Sweet Romance10 min read
I Hired a Groom — Then Fell for the Man Who Staged My Wedding
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I kept my hand on the bouquet and listened to the clock in the wedding hall hit the appointed hour. The hall smelled like lilies and panic. My phone buzzed again. Another call from Court.
"Cecelia, something came up. I can't make it. Handle it," Court Dalton's voice said, flat and untroubled.
"Handle it?" I repeated into the quiet. "Handle it how, Court?"
"Just—take care of things. My apologies."
"Apology accepted," I said to no one, and hung up.
"He's got to be kidding," Annabelle Morgan hissed beside me. "That man is a monster. He can't do this to you, Cece."
"I'll do something else," I said.
"Like what? Call the police?" Annabelle's eyes flashed with comic desperation. "No, wait—" She snapped her fingers, then grinned. "I can—I'll get someone. Half an hour."
"You will?" I tried not to sound hopeful.
"I will," Annabelle said, sure as a promise.
Fifteen minutes later a knock came at my dressing room door and Annabelle ushered in a man who looked like he'd stepped off a magazine cover. He was composed in a way that made people look second. He smiled politely at me.
"Annabelle told me you needed help," he said. "I'm Grayson Carroll."
"Grayson?" I echoed. "You—are you willing to—"
Grayson nodded. "Whatever you need. I'm at your service."
We walked into the hall hand in hand. The crowd murmured. I announced him with the same calm that had carried me through many boardroom fights. "This is my groom, Grayson Carroll."
"You're joking," Court's mother snapped, rising. "This is a wedding—this is not a joke."
"With respect," I said, the sentence crisp, "if the groom chooses to skip his wedding to tend other matters, then the wedding will proceed."
"You can't—" she sputtered. "He had obligations—"
"Those obligations happened to other people's affairs," I answered. "If absent is excused, we will not be the ones apologizing."
Court's father fumbled with his phone and, predictably, Court called from somewhere. "Cecelia," he began.
"There is nothing to discuss," I said. "The ceremony continues."
Court and his family stomped out, red-faced and shouting threats. The hall fell quiet. Grayson held my hand like a practiced gentleman. He smiled with steady warmth, and when I watched him move, I found myself thinking: Annabelle really pulled a miracle.
After the ceremony the family bore down on me with questions. Later, alone, I handed Grayson a check.
"This is your fee," I said.
He shook his head. "I signed a contract," Grayson replied, sliding a folder across the table. "A year's cohabitation. You signed, too."
"What?" My voice must have been small. "Annabelle, what on earth—?"
I tried to call Annabelle, but the calls went straight to voicemail. Panic rose like a tide.
"This is absurd," I told Grayson.
He looked at me with a patience that disarmed. "Contracts are contracts," he said. "I signed because I intended to follow through. You signed because of... the moment."
"I didn't intend any—"
His smile softened. "Then we'll proceed as two professionals."
That night he helped me in surprising ways—brought water, peeled fruit, sat politely on the sofa while I adjusted from the day's chaos. He was attentive with no demands.
Then, in the quiet, as he sat close, he said with a softness that was almost a whisper, "I don't sell myself."
I choked on my water and looked at him. "What did you say?"
He leaned nearer, voice coaxing. "Tonight is—our night. Don't you want something?"
"Do you—" I laughed to mask the sudden flushing in my throat. "You want to do... exercise? Push-ups? Sit-ups? What?"
He blinked, then grinned like a mischievous schoolboy. "If that's your plan, I'll oblige."
"I said push-ups," I declared. "Do them until you're exhausted."
He complied, shoes squeaking on the floor. Sweat traced the line of his jaw. For a moment, my plan was absurdly childish, but it grounded me: power, regained. He was ridiculous and he was gorgeous and he did exactly what I asked.
The doorbell rang. I froze. Grayson straightened and walked to the door in disheveled dignity. When the door opened, Court Dalton stood there, breathless.
"What is going on here?" Court demanded, eyes darting between us.
"Out," Grayson said, cool as ice. "You can leave. This isn't your time."
Court sputtered and then tried to push his way in, red-faced, voice shrinking with every word. Grayson met him with a quiet threat and slammed the door, locking it behind him.
I felt the ludicrous relief mix with something else—curiosity.
The next morning three headlines set bylines alight, each one vicious and precise: groom absent, scandal at wedding, groom exposed as neglectful leader. Grayson had not lied: those three headlines came from nowhere and sat stubbornly at the top of the feeds.
"You did this?" I asked.
He answered simply, "Yes."
"Why?" I demanded.
"For the wedding," he said. "For you."
He stayed. He cooked, he made lunches, he kissed my forehead in the morning and left little notes. He was everywhere but intrusive. Power, in him, folded into tenderness in a way I hadn't expected.
