Page 1 of Revenge Honeymoon

Chapter1

The Idea is Born

Emily Small grimaced as she listened to the person on the other end of the bride’s cell phone. She’d been assigned to manage it while her best friend in the whole world, Ruby Madison Evers, prepared to marry the love of her life, Tyler James Hardy.

The perfect couple.

The most beautiful couple.

Better looking than Brad and Angelina.

They were going to have the most gorgeous brown-eyed, curly-haired babies ever, ever, ever.

So how was Emily going to tell Ruby the truth?

As she set down the phone, her hand shook.

Across the choir room converted into a bride’s dressing room, Ruby lifted the skirts of her Monique Lhuillier knockoff gown, rested one dainty foot on a chair, and slid a lacy garter up her thigh.

“What is it, Em?” Ruby asked, her cheeks pink with excitement and professionally-applied blush. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Those words hit her like a punch to the gut—exactly like Emily’s older brother, Hunter, used to do when they were kids. Sock-o, blam-o. Punch. She wished with all her might she could be at her childhood home in Roanoke, Virginia plucking a lime popsicle out of the freezer to soothe her pain and her wounded psyche.

“Em?” The bride waved off her two bridesmaids, cousins on her father’s side and eager to be part of the Ruby Wedding Spectacular, and swished over to her maid-of-honor. “You’re worrying me. Is it the caterer? Or maybe the DJ? I forgot to check in with them this morning, and I really should have double-checked they knew the address.”

Ruby’s gleaming auburn hair had been twisted into the perfect Rapunzel braid, which lay artfully across one shoulder. The stylist had secured her Bruges lace veil with a diamond-encrusted comb supplied by her mother and worn by several generations of Madison women before her. She fluttered her thick-yet-false eyelashes, maybe not used to their weight and view-obscuring tendencies.

Emily’s only positive thought before she broke the worst news of Ruby’s life: at least she won’t have mascara running down her face.

“That was Tyler,” she gulped. Her mouth so dry she wished she had a bucketful of water to drink. “He’s not coming.” Her voice dropped to a bare whisper.

The cousins gasped and clutched one another in horror.

The make-up artist, who had been waiting to do final touch-ups, packed up her case in a flash and squeaked out of the room without a word.

Ruby’s eyes widened, her mouth formed an ‘o,’ and her body vibrated a fine tremor. “Oh no, was he in an accident? I told him not to drive himself. I’ve read so many stories about brides and grooms getting in accidents on the way to the church. Nerves, they said. Should I go to him? Where is he? Was he driving his father’s car or the rental? I hope he wasn’t driving the rental. We have to make it to our suite at the Hilton tonight, and I really don’t want to take an Uber. Or have my father drive. Oh, that would be so embarrassing.”

“Ruby.” Emily grasped her friend’s arm, the fine Mikado silk cool under her fingers. A long-sleeved dress for a late fall wedding maybe was too warm for the Tampa location, but it had been so gorgeous on her friend’s slender body there had been no other choice at the bridal boutique. “He’s calling off the wedding.”

Nausea soured Emily’s stomach.

Why did she have to be the one who picked up the phone?

One of the cousins burst into tears.

Ruby stood stock still in the middle of the bride’s dressing room. “But—”

Rhonda Madison Evers entered wearing a royal blue mother-of-the-bride dress covered in sequins. “My darling. The make-up artist told me the news. How could that man be so cruel?” She curved her arms around her only daughter.

“Mom, I don’t understand. How could he not be coming?” Ruby crumpled to the floor.

“You’ll crush your dress!” Mrs. Evers gasped and knelt beside her. She yanked at her daughter’s arm as if her will alone would lift up the one-hundred-twenty-five-pound woman and her ten pounds of underskirts and heavy fabric. “We can still return it.”

“No, we can’t. It’s been altered.” The bride spoke in a monotone.

“Well,” said Mrs. Evers, “there’s always eBay or Craigslist, I suppose.”

“Facebook Marketplace is better,” mumbled a cousin.

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