A Bride With a Beautiful Smile
Chapter 02 - A Bride With a Beautiful Smile
Sienna Whitmore had practiced her wedding smile for months. She knew how to tilt her chin toward the camera, how to laugh as if nothing in the world had ever disappointed her, how to make people feel honored simply because she looked at them. She had been raised for rooms like this. Every guest believed she was the perfect bride.
Only Adrian seemed to notice the tension beneath her sparkle. “Are you all right?” he asked, touching her elbow after the photographer moved away.
Sienna’s smile did not move. “Of course. I just want everything to be flawless.”
“It already is.”
“It will be,” she said, and her eyes drifted toward Grace.
Adrian followed her gaze. “The server?”
“She keeps hovering near the cake.”
“That is her job.”
Sienna gave a small laugh, but it had no warmth. “You always defend strangers.”
Grace felt the bride approaching before she heard the heels. The air around Sienna seemed to change; servers straightened, guests stepped aside, and even the photographer lowered his camera as if he sensed a private storm.
“You,” Sienna said softly.
Grace turned. “Yes, ma’am?”
Sienna looked her up and down. The gray uniform, the apron, the simple black shoes, the brown hair pinned back with a tiny white flower clip Grace had found in her mother’s old jewelry box. Sienna’s gaze stopped on that clip.
“Where did you get that?”
Grace instinctively touched her hair. “It was my mom’s.”
“Your mother was invited here?”
“No, ma’am. She passed away. I mean, my adoptive mother is home. This belonged to my birth mother, I think.”
The word birth made something flicker behind Sienna’s eyes. For one second, her perfect expression cracked. Then she smiled wider.
“How touching,” she said. “Just make sure your sentimental little story does not end with my cake on the floor.”
Grace flushed. “I’ll be careful.”
Sienna leaned closer, so only Grace could hear. “You should be. Some girls forget where they belong when they walk into beautiful rooms.”
May you like
The insult landed quietly, but it landed. Grace swallowed it the way she swallowed most things: with silence. She had learned long ago that people with money could turn a small reaction into a reason to punish you.
At the far wall, Eleanor Whitmore lifted her head. She had not heard the words, but she had seen Grace touch the flower clip. Her fingers tightened around the ivory envelope. The same clip had once been worn by a young woman named Clara, the wife of Eleanor’s late son, on the day she disappeared from the family forever.
