Page 2 of Cinderella's Secret Baby

“He said he had an important message for the groom. I sent him to the guesthouse.” The older woman pointed down a hall where a glass door led to a covered walkway. “The groomsmen were gathering for a sip of courage in the breakfast room.” She winked. “Would you excuse us? Hannah and I need to take our seats.”

“Of course. Thank you.” Amelia turned to start down the hall, but her gaze was snagged by the chalkboard behind the bar.

The stark black slate was adorned with a border of silk orchids in purple and white. Calligraphed letters read Congratulations Hunter and Eden.

Amelia’s heart jolted to a stop, then slammed into a panicked gallop.

No. No, Dad. No.

Nooooo.

“I’ve always presumed I would get married at my aunt’s vineyard,” Hunter Waverly’s fiancée had said when their engagement became official. “Weddings are their specialty. She’ll pull out all the stops for me.”

Hunter had gone along because a groom didn’t override his bride when she set her heart on an outdoor wedding at a vineyard on a lake. Holding the ceremony here had been one less decision. Simple, if not ideal.

By anyone’s standards, everything about this wedding was perfect. Bright June sunshine beamed from a cloudless sky. There was a soft breeze coming off the water, just enough to keep Hunter from overheating in his suit as he walked out to the pergola. If any of the typical day of disasters had occurred behind the scenes, solutions had been found before Hunter heard a whisper of it.

The guests were taking their seats, the bride was said to be ready, and the officiant was motioning to the string trio to wrap up their current piece.

It was unfolding flawlessly, but Hunter was tense enough to snap in half.

PTSD, he thought dourly. For most of his life, every special occasion had turned into an embarrassing disaster. He had been tempted to insist on a small ceremony with Eden, but that would have been cowardly.

The officiant checked in with his best man. Remy nodded, patting his lapel, smile tight. Something had been eating at him for months. Hunter noticed it at the engagement party, but Remy didn’t want to talk about it and Hunter had lived with so little privacy in his own life, he didn’t invade others’.

Through the amplifier that would allow the guests to hear their vows, he heard Eden’s voice ask, “Is it working?” Her tone was a fraction higher than normal.

Wedding jitters. A bride was entitled, and Hunter refused to catch a case of it. This marriage was advantageous for both of them.

Eden had inherited controlling interest in Bellamy Home & Garden last year. Its stock value had languished in recent years, but it was a trusted Canadian icon, especially in rural communities. Eden would right the ship once she had Waverly cash at her disposal. The fact that their marriage merger included a plan to use Bellamy as a road map to bring Wave-Com’s next generation of wireless technology into all those remote locations wouldn’t hurt, either.

For his part, Hunter was repairing the Waverly reputation by attaching himself to the Bellamy name. Wave-Com had suffered in the years after his father died, plagued by ugly legal fights and a takeover attempt as his stepmother had sought to steal the corporation from her husband’s children, throwing mud every chance she got.

Today would turn the page on those perpetual scandals. With this sophisticated wedding, brimming with homegrown celebrities and dynasties from abroad, Hunter was setting a tone of respectability, family values and stability. Dare he add,class? Because Eden was intelligent, cultured and accomplished. She was well known for her philanthropy and admired for her Canadian-made fashion choices. Her grandfather had been a beloved voice on the national radio waves, and her mother still contributed weekly gardening tips to one of their programs.

Eden was suitable in other ways, too. Vienna had introduced them, implicitly promising that family gatherings would always be pleasant and civilized. Eden wanted babies right away, and Vienna was ready to start her family, too. Their children would grow up together.

Best of all, Hunter found Eden attractive, but nottooattractive. They would have a foundation of friendship and respect, not fickle love or treacherous lust. Hunter wouldn’t be tugged around by his fly the way his father had been, subjected to spectacles every other week while making excuses for the source of his humiliation.

This marriage was exactly the right thing for all concerned.

Yet his gut was full of gravel, and he couldn’t shake this sense of impending doom.

It was the location. As Hunter breathed the scent of newly mown grass and heard the ducks on the lake and the buzz of bees, more prurient memories were accosting him. A musical laugh and a soft shoulder under his lips. Fine hair that carried a fragrance of sunshine.

That one night had been an escape, he often reminded himself. In some ways, it had been a narrow escape, because the heat in his blood had nearly made him say rash, embarrassing things.Don’t go in to work. I’ll stay another night. For sex.

Stop it. What kind of groom awaited his bride with a one-night stand clouding his thoughts?

Maybe it was the natural reckoning of a wedding day. He was saying goodbye to freedom and flings as he committed the rest of his life—his sex life—to one person. That heaviness in his gut wasn’t misgiving. Or regret. It wasn’t.

The music faded to expectant silence. The murmuring crowd quieted.

The officiant covered her lapel microphone with her hand and asked, “Ready?”

Hunter drew the device from the pocket of his coat and turned it on, noting the green light. He nodded and brushed his jacket straight again. He looked over the guests. There were roughly two hundred arranged on either side of the carpeted aisle, all smiling with anticipation.

The first notes of their wedding playlist were plucked from the harp. He looked to the top of the stairs from the terrace where his cousin’s tot of three years appeared in a flouncy dress. A bridesmaid of fourteen, one of Eden’s cousins, kept a firm hold of the little one’s hand and used the other to hold the rail as they began to descend.

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