Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 108173 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108173 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
But this… what the hell was this? He felt his jaw drop. He had absolutely no control over it. He knew his mouth was gaping but there was nothing he could do to disguise his utter shock at her opening lines. She was beaming up at him again. That joyful smile, her eyes alight with happiness.
She started speaking again, and he braced himself for another body blow. And he was right to do so because…
“I vow to love you every day, in sickness and in health, with my every breath till the end of my days. I promise to honor and cherish you. And I will remain faithful to you for as long as we both shall live.”
Damn it.
She was supposed to be over this. She was supposed to have outgrown it. She’d had boyfriends since her ill-advised crush on Ben so many years ago. She was no longer the innocent little girl he’d known back then. She was a grown woman and she knew the stakes.
He felt trapped. Like he had been conned. Love didn’t factor into this arrangement. It shouldn’t. Why the hell would she do this? He was punch drunk, confused, resentful.
This was not what he wanted. Not what he’d signed up for.
Lilah lifted his left hand and her maid of honor—her best friend Blake Landry—handed her a ring. Which she slid onto his left ring finger. A brushed platinum band, similar to hers but broader, with a strip of black diamonds running down the center. The diamond points gleamed in the warm light spilling in through the stained-glass windows of the Beckett family chapel.
“Ben, I give you this ring as a symbol of my absolute love and trust. With it, I pledge to be your loving wife and accept you as my beloved husband from this day forward into all of eternity and beyond.”
Ben couldn’t remember any other time when he’d felt this incandescent with rage. He tried his damnedest to keep a lid on all of that negative emotion. But he could barely think straight he was so fucking furious right now. She met his eyes, that soft loving smile still lingering in those amber depths, and he stared back intently, unable to hide his absolute fury from her.
Finally, finally, he saw reality intrude into the deluded depths of whatever fucking fantasy she had spun around this marriage. Her smile flickered, the light in her eyes faded… and she looked bewildered. Uncertain. Even a little fearful.
Good, he thought, with a curl of his lip. Fear me, little girl! I am not your knight in shining armor.
The woman seemed have been operating under some massive misapprehension about this marriage. He wasn’t doing this for her. He barely even liked her.
This was for someone to whom Ben owed his life. It was the only way Ben knew how
to repay that debt.
The officiant spoke, bringing Ben crashing back to their present reality. The one in which he’d just married this woman he did not love, whom he would never love.
“Lilah and Benjamin, I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss.”
TWO
Six Months Ago
“So did this one break your heart?”
The question startled Lilah out of her contemplation of the glass of Vilafonté, Series C 2014 cabernet sauvignon she’d been nursing throughout dinner.
It had been Gramps, Lilah, and the ubiquitous Benjamin Templeton as usual for dinner tonight. She couldn’t remember the last “family” dinner they’d had without Ben present. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find that he’d moved in during her much-needed three-month hiatus in Paris. Gramps already considered him family—the grandson he’d never had—and he would love to have Ben living at the family estate. The old man had frequently said that Ben—like Lilah—could have his very own wing.
“What did you say?” Lilah asked, suddenly becoming aware of the fact that Gramps had left the table without her noticing. It was just Ben and Lilah seated at the massive dining table. Thankfully, Gramps had long ago dispensed with formal seating and she and Ben were sitting directly across from each other. Gramps usually sat at the head of the table with Ben directly on his right and Lilah on his left.
“I asked if this one broke your heart,” Ben repeated. He set aside his fork and lifted his napkin to his mouth.
So refined.
What Ben had known about table etiquette, when she’d first met him fifteen years ago, wouldn’t even have filled one side of that napkin.
“Nobody broke my heart.”
Except you.
“You randomly closed up shop on your precious little photo business thing—nice work if you can get it, right?—and fucked off to Paris. Where you paid for your lover’s vacation and he repaid you by dumping you to run off some a cute French mademoiselle.” How very like Ben to remind Lilah of that still fresh humiliation with an easy shrug of his broad shoulders.