Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 135536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Shortbread had waited for my impending arrival to claim my newest acquisition.
Her.
I’d toyed with the idea of giving her the entire weekend to say goodbye to her family and friends, mainly to relieve myself of her burdensome existence.
But it was best to get it over with as soon as possible.
Shep Townsend opened the door in his Sunday’s best. Of course, they’d just returned from church.
Nothing screamed devout Christian like getting caught with a stranger’s hand between your thighs.
“Is the ring acceptable?” He snatched the jewelry bag from my hands, ripping it open. “Because I won’t let you humiliate my daughter any further.”
I might have been a deplorable human for dragging his daughter kicking and screaming into marriage, but he was a first-class prick for allowing it.
And for originally fixing her up with Madison Licht, who was a bag of STDs draped in a Prom suit.
He popped the ring box open.
His eyebrows shot to his hairline, throat bobbing with a swallow. “This’ll do.”
Shouldering past him without acknowledging his words, I surveyed his foyer. My future wife was nowhere to be seen.
A smaller, scowling version of her—her little sister, I assumed—stood at the foot of the stairway, holding tight to the banisters, watching me like a woodland creature about to pounce on its prey.
I glanced at my Rolex. “Where’s Dallas?”
“Upstairs, resting.” Former Miss U.S.A. Natasha Townsend traipsed out of the kitchen in a respectable Gingham dress, appraising me with open hatred.
Thankfully, Dallas had inherited her mother’s face rather than her father’s.
“From what?”
The girl sure didn’t have a busy schedule.
She didn’t have any schedule.
“Stop goading her. You catch more bees with honey.” Shep placed a hand on my arm, ushering me to the drawing room. “Just yesterday, you disgraced her, killed her engagement, and strong-armed her into marriage. She needs time to process.”
It had never once occurred to me that Dallas Townsend was a three-dimensional character with needs, wants, and motivations.
From where I stood, she seemed like a gorgeous, spoiled, petulant child accustomed to getting her way.
One who nursed a somewhat unhealthy obsession with food.
I invited myself to sit at the head of the room in front of Dallas’s shocked family. “Tell her to come down right this second. We need to discuss schedules.”
Little Townsend surged forward. “Why don’t you go scre—”
“Go get your sister, Franklin.” Shep’s lips twisted downward. “And wash your mouth with a bar of soap right after.”
With a shake of her head, Franklin fled my periphery. Shep remained standing. So did his wife.
They both glowered at me.
I produced my leather business case and began spreading the paperwork my bride needed to sign on the table. “A cup of coffee would be nice. No sugar, no milk, no spit.”
Mrs. Townsend’s eyes flared. In the end, Southern hospitality beat her resentment.
She scurried into the kitchen. Probably speed-dialing Jesus with a request to give me an early and deadly heart attack.
Shep braced the back of a chair. “Did you do this to get back at Madison or because your father is making you wed?”
I wiped invisible lint from my suit, marking everywhere Dallas needed to sign with an x. “It was a two-birds-one-stone situation.”
He sat and laced his fingers on the table, tight-lipped. “My daughter is very special.”
Fighting an eye-roll, I muttered, “They all are.”
“No,” he insisted. “Dallas is nothing like what you’ve seen and known. I assure you.” If I had a penny for every time a proud father tried to sell me his daughter based on her merits…well, I’d still be a billionaire. “When you fall in love with her, make sure you don’t resent her for it.”
So. Delusion was something that ran in this family.
As luck would have it, I didn’t need Dallas’s DNA.
I glanced around me, bored. “I’ll try my best.”
“I mean it.” His jaw set. “I know you don’t feel this way right now, but my daughter is utterly irresistible. There wasn’t one man in this town and the next who didn’t offer for her. I hope that, when she captures your heart, she’ll have the right mind to break it. Just like you’re breaking hers.”
That really did it.
“She isn’t in love with Madison Licht.”
“How do you know?”
“While I’m no expert in relationships, I’m pretty sure it would’ve taken me more than thirty seconds of waltzing to convince her that shoving my fingers inside her was a good idea if she were madly in love.”
The man never failed to wince when I mentioned my sexual encounter with his daughter.
“She is definitely fond of him, though.”
“She’ll be fond of me, too,” I snapped.
I didn’t even want her to be fond of me. I simply hated the idea of losing to Licht.
Shep sat back. “That remains to be seen.”
My bride interrupted the bizarre conversation, stomping into the drawing room in a dark-green satin dressing gown. Her chestnut hair spilled down her shoulders all the way to her waist.