Buch lesen: «Mine At Midnight»

Chapter 1

Ava Bradley wasn’t often nervous. Her twin brother often said that she had cold water running through her veins, that she was an ice princess. But today, as she stood in the living room of her charming seaside cottage, she felt anything but cold. Her heart was racing. Pounding so hard she wondered if it was going to burst out of her chest.

An enormous black garment bag had just been hand delivered to her by the designer after more than a thousand hours of work had been put into what was inside.

It was his masterpiece, as he called it.

Ava called it her wedding dress.

Her $25,000, crystal-encrusted, frothy confection of a wedding gown.

Most brides would be nervous, excited to receive their completed gowns.

It symbolized closing the door completely on one life and starting another.

But Ava didn’t feel excitement. She felt more like throwing up.

This was her second wedding gown. She had purchased a simple but elegant one originally, which she had found in a shop right on Hideaway Island. It had been love at first sight. The ivory gown was vintage inspired, something a young bride might have worn in the 1940s, but that wasn’t the dress she was going to wear when she walked down the aisle.

Her fiancé wanted her to wear something...better, he called it. Something luxurious and extravagant. It seemed like such an incredible amount of money. They could feed Miami’s homeless for years with that amount of cash, but her fiancé wanted her to have it, so she had it. It was like that with everything. The car she drove had to be top of the line. The handbag she carried had to be so exclusive that most people were on a waiting list for a year just to be able to buy it. He was extremely wealthy and powerful, and he wanted his woman to reflect that.

“I only want the best, sweetheart,” he purred in his Belgian accent. “That’s why I picked you.”

No, simple wouldn’t do for Maxime Vermeulen. He was forty-four years old. Never married. He told her that he planned to be married only once, and that’s why this wedding had to be the event of the century. Every time she had voiced her concerns about how much money they were spending, he would tell her that he had to spend it because she was perfect for him. And that she was beautiful and smart and lovely and all the things every woman wanted to hear from the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with.

A perfect wedding, for my perfect bride.

Ava had agreed to all of the pomp and circumstance to make him happy, although she had grown up in a working-class family in Maryland. Her father worked in a factory. Her mother had worked two jobs when things were tight. Yes, her older brother had made it big in the major league, but never in a million years did Ava dream that she would land someone like Max. Someone who had always had so much and had no idea what it was like to fly in a plane that he didn’t own. She’d met him by chance while she was working. She’d been a buyer for an exclusive chain of boutiques and had literally bumped into him walking out of a meeting. He’d dazzled her with his easy charm and devastating good looks.

He was good to her. He spoiled her silly and proudly showed her off to his friends. It was why she made sacrifices for him.

Small ones like quitting her job. And giving up her home and a tiny bit of her freedom. Max insisted that the wives of rich men didn’t have jobs. He told her that he would look like a fool if he let her continue to live in her modest townhome instead of a penthouse apartment in an exclusive section of Miami. And the thought of her grocery shopping or even doing something as simple as making their bed nearly sent him into a series of fits.

We have people to do that for us, my sweet.

She didn’t want to make Max look foolish. But she wasn’t adjusting to the lifestyle of the rich and idle too well.

That’s why she had thrown herself into planning the perfect wedding. There had been no planner or assistant. It didn’t make sense for them to hire someone to do it when she could. Max indulged her on this. He thought it was because she was very particular, but the truth was she needed to plan this wedding because without her career she was bored.

And now the ceremony was upon them. Five more days. Guests were coming in from all over the world. Heads of state, members of royal families, politicians. These were the people they needed to impress. That’s why Max insisted on the cake being made in the most exclusive bakery in New York and flown in the next day. He wanted flowers that were grown in special hothouses. A string quartet was being flown in from Belgium. And a celebrity chef and his crew of fifty were arriving to feed the hundreds of guests that were going to be present. There were so many moving parts, so many things that needed to be done on a deadline that it felt more like a job than the most meaningful day of her life. Maybe it was better that this felt like work, because the longer she focused on the work, the less time she had to think.

