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My Fiancé Chose Her, So I Married His Adoptive Father
Novelix
new
Completed
Three days before my wedding, I caught my fiancé in our bridal suite with another woman wearing my ring. He wanted her father's money—and me in a secret apartment as his mistress. I refused. Instead, I asked his adoptive father, Adrian, to marry me. Same date. Same dress. Different groom. Ethan thought I was bluffing until Adrian called me his bride in front of everyone. Now my ex wants me back in hiding, but my husband stands beside me in public—and Ethan's lies are about to cost him everything.
Chapters (2)
第1章
Three days before my wedding, I find my fiancé in our bridal suite with another woman beneath him.
Downstairs, a florist is arranging the white roses I chose.
Upstairs, Victoria Sterling is wearing my fiancé's shirt.
Nothing else.
Ethan gets off the bed.
"Claire."
For a second, I can't look away from the sheets.
I picked those, too.
Victoria pulls his shirt closed, taking her time. Her engagement ring catches the light.
An engagement ring.
I look at Ethan.
"What is that?"
"Let me explain."
"What is on her hand?"
Victoria glances at him.
"You haven't told her?"
The room goes quiet.
Outside, someone calls for help moving a flower arrangement.
My wedding is being assembled on the other side of the door.
Ethan reaches for his pants.
"I was going to talk to you tonight."
"About sleeping with her?"
"About the wedding."
I wait.
He fastens his belt.
"The wedding is still happening. I'm just marrying her."
I stare at him.
For six months, he has let me choose flowers. Taste cakes. Put together a guest list.
Last week, he asked whether I had finished writing my vows.
"You're marrying her."
"Claire, this isn't how I wanted you to find out."
"How did you want it to happen?"
He glances toward the open door.
"Could you lower your voice?"
I haven't raised it.
Victoria sits on the edge of the bed.
"My father is announcing his investment next week," she says. "It makes sense to settle everything before then."
Everything.
Apparently, that includes me.
Ethan steps between us.
"Her family can help me move forward at the company. You know how things have been with Adrian."
His adoptive father.
The man who gave him his name, his job, and a home in the estate we're standing in.
"He keeps telling me I'm not ready," Ethan continues. "No matter what I do, there's another condition. Another year I'm supposed to wait."
"So you're marrying her because her father has money."
Victoria stands.
"Be careful."
I look at her.
"Why? Is that the part we aren't supposed to say?"
"Enough," Ethan says.
I turn back to him.
He looks irritated now.
As though I'm making an already difficult afternoon worse.
"When did you decide?"
"That doesn't matter."
"When?"
"A few weeks ago."
A few weeks.
I think about the seating chart spread across our dining table.
The invitations my mother helped address.
The dress hanging in a locked room at my studio.
"All that time, you let me keep planning."
"I was trying to find a way to tell you without hurting you."
"And did you?"
His jaw tightens.
"You're not listening."
I almost laugh.
"What part have I missed?"
He looks at Victoria.
"Could you give us a minute?"
She doesn't move.
"Ethan."
"Please."
She retrieves her skirt from the floor and pulls it on.
She picks up her bag.
As she passes me, her perfume reaches me first. I've smelled it on him before.
He said it was from a client dinner.
Victoria pauses at the door.
"I want the roses changed," she tells him. "White is so predictable."
Then she leaves.
Ethan waits until her footsteps fade.
"This doesn't have to be the end of us."
I look at him.
For a moment, I think I've misunderstood.
"What?"
"We've been together for four years, Claire. That means something."
"Apparently not a wedding."
"Don't do that."
He reaches for my hand.
I pull it away.
"There's a place near the river," he says. "Private. You liked that neighborhood when we looked at apartments."
I remember.
We were looking for somewhere to live together.
"I can arrange it. You'd have your own space. You wouldn't have to deal with all this."
"With your wife?"
"With the pressure. The family obligations."
I feel something inside me go very still.
"You want me to be your mistress?"
"I'm asking you to be patient. This marriage changes things for my future. It doesn't have to change us."
I look past him at the bed.
"You've already changed us."
"Victoria understands that we have history."
"Does she?"
"She isn't unreasonable. As long as we're discreet, there doesn't have to be a problem."
For four years, I have defended this man.
When he missed dinners.
When he forgot things that mattered to me.
When Adrian questioned whether he was ready for more responsibility, I told Ethan his father was being too hard on him.
Now he is offering me a hidden apartment and whatever time his wife decides I can have.
"Listen to yourself," I say.
"I'm trying to keep you in my life."
"On her terms."
"On terms that work."
He says it so easily.
I pull the ring off my finger.
He stops talking.
"Claire."
I place it on the dresser.
"Don't make a decision because you're upset."
"I'm upset because you made a decision."
"We can work through this."
"No."
His eyes flick toward the ring.
For the first time since I opened the door, he looks worried.
I pick up my bag.
He moves in front of me.
"What am I supposed to tell everyone?"
I look at him.
"The truth."
"Be reasonable."
"Tell them you decided to marry Victoria. Tell them you offered me an apartment."
His face hardens.
"You'd embarrass yourself, too."
I wait.
He steps aside.
Downstairs, a woman is wrapping ribbon around the staircase.
"Miss Bennett? Do you prefer the bow here or lower down?"
I stop beside her.
The ribbon is ivory.
My mother spent an entire afternoon helping me choose it.
"Here is fine," I say.
Behind me, Ethan comes down the stairs.
"Claire. We aren't finished."
I turn.
He looks almost certain I'll stop.
That I'll listen.
That four years of loving him means I'll accept whatever he leaves for me.
