The Wedding She Always Wanted. Stacy Connelly

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      Chapter One

      Emily Wilson had spent years practicing her smile. Not too wide, or her eyes would squint. Not too small, or the expression looked fake. Somewhere in between was the perfect smile Emily modeled, even when smiling was the last thing she wanted to do.

      Despite the years of practice, she couldn’t remember when she’d had a harder time holding on to that smile. But then again, she’d never had to survive a day like today. Her wedding day.

      Only she wasn’t the one getting married.

      The ballroom looked exactly as she’d imagined. White cloaked tables circled the black granite dance floor. Pink roses and silver candles floated in glass bowls, the light reflected by mirrored chargers beneath. In every corner, towering plants reached right up to a moonlit night revealed by the soaring glass ceiling. A romantic ballad played as the bride and groom met for their first dance, love shining in their eyes.

      Just like she imagined, Emily thought, her stomach twisting, except for the identity of the bride and groom.

      “How are you holding up?” a quiet voice asked behind her.

      Emily turned to face her older sister. Wearing a pink bridesmaid’s dress identical to her own, Aileen’s brows were pulled together in a concerned frown. “I’m fine,” Emily answered automatically. “The wedding was beautiful, and no one deserves it more than Kelsey.”

      As little as a week ago Emily could never have imagined that the wedding her cousin had planned would end up as Kelsey’s own wedding to Connor McClane, Emily’s high school boyfriend.

      “And how many times have you said that line today?”

      “To everyone who’s actually had the courage to come up to me. Which, considering the number of people here, hasn’t been all that many. Everyone is much too busy talking about me to actually bother talking to me.”

      “Well, it’s not every day that a wedding goes off as planned, only with a completely different bride and groom,” Aileen noted.

      “And it’s not every day a woman learns her fiancé got another girl pregnant and proposed only to get back into his family’s good graces.”

      It had, in fact, been Thursday, mere days before her wedding.

      Shoving hurt and humiliation aside, Emily insisted, “Besides, it’s not just a line. I am happy for Kelsey. And for Connor.”

      Connor had come back to town with the specific purpose of stopping Emily’s wedding to Todd Dunworthy. He was the one to discover Todd’s hidden agenda. Along the way, Connor had also fallen in love with Kelsey.

      “I know you are,” Aileen said, “and we’re all glad Connor found out what Todd was up to before you married the jerk. I still can’t believe how completely he fooled all of us.”

      But Todd had fooled all of them, including Emily’s parents, who had seen him as the perfect future son-in-law. Maybe she should have felt better, knowing she wasn’t the only idiot in the bunch, but she didn’t. Instead, the betrayal had shaken her foundations.

      Her whole life she’d followed the plan her parents had laid out for her—going to the right schools, wearing the right clothes, being seen with the right people. She’d always done what she was told, never crossed the line … except for a brief moment of teenaged rebellion, when she jumped over it and into Connor’s arms.

      Intense, rough around the edges, Connor McClane had been nothing like the boys at her prep school. For a few short weeks, she’d been thrilled by the youthful infatuation and by veering so far off course from the map her parents had drawn out for her life. But before long she’d realized dating Connor wasn’t as much about following her own dreams as it was about defying her parents. Knowing Connor deserved better, she’d broken things off with him.

      Almost ten years later his call to congratulate her on her engagement had come as a surprise, and she’d impulsively sent him a wedding invitation. A decision that had changed all of their lives, she thought as she watched Connor spin his new bride into his arms.

      “Connor saw through Todd right from the start,” Emily said.

      So why hadn’t she?

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