Think about him and their future and how she would be spending her time as his wife.

She hadn’t seen Max at all this week. In fact, she had seen him only twice in the last thirty days. He traveled a lot for work, and they agreed to spend the days leading up to the wedding apart so that their honeymoon would be more special. Ava was hoping that he would slow down once they walked down the aisle. He had promised her that he would. That they would put down roots. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be on this island, even though she had loved it since her parents had first taken her here as a little girl.

Maxime was a restaurateur, and she had convinced him to open up a small bistro on the island and staff it with local people. Their idea to open an oceanfront eatery had somehow expanded into a plan to build a massive resort. But the residents of the island, led by the mayor, made it impossible for him to even purchase land. Maxime had been furious. He wasn’t a man that was used to hearing no. Ava had secretly been glad the plan had failed. A huge hotel would have taken away from the quaint, homey feeling of Hideaway Island, and that’s what Ava loved about this place. Miami was good for nightlife and culture, but this place felt like home.

Maxime wanted nothing to do with it now. He had wanted her to move the wedding off the island, but she had refused. She would quit her job to make him happy, plan a wedding that would rival all weddings, but she was going to get married on Hideaway Island. In the place her family spent summer vacations. In the oceanfront home her father had helped her older brother pick out before he passed away. She had grown up in Maryland, but this was the place where she felt closest to her father. She remembered him being so happy here. And as she walked down the aisle toward Maxime on her brother’s arm, she would picture her father’s smiling face.

Max wanted her to have a baby soon, but she wanted to wait a little while. She knew she couldn’t hold him off much longer because he was older than she was, and he wanted to be an active father. Children and family were extremely important to him.

I want to have as many as possible. My children are my legacy.

She wanted children, too, but she wanted to spend some time with just him first. He was away so much that there were times when she felt like she barely knew him at all.

She tried to shake off the uneasy feelings that snuck into her chest and nearly suffocated her. She had been with him for more than three years. Of course she knew him. And if she didn’t, she would have the rest of her life to get to know him.

Ava took a deep breath and finally unzipped the large garment bag that held her dress. She didn’t even have to unzip it all the way to see the sparkle from all the hand-sewn crystals. Even if it wasn’t exactly her taste, she had to admit it was magnificent. All that effort for something that she would wear for only a few hours. She wondered what her father would think of all this. He had been a simple man. She wondered if he would be impressed by it all or think it was crazy to spend this much. Deep down she knew the answer.

She hated to think that her father might be disappointed in the way she was leading her life, but she knew that he had just wanted her to be happy. In the end, Ava was happy when Maxime was happy.

A knock on the door distracted her from her musings. She thought it might be her sister in-law, Virginia, bringing her six-month-old by for a visit. Ava would happily quit wedding planning for an hour or two to spend time with her niece. She had been there when Virginia had given birth and for every little milestone that Bria had met. She loved being so near the next generation of her family and seeing her oldest brother, Carlos, being a father.

She zipped the garment bag up and headed to the front door. Only she didn’t see her sister-in-law with her adorable little baby standing there. There was a woman that she’d never seen before. She was older, probably nearing forty, with plain brown hair and nondescript features. Ava had never had a visitor outside of her family and the delivery people since she’d been there.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” she started, “but I am very happy with my current faith at the moment.”

“Oh, I’m not here for that reason, Ava.”

She knew her name?

“You are Ava, aren’t you? I recognize you from your pictures.”

Maxime wasn’t quite a celebrity, but because of his massive business holdings and his family’s last name on a string of luxury hotels he was well known and sometimes his picture was snapped by the paparazzi. She was sure she had been photographed with him a few times, but that didn’t explain why the woman was there.

“How can I help you?” Ava tried not to let her nervousness show. There was a strange woman at her rental home, and she was alone. She had taken some self-defense classes, but right now that information had flown out of her head while other more troubling thoughts had crashed around into it.

“I’m Ingrid.”

