Page 1 of Wilder’s Mistake

CHAPTER 1

LUCY

By ten thirty, Nora is married, Caleb has survived the speeches, and the only thing left on my list is getting them into the honeymoon car with both passports. I stand near the edge of the ballroom with one heel slipped out of my silver pump, watching my best friend dance beneath the crystal lights. She looks happy in the loose, unguarded way I wanted for her all day. Caleb looks as though he still cannot believe she chose him.

The flowers arrived. The photographer took every family combination without losing patience. Nobody mentioned the groom’s parents’ divorce during dinner. By my project-manager standards, the wedding is a triumph.

Then Wilder crosses the floor and ruins my concentration.

Nora’s older brother wears a black suit with his white shirt open at the throat. His short dark hair is neater than usual, though nothing about him looks polished. Tattoos rise above his collar and disappear beneath his cuffs. He moves through a formal ballroom with the same quiet certainty he carries everywhere else, as though chandeliers and armed clubhouses are merely different rooms he knows how to control.

The men I usually date are clean-cut, careful and easy to explain. Wilder has never been easy to explain, and he catches me looking. His gaze drops to my bare heel before traveling slowly up the blue dress Nora chose for me.

“Done?” he asks when he reaches me.

“Nearly.”

“You look done.”

“My feet are trying to resign.”

“Take the shoes off.”

“And walk barefoot through a hotel ballroom?”

His eyes hold mine. “I wasn’t thinking about the ballroom.”

Heat reaches my face before I can stop it, and Wilder moves on with no change in expression, leaving me to wonder whether I supplied the filthy meaning myself. He’s been doing that for six years. A low comment at one of Nora’s birthday dinners. A look held half a second too long. Something that could pass as innocent if I challenged him, followed by his calm departure before I found the nerve. He’s never touched me, but somehow that has not made him harmless.

Nora appears beside me and takes the champagne from my hand.

“That was mine.”

“I know, but I need it.” She smiles and drinks anyway. “You can stop working now.”

“When you are in the car with your passport.”

I look at my best friend. A few strands of dark hair have escaped the pins at her temple, and happiness has softened everything the makeup artist tried to perfect.

Her mouth curves as she glances across the room, where Wilder is speaking to Caleb near the bar.

“He behaved, at least,” she says with a nod in his direction.

“The night’s young,” I reply.

“People decide what he is before he opens his mouth. That’s the problem with my brother.”

“He rarely bothers correcting them, though.”

“He does, but only when it matters.”

The words are quiet, not a warning or an invitation. Nora knows her brother better than anyone. She also knows me well enough to recognize every subject I avoid too carefully.

We met at a construction conference six years ago and became friends over bad coffee and a speaker who used the phrase synergistic pathways without irony. Since then, she has become the person who knows where I keep my spare key, which work calls I pretend don’t upset me, and the date each year when grief for my mother catches me off guard.

She is family because we chose each other and that is one reason I’ve never acted on what happens to me around Wilder. A careless affair could sour birthdays, holidays and every ordinary day Nora expects both of us to be in her life. Wilder might be able to walk away cleanly. I couldn’t bear to make her stand between us afterward.

Caleb approaches and rests a hand at Nora’s waist. “The car’s downstairs.” She gives me back the empty glass and somehow I ache for what they have right now.