Free Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) by Rosalind James Page A

too?”
    It knocked the breath out of me. That was the moment Violet chose to walk in and try to hand Hope a carrier bag.
    Hope turned those eyes on her, and Violet said, “Whoa,” swiveled, thrust the bag at me instead, and said, “She wouldn’t try anything on, so I got a couple versions, plus a little something extra I thought up. Call it a wedding present, assuming you get this sorted.”
    Good. I had somebody new to take my temper out on. “How does Hope know,” I asked, “about my first wife?”
    She laughed. That was the problem with people you’d gone to Uni with. No matter how successful I was; no matter, even, that I’d helped Violet establish herself in her business—to her, I was still that bloke she’d done her group projects with, the one she’d argued with and shouted at and stayed up half the night with, whose shoulder she’d fallen asleep on. The one she knew far too much about. “Darling,” she said, “come on. Girl talk. If you didn’t want me to mention Anika, you should’ve said. Except that you shouldn’t have. Did you imagine that you’d get your whanau up for your wedding and none of them would’ve dropped a hint that they’d done this before? Not what my family’s like when they’ve been at the wedding champagne. Would you rather your bride run away from you at your reception, or at the altar, maybe?”
    “I’d rather,” I said through a jaw that had tightened, “that she not run away at all. I’d rather she trusted me when I told her I loved her and that I’d take care of her, and left me to sort out the rest.”
    “And I’d rather you talked to me,” Hope said, “instead of talking about me like I’m a child.”
    “Then stop behaving like one,” I said, and could have sworn that three women sucked in their breath at once. I went on anyway, because I’d lost the battle for self-control. “Calling me out of a meeting like something’s horribly wrong instead of trying on your…” I took a quick look into the carrier bag. “Bridal lingerie? Which is heaps more important to me, and should be to you, too. So I was married before. What does it matter? And I notice you haven’t even bought shoes, for you or Karen. What are you planning to wear? When were you planning to buy it?”
    Karen said, “Hemi…” in a tone of the purest misery.
    Violet heaved a sigh. “This isn’t going to end well. And I need to go. I have a business to run, and there’s no way Hope’s going to be ready to buy shoes in the next hour, or to let her sister do it, either.”
    “I’ll do it,” Karen said, just as Hope said, “No.”
    “See what I mean?” Violet said. “I’m going back to work. I have somebody’s wedding gown to oversee, if somebody else can pull his head out of his arse and make it happen. D’you want me to take Karen back with me?” She told the girl, “Fiona will show you around, or you could just read some more of your book. But this isn’t going to be quick.”
    Karen glanced at her sister as if she wanted to say more, and Hope sighed, ran a hand through her mass of fine hair, mussing it, and said, “That’ll be better. Go on with Violet, please.”
    “I’m going,” Karen said, “but I love Hemi, and I trust him. I don’t care if he was married before, and I don’t see why you do. He isn’t married now. Why isn’t that enough?”
    “It’s like I’m in some alternate universe,” Hope said. “Or like it’s Backwards Day. I could explain it to you, but it’s more important right now that I explain it to Hemi. Please, sweetie. Go. I’m so mad and so disappointed, I can’t…I can’t think straight. I’m going to say things I’ll regret, and I’m…” She heaved in a breath. “I can’t—”
    I couldn’t stop myself. I was still narky as hell, but if the winner was the one who needed it less—well, that wasn’t me. And she was so sad, and I couldn’t have that, so I stepped closer and put an arm around her. “Come sit down and