The day Nigel Delgado fell for the girl I'd been sponsoring, I was sitting at the head table of our engagement banquet, waiting for him to slide the ring onto my finger.
The emcee had said it three times now. "Will the groom please place the ring on his bride."
Three hundred guests watched the silence stretch, and their expectant faces slid into confusion, then into the bright, ugly anticipation of people who sense a scene coming.
I gripped the bouquet until my fingertips went white.
"Ms. Henson, Mr. Delgado is outside. But—"
A waiter had hurried in and stopped, swallowing whatever came next.
I kept my face still, lifted my skirt, and walked out.
By the fountain in the hotel garden, Nigel was down on one knee, fitting a shoe onto a girl in a white dress.
I knew the girl. Constance Pruitt, the scholarship student I'd taken on three years ago.
She'd come to the city for college with nowhere to live, so I'd moved her into my apartment, bought her clothes and bags, introduced her to the people in my circle.
I'd treated her like my own sister.
When Constance saw me, her eyes reddened on cue, her voice catching on a sob.
"Alma, I'm so sorry, my heel snapped, Nigel was only helping me—"
"Don't."
Nigel stood and stepped in front of her, shielding her with his body. There was no guilt in the way he looked at me. Only a kind of guileless honesty.
"Alma, I've thought it through. I can't go through with the engagement."
...
Around us, every spectator drew a sharp breath.
None of them had believed Nigel would actually say it out loud, in front of all of them.
He was the only son of the Delgado family. I was the eldest daughter of the Hensons. A marriage between the two houses was something New York's business circle had taken as settled fact.
We'd been together three years. He'd been gentle, attentive. Everyone said we were made for each other.
"Why?"
My voice came out steadier than I'd expected.
"Because I'm in love with Constance."
"She's simple, kind. She isn't calculating like everyone in our world. With her, I get to be who I really am."
As he said it, he glanced back at the girl behind him, and his expression went unbearably soft.
Calculating?
I nearly laughed out loud.
Five years I'd spent clawing through that business world. I'd closed three major deals for Nigel. When his father had the stroke, I'm the one who held the company steady.
Everything I'd done, and in his mouth it became calculating.
"So? You want to call it off?"
I looked at him.
Nigel nodded, his tone firm.
"Yes. I'm going to marry Constance."
Behind him, Constance sobbed until she couldn't catch her breath.
"Alma, I never set out to take Nigel from you, I'm not good enough for him—"
"I just, I couldn't help how I felt. If you have to blame someone, blame me, don't blame Nigel—"
She cried so prettily, so innocently, as if she were the one who'd been wronged.
I took a slow breath and worked the engagement ring off my finger.
I looked at it, and the irony cut deeper.
Because I'd been the one to go pick this ring up, alone, because something had come up for Nigel that day.
I held it out to him.
"Fine. I hope you'll be happy."
Nigel blinked, thrown. He hadn't expected me to make it so easy.
He took the ring, his lips moving like he wanted to say something, but in the end all he managed was a low, "I'm sorry."
I turned and walked back the way I'd come, indifferent, my hem dragging gray across the stone path.
Behind me, Constance's small, thin voice drifted after me.
"Do you think Alma hates me? I don't want to lose her as a sister—"
Nigel was comforting her.
"She won't. She's not that kind of person."
I almost laughed.
Not that kind of person?
