Thayer
The panel clicks into place. My blood’s boiling; the urge to lash out at Emily pushes on my skin.
I clench my teeth, my stomach, and my fucking hand at the side of my suit trousers.
A deep breath in. I created this. I didn’t tell her no when this all started.
I damn well should have sent them all away.
Then again, she agreed to get rid of them at Winterborn but retracted it.
“How’s my bed?”
Her blue eyes flash up at me. Is it a warning or fear? “Warm.”
I hold my breath, pivot, and take off my coat, throwing it on the chair. There’s a glint between the cushion and the back of the chair. My cufflink that went missing from the valet stand in my closet this week. It’s a damn petty game we’re playing.
The knot of my tie hitches when I’m taking it off.
A noose around my neck. I turn back. She’s got the duvet pulled up around her ears.
Her soft strawberry-blonde strands poke out around the pillow.
I snatch up the cufflink and put it back with its mate.
The crisp white shirt I put on two hours ago is from a last-minute meeting.
I met them at the pub, and it’s a fucking good thing I did. The shirt lands next to the suit coat.
A jerk of the duvet back sends the scent of my former best friend’s cologne flying into my face. A wave of nausea rolls through me. I stare at the ceiling, my hands folded over my chest.
“You’re not going to do work?” she mutters into her pillow.
“No, for some reason I’ve taken the next five days off. That starts now,” I say to the ceiling.
The bed wiggles, and she flips to face me. I don’t move. “Is there much left to do?”
“No, it’s done. My brother’s coming tomorrow.”
“Oh. Darius, right?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“Tell him that I’m marrying you to keep you alive, that your boyfriends just fucked you in my bed, or that you’re not really pregnant?”
She laughs. “You are human.”
“What?” I turn to face her. Her blue eyes are poking out from the duvet two feet from me. Her cheeks are still flushed, and her hair splays out over the pillow. She’s a doe-eyed temptress. One who’s capable of dragging me to the ocean floor and drowning me.
“You’re jealous.”
“No, I’m not. I’m damn worried about everything falling apart.” I glare at her. Jealous? It hits me in my gut.
“I am too. We all are. Right before you came in, we agreed that things have to change. I’m going to cool things off until things calm down.”
My stomach churns. She’s told me exactly—well, almost exactly—what I want to hear.
But what my subconscious wants to hear is that she doesn’t want them, but me.
And that’s not possible. Having her out of my life forever is the best thing for both of us, even after James is gone.
The Zambrano bloodline is too strong. There’s too much corruption in my family.
“Anything else you want to talk about? Sorry I didn’t give you the fight you were looking for,” Emily says, blinking up at me.
“I don’t want to fight, Emily.” I stop at the door to the bathroom and turn back to look at her.
“Three more sleeps and I’ll be able to say ‘goodnight, husband.’”
I nod, my mouth suddenly dry. I hadn’t planned on ever having a wife. A family. It’s all fake. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
Dreams don’t stay with me, never have. I open my eyes most days, and they’re gone, faded away to nothingness.
Last night wasn’t normal. I had dreams of Emily falling from a cliff.
Of her drowning. Another where I was searching the woods.
I didn’t know who for, but in reality, I know it was for her.
These and others that blurred one into another until they finally stopped.
My arm doesn’t move when I go to roll over. My eyes open to a mass of strawberry-blonde hair on my chest. Emily’s arm is over my waist, her leg over my leg. Her pelvis cradled on my hip.
She squeezes my ribs. “Are you okay now?”
Her leg moves from over mine, and her arm recedes. Only my other arm holds her to me.
“I had dreams.”
“Those are called nightmares, Thayer.”
“I don’t dream.”
She tilts her head up to me, her nose inches from my lips. “It appears you do. You also talk in your sleep, and sometimes cry.”
“I don’t.” I drop my arm from holding her at my side.
Instead of escaping to her side of her now invisible pillow wall, she climbs on top of me. “You do. Trust me, you do.” She pushes up until she’s straddling me, sitting up. She has one hand in the middle of my chest. She bites her lip, her head cocked.
I put my hands on her hips. “I don’t. I don’t dream.”
“You do, every night. You’re a chatterbox. If this were a real relationship, I’d know if you ever cheated even before you touched them.” She shrugs.
I squeeze her hips to lift her up and off me. But she widens her eyes, drops her other hand to my chest and pushes down. What it does is slide her down enough that her core and her thin panties are now pressing directly on my morning wood.
