King's Passion. Adrianne Byrd

four of them fell into a heap on the floor.

      The door to the suite flew open and, after a momentary gasp to take in the situation, a stream of women rushed into the room and struggled to pull them apart.

      “Enough! Enough! Enough!”

      Celya Gregory’s strength never ceased to surprise Victoria. Before she knew it, she was peeled away from the girls, but she was still pissed at her cousin’s determination to ruin her wedding day. Who does that?

      The team of family and friends helped them all to their feet, but Victoria and Lolita continued to stare each other down.

      “Oh, some of the beads fell off your dress,” Ceyla fretted while she checked her daughter over.

      Aunt Brenda settled her hands on her hips. “What on earth is going on? Have you two lost your minds?” Her head swung from Victoria to Lolita, but then her face twisted into a frown. “Child, what on earth happened to your head?”

      Lolita thrust an acrylic-tipped finger toward Victoria and started shaking it. “She did it! Crazy bitch! No wonder Marcus doesn’t want to marry you. If I was him, I’d run like hell, too.”

      Victoria’s temper shot back up and she was once again in the launching mode. “Let me at her!”

      This time the army of women caught her and pulled her back.

      Her deranged cousin laughed as she swooped over and snatched her wig from off the floor. “I guess things don’t always turn out the way we plan, do they, cuz?”

      Lolita’s mother, Fiona, snickered as well, but then grabbed her daughter’s arm and pulled her toward the door. “C’mon. Let’s go.” Before they reached the door, she also added, “I guess it’s a good thing that we didn’t waste any money, buying a gift.”

      They laughed like a pair of hyenas and then slipped out of the room.

      Clenching her teeth together, Victoria’s gaze shifted to her mother. “Gee. I’m so glad you talked me into inviting those two.”

      Celya’s cafe-latte complexion pinkened as she exhaled a long breath. “I’m sorry, baby. I’d hoped…”

      Victoria shook her head and then turned away from her mother. She wasn’t in the mood to rehash the strained relationship of her mother’s older and crazy sister who couldn’t deal with her own petty jealousy. Everyone could see the truth, but her mother generally saw or wanted to see the best in everyone.

      It was an annoying habit that Victoria was happy that she didn’t inherit. “Someone get me a phone.”

      “Sweetheart, what did Lolita mean about Marcus not wanting to marry you? Where is he?”

      All eyes turned toward her. “I don’t know, Mother. She probably made it up. Lord knows she’s evil enough. All I do know is that he’s not here.”

      Everyone’s eyes shifted away.

      Victoria resisted the urge to scream and instead turned around and stormed from the living room suite and to the elegant master bedroom with her torn chapel train sweeping the floor behind her.

      “Oh wait, sweetheart. Your train.” Her mother fretted behind her.

      Victoria continued her steady march away from everyone’s gazes. They probably couldn’t wait until she was out of sight anyway so they could start calling and texting everyone that she had just been dumped at the altar. “Dumped! Me? I don’t believe this.”

      “Well have you tried to call him?”

      She sucked in a breath and rolled her eyes. “That’s why I’m looking for a phone, Mother.” Victoria grabbed her cell phone from the nightstand and speed-dialed Marcus. On the first ring, she impatiently tapped her foot. On the second, she was pacing the room. By the third, she was mentally threatening to kill her tenuous fiancé if he didn’t answer his damn phone.

      “This is Marcus. I’m sorry but I can’t come to the phone right now. But if you leave a message, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” BEEP!

      “Marcus Lawrence Henderson, I don’t know where you are, but I know that you better be on your way to our wedding.” She turned her back toward her mother and then added in a low hiss, “I swear. If you embarrass me today, there’s not a rock on God’s green earth that you’ll be able to hide under. Get your butt here. Now!” She disconnected the call but still felt the need to stomp, scream or hit something.

      “All right now, sweetheart,” her mother said, coming up behind her and wrapping her arm around her waist. “Calm down. I’m sure that everything will be all right. He and the boys probably just hung out a little too late at their silly bachelor party.”

      Victoria’s eyes rolled back so far that she could almost see behind her. “I know Kent is behind this.”

      Her mother sighed but didn’t refute the comment. That was enough to make Victoria feel like she was on the right track. Kent Bryce had been doggedly pursuing her hand since college. Not because he loved her, but because he wanted to position himself with her billionaire father and his successful investment company. She wasn’t a fool. She saw straight through Kent and all his lame attempts to woo her. So when she pivoted and selected Marcus Henderson, a simple paper pusher out of account receivables, as an attempt to spur his calculated affection, Kent proved to be quite adept and positioned himself to become Marcus’s new best friend.

      Marcus, being a shy man, didn’t know what to make of his rise in social standing and popularity and was snookered into Kent and Victoria’s chess game before he ever knew what had happened. Relentless, Kent beat out Marc’s own brother for the position of best man and was primarily responsible for this harebrained idea of having the bachelor party out in Las Vegas.

      Victoria protested the idea, but she was seen as feebly trying to prevent the groom from his one rite of passage. Her father even poo-pooed her concerns and said that she was just being paranoid. So here she was, waiting for the groom along with all of New York’s elite society.

      Victoria took another deep breath while the fear of becoming a laughingstock rose like a tidal wave. Marcus wasn’t much of a party man. He didn’t drink or indulge in anything crazy. All of that played a part in her selecting him as her husband in the first place. Sure. She would’ve liked to have done this the old-fashioned way. You met someone, there’s a connection, you fall in love and then you walk down the aisle. In Victoria’s world that was just a fantasy sponsored by the fairy-tale spinners out of Hollywood. In her short thirty-two years, she had found one constant in life: people only liked her for her family’s money and prestige.

      She was irrelevant.

      Her father, Mondell Gregory, made his fortune in hedge funds and this year cracked the top twenty on Forbes’s list of richest Americans. A worthy accomplishment to be sure, but it resulted in her having a rather difficult upbringing. When you can’t trust those around you because you suspect their intentions had nothing to do with you, but everything to do with them trying to boost their social standing, it leads to a rather lonely existence. So she built a wall around her heart and protected herself the best way she could. As a result, she had little patience for fools and it could be argued that she was a little anal and controlling.

      It was the best way to avoid getting hurt.

      When Victoria attended prep school, she was dubbed the poor little rich girl because she isolated herself from the crowd. By the time she was in college, she was the ice queen—and the loneliest person in the world. The years that followed didn’t improve much. She’d become an investor herself and was rich in her own right. She had plenty of acquaintances, but no real friends. She just learned how to play the game. Smile and pretend she was happy during long, tedious society events. Men did find her attractive. After all, she did have her mother’s long legs and coke-bottle curves. But after a while, those same men would show their true hand and start talking more about her father than about her.

      Again, she was irrelevant.

      Now,