Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Yeah, my name might be on the title, but he’d have all the control.
I grabbed his hand. “Honey, that is such a wonderful surprise,” I told him sweetly, digging my nails into the skin of his palm as hard as I could.
He inhaled a sharp breath, but his eyes were dancing, lips still turned up.
“Now that’s sorted,” the lawyer said, scribbling. “As I said, my paralegal will go over a bunch of forms with you, and there will be a lot of questions. But have the two of you ever been married before?”
I froze. Again, this question should not have taken me by surprise. It was par for the course. Nothing was private. Though I’d had the mad idea that Kip wouldn’t be in the room when I was asked this question, that it would be on a form with a box I could check.
“Yes,” I said, staring at the lawyer.
At the same time, Kip tensed beside me and muttered, “Yep.”
Again, I didn’t know who was more surprised, me or him.
We stared at each other. His expression was morose, somber even. He was closed off, that playful exterior he’d plastered on for the lawyer gone.
So, we both had secrets.
“Okay, well, as long as both marriages have been appropriately dissolved, that shouldn’t be a problem,” the lawyer said, jerking me away from Kip’s gaze.
I realized I still held his hand in mine. I dropped it.
“Yes, appropriately dissolved,” I murmured, thinking of the nightmare that had been. The months it took for me to even find the courage to meet with a lawyer. The endless forms, the police reports. The fear.
Then… the freedom.
Kip nodded fiercely in response to the lawyer’s statement.
Despite the need to stay out of Kip’s personal life—as much as a fake wife could—I found myself very curious about his previous wife. Obviously, it was a bad breakup. I wondered if he cheated on her. His man-whoring ways were not subtle.
But maybe the man-whoring was an aftereffect of her leaving him. Or her cheating on him.
It didn’t do good to wonder.
two
The Wedding
present
kip
“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
Those words echoed in my ears the whole goddamn night. And the kiss. The motherfucking kiss.
Fiona, although drunk, looked shocked and terrified at the prospect of the kiss in front of our small audience. Both of us had known it was coming. Both of us were of sound mind when we made this decision.
Well, I think she was, at least.
I couldn’t say my mind had been sound in about… five years. Suffice it to say, I was sober when I made the decision. Painfully so.
Sure, I’d had a beer or two in me the night I proposed the wedding, but the days after, thinking about it, I’d known I was serious. And if Fiona showed up at my door wanting to get married, I’d do it.
And she did show up.
Looking like I was holding a gun to her head.
As she’d looked pretty much the entire day. She strutted down the aisle as if she were preparing for battle, her bouquet her weapon. Her chin was held high in defiance, and she’d made a concerted effort not to look at me.
That had been my plan too.
Except you couldn’t not look at her. She’d forgone the traditional white—as I’d expected. This was far from a traditional wedding, and Fiona wasn’t exactly the puffy white dress kind of woman.
She went with red. Like a flame coming out. Her blonde hair was down in wild curls, framing the delicate face, the full lips, the electric eyes. The dress clung to her every curve. And fuck, were those curves impressive. I’d spent months drinking them in, wondering what it would be like to see her naked, taste her nipples, her pussy. What it would feel like to be inside her.
Which had been the problem. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the women I fucked. I usually singled them out on the night in question, did some smooth-talking, took them home, fucked them, and forgot them before they even left the bed.
Yeah, the feisty Australian was dangerous. I’d tried to fuck her, of course, because I couldn’t help myself. But she wasn’t interested. A good thing for the both of us.
I’d done well flirting with her and pretending it wasn’t her face I thought of when I jerked off, but then I had to go and agree to fucking marry her.
I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to fuck her. And the surefire way to do that, in my fucking warped mind? Marry her.
She needed a Green Card. I needed my mother to stop calling me, and then my sister to stop calling me to tell me how much Mom was worrying about me. I needed my father to stop sending me fucking emails about my ‘responsibilities’ that made me throw my computer across the room. I needed my whole goddamn family to get off my back.