Page 16 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

“That’s okay. The whole situation is unusual. Could anybody really blame you?”

“I guess not.”

“What kinds of agreements do you have in place,” Marianne asked. “To protect you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Rocco...”

“He’s your friend. He’s our friend.”

“He is,” said Mariana. I’ve known him for three years. I like him. But... Sometimes... Sometimes he says things that worry me a bit. And I... I would just hate for you to get hurt doing any of this. You could always marry Pablo.”

“I can’t just substitute a groom at the last minute. And anyway, it’s a little bit too well documented that Pablo is not interested in women. And I can’t have the marriage looking fake. It has to be legitimate.”

“Yes. I get that.”

Granted, nobody seemed half as concerned with controlling her life, and what she did than Apollo was.

“What do you think he’ll do?”

“It’s a lot of money,” Mariana said. “And you’re being really generous with it. I worry he’s going to let that kind of thing go to his head. I’m not going to lie to you, Hannah, it’s... It’s kind of intoxicating. To have a friend who can suddenly open all these doors for you. But I can’t control you, and neither can Pablo or Gigi. Rocco... He’s going to be your husband, and I just worry that he’s going to start to think he could make a lot of money divorcing you and taking things from you.”

“I just...”

“The stipulations of your will didn’t allow for prenup, did they?”

“But he and I talked about it and...”

“Yes, you have an agreement with him. But will he stick to it, or will he exploit you as a husband?”

“It’s too late to worry about that,” she said. “It just is.”

Except she was now suddenly worried that she was taking her foot out of one bear trap only to stick it in another.

And Apollo’s words echoed in her ears. That she was young and foolish and knew nothing of the world.

Remembering that, the way he saw her...

Apollo was the bigger risk.

She didn’t like to think she was naive. She knew that people could take advantage of you. But she supposed that there was an element of naivete in believing that money might not change somebody. Maybe that was the kind of thing someone who’d always had a certain amount of access to money could comfort themselves with. Money was inevitable for her. And she had never had control of it, but she had also never felt the lack of it.

She was worrying about that even as she slipped on her shoes and followed Mariana to the main part of the chapel.

She linked arms with Pablo and walked into the sanctuary. And Hannah waited. Waited until the music shifted. Until it was time for her to walk down the aisle.

She had no father with her to give her away. And suddenly she felt extremely sad. It was a funny thing, grief like this. Tinged so often now with anger, and yet there was still so much regret. She could go days without thinking of her parents. Weeks. And then suddenly it just wouldn’t make any sense to her that they were gone. Not at all.

Right now, though, was one of those times when she was shocked, almost, that they weren’t here. For her wedding.

She had never let herself think about that. Perhaps because she had never been in a space where she had really thought about having a wedding.

The whole Apollo tying up so many of her emotions had prevented her from dreaming about that.

She looked up at the white stucco ceiling. “I wish you were here, Dad. But if you were here, this wouldn’t be happening.” A tear slid down her cheek. Of all the absurd things. She dashed it away and continued into the sanctuary. Rocco was standing there, looking handsome and familiar. And most importantly, like her friend. She tried to push away the doubts that Mariana had just introduced to her. She didn’t need to be filled with doubt.

She arrived at the head of the aisle and had just turned to take his hand when suddenly a man in a dark suit melted from the shadows behind him and turned.

---