CHAPTER 1: UNDRESSED BY A STRANGER

CAROLINE'S POV

The dress costs more than my first car.

Twelve thousand dollars of hand-stitched Italian lace and silk organza, with a sweetheart neckline and a cathedral train and approximately ten thousand tiny buttons running down the back that someone will have to fasten one by one on my wedding day.

I stare at myself in the three-way mirror and try to feel something.

Anything.

"It's stunning on you," my mother says from the settee behind me, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. "Oh, Caroline. You look like a princess."

I look like a fraud.

The woman in the mirror is beautiful, I...