Dominic (Saint Brothers #1) (23 page)

After spending time with my father, I had played nice with my mother, sister and the rest of the bridesmaids. It had been one of the most boring nights of my life.

Olivia had spent the entire evening fretting and going over last minute details with a fine tooth comb. Not that she needed to. This wedding had been so perfectly planned that nothing could possibly go wrong.

After I had stayed with them as long as I could possibly stand, I had snuck back into the library to drown my sorrows with my father.

That had been a big mistake. We had stayed up until the early hours of the morning, making a heavy dent in his expensive alcohol collection and putting the world to rights.

A late night followed by a ridiculously early wake-up call by my sister didn’t mesh well together. My head was banging and all I wanted to do was crawl back under the covers and sleep for another ten hours.

Not that it was going to happen. Olivia had already been screaming at everyone, making me feel even worse. She was acting like the Wicked Witch of the West and I had to wonder how she was going to manage to transform into a princess in time for the wedding.

Not bothering to get dressed, I wrapped myself in my bath robe and slowly made my way downstairs to the dining room which seemed to be the hub of morning activity.

“It’s about time you showed your face.” Olivia snapped as she sat down at the table with a glare in my direction.

“You yelled at me to wake up only five minutes ago.”

Olivia didn’t reply. She was too busy shouting at one of the other bridesmaids for breaking a nail. My father threw me a sympathetic look as I sat down in one of the empty seats.

None of the other women dared to speak back to Olivia, especially not when my mother was stood at her shoulder, backing her up. I only quietened down because I couldn’t be assed with the drama this early on in the morning.

As we were served our breakfast, Olivia continued to bark out orders. It took a lot of restraint not to burst out laughing at her ridiculous demands.

We were all to bathe in rose scented water and were allowed no other perfume. Apparently, she was the only one who could smell nice today. Seriously? Rose scented water? She really was on a power trip today.

And that wasn’t all. She had printed out an exact timetable that we all had to follow or there would be hell to pay. A schedule! I hated to think what would happen if one of us fell behind.

Getting up from the table, my father kissed my mother on the forehead before making a quick escape. Not that I could blame him. I would have made a run for it too if I could.

But I had made a promise to myself to do everything that was expected of me today. This was Olivia’s big day and I would do everything in my power to make sure that her day ran smoothly. Plus, if I didn’t make waves and flew under their radar, the day would be much less stressful for me.

After we had eaten breakfast, we were all ordered to bathe and get ready for the make-up artist and stylist to come. The rest of the girls ran up the stairs like their asses were on fire.

I couldn’t help but giggle to myself as I slowly made my way up to my old bedroom. My sister had them all running scared when this should have been an enjoyable day. At the moment, the only enjoyable part was going to be falling into bed at the end of the day.

The bath went a long way to relaxing me after such a crappy nights’ sleep. I couldn’t stand the smell of the water, though. It reminded me of old ladies.

Getting out at the time that Olivia had specified, I put the bath robe back on and made my way across to the west wing where I knocked on Olivia’s bedroom door.

“Come in.”

Opening the door, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Nothing had changed in there. It was decorated in exactly the same manner it had been when we were little kids. Everything about it screamed out spoilt princess. It was much too immature for a woman of her age and was bordering on creepy.

Olivia directed me over to a chair to wait in line for my turn to be made pretty by the stylists. It was like an assembly line.

My mother and two of the other bridesmaids were currently being worked by the magic fingers of the stylists and I was pleased to see that the make-up was being kept natural and attractive.

When it came to my turn to sit in the chair, I nearly fell asleep. To me, there was nothing more relaxing in the world than having someone play with my hair. They could keep their expensive body massages with their exotic oils, give me someone messing with my hair any day.

The morning was a hectic whirl of activity. None of us seemed to have a moment to ourselves, running around to Olivia’s timetable. It wasn’t until my sister was busy with the stylists that she sent the rest of us to get into our dresses.

It was nearly time.

Dominic

Her father was just as she had described. He seemed like a good guy, he just needed some backbone to stand up to his wife.

Now, Fallon’s mother was a raging bitch, just as she had told me. I’d found it highly amusing when she approached me before the ceremony, staring pointedly at the tattoos on my arms.

At first, I’d dressed as I normally would do if I was going to work at Decadence, but the look in Fallon’s mother’s eyes had annoyed me and I had happily taken off my suit jacket, loosened my tie and rolled my sleeves up.

It was apparent from the first look that she didn’t think I was good enough for her daughter, but that wasn’t her decision to make. Fallon was a grown woman and was more than capable of making her own decisions.

Waiting with the rest of the congregation, as soon as I heard the first strains from the organist, I turned to wait for Fallon to walk down the aisle. I couldn’t give a crap about the bride like the rest of the room were waiting for, it was only Fallon I had eyes for.

I nearly fell off my seat when she entered the room. She’d told me that the dress her sister had picked out for her was ugly and unflattering, but I thought she looked absolutely stunning. The pale lilac shade perfectly offset her bronzed skin, her hair fell in soft waves down her back with a simple flower placed on one side.

As soon as she started walking down the aisle, her eyes locked to mine and a small, secret smile lit up her face. I couldn’t stop the beam that broke out across my own.

She was mine. I didn’t give a flying fuck what her family thought of me, as long as Fallon felt that I was right for her, I was a satisfied man. What they thought of me didn’t matter.

She was mine and I was going to make it official as soon as I could. This was what I wanted for her. Sure, I knew that she didn’t want a big wedding like this one, it would be her idea of hell, but we could plan something smaller that suited both of us. We didn’t need to have a million people that we didn’t care about to share that moment. It wasn’t about putting on a public face.

She was mine and that was the way it was going to be. No one was going to get in our way, no one was going to take her from me and she was going to make me the happiest man on earth.

Mine.

AUSTEN

A Saint Brothers Novel

Coming to you November 2015!

Also by Kristan Belle

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