Page 105 of How to Ruin a Wedding

Taina grips my shoulder with her nails. I’m sure she’ll draw blood. She pins me in place, looks up at Mathew with a flat expression, her voice a single, leveled tone. “Excuse me? What time limit?” Then she turns to me. “What promise?”

“You coddle your sister,” Mathew says, “and it’s exactly why she doesn’t grow up. So, I stepped in.”

Taina takes a measured breath, looks to me. “And you didn’t tell me about this conversation?”

My brows pull together. “I don’t want to ruin your relationship.”

“Yet you do an amazing job at it,” Mathew shoots out.

Taina lets me go. I see it in her, the lack of emotion, the fists at her sides, the straightening of her shoulders. I wrap my arms around her. “Taina, no.”

“Wife?” Taina struggles to free herself from my grasp. “I’ll be a widow from this point on.”

“Taina!”

“I’ll kill you,” she says to Mathew. She turns and elbows me. “You, too, for keeping this from me.” She nearly slips out of my grasp, but the extra weight I have on her helps me yank her down the steps.

Instead of using the space as a barrier, Mathew storms down to us.

Before he reaches the center of the stairs, someone bullets past us. Anders grabs a fistful of Mathew’s shirt and throws him down with force.

Anders is larger, but barely. Mathew doesn’t roll down the stairs, but the impact sends him stumbling down, gripping the railing to keep from hitting the pavement.

Anders is in an all-black sweatsuit, his hair a windswept mess, and his brows are knitted together; a long wrinkle dents the center of his forehead. When he approaches us, reaches out to touch a hand to my face, his hand is a gentle contrast to the anger radiating off his body.

“You okay?” he asks so softly, my eyes burn with tears from the only person tonight who has spoken to me without a hint of anger.

I nod, and he caresses my cheek.

Mathew barks out a cruel laugh. “What’s this?” he asks. “Are you sleeping with him? You really will use anyone for your own benefit, won’t you?”

Both Taina and Anders whirl on him, and I somehow am able to run in front of them both, placing a hand on each chest.

“Please stop.”

Anders firmly grips my wrist, pulls me away. “That’s the bastard who threatened you, isn’t it?” Anders asks. “He wanted to kick you out even with nowhere to go.”

Taina shoves a finger at Anders. “You told him and not me? Are you kidding me?”

A screeching of tires tears through the air, and we all turn to the sound. Valerie is storming toward us, barefoot, with a wild look in her eyes. Oh no.

“She knows,” I warn Anders. “She knows what I’ve been doing.”

His expression remains impassive as he faces Valerie. He stands in my path so that her fury lands on him first. “Was it all a lie?” she asks him. “You never really got behind the wedding. She never convinced you.”

“It’s true,” Anders says.

Valerie laughs harshly. “I knew you hated the idea of us marrying, but I thought you hated Nick more. I can’t believe you tried to use him to manipulate me.”

Anders falters. “What?” He glances at me. “What is she talking about?”

“I was going to tell you today,” I hurriedly get in, “but you were so stressed about the plane, about missing the party, I thought I’d catch you up later.”

Anders digs the bottom of his palms into his eyes. “Lucinda,no. You should have run this by me. I would have never let this happen.”

“I didn’t know!” I get out, the words a desperate plea nobody cares for, words that hold no meaning. “I didn’t know he was a father, the age difference.”

“You didn’t know that he tried to control my whole life?” Valerie shouts. “You didn’t know that he managed my day, what I ate, who I spent time with, what I was allowed to do, wear, say. You didn’t know hewas a manipulative bastard that ruined my life? I didn’t tell you because I didn’twantto.”