Chapter 1

My fiancé left me at the altar. His executive assistant brought in a rooster and told me to marry it.

“Go on, Elise,” Hester said. “Say ‘I do.’ You didn’t really think a Delgado would marry a woman with no name and nothing to offer, did you?”

She had the rooster tied to my wrist. Its claws caught in my lace sleeve. The men in the front pew laughed. Most of them owed their livelihoods to Scott’s father.

By the time Scott Delgado showed up, he had a diamond in his pocket. He told the priest there’d be no wedding, then got down on one knee and proposed to Hester in front of everyone.

She slapped me before I could leave. Scott took one look at her hand and told me to apologize.

“She hurt herself hitting you,” he said. “You can at least tell her you’re sorry.”

“Unless you’d rather leave Riverton in pieces.”

His father’s men rose from the back pews. One looked me up and down, grinning, while the others spread out across the doors.

Scott waited for me to beg. Then my phone rang.

One call was all it took. Riverton’s mayor came for me himself, with armed officers at his side. The men at the doors stepped aside.

The next morning, Scott’s father came to apologize in person. He brought a signed transfer of shares in the family’s shipping company. Scott stood beside him, staring at the name on the paperwork.

He looked up at me. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

He could barely get the words out.

……

By the time the organist started playing the same piece for the third time, I was still standing at the altar in my wedding gown, and Scott Delgado was nowhere in sight.

His father had booked the chapel and the ballroom next door. The pews were full of people who did business with the Delgados, from shipping executives to men who never put their names on anything. They’d all managed to show up on time.

Hester Pruitt, Scott’s executive assistant, came up the aisle and clipped my shoulder on her way past. I looked at the empty stretch of carpet on her other side.

“Elise,” she murmured, “you didn’t really think Mr. Delgado would marry you, did you? No family name that matters. No connections. What exactly did you think you were bringing to the table?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I took my phone from the clutch I’d left beside my bouquet and called Scott. He picked up on the fourth ring.

“The ceremony was supposed to start twenty minutes ago,” I said. “Where are you?”

“What’s the rush? I found a stray dog on the road. I’m dealing with it.”

“I’ll get there when I get there,” he went on. “Let Hester handle things.”

He hung up before I could ask what, exactly, he expected her to handle.

Hester had moved close enough to hear Scott through the earpiece. As I slipped my phone back into my clutch, she turned to the priest, who still had his book open.

“Well,” she said, loud enough for the first few rows to hear, “Mr. Delgado has left the wedding in my hands. Shall we get on with it?”

With whom?

Our parents had arranged the marriage when Scott and I were children. Mine had asked me to honor the agreement and let Richard Delgado decide when to tell his son whose daughter I was. Until then, I was to use the name I’d gone by for years, Elise Summers. To most of the people in the chapel, the empty pews on my side told them everything they needed to know.

I could live with what they thought of me. I saw no reason to stand there in a wedding gown while Scott decided whether a stray dog was more important than getting married.

I turned to leave. Hester closed her hand around my arm.

A woman in a black catering uniform was coming down the side aisle with a rooster tucked against her chest. A length of red cord hung from one of its legs.

I pulled my arm free. “What the hell are you doing, Hester?”

“Scott can’t make it. I found you a stand-in.”

“You want me to say my vows to a rooster? Have you lost your mind?”

Someone in the second row sucked in a breath. Then the whispers started.

“She really said that to Pruitt?”

“Last guy who crossed Hester lost his trucking contract. Scott pulled it himself.”

A man in the front pew raised the wineglass he’d brought in from the reception. “A rooster’s supposed to be good luck, sweetheart. You could at least say thank you.”

Hester gave the woman in black a nod.

The woman shoved the rooster into my arms. Its claws caught in my lace sleeve, and while I was trying to keep it from scratching me, she looped the loose end of the cord around my wrist and cinched it tight.

The rooster slipped from my arms. I dropped to one knee to give it enough slack to reach the floor, but its wings were already beating against my skirt. Laughter drowned out the organ.

“Get this off me,” I told Hester.

She took the microphone from its stand. The priest stepped back from the altar.

“All right, everyone. We’re ready to begin.” She looked down at me. “Come on, Miss Summers. Be a good sport. Dinner’s getting cold.”

I got a fingernail under the knot, but the rooster pulled and the cord bit deeper.

“We can skip the sermon,” Hester said. “I doubt the ring will fit. Somebody bring the bride a glass. We’ll do the toast and go straight to the kiss.”

The man in the front pew started clapping. By the time I looked up, half the chapel had joined in.