Chapter 2

Mara woke to the smell of coffee, gasoline, and rain drying on concrete.

For one terrible second she thought she was back in the hotel suite, trapped between Evan's excuses and Brielle's perfume. Then she felt the scratchy gray blanket over her legs and the hard edge of a mechanic's couch under her shoulder.

Her wedding dress hung from a chain hoist twenty feet away.

The sight made her sit up too fast.

"Easy." The mechanic stood near a metal workbench, one hand lifted, not touching her. "You were soaked. That thing weighed more than you did."

Mara pulled the blanket tighter. Under it she wore a black T-shirt that said CROSS AUTOMOTIVE in cracked white letters and a pair of sweatpants cinched around her waist with twine.

Her face burned. "Where are my clothes?"

"The dress is drying. Nothing else was worth saving." He glanced away, giving her privacy after the fact. "I didn't undress you alone. Mrs. Alvarez from the bakery came over."

"You called someone?"

"You were unconscious in my garage."

His voice was rough, but there was no leering in it. Only irritation, as if her collapse had personally offended his schedule.

Mara looked around. The garage was old brick and steel, packed with tool cabinets, engine parts, and cars in different stages of resurrection. Above the office door, a narrow staircase led to a loft with a single curtain for a wall. The place should have felt unsafe. Instead, it felt brutally honest. Nothing here pretended to be gold when it was chrome.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Dante."

"Dante what?"

He wiped his hands on a rag. "Cross."

The name pulled at something. A memory of headlines about Crosswell Holdings, the old money family that owned half the skyline and sponsored museum wings with their dead relatives' names. But this man had grease under his nails and a bruise darkening his jaw.

"Mara Vale."

"I know."

The answer came too fast.

She stiffened. "How?"

He looked at her dress instead of her face. "Your shop label is sewn inside the bodice. Vale House Restoration."

That was true. Her mother had designed the label: cream thread, blue border, a tiny stitched needle through a crescent moon.

Mara stood, found her legs unsteady, and crossed to the hanging dress. The skirt was muddy, the lace torn along the hip where Grant had grabbed her, but the old silk panels still held. Her mother had married in that gown. Mara had spent four months altering it by hand so it would fit without cutting the original seams.

Now it smelled like an alley.

"I need to go."

"To him?"

She turned. "You don't know anything about it."

Dante leaned back against the workbench. "I know somebody hit you. I know you came in wearing a wedding dress and no ring. I know you flinched when my air compressor kicked on, but you didn't flinch when I came near you. That means the person who hurt you was familiar."

Mara hated how accurate that was.

"I have a shop to open."

"You have a bruise to ice."

"The bruise won't pay rent."

For the first time, something like a smile cut across his mouth. "There she is."

The words were too intimate. Mara gathered the borrowed shirt at her throat. "Do we know each other?"

Dante's expression shut.

"No."

Another lie. Not soft like Evan's. Not polished. This one had barbed wire around it.

Mrs. Alvarez arrived with coffee, a brown paper bag, and the kind of sharp eyes that missed nothing. She was short, silver-haired, and wore a flour-dusted cardigan over pajamas.

"Good. You're awake. Men are useless with wounded brides." She shoved the bag at Mara. "Croissant. Eat before you faint again."

"I'm not wounded."

"Mija, you look like a ghost someone tried to fold wrong."

Mara ate because arguing would take energy. The croissant was warm. It nearly broke her.

Dante turned on the small office television without asking. Morning news flashed over footage from the hotel. The headline read: LOCAL BRIDAL DESIGNER REMOVED FROM OWN WEDDING AFTER FAMILY DISPUTE.

Brielle appeared in a silk robe, eyes swollen prettily. "Mara has always struggled with jealousy. We just want her to get help."

Evan stood behind her with a bruise on his cheek that Mara knew she had not put there. "I still care about her. But last night was frightening."

Grant placed a hand over his heart. "As a father, I'm devastated."

Mara set the coffee down before her hands crushed the cup.

Dante's jaw flexed. "There cameras at that hotel?"

"Of course."

"Then get the footage."

She laughed once, bitter. "From a hotel owned by Evan's godfather?"

"Everyone has a godfather until a better lawyer walks in."

"Are you a better lawyer?"

"No." He stepped closer, and she caught the heat of him, oil and soap and rain. "I'm the guy who knows which cameras people forget to delete."

Mara should have asked what that meant. Instead her dead phone buzzed on the charger near the workbench.

It had enough power to show twenty-seven missed calls and one voicemail from the alarm company attached to Vale House.

Front door forced. Motion detected.

Mara snatched the phone. "My shop."

Dante was already reaching for his keys.

"I didn't ask you to come."

"Good. Then you won't owe me."

He drove a battered tow truck through rain-washed streets while Mara sat rigid beside him, still in his borrowed clothes, her wedding dress wrapped in plastic behind the seats. Downtown changed from hotels and courthouses to old storefronts with striped awnings and boarded upper windows. Vale House sat on Magnolia Street between a closed watch repair shop and Mrs. Alvarez's bakery, its painted sign swinging in the wet wind.

Grant's SUV was parked at the curb.

Two men in cheap suits stood by the door. Evan leaned against the display window, fresh and clean in yesterday's tuxedo pants. Brielle filmed herself on her phone with Mara's mother ring back on her finger.

Grant held a folder.

When Mara stepped out of the truck, her father smiled as if she had arrived late to a meeting.

"There you are. Sign the transfer, Mara. Or I let the locksmith open your mother's shop in front of the whole street."