Twelve
“You dance secretly inside my heart,
where no one else can see.”
—Rumi
Zander Wilde was seeing things. It was the only explanation. He was hallucinating. Or having a stroke. Anything. Because the woman in a frothy white wedding gown who’d just burst through the door of his birthday party at the Bennington Hotel couldn’t possibly be real. Not when she looked so very much like Allegra had all those years ago.
“Let’s make a deal. If neither of us is married by the time we turn thirty, we’ll marry each other,” Zander had said. “Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Allegra had replied.
Zander’s throat grew tight. He hadn’t thought about that conversation in a long time. A very long time. Unless the past week or so counted. But it was normal to remember such things under the circumstances, wasn’t it? He was turning thirty, and that impulsive little arrangement was a childhood memory. Nothing more. Nothing less. It didn’t actually mean anything.
Except here she was, almost a decade and a half later, dressed from head to toe in bridal white.
No one else seemed to notice her sudden appearance, so maybe she was indeed a figment of his imagination. Either that, or the party guests had been distracted by the arrival of his enormous birthday cake. With any luck, it was the former.
He tore his gaze away from her and focused instead on the cake sitting on the table in front of him. The blaze from its thirty candles warmed his face. Someone started to sing the lyrics to “Happy Birthday to You”—maybe one of his sisters or another of the Wildes. He didn’t even know. He couldn’t seem to concentrate on the very real people and the very real celebration going on around him.
He glanced back up. She was still there—the woman in white—looking even more like Allegra. Same honey-colored hair tumbling about her shoulders in waves. Same petite frame. She pressed a hand to her abdomen and took a few deep breaths, nodding to herself the way she’d always done backstage before a dance competition when she was a teenager. Zander had witnessed this private ceremony of nerves on many occasions. He’d just never seen it performed when Allegra looked like she’d recently climbed down from atop a wedding cake.
Zander blinked. Hard. This was one realistic daydream.
He cleared his throat and fixed his attention on the candles melting all over the thick frosting of the chocolate-bourbon masterpiece the hotel’s pastry chef had created. The pâtissier had really gone all out. It was just another perk that came with being CEO of one of New York’s most legendary hotels, Zander supposed. He forced himself to smile—or tried, at least—and realized the singing had stopped.
“You going to blow those out?” Ryan Wilde asked.
Everyone around the table looked at Zander. His sister Tessa and her fiancé, Julian. His mother, Emily, along with about four dozen or so other party guests. All of Zander’s staff and closest friends, including his date, whose name he couldn’t quite recall at the moment.
Susan. Or Stacy. Something that began with an S. They weren’t serious, obviously. Zander’s dalliances never were.
And now you’re seeing imaginary brides.
He was losing it.
No. No, he wasn’t. He was perfectly competent. He was at the peak of his career. Two months ago, GQ had named him one of Manhattan’s “Top Thirty Under Thirty.” He was one of the most eligible bachelors in New York, and he had every intention of staying that way.
The ancient deal he’d made with Allegra was messing with his head, that’s all. Which was more than a little irritating. Not to mention absurd on every level. Zander hadn’t set eyes on Allegra Clark in over a decade, and he was certain it had been even longer than that since she’d given him a passing thought. She’d left Manhattan without even saying goodbye.
Enough reminiscing. Some things were best left forgotten, and whatever had—or more accurately, hadn’t—gone on between him and Allegra was definitely one of those things. He squeezed his eyes shut, took a deep breath and readied himself to blow out his candles. In the second before he exhaled, he heard something. A voice from his past, as breathy and velvety soft as he remembered.
“Oh, my,” the voice said.
Zander looked up.
“It seems I’m interrupting something.” The woman standing with her back pressed to the ballroom door offered a tentative smile. “I’m sorry.”
Allegra Clark. Not a figment of his overactive imagination, but real. As real as her floor-length white gown and the bouquet of blush-pink roses in her hand.
Zander opened his mouth to say something, but he couldn’t seem to form words. What in the hell was going on?
“It’s nothing. Just a little birthday party,” Zander’s mother said. She shot a questioning glance at Zander and he stared back at her, paralyzed by shock.
Emily cleared her throat. “Join us. The more the merrier, and all that.”
She jumped up from her chair, scurried toward Allegra and gathered her into a welcoming hug. His sister Chloe followed suit, and Zander began to wonder if anyone was going to mention Allegra’s unusual attire or if they were going to keep pretending anything about this scenario was remotely normal.
“Thank you,” Allegra said. She cast a panicked glance at the closed door behind her. Then her chin wobbled in a way that brought about a sudden, intense ache in Zander’s chest.
He looked past Allegra, hoping with every fiber of his being that there was a groom standing somewhere nearby. Surely there was.
No such luck. There was no husband, apparently. A growing sense of panic welled in Zander’s chest, which did nothing to improve his mood. He’d single-handedly restored the Bennington Hotel to its glory days. He was one of the most powerful CEOs in the city. He could snap his fingers and in an instant, a team of security officers would materialize and discreetly escort Allegra from the building. Under no circumstances should he be losing his cool over the sight of a woman in a wedding gown.
But this wasn’t just any woman.
“Hey.” Beside Zander, Tessa frowned. “Isn’t that...”
“Yes. It is.” Since Tessa was hearing impaired, Zander signed the words in addition to speaking them in a voice that sounded angrier than he intended.
He actually hadn’t realized he was angry. Surprised? Yes. Confused? Absolutely. But angry? At Allegra? He wouldn’t have admitted as much back in the day. But he supposed he was. In reality, he’d probably been angry at Allegra for a very long time.
“Allegra Clark. Wow,” Tessa muttered. “After all this time.”
“Yep,”