Wedding Chocolate. Adrianne Byrd
for the nausea to pass. It wasn’t going to happen anytime soon—especially not while her mother, Katherine, screeched at her.
“Answer me, young lady!” Her mother stomped her foot. “Do you realize the mess you’ve made?”
In response, Isabella released a long winding groan. Under the circumstances, it was the best she could do. Heck, she didn’t understand how she’d gotten in this mess either. Well, she did, but it was all so unbelievable that she didn’t know where to start.
Crash!
Isabella jumped from the bed, hiked up the hem of her white beaded Badgley Mischka wedding dress and raced to the bedroom window of her parents’ two-story home. Her mother and Isabella’s team of bridesmaids/sorority sisters followed suit.
Outside, rolling around on the lush green lawn before hundreds of friends, family and Capitol Hill’s most powerful elite, Isabella’s two fiancés, Derrick Knight and Randall Jarrett, duked it out as if a world championship title was on the line.
Reverend Williams, bless his heart, jumped in to pull the men apart, but his efforts landed all three in the Lady Justice stone-garden water fountain.
Everyone gasped in horror.
“No. No. No. This can’t be happening,” Isabella fretted, turning away from the window to pace around the room like a mad woman. “Oh, God. What am I going to do?”
No one had an answer to that—especially since no one knew how she had managed to get herself engaged to two men at once.
“Izzy,” Keri Evans, Izzy’s best friend, spoke up. “You’re going to have to do something.”
Talk about an understatement.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
All the women jumped and gasped at the sudden hammering on the bedroom door.
“Isabella, open this door!” her father, Senator Tyler Kane, roared.
Shrinking from the rattling partition, Isabella returned to the bed and tucked her head between her knees again. Meanwhile, her mother rushed to the door.
“Everybody out!” her father barked.
The command was met with the loud rustle of silk as her bridesmaids bolted. Isabella wished she could join them, but she no longer trusted her legs’ stability to carry out an escape attempt.
The Senator, as he was affectionately called, slammed the door behind the women. Waves of heat pulsed from him and, if Isabella wasn’t mistaken, the floor trembled as he stalked toward the bed.
“Well, little lady?”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she croaked down at the pearl-colored carpet.
“Sorry? I have spent twenty years on Capitol Hill,” he began, his voice laded with anger. “And I’ve never once been embroiled in a single scandal. Now my own daughter has managed to destroy my record in one afternoon. This is an election year for God’s sake!”
“Tyler, calm down,” her mother instructed softly.
“How can I be calm? The media is here.”
Isabella’s head snapped up and for her trouble the room spun. “Oh, Daddy.”
“Don’t ‘oh, Daddy’ me. You need to get out there and fix this.”
Fix it? How on earth could she do that?
A quick knock and Keri rushed back into the room. “They’re on their way up.”
“Who?” her mother asked.
“The fiancés.”
Isabella sprang to her feet, thankful they still worked after all. “Stop them! Don’t let them come up here.”
“Stop them?” Katherine questioned. “Honey, you can’t stay up here and hide all day. You’re going to have to talk to them.”
“No. I—I can’t,” Isabella said, bordering on panic.
“By God! As much money as I have spent on this wedding, you’re getting married today.”
“To which one?” her mother asked.
“Derrick/Randall,” her father and Keri answered in sync and then glanced at one another.
Only her mother thought to ask, “Well, which one do you love?”
“What the hell does love have to do with any of this?” the senator thundered. “She’ll marry who I say to marry!”
“Tyler!” her mother screeched.
“What?”
Keri stepped forward. “Izzy? It’s your decision.”
Before anyone had the chance to refute the statement, the bedroom door banged open and Isabella’s two bloodied and soaking wet grooms spilled inside.
“Randall, get out of my way!”
“Like hell, Derrick!”
Isabella leapt behind Keri, hoping to use her as a human shield while the men continued to scuffle.
Her brave father stepped forward and ended the tussle with the powerful boom of his voice. “Stop it, both of you! If you break one thing in this house, I’ll have you both thrown in jail!”
The angry grooms sprung apart, but their heated glares continued the war.
“Isabella?” her father prompted and all eyes turned toward her.
Randall, her first fiancé, pulled his shoulders back and stood erect. His handsome face stared at her with confidence. “Will you tell this man—” he indicated Derrick, who stood to his right “—whom it is you wish to marry.”
Isabella’s eyes shifted to her second fiancé who towered over Randall by three inches and possessed shoulders as broad and strong as mountains. “Bella?” His dark eyes implored. “Tell them it’s me you love.”
Tears crested her eyes as she opened her mouth, but her throat clenched closed beneath everyone’s expectant gazes. And then she did the one thing no one expected...she fainted.
Washington, D.C.
Seven months ago...
“Isabella Kane, will you marry me?”
A series of gasps traveled around the large dining table at Maestro restaurant. Handsome Randall Jarrett smiled his newly acquired veneers at his girlfriend.
Isabella dropped her fork and fluttered a shaky hand across her heart. Her eyes widened to the size of saucers. Surely she hadn’t heard her boyfriend of eight weeks correctly.
“We’re perfect for each other,” he added, clutching her hand.
Perfect, she noted. Not “I love you with all of my heart” or “I’m crazy about you and I can’t see myself living without you.” Just a calculated “we’re perfect for each other.”
Isabella stared down at a breathtaking two-carat princess-cut diamond and had a hard time pushing the word “no” through her lips. How could she? Before Randall she had never had a serious boyfriend her entire life—let alone someone as gorgeous as Randall notice she was alive.
“Isabella?” Randall questioned with an awkward chuckle and then glanced at his parents and potential in-laws. “You’re not going to leave me hanging here, are you?”
Isabella smiled; at least she tried anyway, and waited for the right words to come.
And waited.
And waited.
“Sweetheart?” Isabella’s father spoke up and touched his daughter’s