sitting across from him and to not get to be with him. She realized that she was so distracted that she was missing out on the very reason she’d come to this place today.

  “…it definitely caused us some issues because we couldn’t check the security footage. We were suspicious about that; it was too convenient, so we started digging around for possible financial motivations.”

  “It’s always about fucking money,” Sebastian said quietly under his breath next to her, and Heather gave a single nod of her head.

  “The photo of Harrison and Madeline,” Heather put her hand against her heart and closed her eyes, as though putting pressure on her chest might somehow make hearing this hurt any less, “sold for over a million dollars for the initial licenses to print. That was just for the rights to print it in the United States. Tallying up the total cost of ongoing royalties for the photograph worldwide came to a very large sum of money.

  “I do want to acknowledge that we did receive the news of your theory, Mr. Fox,” he nodded to Sebastian, “and it was a good one, pretty much spot on. We had already begun working the theory by that point and had started to interview all staff that had been working in the hotel at all over the course of the weekend. Eventually, we were able to convince a maid, who was driving around in a brand-new Mercedes, to give a confession.

  “In short, there was a group of hotel staff involved, the head of the operation was the hotel manager—” This elicited a gasp from several people around the table.

  “He was so nice and sympathetic to us!” Ariana said out loud.

  The police chief gave her a compassionate smile, “Yes, hiding in plain sight is, unfortunately, a common tactic for criminals. He was very helpful to us at the beginning of our investigation, as well. Once we started asking more questions about the missing security footage, he skipped town.

  “We put a warrant out for his arrest, and a bounty hunter tracked him down in Nebraska. As soon as we could, we arrested and charged him, which is where we stand at the moment. Now, as I said, I’m sure you have questions?”

  Sebastian was the first to speak up, “How did they manage to drug the wine if no one at the catering company was involved?”

  “The catering company supplied the food and beverages, but it was all served by hotel staff. Thi
s was by design; it allowed them to ensure that it was only your table who received the drugged wine.”

  “What are they being charged with?” Cooper was the one to ask this.

  “They’re being charged with ten counts of felony Willfully Poisoning someone; each count carries a maximum of five years in prison. We will also seek the extra three years of jail time for the count of your poisoning as you ended up in the Intensive Care Unit, which we believe falls under ‘great bodily injury.’”

  “Did they say why they waited to drug us until the main course?” one of Cooper’s team asked.

  Heather looked over at the man and saw that he looked like he was horrified by this whole thing; so many people had been harmed by this.

  “They wanted to make sure that you’d all had enough alcohol to not notice or be suspicious about the MDMA. I’m sure the doctors told you that it’s very dangerous to take MDMA with alcohol, so this is part of what makes this crime more atrocious.”

  “How have the media not caught wind of this?” Hayden asked, more as a rhetorical question, but Aaron Hamilton answered anyway.

  “We’ve had a tight lid on it. We didn’t want any interference in the investigation. There will be a press conference tomorrow that Cooper will be attending with me. We do not expect any of the rest of you to attend that,” he told them.

  “I suggest you all lie low after the announcement tomorrow. I expect that it will get hectic,” Cooper said.

  There was silence then for a few moments before Heather finally found her voice.

  “What I don’t understand,” she began as everyone in the room turned to look at her but she stared firmly at Aaron Hamilton as she voiced the question that had been running through her mind for a while, “is how they knew that Harrison would cheat on me with Maddy.”

  She felt, more than heard, the low groan from Harrison and knew that this conversation and the reminder of what he’d done, was hurting him.

  “They didn’t,” was the reply that she received.