His words had dragged out like he, too, was underwater.
But Ayla was the only one drowning. She needed air. She needed freedom. She needed…she needed a new life.
She jerked back, whipping her bouquet at Jilly, who somehow managed to grab it. Of course, she’d been practicing how to catch that thing since Ayla and EJ set a date.
“Ayla?” Her sister and father called out at the same time, but it was all muffled by the sound of Ayla’s own screaming. Wait. Was she screaming? Of course not. Ayla Hollis would never scream. Only on the inside.
Her father reached for her. “What’s going on? What’s the matter?” He sounded a little panicked, like all his carefully laid plans were about to go up in smoke.
Shouldn’t they be her plans? Wasn’t this her wedding? Not in his head. This was the joining of two massive bank accounts and family dynasties, no different than an arranged marriage from the dark ages.
“Everything is the matter.” The words were little more than a ground-out whisper, but he heard her, she could tell by the way his face took on that stern expression that said he did not like being disobeyed.
And normally, that would have been enough to make her acquiesce and be a good girl and follow the plan and say the right thing and never, ever color outside the family lines or do anything but be a Hollis. The good one, too. The one who never caused one drop of whitewater.
Well, too bad, folks. You’re in the splash zone.
“Everything’s wrong, Dad,” she said, her fingers tunneling into the silk of her wedding gown, unconsciously gathering it up. “EJ screwed Jilly. And you screwed me by making me agree to marry him.”
“No one is making you do anything.”
“Making me feel like I should marry him. Well, sorry. I’m not. I’m not marrying him. I’m—”
“Ayla Josephine Hollis! You will—”
“I will not.” She hiked the dress higher. “I’m out. Jilly can have him.”
Suddenly, the doors opened, and the soft opening notes of Pachelbel’s Canon in D drifted out. That was the cue to walk…or maybe it was the cue to run.
“Young lady, you will—”
“No. I won’t. For once in my life, Dad, I will not do exactly as you say.”
The entire sanctuary of three hundred people gasped in unison.
With that, Ayla gathered up the whole dress and took off, shooting past him and a tearful Jilly and a dumbstruck Trina. She used her hip to slam open the double doors and jogged down the wide stone stairs. There, a white stretch limo waited to take the just-married couple to the Peninsula Club for a lavish six-figure reception that already had its own hashtag.
Fitz, the silver-haired man who’d been driving Ayla for half her life, leaned against the door, reading his phone. He looked up and did a double take as she nearly took flight on the last two steps.
“Miss Ayla?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“My fiancé’s a cheater. My father’s an ogre. And I’ve been pushed around for the last time. Out of here! Now!”
Fitz yanked open the back door as she heard her father’s voice, but closed it before she could hear what he was saying. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
“The shelter!” she called through the separation panel when the chauffeur climbed in.
Fitz knew which shelter. He’d taken her there before, often with an animal in the back on the way to or from. And, thank God, he didn’t question the request. Maybe he knew her that well. Maybe he knew that when Ayla Hollis’s life went to the dogs…she went to the dogs. Maybe he was on that short list of people who really cared about her.
Who else made that list? Now that Nana Jo was gone? Certainly not EJ. Maybe Trina. Definitely not Mother.
Only when they were on the highway did Ayla give in to the tears, which, once they started, wouldn’t stop. Tears of fury. Tears of agony. Tears of…relief. And not just because she finally ripped the damn veil and heinous clip out of her hair.
With the world passing in a blur, she marched into the front office, cruised past the shocked faces at the front desk, and headed down the hall to where the new arrivals were always rolled up in balls on hard concrete floors.
She could smell wet fur and sadness, and it felt…right. Familiar. And in her head, she could see even more of that sadness. She shook off the energy coming at her with machine-gun rapid fire, spying a little tricolored Chihuahua mix who looked like he needed company.
Flicking the latch, she crawled right into the pen and folded onto the floor with no regard for the Vera Wang crepe halter-top gown that cost enough to feed every dog in this shelter for a lifetime.
The dog with giant ears was thinking about a polka dot blanket he once loved, so he must be cold. She wrapped him in her arms and cuddled him close to her chest, the perfect little creature to catch her tears.
She had no idea how long they were like that, but when she finally looked up, Miz Marie was standing next to her with a wistful smile on her face.
“I had a feeling you might come here, kitten,” she whispered.
Ayla swallowed. “Take me home, Marie.”
“Of course.” She stepped in and reached down, scooping up the dog. “This guy, too, now that you’ve bonded.”
“Can we?”
“Honey, I’ve been volunteering at this shelter for a decade. We’ll fill out the paperwork later. And if you don’t mind a bit of a drive tonight, I’m going to take you somewhere special.”
“Take me anywhere.”
So Marie Boswell did what she was famous for among the community of dog lovers all over North Carolina…she rescued the damaged creatures who hit rock bottom and needed a new life.
Chapter Two
Theo Santorini had to face the fact that his charmed existence wasn’t so charming anymore. Long considered the “lucky one” in his Greek family, he was one broken-down truck away from becoming one of the country music songs that seemed to be wailing from the speakers in every rest stop he visited from Southern California to North Carolina.
Lost my woman, lost my job, my dog hates me, and my truck won’t start.
Okay, he didn’t have a dog, and he was currently zipping through the middle of Arkansas in his beloved Honda Civic SI, not a truck. But the job and woman? He hadn’t listened to country music since he was growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but the imaginary song was dead-on.
And if he was being honest, he never believed that garbage about “being born under a lucky star” that his siblings had hung on him because he happened to be their grandmother’s favorite. That didn’t make him lucky—it made him smart enough to know how to handle the old battle-ax.
He was an engineer, for God’s sake. He didn’t believe in luck.
Things just looked like they came easy to him, Theo thought as he passed a blue interstate sign and checked his gas gauge. It was a hair away from a quarter, which was close enough to empty for a man who rarely let his tank go low.
Nothing had been easy about becoming a Navy nuke. It wasn’t luck that got him one of the highest scores of any Navy officer who’d taken the test to get into the Nuclear Field Program. They might have sent him directly to Nuclear Power School after that, but he worked his butt off to get all the promotions to become lieutenant commander in charge of the technicians running the power on the aircraft carriers stationed at Naval Base San Diego.