Chapter Two
My fiancé was lost.
I’d searched the chapel and the grounds, and now, after another glass of watery sweet tea, I stalked row twenty of the parking lot like a meter maid gone mad. Did absolutely everyone in Sugar Creek drive a white SUV?
Ned wasn’t answering my calls or texts. And since my last text had been downright clever, the least he could’ve done was respond with a complimentary GIF.
I was just about to rally my family for a search party when I caught the shadow of a man moving in the distance.
Though my feet protested every step in my heels, I left the parking lot and followed the figure as he traveled down a gravel trail that wound around the chapel. If I was indeed following Ned, where on earth was he going? He had been odd for days, but this was getting out of hand.
A few hundred feet later, a garden came into view. I was sure it would be a lovely place to take wedding photos, but why would Ned be taking a tour? Maybe he was checking it out for our own wedding.
Not that he was thoughtful like that.
I’d read college psychology textbooks more romantic than my fiancé.
“Ned?” I called, my shoes unsteady on the pebbled path. “Ned?” Surely that was him.
Entering the garden, I didn’t have time to fully appreciate the violet pansies, the snow white crocuses, or the cheerful tulips pushing their way through the soil. Halfway into the garden, I heard a voice.
“You shouldn’t have come here.” Yes, it was definitely Ned. “This is crazy.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could, another voice joined. This one decidedly female. And definitely not mine.
“I had to,” she said. “I can’t stand the idea that you’re here with…her.”
Wait a minute. What exactly was going on?
Being the granddaughter of a former CIA agent, I could creep stealthily with agent-level skill, so I silently inched further into the flora.
“Now is not the time, Britney.”
“Then when, Edward?”
Edward? Nobody called Ned that, save for his third stepmom and a great-aunt in Houston who smelled like cheese.
“Give me time,” he said.
“I have. I just want us to be together.”
My heart pounded against my ribs, and Sissy McGillicuddy’s casserole threatened to come right back up.
“I’ve missed you so much,” the woman cooed.
And then I heard it—kissing noises. Awful, smacking, breathy, flower-violating kissing sounds.
I jumped up from behind a boxwood bush and gasped at the sight. “Ned!”
There was my fiancé, lip-locked and holding a woman with more passion in those few seconds than he’d bestowed on me in our five years.
The two split apart, and Ned’s face turned a strangled shade of crimson. “Hattie. I…I can explain.”
I looked at him. Looked at her. “Who is this woman?” She wore a tailored white pantsuit as if she’d wanted to be photo-ready for her illicit frolic in the flowers.
“Tell her, Edward,” the awful woman said.
Ned,the man I was to pledge my life to in four months, two days, and six hours, said nothing. His mouth opened and closed like a water-deprived trout.
