Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(97)

“Where’s Brad?” I craned my neck to look for him, but only saw David. Jedi Heywood reached up to hug me, and I gave him a hard squeeze before looking over everyone’s head for my . . . well, my fiancé.

“Come on,” Blakely said, yanking me away. “We have half an hour to get dressed.”

“What? I—?”

I was pulled into a dressing room.



Blakely and a gaggle of nannies from the parks and parties got me into a white gown and gussied up in thirty-four minutes. Whirlwind didn’t begin to describe it. I’d gone to the stables to surprise Nicole with a pony and came out in a long white gown with a handful of white roses.

“The wedding’s on the lawn overlooking the canyon,” Blakely said absently, pulling me out the door. She’d done nothing but pull me from surprise to surprise for half an hour. Surprise, it’s your wedding. Surprise, here’s your dress. Surprise, long white ribbon on your bouquet. Surprise, Nicole is the most perfect flower girl ever.

“But the pony,” I said. “Does she know about the pony?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Pull down a carpeted hall. Pull around a corner. She pulled me until I was at the top of a stone stairway and— “Blakely!” I yanked my hand away.

“What?”

“I can’t walk down the aisle. I have no one to give me away. Who thought of this? It’s like a big missing piece. I can’t go alone with everyone looking at me. It’s depressing.”

I anticipated Blakely recoiling in horror when she realized her massive embarrassing mistake. But she kind of smiled a little, then she smiled a lot.

“Surprise,” she said quietly, holding her hand out to the side. I followed the line of her arm to a gray-haired man in a tuxedo. He stood perfectly still, a vision of diplomacy and courtesy. His eyebrows were still dark brown, and blue and brown coexisted in his eyes like dual mood rings.

“Dad?”

“Hi, button.”

That was his voice, his stature, his posture. It was him. His presence cracked through the barriers I’d built around him.

“Dad?” I repeated.

He held his hand out for me. My father. He hated me. I knew he did. But he was here, at this ridiculous surprise wedding.

“Let’s walk a straight line together,” he said. “Then let’s dance. Then you, me, and your mother—”

“Mom’s here?”

I was reduced to simple thoughts and sentences. Nicole could have gotten deeper sentiments out.

“Of course we are. We love you, button.”

Past him, down the stone steps, and over a short flagstone path, a hundred people waited. Past those hundred people stood Brad Sinclair in a tuxedo. With full-length pants. The whole getup. Even the tie.

“Can we go already?”

I had forgotten about Nicole at the top of the steps in her poufy white dress and basket of rose petals. She wore light-up pink sneakers that were never meant to be paired with a flower girl dress. Her brow was knotted, and she looked like a holy terror.

“She has your mouth,” my father said.

“That’s impossible.”

He looked back at me dryly. “I was talking about what comes out of it.”

His mouth twitched with a smile, and he gave me his arm. I slid my hand around it at the elbow, and he led me down the stairs. In front of us Nicole liberally covered the center aisle in white petals.

“I’m glad we came,” he whispered to me. “You look beautiful.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Nicole got impatient in the last three steps. She held out her basket and dumped the remaining flower petals at her father’s feet. Everyone laughed, and when she hugged his legs, he laughed with them.

“He seems all right,” my father said.

Brad picked up Nicole and held her to one side as I got closer. He waited for me with his daughter and my father patted my hand. I wanted to thank him for giving me the wedding I was afraid to create for myself. For completing wishes I didn’t dare have. I felt a tightening circle around me. A bond of family that protected me from harm. A bond I would use everything in my power to protect. We completed a cycle of love and protection passed from father to daughter, generation to generation.

Brad took my hand and I was whole.