Chapter 7 Whatever It Takes
SEVEN
WHATEVER IT TAKES
SEBASTIEN
“Sebastien.”
It’s the first time she’s used my name. She already had my complete attention, but now I’m letting her see a hint of the real me through my easy-going grin, and I think it’s making her more than a little nervous.
Okay, then. “Yes?”
“I need you to take this seriously. To understand. This isn’t about love. This isn’t romance. In Harmony Heights, a wedding band is akin to protection. This is survival. For me… for Miranda. I’m doing this so they don’t steal my sister’s future because I stupidly ruined mine.”
Annaliese says it so matter-of-factly, I know that she must’ve spent ages coming to this conclusion. Whatever she did to get booted from her class of Offerings, she’s sure it’s so bad that her sister will be tossed to the Court instead of getting the chance to be Claimed.
And I get that. The Order is so fucked up with its rules and its bylaws and its expectations.
Annaliese could make a mistake that leads to her family’s standings tanking with her.
Jack Collins would’ve delighted in punishing the entire Crawford family if one of the precious Offerings stepped out of line.
But Jack isn’t the King anymore. Dallas is. I know my buddy. My bro. He might not be able to save Annaliese from her fate, but he wouldn’t go after Miranda the same way his vindictive father would’ve.
Hell, if I ask Dallas to erase whatever black mark is next to Annaliese’s name, he would, no questions asked. Of course, then she wouldn’t feel compelled to marry me, and… yeah.
Before that night in the Last Prayer, I would’ve helped her, would’ve let her walk away. But now? Hey. Turnabout is fair play. She walked away once. No fucking way I’ll let that happen again.
She has a point, though. This contract spells out everything for this fake marriage she’s insisting on… including a section on living arrangements.
“I see you added a part about us keeping separate residences. I get that you might want to hang on to your place, but when an Owed takes an Offering for a wife, she has to spend at least one night in his bed a week. No getting around that.”
Not when I’m dying to have Annaliese in mine…
Her body jerks. It’s a quick shudder, but I saw it.
I arch an eyebrow.
“I know, but that doesn’t apply to this marriage.” She exhales softly. “Because I’m not an Offering. Not really.”
Ah. There it is. Confirmation. “I thought you were.”
Beneath her renewed icy composure, I can tell she’s wagering whether or not she wants to answer me. For a moment, I think she’s going to brush past it, but she surprises me by tilting her head up just enough to come across as defiant as she admits, “I was. I’m not anymore.”
Fuck, she’s so damn sexy. “Why’s that?”
“Why do you think? You keep reminding me of that night… if you Claim me, no one ever has to know that I was meant to be demoted to one of the Used during the next ceremony.”
More Order fuckery that I can’t stand. It happened to Loni Dougherty when we were in high school.
She slept with Adrian and got caught when Desmond St. James started running his mouth, and what happened?
She got kicked out of being an Offering, too.
Even if Adrian wasn’t related to the former King, nothing would’ve happened to him.
Nope. It’s the women in the Order who need to be held to some ridiculous standard.
The second she had penetrative sex for the first time, she lost any worth she had as an Offering.
I don’t agree with it, but it’s how the Order is.
If I’d known she was an Offering, I never would’ve followed her into that bathroom.
She sure as hell wasn’t acting like an unpracticed virgin that night, but—
My tongue darts out, moistening the corner of my suddenly dry mouth. “Real quick. I wasn’t the one who”—shit… how did she put it?—“ruined you, was I?”
I don’t want to be. It wouldn’t change a damn thing if I was since I have every intention of keeping Annaliese, but when she slowly shakes her head and my gut feels like someone kicked it, I realize something: I hate the idea that someone else got to her first more than that I could be responsible for her being desperate enough to marry a man like me.
Of course. Why else was she at the Last Prayer? Some prick hurt her, and she found solace in my arms. That was heartbreak that chased her into the dive bar, onto my cock, and I still echoes of it as I look in her eyes.
I hate the fucker. I don’t know who he is, but I will, and it doesn’t matter. I hate him.
I shove it down just like I do everything else that has the old anger crawling up my spine. “And you can’t marry him?”
“No.”
It’s obvious that that’s all the answer I’ll get out of her on that topic—and it’s enough.
He’s history.
She’s mine.
“Good.”
I reach inside of my leather jacket.
If she thinks it’s weird that I wear it in my house, get in line. I’m pushing thirty myself, my birthday next November, but my road jacket is like some little kid’s blankie.
When I wear it, I am Bas Reynolds.
I’m the black sheep. The outcast. The rebel who’s stuck his middle finger up at the Order his entire life, but whose last name keeps him from being kicked out despite Jack’s best attempts over the years.
I need that reminder more than most. So does half of Harmony Heights.
Plus, the inner pocket is pretty handy for storage. When Annaliese handed me the binder before she eased herself down on the edge of my couch, she gave me a pen, too. I shoved it in my jacket. Now, I grab the pen, uncapping it with my teeth before flipping back to the front page.
At the bottom, there’s a pair of lines with two different names printed beneath it: Sebastien Reynolds and Annaliese Crawford.
We look damn good next to each other.
I scrawl my signature over the first line. Then, meeting the relief in her eyes as I recap the pen and close the binder, I tell her the truth: “You don’t think I figured most of that out? I know exactly what I’m signing.”
A contract that says that she’s my wife for one year. But, more than that, I noticed a simple clause right near the top that’s going to be my new best friend.
