Chapter 1

"Elena. I'm sorry. I can't marry you."

I stood at the altar of St. Mark's in a dress I'd had altered three times, and heard my fiancé, Adrian, say those words in front of three hundred guests.

The last note of the organ hadn't faded yet; it was still turning in circles up under the vaulted ceiling. The minister's hand froze halfway to his Bible. The stained glass cut the light into blocks of red and blue that fell around my feet like a whole floor of shattered candy.

I didn't cry. I've spent half my life repairing books, and the one thing these hands do best is stay steady. You try to mend a page so brittle it flakes at a touch, and one tremor ruins it. So that's what I'd trained into myself over the years — that no matter how hard everything collapses inside, the hands don't shake. Even now, with my heart pounding like someone knocking, over and over, on the door of an empty house, and nobody coming to answer.

Because before Adrian even opened his mouth, his eyes had already gone past my shoulder — to the woman who had just pushed open the doors at the back of the church.

Celeste Ashford. The society darling, back from Europe. His college sweetheart. The one who got away. She walked in wearing a wine-red gown, her heels striking the stone unhurried, like a woman walking into a wedding that had always belonged to her. And I was the one who'd wandered into the wrong room, in the wrong dress.

"She's back," Adrian said, his voice soft — almost gentle. "Elena, you're a good woman. But I never really let her go."

Three hundred people, and not one of them made a sound.

I knew most of them. Hartwell aunts and cousins, old classmates from the Ivies, names that showed up in the business pages. For three years I'd handed them drinks at every dinner, remembered every one of their dietary quirks, tutored their children. And now they looked at me the way you'd look at a returned parcel: at last, back where it belongs.

I reached up and slipped the engagement ring off my finger. Nobody made me. I wanted it off.

A man who only remembers, at the altar, in front of three hundred people, that he loves somebody else — I couldn't keep him. And I shouldn't want to.

"Be happy, Adrian." I set the ring down on the white cloth of the altar, my voice steadier than I'd expected. "I mean it."

I turned and started toward the doors, alone. The train of the dress was too long; I had to lift it a little, and every step landed in the scattered light on the floor. The aisle was long. Long enough to hold a whole lifetime of being alone, packed into a few dozen feet. I counted the tiles under my shoes — one, two — because someone who mends books always needs something to count, to keep from falling apart in front of a crowd.

Just before I reached the doors, a voice rose from the front pew. Unhurried.

"Elena."

I stopped. Damien Hartwell had gotten to his feet.

He was Adrian's uncle. Chairman of the Hartwell Group, executor of the family trust — the man who actually ran this family. Somewhere around forty, a touch of frost at his temples. In three years I'd spoken maybe ten sentences to him, total. Everyone was afraid of him. Even Adrian swallowed his spoiled-rich-boy edge in his presence.

He walked to me, one step at a time. The whole church stopped breathing.

The first thing he did was take off his own jacket and settle it over my bare shoulders. The fabric still held his warmth, and it was heavy — steady, like a hand pressing down on the shoulder I'd been trembling in this whole time without letting anyone see.

Then, from his inside pocket, he took a ring. Not some newly bought jewel. A plain platinum band, old, the inner rim worn smooth and bright — a thing the Hartwells had passed down three generations, worn only by someone this family had truly claimed as its own.

"This family owes you a wedding," he said, lifting those gray-blue eyes that never held any warmth, looking straight at me, each word slow enough that every person in that room heard it clearly. "And since no one is going to make this right for you — I will."

The moment the ring slid onto my finger, three hundred faces that had been smiling at my ruin cracked, inch by inch.

Adrian stood frozen at the altar like something nailed in place. He wasn't looking at Celeste. He was looking at his uncle's hand — the hand now holding mine — and what crossed his face wasn't relief, and it wasn't jealousy. It was something he hadn't even recognized in himself yet. Panic.

Damien took my arm and led me out — down the aisle I was supposed to walk alone.

It was only at the doors that I realized: this man everyone feared, this hand around mine, was steady.

Steady — and burning, like it was very nearly about to shake.