Fated: An Alpha Male Romance (23 page)

Alexandra

Entirely too many people were in attendance. I saw political aficionados ranging from local and state government to members of Congress. It was easily a five-hundred person guest list which was a rough guess since I’d had no part in the planning or execution. Everything had been handled by my father’s “people,” right down to the couture Elie Saab gown that I was wearing. The venue was bursting at the seams and my stomach felt as though I’d just jumped into the seat of the world’s most convoluted roller coaster.

The wedding party marched out in front of us dressed in lilac-colored, floor-length dresses. The only people I recognized were my mother, Grandma Evelyn, Gia and Elliott; the rest were extras that the network sent in order to make the affair seem larger and more extravagant. My father was standing next to me with a grasp on my hand that would slacken and tighten periodically in response to my own nerves, reminding me of his open threat to Ethan’s career.

He looked down at me. “Alexandra? Are you ready?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“And you remember what we talked about?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

A velvety, red curtain drew back and I was thrust into the spotlight. Five-hundred pairs of eyes turned and the scrutiny instantly began. My father smiled and straightened his frame while I searched the room for familiar faces. The symphony orchestra belted out a near perfect rendition of the wedding march which commenced our walk towards the altar. Roderick was waiting at the front and looked admittedly handsome in his tux, but he wasn’t sharing in my father’s smugness. Instead, with the way he constantly contracted and extended his fingers, he actually looked a bit uneasy.

I caught Gia’s eye standing at the altar with the rest of the bridesmaids. She raised both eyebrows and tilted her head slightly to the side. Silently, she was telling me that I was crazy for still going through with the wedding.

On the right, Eli watched her before his gaze traveled to me. He shook his head, very slightly, and I felt my father’s grip tighten as though he’d seen the gesture.

My father handed me off to Roderick and we turned to the officiant, a Supreme Court Justice and good friend of my father’s. I could feel Gia’s glare continued to burn a crater in the side of my face.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join —

“Ethan Stewart.”

Every head in the church turned towards a sudden burst of light that exploded into the room. The double doors in the back of the room had opened, and when I saw the person’s outline walking down the aisle towards me, my heart stopped. Gasps and murmurs emanated around the room, but I no longer possessed the will to pay attention to them. Ethan, who was supposed to be in Florida, who’d said that there was no longer any chance for us, who I absolutely adored, was here. In Louisiana. Crashing my wedding.

“…and Alexandra Miller in holy matrimony,” he finished. “Alle, I’ll be damned if I let you stand up there and get married to another man.”

The chattering increased and I stepped down from the altar mound, once again on autopilot as I walked towards him. I didn’t care about the long train of the dress dragging behind me as I tugged the veil from my head. The only thing I was concerned about was getting to him as soon as possible, just to see if he was real.

“Ethan, what are you doing here?” I asked. I really didn’t care about the answer to the question, but it still came out anyhow.

“It’s a long story,” he answered, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me flush to his body. “Let’s just say that two delayed flights and a nine-hour drive weren’t going to stop me from being here today.”

I ran my palm over the roughness of his cheek and then pressed my cheek into his chest. The feeling of having my arms wrapped around him and embracing him for everyone to see felt as though I’d finally closed the open edge of a massive circle.

“I’m so happy to see you,” I told him, honestly and openly. “I wasn’t going to go through with it anyway.”

I felt his warm lips against my forehead. “You weren’t?”

“I couldn’t have ever been happy without you, E.”

Suddenly, I felt my father’s foreboding presence approaching me from the back and heard his angry footsteps on the plush carpet. For the first time, I noticed the looks on our guests’ faces: about a third were confused, another third looked horrified, and the final third were actually smiling.

“You’ve sealed both your fates, Alexandra,” my father threatened. “Love dies. Love doesn’t pay bills. Love doesn’t even last forever. You want to throw away the foundation that your mother and I have built for you over love? Security!”

Ethan stepped in front of me.

“I said, security!” my father repeated.

Two men wearing suits and earpieces walked over to us. Ethan turned towards them and each man grabbed one of his arms.

“Let me go,” he ordered.

“Take him out of here,” my father growled.

“Drag me out of here if you want to, but I’m not leaving without my woman,” Ethan asserted. “I didn’t go through all of this to give her up, and I promise you that I’ll never give her up again.”

I turned to my father, but my mother’s voice broke through, more vocal than I’d ever heard it in all the years of my life.

“You want her to have a life like ours, James?” she asked, walking up. “You want her to have a life filled with emptiness and infidelity?”

Grandma Evelyn rose and followed her. The men’s eyes darted between my parents. I shook my head, and they slackened their grip enough for Ethan to shrug out of their grasp.

My father shot my mother an angry glare. “Janice, be quiet.”

“I’m sorry, James, but I can’t stand by and let my daughter make the same mistake that I did when I married you.”

At that admission, I was sure that ninety-percent of the people in attendance gasped. The other ten-percent were children who had no idea what was going on.

“You don’t know what you’re saying, Janice,” my father warned. “I gave you a good, comfortable life.”

“And you’re saying that I’ll somehow ruin that?” Ethan jumped in. “Look, I could
somewhat
justify
your opposition to my relationship with Alexandra if I didn’t have anything to my name. But, I have damn more than that. Why are you so against this?”

My father redirected his glare to Ethan. “And what makes you think you have the authority to speak to me?”

“Because you’re a red-blooded human being,” Ethan answered. “That and the fact that I can talk to who the fuck I want to. You think your title makes you better than me? You think you can just shit on whoever you want to because you’ve had a position in the government?”

