"The Wedding Crasher"

"THE WEDDING CRASHER"

A Thrilling Love Story of Danger, Deception and Destiny

The champagne flute nearly slipped from Lena's grasp when she first spotted him. Amidst the glittering crowd of her sister's wedding, one man stood out - not because of what he wore (the same black tuxedo as every other guest), but because of how he moved. Like a shadow detaching itself from the wall, his eyes tracking the groom with unsettling intensity.

He didn't belong here.

As the string quartet swelled and her sister floated down the aisle, Lena kept watching the stranger. Their eyes met across the candlelit reception hall - one heartbeat, two - before he vanished into the garden.

She found him thirty minutes later, hunched over the groom's laptop in the library. "Who the hell are you?" Lena demanded, her whisper sharp as broken crystal.

The stranger didn't even flinch. "Daniel Carter. And you're about to be in terrible danger."

The first gunshot shattered a champagne tower.

Suddenly Daniel's arms were around her, his body shielding hers as they crashed through a stained-glass window into the vineyard. "Run!" he ordered, and Lena - in her $3,000 bridesmaid dress and ruined Louboutins - ran like her life depended on it.

Because it did.

In the safehouse hours later, with police radios crackling and Lena's knees scraped bloody, the truth came out. Her soon-to-be brother-in-law wasn't a banker. The wedding wasn't just a wedding. And Daniel? "Private security," he said, pressing a steaming mug into her shaking hands. "Though I'm starting to regret taking this assignment."

Their fake marriage began as a necessity.

"Kiss me," Daniel murmured against her lips in a crowded elevator, his breath warm with the lie they were selling. "They're watching." Lena's heart hammered - from fear or desire, she couldn't tell anymore. Shared hotel rooms. His calloused fingers "adjusting" her wedding ring for cameras. The way his gaze lingered each morning when they peeled apart, the line between performance and reality blurring like smudged lipstick.

The night they brought the groom down, Lena expected relief. Instead, she found Daniel on their (their!) hotel balcony, staring at the fake gold band on his finger. "I need to tell you something," he began, and in that suspended second before the words came, Lena realized:

She wanted the lie to be true.

Their real wedding happened twelve months later - no gunfire, no secrets, just two people exchanging rings in a sun-dappled backyard. As Daniel slid the platinum band onto her finger, Lena laughed through tears: "Still think crashing weddings is a good way to meet women?"

His lips found hers, warm and sure and finally, gloriously real. "Only if I get to keep you."