"We are," I say.
第2章
My father wants to call Ethan before I finish telling him what happened.
I put my hand over his phone.
"Not yet."
Richard Bennett looks at me.
"He asked you to do what?"
"Live in an apartment and keep seeing him after he marries Victoria."
My mother sets down her coffee.
Carefully.
"And she knows?"
"Yes."
For a moment, neither of them speaks.
Then my father stands.
"I'll speak to Adrian."
"I will."
"This isn't yours to clean up."
"I know. But I want him to hear it from me."
My mother reaches across the table.
"What do you want to do about Saturday?"
Saturday.
Two hundred guests.
A dress I've tried not to look at since I got home.
I take a breath.
"I don't know yet."
"That's all right," she says. "You don't have to decide everything tonight."
My phone vibrates.
Ethan.
Then again.
I turn it facedown.
An hour later, Adrian Caldwell calls.
"Claire."
His voice is quiet.
"Are you home?"
"Yes."
"May I come by?"
I look at my father.
"Did you call him?"
"No."
Adrian hears me.
"The house manager told me you left upset. Ethan says there's been a misunderstanding."
"What else did he say?"
"That you need time to calm down."
I close my eyes.
Of course.
"Come over," I say.
Adrian arrives twenty minutes later.
At thirty-nine, he is only eleven years older than Ethan. People who don't know the family sometimes mistake them for brothers.
When Ethan's parents died, Adrian was twenty-two and Ethan was eleven. They were distant relatives. Adrian took him in, later adopted him, and spent the next seventeen years making sure he had every opportunity.
Ethan now calls those opportunities a cage.
Adrian sits opposite me in my parents' living room.
He lets me finish.
He doesn't interrupt when I tell him about Victoria.
Or the apartment.
When I stop, he looks at the bare finger resting against my knee.
"I'm sorry."
"You didn't do it."
"No. But he used my home to do it. And he seems to think I'm going to let him take over your wedding."
"Are you?"
"No."
He says it without hesitation.
"The venue is yours for Saturday. You can cancel it, use it, or turn it into a party where no one mentions his name. The staff have been told to take their instructions from you."
Something in my chest loosens.
For the first time all day, someone is asking what I want.
Adrian leans forward.
"You don't owe him silence, Claire. And you don't owe either family a wedding."
"I know."
"Any costs our side created, I'll cover."
"I'm not worried about the flowers."
"I didn't think you were."
He looks at me as though I'm still myself.
Not a woman who has been replaced.
Not a problem waiting to be settled.
My parents give us the room.
I watch the door close.
Then I look back at Adrian.
"What if I don't want to cancel?"
His expression changes slightly.
"Then you don't have to."
"What if I want to change the groom?"
He is silent.
I can hear the clock above the fireplace.
"Claire."
"I mean you."
He doesn't laugh.
That almost makes it harder.
"You've had a terrible day," he says.
"I have."
"And I'm not going to take advantage of it."
"You aren't."
"You may feel differently tomorrow."
"Then ask me tomorrow."
He studies me.
We have known each other for years, though never like this.
He has come to my studio's annual fundraiser. Sat across from me at business dinners. Asked about my work and remembered the answers.
Last winter, when a burst pipe destroyed half my stock, Ethan told me insurance would handle it.
Adrian asked what I needed to reopen.
He offered help once.
When I told him I wanted to manage it myself, he respected that.
I have noticed him.
The way he listens.
The way a room settles when he speaks.
I never let myself do anything with those thoughts.
I was engaged to his son.
"You don't need to marry me to make a point," he says.
"I know."
"Do you?"
"Yes. I can leave Ethan without marrying anyone."
"Then why me?"
I make myself hold his gaze.
"Because I respect you. Because I'm attracted to you. Because I've spent four years making excuses for someone who makes me feel smaller, and you never have."
His hand rests on the arm of the chair.
Still.
"I don't want a marriage that exists only when Ethan is watching," he says.
"Neither do I."
"If we do this, it's real. We take the time to learn how to live together. We don't use each other to settle a score."
"I'm not asking you to pretend."
For a long moment, he says nothing.
Then he stands.
"Sleep tonight. I'll come back tomorrow."
"And if I still want this?"
"Then we'll talk about Saturday."
He keeps his word.
The next morning, he arrives without an assistant or a driver waiting at the door.
We walk in my parents' garden.
He asks about my studio.
Where I want to live.
What I expect from a husband.
I ask whether he has ever wanted to kiss me.
He stops beside the terrace.
"Yes."
The answer sends warmth through me.
"Why didn't you?"
"You were engaged."
"I'm not now."
He looks at me for a moment.
Then he touches my cheek.
"May I?"
"Yes."
His kiss is careful at first.
He gives me room to change my mind.
I move closer instead.
When he draws back, I'm holding the front of his coat.
"All right," I say.
His mouth curves.
"About the kiss or the wedding?"
"Both."
We tell my parents together.
My father asks Adrian three direct questions.
My mother asks me one.
"Are you choosing this for yourself?"
"Yes."
She holds my gaze.
Then she nods.
By afternoon, the planner has new instructions. We arrange the license paperwork, call the people who need to know, and keep the original ceremony time.
Sophie meets me at the studio.
My dress is waiting in its garment bag.
"Are we putting it in storage?" she asks.
"No."
She looks at me.
"The dress stays."
"And the wedding?"
"That stays, too."
I hand her the revised details.
She reads the name.
Then she reads it again.
"Adrian Caldwell?"
"Yes."
A slow smile spreads across her face.
"I'll call the stationer."
Only one name needs changing.
