Page 1 of Runaway Bride's Guide to Love

guide to love rule #1

Red is a good color for lipstick, not flags.

1

stella

“To Duncan and Stella!”

Our families and the wedding party all raise their glasses. “To Duncan and Stella!”

Cheers fade in and out as people take sips of their drinks and resume their conversations. I lower my champagne flute before turning to my soon-to-be-husband, my whole body filled with love and excitement. I’d love to steal a kiss after the beautiful toast my brother Simon just gave at our rehearsal dinner.

But there’s no return look from my fiancé, let alone a loving glance. There’s no kiss. If I wasn’t holding his hand I doubt he’d even know I’m standing next to him. Hell, he still might not.

No, the only thing Duncan is looking at with hearts in his eyes is the bottom of his glass of scotch.

Get you a man who looks at you like Duncan Hughes looks at a glass of Macallan 18.

I shouldn’t think things like that, especially the night before our wedding. I’m just being dramatic. I have a tendency to do that—or so I’ve been told. Tonight is a happy night, and tomorrow is a day I’m going to remember forever.

Tomorrow I’m becoming Mrs. Duncan Hughes.

So I’m not going to hyperfocus on the fact that Duncan is half a bottle of scotch in. He’s celebrating. The man loves scotch. So much so he has an entire room dedicated to it at our condo. He calls it his office, but that requires a desk. I don’t say anything about his hobby, though. I know if I say one word about the booze room then he’s going to object to the number of shoes I own and the two closets I need to store them.

And no one—and I mean no one—touches my babies and lives to tell the tale.

But that’s marriage, right? Compromise. Learning to blend your lives together. He has Jameson, and I have Louboutins. He has his poker nights, and I have my Thursday night dates with my best friend, Andi. Instead of buying a house in the suburbs, he wanted us to continue living in the condo I moved into with him last year. I didn’t want that. Then again, he didn’t want the big wedding I had dreamed about since I was a little girl, and even more so since the day we met.

So he’s getting married in front of four hundred people and I’m staying in a space that doesn’t have enough closets.

See? Compromise.

We’re already killing this marriage thing.

“Stella?”

I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to see our wedding planner, Whitley, standing next to me with a worried look on her face. It’s the opposite of what you want to see from the woman who has been taking care of every facet of your wedding weekend since you realized four months ago it was too big to handle yourself.

“Everything okay?”

She doesn’t say anything, instead just tilting her head as she signals me to follow her. I nod and give Duncan’s hand a squeeze. “I’ll be right back.”

He barely acknowledges me as I follow Whitley through the private dining room at the Italian steakhouse we rented for therehearsal dinner and into a hallway. It’s not private, but it’s about as out of the way as you can make it. My stomach drops with every step we take. If this were good news, we wouldn’t be back away from everyone. And considering we’re about to go through the fire exit, this has to be bad.

“Okay, you’re scaring me,” I admit.

“I’m sorry,” she begins, though I don’t know if she’s apologizing to me for what she’s about to say or what’s about to happen. Maybe both. “Something is up that you need to know about.”

Those are the last words a bride wants to hear the night before the wedding. “Just tell me Whitley. Rip the Band-Aid off.”

Whitley bites her bottom lip, clearly nervous to say what she’s about to say.

“The florist called me because she said she hadn’t received final payment.”

I feel the color drain from my face. “What? That can’t be right. Duncan was supposed to call in the payment this week. Did he not?”

Whitley shakes her head. “Doesn’t sound like it. The problem is, she’s not the only vendor who’s called to tell me this.”

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