His Accidental Bride

Panic in the Hallways

My mother put me in a chair in Maria's room and told me not to move.

I moved anyway.

The moment she stepped out I was on my feet, walking the length of the room, listening through the door. The house was loud in a way it never normally was. Feet on stairs. Someone on a phone using the kind of hushed, urgent voice that meant the news was bad and the audience was dangerous.

I cracked the door open two inches.

Down the hall, my father was talking to a man I didn't recognize. Suit. Earpiece. Hands clasped in front of him like he was used to standing still for a long time.

"The bride is preparing," my father said. "Everything is on schedule."

"Mr. Brandon's team will arrive at eleven to do a sweep of the venue," the suited man said. "He asks that the bride be ready for a brief introduction before the processional."

My father's jaw moved. "That was not part of the arrangement."

"Mr. Brandon revised the arrangement this morning."

Silence.

"Of course," my father said. "That is fine."

The suited man nodded once and walked away. My father stood in the hallway alone for three seconds, and I watched him press one hand flat against the wall like he needed it to hold him up. Then he straightened, fixed his jacket, and walked in the other direction.

I closed the door.

I sat back down in the chair.

A brief introduction before the processional. James Brandon wanted to meet his bride before the wedding. That meant my mother's plan had a hole in it the size of a door, and she had about ninety minutes to either fix it or drag me through it anyway.

My money was on drag.

The door opened and Olivia came in carrying a makeup case and a cup of coffee I had not asked for. Olivia was not family, not staff, and not exactly a friend. She existed somewhere in the middle, the way she always had, present at every Miller disaster and somehow never touched by any of them.

She set the coffee down in front of me, looked at my face, and said nothing for a moment.

"You know," I said.

"I know," she said.

"And you are not going to stop it."

She sat down on the edge of the bed. "Anna. Your father owes James Brandon four million dollars. That is not a number people walk away from."

"That is not my four million dollars."

"No," she said. "It isn't." She opened the makeup case. "But you are here and Maria is not, and your mother has decided that makes you the solution."

"What do you think?"

She looked at me. Olivia had a face that was very good at saying things her mouth wasn't saying. Right now it was saying: I think this is wrong and I also think it is already happening and those two things are both true at the same time.

"I think," she said carefully, "that James Brandon is not a man your father should have borrowed money from."

"Who is he?"

"Powerful," she said. "Private. He runs Brandon Security. Half the government uses his firm for protection detail. The other half is afraid of him." She picked up a brush. "He is not someone who gets managed, Anna. Your mother thinks the veil buys time. I am not sure she is right."

"She is not right," I said. "His people are already here. He wants to meet the bride before the ceremony."

Olivia's hand stopped moving. "What?"

"Revised the arrangement this morning. Ninety minutes."

She put the brush down and looked at the door. "Martha doesn't know yet."

"No."

"This is going to be bad."

"Yes."

She picked the brush back up. "Then let me make you look like your sister, because right now you look like yourself and those are two very different things."

My mother came back twenty minutes later.

I watched her face when Olivia told her about the pre-ceremony introduction. She did not react visibly. That was the thing about Martha Miller. The more dangerous the information, the less she showed. She just stood very still and processed it the way a machine processes something it was not built to handle.

"He cannot meet her before the ceremony," she said.

"His man said he revised the arrangement," I said.

"Then we revise it back." She pulled out her phone.

"Mama. You cannot call James Brandon and tell him he cannot meet his own bride."

"I am not calling James Brandon." She was already dialing. "I am calling his lawyer."

She walked out.

I looked at Olivia. Olivia looked at me.

"His lawyer," I said.

"Brandon Smith," Olivia said quietly. "James Brandon's cousin. He handled the contract." She paused. "He is also the one who has been managing the debt negotiation on the Brandon side."

"Is he trustworthy?"

She made a face. "He is a lawyer who works for a powerful family and is also somehow very friendly with your father. So." She picked up the brush again. "Draw your own conclusions."

I drew them. They were not good.

My mother came back in eight minutes looking like she had won something small and spent too much to get it.

"The introduction has been postponed until the reception," she said. "Brandon Smith handled it."

"Brandon Smith got James Brandon to change his own request," I said. "Just like that."

"Yes."

"That does not bother you?"

"Right now," she said, "nothing bothers me except getting you down that aisle." She looked at my hair. "Olivia, the left side needs to come forward more. It has to cover the ear. Maria has a small scar above her left ear and Anna does not."

Olivia moved my hair forward without saying anything.

I sat in the chair and felt my mother and Olivia work around me like I was furniture. Moving my head. Adjusting things. My mother kept comparing me to a photograph on her phone, tilting her head, making small corrections.

"Stop looking at the photo," I said.

"I need to—"

"You are looking at it every thirty seconds. If you keep doing that you are going to make yourself believe there is a bigger difference than there is, and then you are going to panic, and a panicking mother of the bride is going to make people ask questions."

She looked at me.

"Put the phone down," I said. "And act like you have done this before."

She put the phone in her pocket.

"Good," I said.

Downstairs, I could hear my father's voice again. He was on the phone with someone and his tone had shifted from taut to something closer to afraid, which was a register I had almost never heard from him. John Miller did not do afraid. He did calculating and cornered and occasionally cruel, but afraid was new.

"I understand," he was saying. "I understand that. Yes. The family is aware of the terms. The family is prepared."

Pause.

"No. There will be no problems today."

Another pause. Longer.

"Yes, sir."

I had never heard my father call anyone sir in my entire life.

"Olivia," I said quietly, while my mother was adjusting the garment bag. "What happens if this falls apart? If he figures out I am not Maria before it is legal?"

She kept her voice low. "Your father loses everything and James Brandon decides how much damage he wants to do on his way out."

"And me?"

She met my eyes in the mirror. "You were the one standing at the altar. In his dress. With his ring." She paused. "I do not think you walk away clean either way."

I looked at my own face in the mirror. Olivia had done something to my eyes that made them look more like Maria's. Wider. More open. Less like someone who was calculating the nearest exit.

My mother came up behind me with something small in her hand. A glass of water and two white tablets.

"For your nerves," she said.

I looked at the tablets. I looked at her face.

"I don't have nerves," I said.

"Anna." Her voice was soft. "Please."

Something in that please made my stomach drop. It was too gentle. My mother was not gentle when she wanted something. She was gentle when she had already decided to take it.

"What is that?" I asked.

"It will just calm you down."

"What is it, Mama?"

She put the glass on the vanity. She set the tablets beside it. She looked at me in the mirror with that same closed, decided, sorry expression from this morning.

And I understood that the chapter I thought we were in had already ended.

We were somewhere else now.