Three months passed. He became part of the rhythm of my days. My family adored him. He took meetings with me, took calls, offered quiet counsel. I started to lean on him the way people lean when they finally stop pretending to be alone.
Then at a restaurant, by chance, I followed a shadow and overheard Grayson in a private room with a voice I didn't know.
"Did you orchestrate the wedding switch?" someone asked.
"I did," Grayson said, voice so soft it stabbed. "It was the only way. She wouldn't see otherwise."
My breath stopped. The voice in the room talked as though a plan had been plotted—a setup where I was the prize. My world did a small, precise spin, and then fell.
I left the restaurant before either man noticed. Back home I put a suitcase by the door. I texted, simply: I'm waiting at home.
Grayson returned cheerful as ever. "You waited for me!" he said, and reached to hug me.
I walked straight past him to the suitcase. "Pack," I said.
"What?" He stiffened.
"Pack your things. Leave." My voice was ordinary, but the iron underneath it made him go pale.
"Why?" he whispered.
"You tricked me," I said. "You manipulated my wedding, you manipulated my life. I'm not your game."
"Please," he said. "Cecelia, listen—"
"Don't call me that." I kept my face trying to be calm. "You'll get the check on the table. Go."
He looked at the check, then at me, then laughed like someone losing a bet he wasn't prepared to lose.
"You don't mean it," he said. "You can't really mean it."
"Watch me," I said.
He left, and I blocked his number. For the first time in months the apartment was empty-still, which felt like a wound and a relief at once.
Days passed. He crawled back, pleading, apologizing, showing up at work. I kept a professional face. When he refused to leave, I asked Margot Martinez, my secretary, to handle him. "Take him out," I said. "Make sure he doesn't come back."
"He keeps coming," Margot told me, exasperated. "He calls himself the company's 'first gentleman' and stands in the lobby."
"I told him to go," I muttered.
"He says—" Margot hesitated. "He says he signed contracts, that the script you're giving him requires him, that he can't leave or he'll be sued."
I looked at the papers, then added my own clause. "Fine. Pay the company back. I'll personally pay his breach."
He didn't have to be paid to leave. He had to be humbled.
Court Dalton, meanwhile, didn't escape unscathed. Word had already traveled; my social circle and the business community had seen his temper and indifference. That exposed him for what he was. I decided to make his punishment public and absolute.
I scheduled a reunion luncheon at the club—where shareholders often met and where Court was due to make a speech about his new responsibilities. I sent invitations widely, more widely than usual. People whispered. I was calm as a surface lake.
"You're doing what?" Court demanded when he realized the guest list.
"I'm exposing you," I told him. "Where and when."
"What do you mean 'expose me'?" He laughed, more a bark than humor. "You don't have anything—"
"You're right," I said, and smiled in a way that made him swallow. "I have photos, messages, witnesses. I have the hospital picture you thought you hid. I'm going to show them all. In public."
He tried to laugh, but the color left his face.
The luncheon hall filled with company heads, press, families. Court arrived with his usual swagger, but as he stood to speak, I stood too.
"Ladies and gentlemen," I began, voice steady. "Court Dalton may have been busy enough to skip a wedding. He may still think that such actions should be private. But I think a leader should be responsible in public, too."
"You're going to humiliate me," Court shouted, cheeks flushing.
"This is not humiliation," I said. "This is consequence."
I started the screen show. The first slide was the hospital photo: Court beside a woman who wasn't me, hands intimate in a way that said betrayal. The room hummed. Court's father made a protesting noise.
"You're lying," Court cried, red with fury.
"Am I?" I asked. "Do you want to explain?"
His voice skittered. "It wasn't—she's a—it's complicated."
"Complicated?" I repeated. "When I trusted you, you were complicated."
The next slide was his series of messages—dismissive, cold, planning to avoid responsibility. The hall reverberated with murmurs. Several colleagues of his stood, some faces changing to shock, others to a slow, hardening displeasure.
"You are a leader," I said, "and leaders are held to light. They can't hide affairs and expect loyalty."
"People will judge me," he said, trying to muster indignation.
"They already do," I said. "And the judgment isn't kind. People judge not for your mistakes alone, but for your choices: to lie instead of explain, to abandon instead of stay."
He started to pace like a trapped animal. "You can't—you can't do this! My position—my family—"
"Is what?" I interrupted. "More important than what you promised another person? Than what you committed to me? Did you think no one would ever look?"
At that moment the room erupted—not into violence, but into the collective unease public shaming brings: whispers, camera shutters, ringed circles of people murmuring. A junior executive took out his phone and recorded Court's speech. An older shareholder narrowed his eyes and turned to his neighbor. Court's mother turned ashen with mortification.
