The Art of Marrying Your Enemy (The Richmond Brothers #2)

19. Daisy

19

DAISY

“ I can’t believe you made me wear this. I look like a forty-year-old woman who peaked in her sophomore year of college.”

“Lilly Pulitzer is classic,” Aaron said. “You look very nice.”

“What the hell do you know about women’s fashion?”

“I know that women who wear Lilly Pulitzer are three times less likely to make costly accounting mistakes.”

Smoothing down the hem of the pink flower-printed shift dress, I hiked up the wide stone steps to the English department building, trying not to break my ankles in the tall white heels.

“I look like I eat children for breakfast,” I complained as Aaron opened the door. “Really, the pearl necklace is almost a freakin’ cliché. If this is the type of woman you want, no wonder Betty says you’re having trouble dating. We should just buy you a sex doll for our thirty-day anniversary.”

Reese’s eyebrows rose straight up into her pink-dyed bangs when Aaron and I walked into the formal reading room where the mixer was being held.

The other girls—and they were mostly girls in my English PhD program—were very much the cool sad-girl novelists who had been working on their great American novels for the past three years and were hoping to get published.

They wore vintage thrift-store outfits—heavy eyeliner, baggy dark clothes, black leather shoes—and antique gold rings.

I stood out in the bright-pink floral shift dress, white pumps, and ridiculously oversized sparkling diamond ring.

I’d already been a little on the outs in the PhD program, never really part of the cool-girl gang, and Aaron and his OCD about the way I dressed were really setting me back.

It didn’t help that I had arrived with him. His crisp bespoke suit, hair neatly parted on the right, and height, made him also stand out among the starving artists and struggling musicians the rest of the PhD candidates dated. Next to the guys with gauges in their ears, faux dreadlocks, and ratty band T-shirts, the fact that Aaron had showered and shaved made him practically an alien.

“This is how you choose to spend your time?” he dipped his head to whisper in my ear.

“Better than ruining the economy. I need a drink.” I ditched him and headed for the bar that was set up on an antique mahogany side table.

I reached for the red then thought better of it, remembering the pink-and-white dress I was wearing.

“What,” Reese said slowly, “the fuck are you wearing?”

“He made me.” I glugged chardonnay into my glass.

“What do you mean made you ? Like tied you down? You look like you’re about to rush the University of Alabama. You look ridiculous.”

“I don’t know if it’s that bad, right? Aaron said I looked nice.” I glanced down at the dress.

“Of course you look nice,” Reese assured me. “You just don’t really look like, well, you. It’s freaking me out.”

Several of the cool girls drifted over to the bar with one of our older professors and Reese’s thesis advisor, who pulled Reese into a conversation with a visiting researcher.

Juniper, who had a gold nose ring and purple eye shadow, blinked at me.

“I heard you got married.”

“That’s so retro of you,” her friend Isla added.

“I mean, I’m not really participating. This is just a formality. My parents needed me to marry him. We’re divorcing in, like, three weeks.” The explanation tumbled out.

“I could never marry someone I just met.” Juniper twisted her hair around her finger.

Isla shook her head slowly. “I can’t believe you got married so young. You’re like a child bride. So sad.”

“I’m twenty-nine. Technically, that’s a normal age to get married.”

“Still, he probably expects you to take care of him.” We looked over at Aaron as he talked to the dean of the college, who I was sure hoped to score a generous donation.

As if.

Aaron would burn this place to the ground just to ruin my morning.

“And you’re really getting a divorce?” Isla asked breathily.

If you ignored his history and didn’t know he was a ghoul, Aaron did look yummy in that suit.

“He’ll be by a dumpster with a ‘Take me I’m free’ sign before the end of the summer,” I promised.

“Interesting.” More hair twirling from Juniper.

“I respect your choices.” Isla pressed her hands together and did a little bow.

They floated away back into the crowd

I cradled the wine bottle like it was my first-born child.

“Margaret,” a man purred in a British accent. Professor Edmund Pennington.

After my past week and a half of being around Aaron, the professor didn’t seem as tall as I originally thought. Or as handsome. It wasn’t lost on me that he looked me up and down with obvious interest.

“I told you, everyone calls me Daisy, Professor.”

“Not with a dress like that. You need to use the full name. Margaret, like the princess.” The name rolled off his tongue. He took the bottle from me, maintaining eye contact, and filled up my glass.

“I adore the whole aesthetic. It’s very 1960s-housewife-has-feminist-awakening,” he purred again, still using that British accent. “And the ring. What, pray tell, is your husband overcompensating for?” The professor took my hand briefly and tilted it this way and that so the diamond sparkled.

“We’re not really like that. It’s for business,” I stammered.

“An arranged marriage. How positively gothic. Is he a terrible brute?”

“Aaron’s not like that.” I felt the need to jump to my new husband’s defense. Not that he deserved it.

“No. He gives you jewelry, after all. A string of pearls.” Professor Pennington’s bony pianist’s fingers trailed along my neck. “You’re a learned scholar of the English language. I’m sure you know what those are a euphemism for.”

I felt hot blotches rise on my neck.

“I’m sure the irony is lost on your new husband,” he added.

I looked up in time to catch Aaron staring at me in fury.

Well, he didn’t even say thank you for the dinner. He could sit there and listen to Dean Hardgrave give a long, tedious history of the English college.

