The Ashtons - Cole, Abigail & Megan

just how much time it would take to convince Lattimer’s only child to fall in love with him.
    Not long at all, if he played his cards right. And after that? Well, marrying into the boss’s family was not exactly a bad idea.
    After all, there was more than one way to get power.
    And once he had it, he’d never let it go.

Chapter One
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    Present
    “W hat do you mean the bride’s missing?” Megan Ashton stifled the instinct to lunge for her sister Paige’s throat. No point in killing the messenger.
    “I mean we can’t find her,” Paige said in a whispered rush, her hazel eyes darting from side to side. “Anywhere.”
    “Perfect.” Megan plastered an unconcerned smile on her face and nodded absently at the handful of guests littering the small parlor. She couldn’t afford to look worried.
    Grabbing her sister’s elbow, she steered Paigeacross the room and out the right-side French doors leading to a wide stone veranda. When they were out of earshot, Megan reached up, took her headset off and clutched it in one tight fist. “Did you check the garden?”
    Paige inhaled sharply, then blew the air out in a rush. “Duh. We checked everywhere. I even poked into every bathroom on the ground floor. She’s nowhere, Megan. And I’m guessing she’s not coming back.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Paige sighed. “She left her wedding gown in the bride’s room.”
    “Oh, God.” Megan felt the first swirls of panic and fought them off as she would any other would-be attacker. As the event planner at Ashton Estates and Winery, she’d never had an event fail—and this would not be the first. All she had to do was think. Okay, think fast.
    She glanced at her younger sister. Paige’s lightbrown layered hair ruffled in the breeze and worry glittered in her eyes. The Ashton family “genius,” Paige had graduated college at nineteen, then she’d jumped right into business school at the University of Southern California, before leaving to come home and help out on the estate. Megan didn’t know what she’d do without her.
    Paige bit at her bottom lip and clenched her hands together at the waist of her simple black skirt. She shot an anxious glance toward the hall where weddingguests were still expecting the ceremony to take place in the next few minutes. “What’re we supposed to do now?”
    “What we don’t do, is panic.”
    “Right. How do we do that?”
    “Beats me,” Megan muttered and lifted one hand to smooth back an errant lock of blond hair that had escaped the tidy ponytail at the back of her neck. Voices murmured behind her and a squawk came from the headset she was still clutching.
    This was a nightmare.
    Well, a potential nightmare.
    Thoughts, ideas, plans raced through her mind, presented themselves and then were dismissed. None of them were good enough to pull this mess out of the fire. Blast it, what kind of woman ran away from her own wedding fifteen minutes before the ceremony?
    And what in heaven’s name was she supposed to tell the groom?
    As if reading her mind, Paige shook her head. “I’m so not going to be the one to tell that groom his bride vamoosed.”
    Megan winced.
    Simon Pearce, would-be groom and gazillionaire, was not going to take this news lightly. The man had arranged this wedding with all the care and diligence of an invasion. Having his plans quashed at the last minute was going to go over like a case of measles.
    Megan reached up and rubbed a spot between hereyes, but all she managed to do was massage a budding headache into a full-blown migraine.
    She’d been dealing with Simon Pearce for more than a month now. He was gorgeous, irritating and rude. He snapped off orders and expected people to jump. In fact, until this morning, Megan had never once seen the blushing bride. Pearce had taken care of everything. He’d made all of the decisions concerning the wedding that wasn’t going to be happening and right at the moment, Megan could almost understand why the bride scampered. She wasn’t exactly looking forward to telling Mr. I-Know-Everything-Don’t-Bother-Me-with-Details that he’d just been jilted.
    “Oh ye gods,” she murmured and lifted her face into the wind sweeping in from across the vineyard. The scent of the nearby ocean surrounded her and the chill of the March breeze cooled her heated cheeks. Unfortunately, it didn’t do a thing for the knot in her stomach.
    “That about covers it,” Paige said and leaned back against the gray stone