Page 3 of Marrying the Silver Fox

He crosses his arms over his chest. He can tell I’m dodging the issue at hand here. But who could blame me? I don’t want to come out with it. Don’t want to say it out loud if I can avoid it.

I glance over my shoulder, as though Natalie might come wafting through the door at any moment, asking if it’s time for her to meet Nikolai down the other end of the aisle and be done with this. I keep hoping that my panic is nothing more than paranoia that I can put to rest, that this wedding isn’t going to fall apart right here in front of me.

“Then tell me.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, clenching my hands into fists at my sides. Come on. He deserves to know. Even if it hurts, I can’t keep the news from him much longer, and it’s better to just go ahead and come out with it than try to dodge it any further.

“Natalie is gone.”

The words hang in the air between us for a long moment, so heavy that I don’t know what to do with them. When I open my eyes again, I find him staring at me, his eyes flickering with an emotion I can’t quite put my finger on.

“What?”

“Natalie is—she’s gone,” I explain, and soon the words come tumbling out of me faster than I can stop them. “I went to her room to find her so I could start the ceremony, but she had—she’s taken off. I went around the entire hotel, I asked the bridal party, everything, but nobody seems to know where she is.”

I take another deep breath, gulping down as much air as I can. The fury in Nikolai’s eyes as he looks at me is rendering me near-speechless.

“And I’m sorry, but I think she might have…she might have bailed on the wedding.”

For a moment, I’m not sure that he has heard me. His gaze is distant, calculating, as though putting the pieces together, making sense of what I’ve just come out with.

And then, to my surprise, he speaks—this time in a calmer tone, almost as though he’s holding back from a complete explosion. “Bailed on the fucking wedding?”

I nod warily, searching his face for some kind of explanation. How does he feel about this? Is he going to blame it on me? I almost want to plead with him, to tell him that there’s nothing more I could have done, that this is not my fault and I would never have let something like this happen if I’d had the chance, but I can tell he has already spun entirely beyond the point of understanding.

He takes a step toward me, and on instinct, my head jerks back nervously. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me right now, as if he holds me personally responsible for all of this.

“You let her leave?”

“I didn’t know a thing about it,” I protest, shaking my head. “I poured months into putting this wedding together, you really think I would just let her walk out on the day she’s meant to get married?”

He eyes me for a moment, then turns his back on me, a low, frustrated sound rising at the back of his throat. I watch him nervously, no idea what to do or say, wondering if I should beg for his forgiveness or tell him that he needs to make a decision, and quick.

“What do you want to do?” I begin, but he holds his hand up, pulling out his phone. He dials a number swiftly, and I assume it’s going to be Natalie—but instead, by the sounds of it, it’s her father.

“Damon,” he greets him sharply. “Your daughter, I’ve just been told, has walked out on our wedding.”

I can’t hear what the man on the other end of the line is saying, but I can hear the panic in his voice, the way he reacts to the news as though it’s the worst thing he has ever heard. If all of this was in aid of sealing a business deal between the two men, then this might well be a nightmare for him beyond just the social hit his status will take given his daughter has fled on the day she’s meant to be getting married.

And while I don’t know what it is that Nikolai does, I get the feeling that he has more power than Natalie’s father wants to be on the wrong end of, if he can help it. I wonder if I should be worried too—but then, I’m not the one who made this happen. Surely, he can’t hold me responsible for her leaving, can he?

After a brief back-and-forth, during which Nikolai accuses Damon of pulling out of their deal at the last moment, he hangs up the phone, clearly sensing that he’s not going to get any further with this matter. And then he turns his attention back to me, face blank, unreadable.

“What do you want to do?” I try again.

“Get her back.”

“I can’t do that,” I tell him, shaking my head. “She’s nowhere to be found. And even if she was, I couldn’t force her to walk down that aisle, not if she doesn’t want to⁠—”

He closes the distance between us, not laying hands on me, but not needing to. His gaze blazes into mine, jaw tight, face written with fury that casts me into silence in an instant.

“Listen to me,” he tells me, voice low. “I am not going to walk out there in front of hundreds of the most powerful people in my—in my industry, and tell them that the woman who agreed to marry me has changed her damn mind. You hear me?”

I stare up at him helplessly. “I don’t know what you want me to do,” I reply. “I’ve looked for her everywhere. If she wanted to marry you, then she would be here, I’m sure of it, but she’s clearly gotten cold feet⁠—”

“You’re the wedding planner, aren’t you?” he shoots back. “So, find a way to make this wedding work.”

I toss my hands in the air incredulously. “Look, I don’t know what else I can do,” I protest. “I can’t force her to marry you. I know this sucks, but⁠—”