To Have and to Hold (The Wedding Belles #1)(75)

“We started dating,” she continued. “I’d always been sort of romantically inclined. Convinced that when I met the guy, the one I was supposed to be with forever, I’d know, and that that would be it. We’d get married and live happily ever after. And by the third date with Clay, I knew. Or at least I thought I did.”

“So was it a fast engagement?”

“No, actually,” she said. “I’m a little embarrassed to say that had he proposed earlier I would have leapt in with two feet, but we dated for a couple years. Moved in together. He got to know my family. My parents thought of him like a son.” She rubbed her forehead as though this last part hurt the worst. “Then it was ring shopping, the sunset proposal, the whole bit.”

Seth said nothing. He waited, his body tensed, knowing the story didn’t have a happy ending.

“I planned the crap out of my wedding,” Brooke said. “I mean, not all that surprising, right, given my career, but I’d like to think that I also did it for all the right reasons. Because I wanted it to be the most special day of my life, not because I wanted it to be the most spectacular wedding of all time. I kept it traditional. I didn’t go bridezilla. Clay and I made the decisions together, we talked about everything from the flowers to the first-dance song.”

Brooke let out a choked laugh. “Here I thought we had the best communication ever, because we could talk about colors and tackle the most stressful parts of wedding planning without so much as the slightest argument. But he was playing me. He was playing me so hard.”

Her sad eyes looked over at him, and his heart twisted at the turmoil swirling in the blue depths. Seth’s fingers clenched into a fist, and his breathing grew ragged with anger. Brooke kept going. “The FBI took him away in handcuffs at the altar. Because that’s how I thought my wedding would go. I always thought Ponzi schemes and money laundering and identity fraud were phrases dreamed up by Hollywood screenwriters. But I heard all of those and about a dozen more that day. My wedding day.”

“Ah, Brooke,” he breathed out, feeling completely at a loss about what to do or what to say. He’d read the story online, of course, but hearing it all from Brooke’s perspective, the woman whose life this * had shattered, made it so much more heart-wrenching and real.

“I thought he’d get put away and be in jail for a long, long time, you know? And I thought that as long as he was in jail, I wouldn’t have to think about it. Or him. I wouldn’t have to deal with it, you know?”

Seth nodded, although in truth, he wasn’t sure he entirely did know. Avoidance wasn’t really in his makeup. He was more of a take-control-of-every-detail-and-then-tighten-the-reins type.

Not that it had served him particularly well over the years.

But Brooke’s method hadn’t served her well, either. He was no shrink, but he was pretty sure he was witnessing the culmination of months’ worth of trying to pretend like a seriously shitty event hadn’t gone down.

And yet, Seth was impressed, too.

Impressed that this woman who had had her heart and dream publicly smashed to smithereens had still managed to keep her overall bright and sunny outlook on life. Brooke still managed to put her heart and soul into planning weddings because she refused to give up on the happily ever after.

“Well, he’s not going to jail. He pled out, and now I’m . . . I’m worried he’ll contact me,” Brooke whispered.

Seth stiffened. He hadn’t considered that. Hell, he hadn’t let himself consider that. But it made sense. A man didn’t lose a woman like Brooke Baldwin and not try to get her back. Even if he was a white-collar criminal.

“How do you feel about that?” he asked, trying to keep the tension out of his voice.

She sighed. “I . . . I don’t know. That’s terrible, huh?”

“Maybe not,” he said, reaching for her hand and rubbing a thumb over the soft skin of her inner wrist. “It’s a complicated situation.”

“You must think I’m an idiot,” she mumbled, looking down at her hands. “For not seeing it. For not knowing who and what he was.”

“Hey now,” Seth said quietly, turning her face toward him and meeting her still-puffy eyes. “Don’t do that. Clay Battaglia was damn good at what he did. He fooled plenty of people, many of whom I consider friends.”

Seth knew people to whom Clay had been a colleague, a comrade, even a mentor. People had trusted him, and the sting of betrayal had caused a ripple.

But it was more than a ripple to Brooke.

It was a damned earthquake.

Seth disdained the man for giving business a bad name, but he hated him for what he’d done to the woman in front of him.

And even as he leaned forward to capture her lips in a comforting kiss, Seth couldn’t stop his brain from churning with ways to ensure Clay could never hurt her again.

Brooke kissed him back, and the slight edge of desperation in the way she clung to him broke his heart, even as he was relieved that he was the one that she’d come to.

They pulled back minutes later, slightly breathless.

Brooke very gently set her fingers against his cheek. “Thank you. For being here when I broke.”

“You didn’t break,” Seth said. “You just cracked a little.”

Brooke smiled weakly. “I was just so sure I was okay, you know? I don’t know which is more foolish, the fact that I didn’t see Clay for what he was, or the fact that I didn’t think it would impact me.”