Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 156392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 782(@200wpm)___ 626(@250wpm)___ 521(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 782(@200wpm)___ 626(@250wpm)___ 521(@300wpm)
It’s tragic enough that he broke my heart. It’d be disastrous if he destroyed my spirit—or whatever’s left of it.
I blink away the moisture and look up as I wipe the tear with the edge of my napkin.
“Something got into my eyes,” I say with an automatic plastered smile.
“Don’t.” The rough warning in his voice sparks a chill through me.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t pretend in front of me. Don’t put up a façade as if everything is fine.”
“Isn’t that what’s expected from a couple like us? A pretense, a front, and an illusion that everything is glamorously perfect?”
He cuts his steak into minuscule pieces and places them in meticulous parallel lines. I’m pretty sure Eli has a mild version of OCD. He doesn’t touch anything used by other people, including his parents.
Leo and his driver always wear gloves whenever they’re in his vicinity—though Leo probably shares the disregard for touching anything. And I just realized that Eli barely eats anything whenever he’s at a restaurant.
Even now, he’s been content drinking and cutting meat, but he hasn’t eaten a single bite.
Hell, I don’t remember the last time I saw him eat anything. I know he has to, but he probably won’t touch any food unless it’s cooked by his precious ex-nanny, Sam, although I’ve never witnessed that myself. At least, not since I woke up in the hospital with spotty memories.
He used to eat fine at his parents’ house, if I remember correctly. But I don’t recall him consuming anything but drinks elsewhere.
“It doesn’t have to be,” he finally says, his attention still on the medium-well steak he’s not eating.
“Doesn’t have to be what?”
He lifts his head, pinning me with that dark-gray look. “It doesn’t have to be fake, a façade or a front.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “So you mean to tell me you’re willing to give me love, children, and your unbound protection?”
“You already have my unbound protection. I can give you children if that’s what you want. But love isn’t something I’m capable of. I presume you wouldn’t want that from me either.”
“You presume right.” My voice rolls out steadily, unlike the ball that forms at the base of my throat as constrictive emotion floods my stomach.
I thought my heart had already mended, but a few words from the bastard are enough to tear the messy stitches surrounding the useless organ.
The retort, ‘In fact, I want nothing from you, including children and protection,’ is on the tip of my tongue, but I douse it with the disgusting nonalcoholic champagne.
If I want to initiate this revenge properly, I can’t keep antagonizing him or pushing him away.
He needs to believe that I’m falling in love with him despite all his warnings. I have to make him so attached to me, so crazy about me, and then divorce him and move on with my life.
Preferably not in a psych ward.
Though marrying this prick in the first place was surely a giant step in that direction.
He swirls the champagne in his glass. “So you agree to dissolve the fake status?”
“I’ll have to think about it, though your behavior is far from convincing.”
“Oh? I thought my behavior was the reason you fell head over heels for me.”
“Fell is past tense. I’m not foolish anymore.”
“I stand corrected.”
“As you should.” I square my shoulders. “Also, if you want me to agree to anything, you better start by giving me what I want.”
“Such as?”
“Companionship.”
“You have Sam, Bonneville, Ariella, and Cecily, who you FaceTime every couple of hours.”
“I’m not married to them, am I?”
“I’m a busy man with a tight schedule.”
“There’s no such thing as busy men. Only unavailable ones. If you wanted to make time for me, you would.”
“Make time to do what, exactly?”
“Court me properly, for starters.”
He releases a bark of laughter that stabs an icy spear through my chest. “Why would I need to court you when we’re already married?”
“Because while I don’t remember, I’m sure you didn’t court me the first time around. You must’ve forced your way in as usual.”
His face remains impassive and my doubts come true. I’ve never believed the ‘marriage of convenience’ part anyway. Now, I’m sure it was under duress somehow.
The problem is, I’m not sure why on earth Eli would force my hand to be with him. He doesn’t even like me.
Right?
Eli’s facial expression remains as frozen as Antarctica as he says, “I still don’t see why I’d do a nonsensical thing such as courting when you have my name attached to yours.”
“Because I said so, Mr. King. Take it or leave it.” I clink my glass to his with a triumphant smile.
“And if I leave it? Will that change the fact that you’re my wife by all conventional and societal laws?”
“No. But it’ll forbid you access to what you truly want.”
He raises a brow. “And what is that, pray tell?”