This agreement does not constitute a lifelong marital expectation unless mutually renegotiated.
Understood, love. Under-fucking-stood.
“Then why—”
I shrug. “Because you asked me to marry you.”
Annaliese blinks, stunned.
My lips quirk in another one of my trademark grins. “And, if we’re being honest here, you gave me a night I haven’t been able to forget.”
Her breath catches. Good. If it affected her half as much as it did me, it’s going to be a hell of a lot easier than I expect to satisfy the bullshit ‘mutually renegotiated’ part of that line.
Rising up from my seat, I move to her side of the room, holding out the binder and the pen. “Your turn.”
Annaliese sets down her copy of the contract. She accepts mine, opening it to the front page with my signature on it.
She hesitates for only a moment before adding her signature to the next line.
That done, she closes my binder, handing it back to me.
I guess this is my copy of the contract to keep.
Considering she grabs hers, signing that one before standing up and holding it out so that I can do the same, I figure she wants us both to keep a copy.
Tucking hers under her arm, she picks her purse up from where it was waiting for her on the couch. “Thank you. It doesn’t seem adequate, but—”
“Then don’t bother. Besides, I don’t know where you’re going. We’re not done here.”
She blinks. “I don’t know what you mean.”
That’s what she says. The way she braces herself, it’s like she expects me to invoke one of the intimacy clauses then and there, telling her to strip so I can fuck her here and now.
And, sure, that sounds pretty fucking amazing, but that’s only if I want to enjoy my new wife for a year. Fuck, no. Like Adrian, I looked at this woman and saw the promise of forever—and that’s what I’m playing for now.
“‘Course you do. You proposed to me, love. I don’t know about you, but I’m expecting a wedding.” Giving in to my desire to touch her at last, I grip her chin between my thumb and my pointer finger. “The sooner the better. I need your input before I can hire someone to put it together for us.”
Her lips part. I nearly dip my head, kissing her, but as though she can sense my hunger, she uses the excuse to drop her purse back to the couch before sitting demurely down again to put some distance between us.
“No need to hire anyone,” Annaliese says primly. “I used to be an event planner. Though I don’t see any reason why we need to have a wedding for a marriage of convenience—”
I flash her a grin. “Humor me. I never planned on getting married at all. If I’m going to do it now, I might as well do it right.”
She clears her throat. “Yes. Well… if you think we should—”
“I insist. Nothing fancy if that’s not your style. We book St. Catherine’s so that no one can deny we had an Order wedding, then have a small reception somewhere. You’ll need a dress, of course. Flowers. Whatever you want for your wedding—”
“Fake wedding,” Annaliese cuts in.
“I don’t do fake,” I toss back. This time, I reach into the back pocket of my jeans.
Taking out my wallet, I rifle through my cards while she stands there, trying to understand just what I mean by that.
You’d think it would be pretty clear. I say what I mean, mean what I say, and if I’m getting hitched, it’ll be for real.
I pull out my black Amex. “Here. Take this. Whatever you want for our ‘I do’s, you get it.”
She takes it with trembling fingers, her expression a mix between surprise and suspicion.
I wordlessly dare her to say something to me about the card.
Yes, my family is loaded. Yes, my parents have used money to bail me out a thousand times.
They pay for my mistakes, and I’ve let them because I never asked to be born into the secret society that’s turned me into the man that I am.
I’m not as bad as I used to be—becoming even more of an outcast when half the town blames you for one of their own taking a swan dive off a building because of you has a tendency to straighten even the biggest assholes out—and I only use their money to survive these days…
but if Annaliese was willing to open up about what being in the Order means for her, I might as well start by doing the same.
She reads my name on the card. Glancing around, I see her taking in my living room with a different eye.
Earlier, she was too nervous to really focus on her surroundings.
Now? She sees the expensive furniture, the huge ass television, the knick-knacks that Maman bought for me to add some ‘personality’ to my home after I left hers.
“I used to be an event planner,” Annaliese murmurs. “What is it you do?”
I smirk. It’s a defense mechanism that I’ve used for so long, I barely notice that I’m doing it. If I’m not being charming Bas, I’m being Sebastien Reynolds the cocky prick—and that’s infinitely better than the scrappy bastard who will throw a punch first, ask questions later.
“Me? I’m a trust fund baby. Why? That turn you off?”
It sure as fuck does me. I’m the world’s biggest hypocrite. I rail against the constraints of the Order while relying on what it’s done for my family and its wealth over the last two hundred years to live my life.
She’s quiet for a moment, then she shakes her head. “I don’t want your money, but if you have a card like this, you won’t miss what it’ll cost to host a small, intimate wedding. After all, you want one.”
Her unsaid I don’t hangs between us.
I don’t care. My smirk softens into an honest smile regardless.
I don’t know what I would’ve done if she tried to refuse or tell me that she would pay, but I won’t have to worry about that.
She’s right. I won’t miss it, and neither will my folks.
Hell, once they figure out that the charges are because one of their sons is getting married, they won’t say a damn word about me using it for more than gas and my tab down at the Court.
And when I let Annaliese keep it in case she needs it—despite her ridiculous idea that what’s mine is mine and what’s hers is hers—they won’t stop me.
If giving my new wife whatever she wants is all that makes me a worthwhile husband, at least I can do that.
I’m not above using her fears against her—or buying her if that’s what it takes.