Chapters (53)
- Front Cover
- Letter from the Author
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- • One •
- • Two •
- • Three •
- • Four •
- • Five •
- • Six •
- • Seven •
- • Eight •
- • Nine •
- • Ten •
- • Eleven •
- • Twelve •
- • Thirteen •
- • Fourteen •
- • Fifteen •
- • Sixteen •
- • Seventeen •
- • Eighteen •
- • Nineteen •
- • Twenty •
- • Twenty-One •
- • Twenty-Two •
- • Twenty-Three •
- • Twenty-Four •
- • Twenty-Five •
- • Twenty-Six •
- • Twenty-Seven •
- • Twenty-Eight •
- • Twenty-Nine •
- • Thirty •
- • Thirty-One •
- • Thirty-Two •
- • Thirty-Three •
- • Thirty-Four •
- • Thirty-Five •
- • Thirty-Six •
- • Thirty-Seven •
- • Thirty-Eight •
- • ∞ •
- • Thirty-Nine •
- • Forty •
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Excerpt from Be Dazzled
- One
- Two
- About the Author
- Back Cover
Kane stayed silent as Ursula endured the barrage of people congratulating her, blessing her, and asking about her wedding dress.
“Where did you get it?”
“France,” she’d say.
“Oh! Tell me about the material!”
“It’s white,” she’d say.
Kane’s mind drifted from the reverie, wondering where Sophia had run to. Maybe she was at home. Maybe she was at the police station right now.
The sun set and the garden shifted to hues of pink and orange, a cue that caused the guests to drift up the wide patio steps toward the château. Ursula remained lost in thought until suddenly she clapped her hands and yelled, “I’ve got it!”
People turned on the steps. She rushed Kane onto the patio and into an isolated alcove behind two hydrangea.
“This is all so familiar, and I couldn’t figure out why until just now. The wedding, the garden, the Beazley family. It’s all from The Devil in the Lily! It was a big romance novel last year. Like, huge. They’re making a movie.”
Kane shrugged.
“Okay, well the details don’t matter, but basically the book focuses on a rivalry between the main character—who I guess is Helena—and her competitor, the wicked Katherine Duval. They’re after the same guy, this hot industrialist prodigy, Johan Belanger, who totally despises Katherine but has no choice but to marry her because of her family’s investment in his business, and—what?”
Kane didn’t realize he was making a face.
“Listen, don’t judge me. It’s a good book, okay? I know you don’t read romance so I’ll just tell you how it ends: Katherine is totally insane. She’s like…the devil, I guess? It’s a metaphor. I don’t know. But this gives us everything we need to know about this reverie! Don’t you see that? All we need to do is make sure we re-create the resolution in the book. Oh, it’s so easy!”
Ursula was thoroughly convinced, and there was little Kane could do to counter any of this. She knew this story, and she knew this world. Still, Kane couldn’t quite reconcile the reverie’s plot with the Helena Quigley he had imagined. But, then again, he didn’t know the woman at all, and it wasn’t his place to speculate what worlds she harbored in her mind.
Ursula peered through the hydrangea.