"Dean, have you lost your mind?"
Ralph came charging down off the stage and threw himself in our path.
His face was an ugly shade of gray, and he'd yanked his own tie crooked.
"Uncle, she's my fiancée."
Dean didn't even look at him. He just bent his head and asked me,
"Do you still want to marry?"
I said, "I do."
Ralph's eyes flinched as if he'd been jabbed with a needle.
"Lena, you're doing this on purpose, aren't you?"
"You'd provoke even my uncle just to spite me?"
"Do you have any idea what kind of man he is?"
I smiled.
"I do."
"The real power behind the Delgado Group."
"The man your own father has to bow his head to."
"And the only one who didn't laugh along just now, when you called me your 'bankrupt little heiress.'"
Ralph had nothing to say to that.
Martha caught up with what was happening, her cane cracking against the floor.
"Dean, stop this nonsense."
"Ralph is young and foolish. Are you, his uncle, going to lose your head along with him?"
Dean finally lifted his eyes.
"Young?"
"Twenty-eight, and already fathering a child, and still young?"
He loosened one cuff.
"Mother, when did the Delgados change the rules?"
"Bringing an outside woman to a wedding to force the real bride to step aside—that counts as foolish?"
Martha choked on her words.
Nina cradled her belly, her face white.
"Mr. Delgado, you've misunderstood."
"I'm not an outside woman. Ralph and I truly love each other."
"I understand why Miss Henson can't accept me."
"But the child is innocent."
Dean gave her a single glance.
Just one, and Nina shut her mouth.
That look was too cold, the way you'd look at a scrap of wastepaper waiting to be thrown out.
Ralph stepped in front of her at once.
"Uncle, don't frighten her."
"Nina isn't strong."
Dean scoffed.
"Not strong, and yet she can haul that belly here to hijack a wedding. Busy woman."
A ripple of laughter broke from the guests that no one could hold back.
Nina's face went red, then white.
Ralph exploded.
"Enough!"
"Lena, keep other people out of what's between us."
"All you want is the title, isn't it?"
"I can marry you."
"But Nina and the child have to stay."
"You'll still be Mrs. Delgado. She won't step over you."
I looked at him.
Even now, he actually thought he was doing me a favor.
"Ralph, do you have any idea how much this wedding cost today?"
He frowned.
"You want to talk money at a time like this?"
"Of course I want to talk money."
I took the itemized bill from my maid of honor and threw it straight against his chest.
"The hotel, booked out entirely. One point two million."
"Jewelry rental. Three hundred thousand."
"Guest travel, both ways. Six hundred thousand."
"Wedding design. Eight hundred thousand."
"And that suit you're wearing. Eight hundred sixty thousand."
Ralph's face stiffened.
I said it word by word: "I paid for all of it."
"The Delgado family didn't put in a single cent."
Martha shrilled at once, "Lies! Where would you get that kind of money?"
I turned to her.
"The Hensons went bankrupt, yes."
"But I'm not dead."
"Martha, your family held my mother's care bills over my head and pressed me with my father's old debts. Quite a performance."
"Pity for you—I sorted out those accounts a long time ago."
Ralph's pupils shrank.
"What accounts have you been looking into?"
Dean suddenly took my hand.
His palm was steady.
"Are we still having the wedding?"
I looked up at the backdrop onstage with my name and Ralph's printed across it.
It hurt to look at.
It hurt far too much.
"We are."
Dean turned his head and gave the order to his assistant.
"Ten minutes."
"Take down everything connected to Ralph."
The assistant nodded at once.
"Yes, Mr. Delgado."
Ralph lunged forward to grab me.
"Lena, you wouldn't dare!"
Dean drove a foot into the back of his knee.
Ralph dropped to the floor on the spot.
The whole room erupted.
Dean bent down and patted his shoulder.
"Ralph. Congratulate your aunt."
