Married By Mistake

Chapter Seventeen: Regina's Terms

Elena's POV

I answered on the fourth ring, stepping out of the car onto the sidewalk before my mother could hear both sides of it.

"Regina. Thank you for calling."

"I wasn't calling to be thanked, Elena. I was calling because my daughter's wedding is being run by a woman whose face is currently attached to a headline about a secret husband."

Straight in. No preamble. That was Regina, always had been, in every meeting we'd ever had.

"I understand the concern. I want you to know the situation is being handled, and it has absolutely no bearing on my ability to deliver Amanda's wedding exactly as planned."

"That's a lovely sentence, and it tells me nothing." A pause, sharp, the sound of someone deciding how hard to push. "Is it true?"

I looked back at the car. My mother watching me through the windshield, not even pretending not to listen.

"Yes," I said. "It's true. It's also a mistake I'm actively correcting, and it's a personal matter that has no impact on the professional service you're paying for."

"Elena, I've spent eleven months planning this wedding with your firm specifically because of your reputation for flawless execution. Do you understand what it looks like if the planner herself is the story instead of the bride?"

"I do understand that. Which is why I'm telling you directly, instead of letting you hear a version of it from someone else."

There was a silence on the line long enough that I wondered if she'd hung up.

"I appreciate the honesty," she said finally, grudging. "More than I expected, honestly. But I need something from you before I decide whether we're still doing business."

"Name it."

"I need this story dead before Amanda's wedding. Not simmering. Not managed quietly in the background. Dead. I don't care how you do it, an official statement, a clarification, whatever the modern version of damage control looks like. But by the time my daughter walks down that aisle, I do not want a single guest whispering about her planner's scandal instead of watching her vows."

"That's reasonable," I said, even though nothing about the last week had felt reasonable.

"And I want to meet him."

I blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"The husband. If this story is going to follow you into my daughter's wedding whether either of us likes it or not, I want to know who he is before some reporter tells me first. I have a reputation too, Elena. I don't like surprises at my own events."

"Regina, that's not really something I can arrange—"

"You have nine days. I'd start figuring out how to arrange it." Her voice had gone crisp again, the tone she uses to close negotiations she considers already won. "I'll expect an update by Friday. And Elena. I do hope, for your sake, that whatever this is turns out to be as small as you're telling me it is."

The line went dead before I could answer.

I stood on the sidewalk holding a phone that had just gone silent, staring at nothing, running the math on a request that had no clean solution. Introduce Jax to my most demanding client, at some point in the next nine days, as what exactly? My accidental husband? The man I was annulling a marriage from while planning a wedding to someone else?

There was no version of that meeting that didn't sound insane out loud.

I got back in the car. My mother didn't ask what was said. She didn't need to; my face had apparently done all the talking it needed to do.

"That bad," she said.

"She wants to meet him."

My mother's eyebrows lifted, the exact motion I catch myself doing in mirrors sometimes and hate.

"Well," she said, pulling away from the curb, "that's going to be an interesting dinner."

"I never said dinner."

"You will. Regina Whitfield doesn't do casual introductions. She'll want a table, a reservation, and probably your father's opinion of him before she's satisfied." My mother glanced at me sideways at a red light. "You should also know I already texted your father the name. Romero. He's better with faces than names, but I gave him something to work with."

My stomach dropped for the second time in an hour.

"Mom, please don't—"

"It's done, Elena. He'll call me back when he places it." The light turned green. She drove on like she hadn't just detonated something. "Might be nothing. Might not. We'll know soon enough."

I sat in the passenger seat of my mother's car, phone heavy in my lap, two separate countdowns now running against me at once. Regina's Friday deadline. And whatever my father was about to remember.