My Future Son Called His Mistress Mom, So I Canceled the Wedding

The champagne had already soaked into the grout by the time I got to it.

I knelt on the ballroom floor of Seabrook House and worked the wet rag in slow circles, my knuckles red and swollen from the cleaning solution. Nine years ago, I owned this hotel. Now I wiped up spills while the guests stepped around me.

"Mom, why is Brooke still here? She's embarrassing us."

I didn't have to look up to know who said it. Mason was eight. I had carried him, named him, sung to him through two winters of ear infections. He called Sloane Mom. He called me Brooke.

I looked up anyway.

Sloane stood under the chandelier in silver silk, a diamond bracelet catching the light on her wrist. Miles's hand rested on her waist like it had always belonged there. And in her ears were my mother's diamond earrings, the ones she wore to the hotel's anniversary gala every year until the cancer took her.

The night Mom died, Miles held me on the back terrace while I sobbed into his shirt. "I've got you," he said. "You and everything she left behind. I'll protect all of it."

Now he glanced down at me and sighed.

"Brooke, you're in the way." His voice carried just enough for the nearby tables to hear. "Try to remember that if I hadn't put in a word for you, you wouldn't even have this job."

Someone laughed.

I wrung out the rag. Champagne ran down my wrist and into my sleeve.

I left the bucket where it was and walked out.

The lobby was bright and warm, full of guests and the smell of lilies. I passed the front desk and stopped so suddenly a bellhop nearly ran into me.

My mother's portrait was gone.

For thirty years, it had hung above the fireplace, her smile soft, one hand resting on the original blueprints of this building. In its place was a giant oil painting of Sloane in a white gown, gazing out at the lobby like she'd built it herself.

I pushed through the front doors into the rain. The marble steps were slick. My foot went out from under me, and the edge of the stone met the back of my skull with a crack I felt in my teeth.

Then nothing.

I woke up gasping.

Soft sheets. Cream-colored walls. The faint scent of the lavender sachets I used to tuck into my drawers. My old bedroom.

I held my hands up in front of my face. The skin was smooth. No cracks across my knuckles, no burns from bleach.

A white wedding dress hung in its garment bag beside the closet, the lace visible through the plastic.

On the nightstand, the silver-edged calendar my mother gave me read November 6.

Two days before the wedding.

My phone buzzed against the wood. Miles.

I stared at his name until it nearly went to voicemail, then answered.

"Hey, I need you to bring the restructuring agreement to my office by four," he said. No hello. "The investors want it signed before the weekend. Also, Sloane finished the lobby concept. We're taking down your mom's portrait for the new focal wall."

I remembered this. I had said, Sure, whatever you think is best. It was such a small thing. Then the next thing was small, and the one after that, until I had no say left over anything at all.

"No," I said.

"What?"

"My mother's portrait stays exactly where it is."

A pause. "Brooke, it's just a painting."

"Then it shouldn't matter to you." I hung up.

The leather folder was on my desk, right where I'd left it, neon tabs marking every place he'd wanted my signature. In my last life, I signed without reading past the second page. Miles had told me the legal language would just give me a headache.

I sat down and read every word.

Page seventeen, the control provisions. I read it twice, then a third time, because the first two times my brain refused to accept it.

Sixty percent of the voting shares in Seabrook House would transfer to Harbor Line Holdings. Miles's company. In exchange, I would receive preferred shares with restricted voting rights.

Restricted. Meaning I could own a piece of my mother's hotel and have absolutely no voice in what happened to it.

It all clicked into place at once. Miles telling me I didn't need an independent lawyer because his team had it covered. Miles brushing me off every time I asked for the full financing package. Sloane introducing herself to vendors as "the incoming creative director," which I'd laughed off as her being dramatic.

They hadn't been sloppy. They had been preparing.

I dug through my top drawer until I found it, a cream business card with my mother's handwriting on the back: Call her if anything ever feels wrong.

Eleanor Marsh answered on the second ring.

"Brooke, sweetheart. Isn't the wedding Saturday?"

"Eleanor, if I haven't signed the restructuring agreement, has any ownership changed hands?"

Her tone shifted immediately, all business. "Not unless you've signed something I haven't seen. Have you?"

"No. And I'm not going to." I flipped back to page seventeen. "I need you to review everything. Every authorization, every power of attorney, anything Miles might have access to. And I want a formal notice drafted saying no one acts on behalf of Seabrook House without my written approval."

"I'll have it ready by tomorrow morning." She hesitated. "Your mother would be proud of you for asking."

I closed my eyes for a second. "Thank you."

After we hung up, I opened my laptop and scrolled back three weeks to an email I'd ignored. Halvorsen Restoration Design, New York. They'd seen my work on the hotel's east wing and wanted me on their historic preservation team.

Last time, I'd turned them down because Miles said a wife should be home.

I typed my reply in under a minute.

I'd be delighted to accept.

At 3:45, my doorbell rang.

Miles stood in the hallway in a charcoal suit, Sloane right behind him in a camel coat, looking around my apartment like she was measuring it for curtains.

"You didn't come by," Miles said, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation. "So we came to you."

He spotted the folder on the coffee table and reached for it.

I put my hand flat on top of it.

"I'm not signing."

He laughed like I'd told a joke. "Babe, we've been over this."

"Sixty percent of my company? That's not a partnership, Miles. That's a takeover."

Sloane drew in a sharp breath and pressed a hand to her chest. "Brooke, that's not fair. Do you know how many nights Miles stayed up working on this? We've been trying to save your hotel, and you're treating us like criminals."

Miles slid an arm around her waist, steadying her as if she might faint. "This is exactly why I handle the business side. You don't understand how investment works, Brooke. You're emotional."

I looked at his hand on her waist. The same hand. The same place.

I twisted the engagement ring off my finger. It caught at the knuckle, then came free.

I set it on top of the agreement.

"Then you won't need to handle anything for me anymore," I said. "The wedding's off."

The smile dropped off his face. His jaw locked so hard I could see the muscle jump.

For a second, nobody spoke. Sloane's eyes went from the ring to Miles and back again.

Then he exhaled and forced his voice soft, the way he used to talk me down from panic attacks after Mom died.

"Okay. You're stressed. I get it." He lifted his hands. "Even if you need space from the wedding, there's one thing I still need. Your mom's original restoration drawings. Just to borrow."

My mother's drawings sat in a heavy leather portfolio on the shelf behind me. We'd made them together the summer before she got sick, her pencil notes crowding every margin.

"Why?"

"For the investor presentation."

"The presentation you already finished," I said slowly. "So why do you need the originals?"

He glanced at Sloane. It was quick, but I caught it.

"The investors have already seen the concept," he said. "Sloane's name is on the design package. We just need the source files to back it up."

I pulled the portfolio down and opened it on my lap. My mother's handwriting looped across the first page: Keep the arches. Brooke's idea, and it's a good one.

"Then explain why your investors think Sloane designed my mother's work."

Sloane's cheeks went pink. Miles said nothing at all.

I closed the portfolio and held it against my chest.

He didn't have my hotel yet.

But he had already handed my talent to another woman.