She studied Ava’s face for some kind of reaction.

“You don’t know who I am, do you? Max never told you,” she said sounding disappointed.

“Told me what?” Her stomach dropped. Sick was the only way she could describe how she was feeling.

“I think it might be better for me to show you rather than tell you. May I come in? You’re probably going to need to sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit down, and I don’t want to go inside. I want you to tell me why you are here.”

Ingrid pulled a small photo album out of her oversize handbag and handed it to Ava. Ava opened it slowly. The first picture was of Maxime with a newborn swaddled in a blue blanket in his arms. His eyes were adoring. She had never seen that look in them before.

“That was nearly sixteen years ago now,” Ingrid said softly.

Ava flipped to the next page to see a younger Ingrid with two small children, a boy and a girl, her head thrown back in laughter. Max sat next to her, a grin on his face and love in his eyes.

Ava wanted to ask if Ingrid was his long-lost sister, if those two children were his niece and nephew, but she already knew the answer. And yet she kept turning the pages. There was Ingrid with yet another baby, in a hospital bed, Max’s arm wrapped around her. Ava walked back inside then and sat down heavily on her couch. She couldn’t think. She just couldn’t muster one coherent thought. But she kept turning those pages. Family vacations and birthday parties. Smiling faces. Happy times. She had hoped that this was a past relationship, but as she turned the pages she could see that Max was still very much a part of their lives. It was clear that when he wasn’t with her, he was with them. He had the kind of life with them that she hoped they would have together.

She was more than stunned, more than shocked. She was paralyzed as she sat there.

“Our eldest is going to be sixteen in a few months. His name is Hugo. My middle’s name is—”

“I don’t want to know their names!” Ava pushed the photo album back at Ingrid, who had followed her inside. They were supposed to get married, spend the rest of their lives together. There were hundreds of people coming, some of them already there, and yet she was sitting next to the woman the man she loved had made a family with.

It was all going to waste. All the money that was spent that could have helped people. All the time she spent loving him, her career, it was all gone. Sacrificed for him.

“I’m not here to hurt you. I just thought you should know before you walked down the aisle that you would be sharing him with us. He said he was going to tell you. I had hoped he would tell you before you were married...”

“I don’t understand.” Ava shook her head. “Why are you a secret?”

“Look at me.” She shrugged.

“What are you talking about? There is nothing wrong with the way you look.”

Ingrid smiled at her. “He’s right. You are sweet. I didn’t think you would be from your pictures. I’m plain. I’m uninteresting. Uneducated. I was working as a waitress when we met. I always knew when I took up with him that I was never going to be the main woman in his life. He needs someone like you. Someone beautiful and graceful. You look like the wife of a billionaire. Plus he really does love you.”

Ingrid had said so many things that Ava was having a hard time focusing on just one of them.

“How do you know he loves me?”

“He told me. We talk about you. He tells me everything. Max is my best friend.”

“He doesn’t tell me everything. I’ve spent three years with the man, and he couldn’t be bothered to tell me that he was leading a double life.”

“He was wrong for that. He should have told you from the beginning. I didn’t want you to start your marriage off that way, and I didn’t want you to find out by accident. But now that things are out in the open, you can discuss it with him and get past it.”

“Get past it? There is nothing to get past. There’s not going to be a marriage.”

“Oh no!” Ingrid looked truly dismayed. “That wasn’t my intention. You have to marry Max. He adores you. He’s waited so long to get married. You’re perfect for him.”

“Do you think I’m the type of woman who would lower myself that far for a man?” Maybe it wasn’t such a stretch, Ava had already given up a lot to be with him—what was the rest of her self-respect?

“Maxime isn’t just any man. He’s special and powerful, and millions of women would give up their souls to be where we are. He’s so kind to me, and I know he’s kind to you. There’s no one else in the world who’s going to give you what he can.”

“I don’t want what he can give me. And I’m sure as hell not willing to give up my soul to be with him.” She stood up and walked to the door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a wedding to cancel.”