Hotter Than Ever

“Do I look okay?” Biting her lip, Claire stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror. The butterflies in her stomach were flying around in crazy circles, making it difficult to focus on the vision in white staring back at her.

“Okay? You look more than okay, sweetie. You look beautiful.” Nora McKinley appeared in the mirror, her brown eyes gleaming with pride and sparkling with unshed tears.

A queasy feeling tickled Claire’s belly. “Mom…”

“I mean it. You’re beautiful, inside and out.” Nora sniffled. “You’re the most wonderful daughter a mother could ever ask for, and I’m so very proud of you.”

Claire’s teeth sank harder into her bottom lip.

“Oh, sweetie, don’t cry. You’ll ruin your makeup.”

She hadn’t even noticed the moisture welling up in her eyes, but that did explain why her reflection was blurry all of a sudden.

She blinked away the tears and turned to face her mother, who looked gorgeous and elegant in a peach-colored empire-cut dress that stopped just below her knees. Nora’s auburn hair was pulled back in a neat chignon, and with her perfect complexion and naturally red lips, Claire’s fifty-three-year-old mother didn’t look a day over forty.

“What’s going on, Claire? Are you nervous?”

“Yes.” She gulped. “But that’s normal, right? People get nervous before their wedding, don’t they?”

”Of course. It’s a perfectly normal response,” Nora said in a gentle tone. “Lots of brides get jittery right before the ceremony.”

”I wish Nat was here,” Claire murmured.

Her mother let out a soft sigh. “I know you’re upset that Natasha couldn’t be here, but you can’t dwell on that. Do you want me to get Michelle? Your maid of honor should really be here to help you get ready.”

”No, it’s all right. I just…I think I need a moment alone. Do you mind?”

A wrinkle appeared on Nora’s forehead, but she didn’t object to the request. “Of course not.” She stepped closer and gently stroked Claire’s cheek. “Michelle and I will come get you when it’s time.”

The second her mother was gone, Claire slid down to the carpeted floor in a pile of white lace.

Was this normal? The nerves, the shaky hands and damp palms? When she was a little girl, she’d constantly fantasized about her wedding, imagined how elated she’d be when the big day finally came. Cold feet had never been part of the fantasy.

And neither had a full-blown panic attack.

The bodice of her dress suddenly felt too tight, making it impossible to breathe, and her hands were shaking so hard she had to dig her fingers into her thighs to still the erratic trembling.

Oh boy, this was bad. Heart racing, forehead dotted with sweat, palms tingling. Her wild gaze darted around the beautiful room, taking in the wood-paneled walls and expensive carpeting, the commanding fireplace and elegant furniture, the scent of money and leather hanging in the air.

Nothing about this felt right. She shouldn’t be getting ready in this fancy room. There shouldn’t be five hundred strangers in that ballroom waiting to watch her get married. And her best friend in the whole world should be standing up at the altar with her, not some random coworker Claire had been forced to ask because her groom refused to accommodate Natasha’s schedule. Since Nat went overseas for three months out of every year as part of a foreign-aid program run by the hospital where she worked as an ER resident, there had been no way for her to fly back to San Francisco for the wedding, which meant that Claire’s best friend of twenty-three years—hell, her only friend—couldn’t be her maid of honor.

Claire had been more than willing to push the date to the spring if it meant having Nat by her side, but Chris’s boss had sprung the Lavender Ballroom gift on them out of nowhere and Chris had insisted it would be rude to turn him down.

He’s changed.

The thought slunk into Claire’s head like a stray animal, but she forced herself to shoo it away.

Chris hadn’t changed. He was just under a ton of pressure. His position at Lowenstein and Tate was stressful, and it didn’t help matters that half his paycheck went to help his mother. Stress like that took its toll on a man.

Does stress also turn men into pretentious, inflexible, judgmental strangers?

She pushed aside the mocking thought. Enough. She had to snap out of this. She’d fallen in love with Chris for so many reasons—his work ethic, his passion to help others, his dry humor.

He might be acting…different lately, but once his mother’s finances were in order and his workload eased slightly, he’d go back to being the man she’d fallen for.

Right?

A knock on the door derailed her internal train of panic and confusion. God, if that was Michelle coming to pretend they were best buds and that Claire hadn’t asked her to be maid of honor out of sheer pathetic desperation, then she was literally going to scream.

There was another sharp knock. “Claire, it’s Dylan. Can I come in?”

Crap. Dylan Wade was the last person she wanted to see right now. Actually, he was the last person she wanted to see anytime, but as his knocking became more persistent, she reluctantly walked over to the door and flung it open.

“What do you want, Dylan?”

“Listen,” he began, “I need to—holy f**k.”

The awe and embarrassment that tinged his voice caught her by complete surprise. “What?” she said warily.