Chapter 10 #2
Christopher leaned in, quick and polite.
His lips touched my cheek near the corner of my mouth, close enough to count, far enough to mean nothing.
The judge smiled. Eleanor dabbed her eyes.
Trisha sneezed loudly and said, “Sorry. The ventilation in here is terrible.” Eleanor gave her a look.
Trisha sneezed again and said, “Fine. It was a little emotional. But mainly because the judge’s toupee is so bad it makes me sad. ”
We signed the papers. Eleanor squeezed my hand as we stood, her eyes warm and shining as she whispered, “You’re doing a good thing, sweetheart.”
The door opened.
A woman walked in. She hadn’t been invited. That much was clear from the way every head in the room turned and the way Eleanor’s warm expression went cold in the space of a heartbeat.
The woman was striking. Fifties, dark hair, immaculate posture.
She wore black like she was in mourning and pearls that looked like they’d been passed down through generations.
She stood in the doorway of the judge’s office and looked at Christopher with contempt so heavy it seemed to darken the room.
“No one had the courtesy of inviting me to my own stepson’s wedding,” she said, her voice sharp. “How thoughtful.”
Christopher went still. A stillness I’d never seen from him, one that said this woman could reach places in him that were otherwise locked.
“Esmeralda,” Eleanor said, her voice carrying a warning.
“Eleanor.” Esmeralda’s eyes didn’t leave Christopher. “I see you’ve found him a bride. Congratulations. I’m sure this one will be more classy than the last woman who made the mistake of getting close to your grandson.”
“That’s enough,” Eleanor said sharply. The sharpest I’d ever heard her.
Esmeralda turned to Christopher. “This changes nothing. You can marry whoever you like. You can play house, play CEO, play whatever game you and your grandmother have cooked up. But I will fight you every step of the way until I get justice for my son. Dominic’s birthright is that company.
Not you. And no amount of window dressing is going to change that. ”
She looked at me then. For the first time.
Her eyes traveled from my face to my dress to the ring on my finger, and whatever she saw, she dismissed entirely.
I was not a person to her. I was a prop.
A piece of staging. And the fury behind her gaze told me she intended to dismantle everything I was standing next to.
She left. The door closed behind her and the room exhaled.
“Well,” Trisha said. “That was fun.”
Eleanor touched my arm. Her hand was gentle but her eyes were fierce. “The driver will take you to his house, sweetheart. Your things have already been moved.”
“Who was that?” I asked, though I was beginning to piece it together.
“Esmeralda,” Eleanor said. “Christopher’s stepmother.”
From what I’d just seen, stepmother was a generous term. The way she’d looked at Christopher and then at me, like we were obstacles she was already planning how to remove.
Christopher left without waiting for me. Trisha drove me to the house, the one I’d driven him to that night from the bar. It looked different in the daylight. Bigger, more permanent; a house that expected you to behave a certain way just by being inside it.
My things were already in the guest suite. My bag, my clothes, the framed photo of my parents, the folded quote. Everything I owned, which wasn’t much, arranged in a room that made it look even less.
I showered and changed into pajamas. Tried to sleep. Couldn’t.
I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Thought about the ring on my finger and everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
I heard the front door. Footsteps on dark wood. The muffled click of a door opening and closing deeper in the house.
He was home.
I got up and padded down the hallway in bare feet. The study light was on, spilling a thin line across the dark floor. I knocked twice.
“Come in.”
He was standing behind his desk, jacket off, sleeves rolled, tie gone. His hair was ruffled and his eyes were bloodshot.
Had he been drinking?
The charming man from the gala was gone. The man who’d dropped to one knee and said beautiful things in front of three hundred people and whispered “just go with it” in my ear was nowhere in this room. This was another Christopher.
“We need to set some ground rules,” he said. No greeting. No how are you settling in. Just rules. Like I was a new employee and this was orientation.
“Okay,” I said.
“No entering my bedroom. Under any circumstances.”
“Okay.”
“No physical intimacy. What happened at the gala, the proposal, the cheek, that’s for public consumption. In this house, we’re business partners. Nothing more.”
“Understood.”
“My schedule is my own. I leave early, I come back late. Don’t wait up. Don’t ask where I’ve been.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.” He paused, setting his hands on the desk. “This is a transaction, Miley. Ninety days. After that, the sum transfers, and we go our separate ways. Clean. Simple.”
He said it all without looking at me. He was looking at the desk, the wall, the window—anywhere that wasn’t the woman standing in his study in pajamas who had just married him six hours ago.
I stood there and absorbed it. Every word. And somewhere underneath, my heart stung. Because for one stupid, irrational second on that stage, when he’d said he wanted to be himself because I saw the real him, some part of me had believed it.
That part needed to shut up.
“Ninety days,” I said. I kept my voice even. I even smiled. “That won’t be a problem, sir.”
I turned and walked out of the study.
I closed the door behind me and made it all the way to the guest suite before the smile faded and the sting settled in. I sat on the edge of the bed, pressed my hands against my knees, and breathed.
Ninety days.
I could do ninety days.
I’d survived Aunt Eliza’s house for eighteen years. I could survive ninety days with a man who kissed my cheek in public and treated me like furniture in private.
Torres sisters never sink.
Even when the water was freezing.