Page 1 of Her Shameful Wedding Night (Corporate Correction)

Chapter One

Zoe sighed and closedthe news app on her handheld, as if all the bad news would stop happening if she didn’t look at it. At least, she thought, the depressing downturn in the fortunes of the world over the past year, with energy riots and shortages of nearly everything, served as a balance to her happiness about marrying Bradley. Otherwise Zoe might, she supposed, have struck her friends and family as the most disgustingly happy person on Earth. Today was Thursday, and she was getting married on Saturday!

The handheld buzzed on the breakfast table next to Zoe’s half-finished muesli and yogurt, with the picture of Bradley she had taken just last week when she had surprised him with lunch at the office. Zoe had found her smoking hot fiancé in the middle of a call with opposing counsel on his big case, the class action against the local arm of Selecta Corporation.

She had snapped the photo when he still hadn’t noticed Zoe standing in his office door: in it Bradley gazed out his window as if his eyes were locked on the face of a hostile witness, his broad shoulders rippling with his decisive hand gestures as he spoke to the speaker phone behind him. Bradley had turned, seen her, and smiled. Zoe’s heart had seemed literally to melt inside her chest even as she had taken the pic of her light-brown-haired, hazel-eyed guy, feeling glad at that moment that her small-town values had made her save herself for her wedding night. How perfect would it be, when this gorgeous man, more experienced than she, finally made a woman of her?

“Hi!” she said, hitting the speaker button on the handheld. “I thought you were insanely busy this morning.”

“I am, Zo,” said Bradley’s voice from the other end of the line, though the connection seemed poor. The news had started warning everyone to expect worse cellular service now that power had to be rationed to the towers, and some of them had started to go offline because of inadequate maintenance. “But I need you to do me a favor if you can.”

“Of course,” Zoe answered, smiling. If she could? She would do anything for the young lawyer who had swept her off her feet as soon as he had arrived in Oakville six months before and found Zoe Ralston, honors graduate but without funds to pay for the skyrocketing costs of college, working checkout at the grocery store.

“You remember that state government program I told you about? The marriage subsidy?”

“Yeah?” It wasn’t quite a lie, because Zoe thought she did kind of remember Bradley mentioning something like that.

“Well, I need you to head to the clinic for an exam, if we want to enroll.”

Zoe frowned. “An exam?”

“Yeah,” Bradley answered. “It shouldn’t take too long. Just ask for the marriage subsidy exam—okay, I’ll be there in a moment—sorry, babe, I have to go. Love you.”

Zoe’s handheld went dead. She looked at it for a moment, then picked it up and started searching online for more information about the marriage subsidy program. It came up quickly enough in the search results.

In these days of increasing scarcity, your state government wants to help couples who opt for traditional marriage get started in their lives together. Multiple studies have shown that traditional relationships benefit society in various important ways, most important these days in the area of resource management. Qualified couples may receive free housing and an additional stipend. Mail today to set up your free interview and medical exam.

That was all. Zoe knew that in coming to work in Oakville, where he could live a small-town lifestyle and take on a megacorp subsidiary in court, Bradley had given up the opportunity to make a lot of money in the city. She hadn’t thought they would need help from the government, but times had gotten tougher and tougher over the past couple of years with the loss of farmland in the wake of climate change and energy shortages: Bradley’s clients couldn’t pay much if anything toward the expenses of the lawsuit, and investors who wanted to take on a megacorp were very hard to come by.

Still...traditional marriage? What did that even mean? Zoe supposed it probably had to do with the same small-town values Bradley prized, and she had taken for granted growing up here. Her fiancé had grown up in the suburbs of New York City, a world away. Zoe had found him dazzling in his knowledge of, well, everything, in addition to the pecs that made her knees weak even through the white Oxford shirts he wore to court.

He had found her steady, she knew, and appealingly innocent, her blue eyes widening every time he mentioned the simplest elements of urban life, like eating at a fancy restaurant or drinking champagne on New Year’s Eve. Bradley also found her super-hot, she knew—and always blushed to recall—though she had always thought her wispy honey-blonde hair and her slim small-breasted figure couldn’t attract the kind of attention her busty peers got.

Traditional marriage, in Oakville’s state, must serve as a code phrase for something patriarchal: without having a religious upbringing at all Zoe still knew about the patriarchy. She herself had luckily grown up in a progressive sort of household, her mom working at town hall and her dad at the refinery. Plenty of her friends, though, had had stay-at-home moms even with the difficulty of a family getting by on a single income. Zoe had envied them when she was little, but had grown increasingly proud of her mom and of her family as she got older and learned about how the world worked.

She looked at the handheld again, wondering if she could risk calling Bradley and asking more questions about the government program. But he had so much to do: the case had a big court date coming up, Zoe knew—one on which Selecta might actually have to make a better offer, a real offer, or face some real consequences for their subsidiary’s negligence.

It shouldn’t take too long. Just go to the clinic and ask for the marriage subsidy exam.Doctors made Zoe just as nervous as the next girl, and she definitely wanted more information, but she could just walk away if she wanted, right? And even if they qualified for the subsidy, she and Bradley would talk it through before they signed anything, obviously.

Zoe had one more thoughtful spoonful of muesli, thinking as she chewed about Bradley’s chest. A little guiltily, she pulled up the pic from the office on her phone and looked at it as she took a sip of coffee, half-pretending to herself that she didn’t feel the tingle that ran down her spine and into the naughty places about which Bradley had shown himself such a gentleman.

Traditional marriage.Zoe felt her forehead crease as she rinsed the coffee mug and the bowl. Her parents had gone to work and Zoe, an only child, had the day off. Her left hand stopped the water flowing, and her right hand drifted down to the front of her jeans. She leaned into the counter, just underneath the place where her fingers pressed, thinking about her wedding dress, about Bradley taking it off and finding the white lace Zoe had chosen with red cheeks just the previous night from the website she had only ever looked at once before.

Zoe did not consider herself a traditional girl, by any means. The reasonably well-educated—though much of that education had come from reading on her own—part of her had a quandary, though, now. If she... her small-town mind said ‘kept going’ here... if she kept going, it would be a modern thing to do, wouldn’t it? A girl had the right to enjoy her body.

But the enjoyment... the need for it, anyway... came from thinking of... of a white wedding dress and white lingerie and a bridegroom who knew what to do with a bride who wore that sort of thing.Traditional marriage.

Zoe stood up, refusing to feel guilty, and got her keys.

The overworked man at the information desk of the clinic, which served three counties and always seemed the most densely populated region in any of them, directed Zoe to an office suite on the second floor. The sign on the door of the suite saidGovernmental Affairs.

“I’m here for the... marriage exam?” Zoe asked the blonde receptionist, feeling the heat creep into her cheeks at her mistake. “I mean... the marriagesubsidy...exam?”

A look crossed the face of the woman, who looked to be in her late twenties, which made Zoe’s blush ten times worse. The receptionist’s expression seemed to say that she knew precisely what this particular state program attempted to subsidize, knew everything abouttraditional marriageand about girls who might be sent to qualify for this program, and despite drawing her paycheck from exactly the same source that supplied the subsidy, disapproved of anyone who would take money from the government through such a program.

“You can have a seat. The nurse will come get you.”

Zoe hadn’t seen anywhere to sit in the cramped reception area, but now she turned and noticed two chairs, one of them occupied by another girl who thankfully seemed Zoe’s own age and also just as nervous as she. Zoe sat and took out her handheld—the other girl had hers out, of course. She opened her news app and saw that the lead story of the morning was about a major layoff at the refinery.

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