I could feel the anger flowing through Ethan’s veins like molten lava. My father once again tried to use his looming presence, this time to intimidate Ethan, but Ethan didn’t even remotely budge.

“This, is who you want to be with?” my father asked, pointing at Ethan but looking at me. “This foul-mouthed baboon?”

“So, you would rather that I marry your choice for you,” I answered. “You’d rather I marry someone who explicitly told me that he wouldn’t care if, years into our marriage, I got some action on the side, rather than the man who said he would prefer to give me up rather than be with me without love?”

He grimaced. “Stop saying that word.”

“What? Love?” I asked. “What do you have against it?”

“It’s not real,” he contended. “Alexandra, I laid everything out for you. Roderick would have given you a good life. I know this about him. I don’t know this man, this Ethan Stewart. I can’t vouch for the life he’ll give you. I can’t promise that you won’t show up at the house in the middle of the night crying because he broke your heart.”

My and Gia’s gazes suddenly found each other from across the room and locked. It was as though we’d just unearthed a major discovery: a source of compassion hidden within our father that seemed to be enshrouded in pain.

“Why do you think that will happen?” I asked him.

He turned away and tried to walk past us, but I grabbed his forearm. When he tugged at it and faced me, although he’d never placed a hand on me in his life, I slightly recoiled. Unfortunately, it wasn’t slight enough. Everyone saw it, even the cameras.

He looked up and around the room into the faces of those now convinced that with the way I’d flinched, he’d put his hands on me before. It was as though I could see the pieces of his public image falling off like flakes from his skin.

“This situation that you’re in doesn’t just happen to women, you know,” he barked, although his face reflected that of a sad puppy. “You think you’re the only one who has expectations that they want to shuck? That women are the only ones who have to conform to something that they don’t want?”

He groaned and flung up his hands while the room fell silent. Even the Justice had tucked his Bible beneath his arm and was watching the Miller family drama unfold like a midday soap opera.

“My parents were in love,” he began, gesturing to Grandma Evelyn. “The whole world knows it. It’s not as though I wasn’t exposed to it because it was evident to everyone around them. But from the minute that I was born, as the only son of one of the nation’s most beloved men, I had an image to retain as well. Part of that involved marrying someone with status, not for love.”

I gently touched his shoulder. “What was her name?”

“Who’s name?” He knew exactly what I was asking, but wanted to be difficult anyhow. It was the first time I’d ever seen any of Gia’s traits in him.

“It doesn’t matter what her name was,” he snapped. “All you have to know is, when you open yourself up to the possibility of love, you also open yourself up to the possibility of heartache. I know I might seem like an insensitive boar, but I didn’t want that for you…or you, Gia.”

He turned and I could tell that his acknowledgment caught Gia off-guard. It was one of the first times, in a very long time, that her name had ever left his mouth in a positive light.

“You say I’m hard on you, but I was just trying to protect you from,” he looked at Ethan, “lowlifes.”

I put a restraining hand on Ethan’s chest.

“Ethan’s not a lowlife, Daddy,” I said.

“It would have been easier to see you two in relationships that couldn’t hurt you,” he went on. “I know your mother has her story; I have my own. Without love, we were still able to make a good life for you both.”

“But, it could’ve been better,” Roderick spoke up. He’d still been at the altar the entire time watching the scene unfold. “It could have been a better life for all of you.” Then, he shook his head. “Alexandra, I might be a lot of things, but I am not the type of man to try to ruin another man’s career for my own gain. Especially when ruining his career puts the livelihood of children at risk.”

My father, embarrassed, shielded his face from our audience.

“So, you don’t have to worry about those images becoming public,” Roderick assured. “I had them destroyed.”

Ethan’s brows went up as though asking what pictures Roderick had been referring to, but they settled when realization hit him that they were compromising pictures of us.

“Sir,” Ethan spoke directly to my father, “have faith in the job you did raising your daughters. Even though you tried to shove them in different directions, they still ended up making choices in their best interests. One needed some coaxing,” he squeezed my waist gently, “but, man-to-man, I promise you that I will never do anything to send your daughter crying to your doorstep. I will give her such a good life that even after I’m gone from this Earth, she’ll still walk around like the happiest woman that ever lived. I’m going to start today by not leaving this building until she agrees to be Mrs. Alexandra Stewart.”

I was nodding along with everything that he was saying right up until the last part, and with a gasp, turned to him.

“W-what?”

“Did I mention that I had two flight delays, a nine-hour drive, and a stop at the jewelry store?” He pulled a box from behind his back and dropped to his knee. “Alexandra—”

I was screaming “yes” before he even had a chance to say anything else. I literally couldn’t even stay still as he tried to maneuver the ring onto my finger, and once it was snug, I pulled his lips down to mine and allowed all of my eagerness to travel through me and into the kiss.

Five well-dressed figures came through the open doors, one of them I instantly recognized as Ethan’s grandfather due to his wheelchair. As they drew nearer, I made out Tayler, a woman who looked so much like Ethan that it was eerie, a man holding hands with her, and Kellen pushing the wheelchair. Over Ethan’s grandfather’s lap was a tuxedo bag.

“You also didn’t mention that you have some of the best friends in the world,” Kellen said, grinning. “Do you know how much faith we have to have in you in order to find outfits and fly out to Louisiana for you to propose to a woman that was already getting married to someone else?”

“I was just hoping it worked out for the best,” Ethan answered, his face exuding pure happiness.

Mr. Stewart extended the bag towards Ethan. “Here, son. Go get dressed.”