“He appears to be one of those single-minded ‘finance bro’ types.” Professor Pennington’s description was mocking. “And you...” His gaze flicked down then back up. “The neglected housewife.”

“I have a job. It’s at the coffee cart, but I do get a paycheck.”

“A caged bird,” he murmured. “Lady Chatterley. All she needs is a lover.”

He poured me more wine.

“Come see me in my office. I have some essays in mind to help you with your situation. I think this could be the inspiration you need for the paper you’re writing for my lecture class. I do so love to be a part of a woman’s feminist awakening.” He kissed my hand again then drifted off to speak with his adoring public.

When I looked back to Aaron, he was pointedly ignoring me while Juniper and Isla were obviously flirting with him, giggling into their glasses, tugging their hair behind their ears, running multicolored nails all over his suit.

“He’s such a hypocrite,” I fumed. “Aaron can’t get mad at me when he’s letting them rub all over him.”

“Oh my god, why do all those visiting professors smell like cabbage?” Reese blew out a breath. “Did you drink all of this wine? Where’s the bottle opener?”

“I’m losing my virginity to Professor Pennington,” I blurted out.

“ Excuse me ? What? Does Aaron know?”

“No, Aaron doesn’t know. Fuck him.”

“Like you’re just going to text our professor and be like, ‘Hey, want to fuck a virgin girl? It’s probably not going to be that great but…’”

“Professor Pennington came on to me.” I gave Reese a rundown of the mildly awkward conversation. “I don’t have to text him anything. I just have to show up in his office.”

She grabbed me. “You’re going to cheat on your husband?”

“It’s not cheating. We aren’t in love, and look at how he’s acting. Besides, it’s basically research. A woman in an arranged marriage has a torrid love affair with her professor, who shows her the meaning of orgasms. That’s like half of the books we study in literature.”

“I think I’d rather my first orgasm be with someone who looks like Aaron.”

“A soulless monster.”

“Bet his dick is huge.” Reese sipped her wine.

I resisted the urge to cross my legs.

“That is not a selling point. I need to ease into the life of sexual promiscuity.”

“You could take some pointers from them,” she said with a snort.

Now our older female professors were flirting with him.

“He’s just passing out red-flag bouquets like candy, and they’re eating it up.” I crossed my arms.

“They all want that post-PhD-program meal ticket,” Reese joked. “I’m not sure I could downgrade to a pump and dump with Professor Pennington after sleeping next to Aaron Richmond night after night. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Professor Pennington isn’t unattractive,” I argued. We watched him maneuver through the crowd, but for once at one of these mixers, people weren’t fawning over him—they were fawning over Aaron.

My husband shot the professor a smug glance.

“The rat-faced look is very in vogue,” Reese commented.

“The professor has delicate, aristocratic bone structure.”

“He’s just got narrow shoulders.”

“His hair is nice, though.”

“If you like blonds. And you don’t,” she reminded me. “You said you couldn’t have two blonds in a relationship because then the couple just looks like siblings.”

“I’m about to become a real woman,” I hissed at her. “You should be happy for your best friend.”

“Okay, okay.” Reese raised her arms defensively. “But I just think maybe binge-watching Gilmore Girls and ordering Chinese is ironically the healthier option here.”

“I can’t because Aaron doesn’t have a TV in our bedroom.”

“I thought you said he gave you an expense account?”

“I want you to quit that PhD program,” Aaron said when we were in the dark car.

“Fuck you,” I shot back.

“It’s a waste of time. What are you going to do with an English PhD in Victorian women’s literature?” he argued.

“I have no big ambitions. I just want to indulge in my special interests, dodge everyone I’ve ever known from high school, and lay in bed and eat cereal without managing to spill it everywhere.”

“Is that what was all over the sheets?” His lip curled.

“I don’t know. I assumed you were jerking off in the bed.”

“The bedroom looks like a pigsty. My balls shrivel up anytime I have to sleep next to you.”

“You’re just mad because my hot British prof was flirting with me,” I snapped, fiddling with the pearl necklace.

In the dark, I could feel those green eyes on my neck, tracking the motion.

“No,” the deep baritone purred. “The irony isn’t lost on me.”

My hand jerked away from the pearls.

“Do you have this necklace bugged or something?”

“Hmm.” Aaron let out a self-satisfied breath. “Educated guess. Pervert professor who wants to sleep with his student with tits like a pinup girl’s? It’s such a cliché.” Dismissive green eyes flicked over me. “Statistically speaking, I’m shocked he hasn’t given you a real string of pearls yet.”

“You’re gross.”

“You’re na?ve if you thought he was actually after you for your amazing intellect. He just wanted to get you all hot and bothered thinking about cum dripping down your neck and over your chest. He rightfully assumed you’d be turned on by the subversion.”

“You’re the one waxing poetic about cum all over my tits,” I shot back.

“Let me guess.” He narrowed his eyes. They glittered in the passing streetlights, the shadows sharpening his features. “The good professor made an Anna Karenina reference. No”—he raised a finger—“ Lady Chatterley’s Lover .”

“Wrong,” I lied. “On both counts.”

“I know when people are lying, Coleman. They do it every day to my face. So predictable.” He hummed, sounding self-congratulatory.

I crossed my arms so I wouldn’t punch his smug face.

I was suddenly glad I never lost my virginity to Aaron Richmond. He didn’t deserve it.