Court's face shifted—at first a brittle anger, then denial. "This is a setup," he blurted. "You're the one who—"
I let him have that moment, then cut to the final slide: his own words to me on the morning of the wedding, recorded earlier, plain and unembellished. The truth landed like a physical slap.
"You're finished," someone said nearby. Not an order, merely observation. It was true: his image—long cultivated—buckled under the weight of small, damning details.
"Please," Court begged, the word small and thin. For the first time he looked not like a man used to commanding and receiving obedience, but like someone aware of the consequences of his selfishness.
Around the table people watched with a hard, hungry interest. "He should apologize," a woman whispered. "But apologies aren't contracts."
"What's done is done," a man said. "But a board will want to know."
I turned to the crowd. "Make him accountable," I said plainly. "Not for spectacle but for consequence. Let the proper channels take over."
People nodded. Court's family tried to pull him aside. He staggered, losing the last of his swagger, and his phone buzzed relentlessly. People took pictures. A young intern came forward and asked him for a comment; he could not give one.
Court went from defiant to pleading to collapsing into furious denial and finally to dread. First he claimed it was misinterpreted, then he shouted at me, then he tried to bargain, then he curled in on himself, the stages of a man who saw his social currency evaporate.
The gathering—my peers, industry reporters, shareholders—watched and recorded. They applauded when I finished. Some were angry on my behalf; some were simply entertained by justice.
After that scene, Court's reputation was a ruinscape. Board members, who had once nodded at his ambitions, suddenly treated him like fallout—dangerous to keep close. He'd been publicly stripped of dignity, and in the weeks after, he found doors closed, dinners uninvited, partners reluctant.
That punishment was not about cruelty. It was about being seen.
Grayson watched that day in silence. For the first time since our first odd night, he looked at me with a face I couldn't decipher—pity? Respect? A fierce protectiveness? Whatever it was, I felt all of it and none of it.
The weeks after Court's downfall, I kept my distance from Grayson. I had been hurt by his orchestration. He had been cruel in a calculated way, but he had also protected me and—awkwardly—helped me rebuild. He was a paradox: manipulative and tender at once.
Two things happened almost simultaneously. A new business partner, Abel Young of Zhongyun, showed up with an offer too good to refuse. At the signing, Grayson arrived and stood beside me, cool and formal, and in the evening the fate of two companies shifted. Then, one morning, a corporate broadcast announced: Grayson Carroll had officially become Zhongyun's new CEO.
The office TV looped the footage. He stood in the frame, serious and unexpectedly goofy with one line that forced me to pause: "Wife, I was wrong. May I come home and kneel on whatever you like?"
On social media the gags multiplied—the footage, the repeated pleas. At first fury tightened my chest: how dare he do this on Day One? How dare he turn my private chaos into his public humility? But underneath the irritant, a small tassel of warmth curled. He could have chosen arrogance. Instead he chose a ridiculous penance, and he did it publicly—open, shameless, humiliating himself in my place.
I called him, sharp. "This is insane," I said.
"You'll make me bankrupt," he answered lightly. "Will you feed me?"
I laughed despite myself. "Don't be ridiculous."
"Promise?" he asked, voice suddenly serious.
"No promises," I said. "But stop doing Daily Kneel Theatre."
After that he became less performance and more quiet insistence. He gave me space when I asked, but he also fixed my coffee and showed up at investor meetings with useful contacts. He didn't ask me for forgiveness all at once. He asked for permission to be part of my life again, slowly.
A month later, at a small dinner with only family, Grayson knelt in the kitchen and muttered, half-joking, half-sacred, "Cecelia, I'm sorry. Can I come home?"
I looked at him—at the man who had staged my humiliation and my rescue, and at the one who had cooked my breakfasts and stayed when storms hit—and I realized that love is messy, often wrong at first, sometimes cruel, sometimes kind.
"Get up," I told him, but my voice had thaw. "You don't get rewards for theatrics."
He rose, cheeks flushed, eyes steady. "No theatrics. Just me."
"Just you?" I repeated.
"Just me," he said.
I took his hand. "Fine. But you will never again treat me as a prize to be won."
"I won't," he said, and I believed him.
We rebuilt slowly, with honesty as mortar. He never staged another headline. The contract he had signed the first night was torn up in my presence and he paid a fair settlement for the role he had played in my life—punishment for his deception, yes, but also a clean slate.
When Court Dalton tried to come back, there was no place for him. He'd learned the cost of treating love like an entitlement. Grayson's stature rose not because he seized power but because he steadied himself before me, openly vulnerable.
People still joked about the "kneel broadcasts," but those jokes became part of our story—the foolishness that led to truth.
And when we stood months later in a small garden, not under a public spotlight but with our close people around, Grayson murmured, smiling, "May I come home?"
"Yes," I said, because I had come to want only him.
The End
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