I grind my molars to keep from flipping her onto the mattress and sliding her panties to the side.
“You snore too. But not a lot, and it’s kind of cute.” A twist of her leg, and she rolls to standing on the floor. Her hands pop to her hips, and her ocean-blue eyes glare at me. “You stopped crying out the more I lay on top of you. It was either smother you with a pillow or lie on top of you.”
“Well, thank you for not killing me in my sleep.”
“There’s always tomorrow,” she says with a shrug.
I close my eyes and try not to think about her soft hands around my neck. I need to take an extra-long shower.
“What time does Darius arrive?” she asks. Thinking of my brother is an instant way of killing my morning wood.
“This afternoon. I’m picking him up at the airport. Do you want to come with me?”
Emily ties her long hair into a messy bun on the top of her head. But I can’t stop looking at the delicate robe she has on.
“Is that new?”
“This?” She twirls. “Nope.”
“You’re a horrible liar.”
“I know. I’m saving my good acting for when it counts.” She steps behind the screen, and I take the opportunity to move to the bathroom. My hand hesitates on the lock, but I don’t throw it.
In the shower, it takes exactly three pulls before I spill on the tile. I wash up and, with a towel around my waist, grab my phone from the counter.
At the sink, Emily’s putting on makeup. My eyes flick over her. Did she hear me?
“You look just as good without it as with it.” I turn the corner into my closet.
“What?”
“The makeup, Emily,” I say from the closet.
“Thank you?” she shouts after me.
Once dressed, I step back into the bathroom.
She eyes my reflection in the mirror. “You’re wearing jeans.”
“Yes?”
“You never wear jeans. You have thirty versions of the same suit.”
“I don’t have thirty, and they’re not all the same. I told you, I’m on vacation.”
“You don’t wear jeans on the weekend either.”
“I don’t take weekends off.”
“You don’t change when you come home.”
“My side of the Zambrano businesses are worldwide. I need to be ready.”
“And you can’t be ready in jeans?”
“My suit sets up my mindset.”
“Right.” Her eyes hold mine in the mirror.
“Do you want me to change?”
She cocks her head at me. “Nope. It’s good. What time do we need to leave?”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m ready.” She plops her mascara into the drawer and closes it. “Have you seen my white running shoe?” Her lips purse in question.
“No.” I have. It’s under the ottoman behind her dressing screen.
“Guess I’ll have two.” She lifts her wide-legged pants, showing both of her white running shoes. “Truce.”
“Truce to what?” I say with a straight face.
“You must be good at poker.” She takes her crossbody bag from the spot on the floor where she normally drops it.
“I’m not bad. I’ve taken thousands from Oliver.” There is a growl to my voice I don’t mean to have. It’s one that says, and I can take you too. Could I? My eyes flick down over her body.
“What?” She visibly shivers and moves to the door. “Are you coming?”
I could, but I can’t. It would kill both of us.
“Let’s go.”
“You can follow.” I slam the door shut on Holloway and wait for him to get in the SUV behind us.
“He’s not happy,” Emily says from the front passenger seat.
“Indeed. He’ll get over it. It’s not like we’re not bringing security.”
“Why are you driving?” She tilts toward me, still unbuckled. I reach around her and click the belt around her chest. My eyes linger on her legs, and damn, I have to shake it off. This woman does things to me. Things I can’t have. Not now, not ever.
I pull out of Havenwood, fighting the urge to peel out, leave Holloway and the other car in the distance.
We’re anything but discreet heading through the thicket-hedged rows.
But I don’t. Mostly because, twenty meters up the road, a giant tractor pulls out into the lane.
There’s no room to pass it. We slow to a crawl. I turn to Emily.
“Will this make us late to pick up Darius?”
“Maybe.”
“So that’s why you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.” I take off my sunglasses and put them on the console, turning to her.
“Right.” She nods, her lips pursed as she focuses out the window. When the hedge turns to a stone wall, white specks of sheep litter the field beside us. Her fingers are interlocked on her lap.
“Darius will be fine.” He might get impatient and try to find his own way to Havenwood, leaving us wondering about where he is. If he’s not home, he never answers his phone. But he’ll manage. My leg shakes, and I put my sunglasses back on.
There’s a churning in my stomach. Being here in the car. So close, such a normal action, something a married couple would do. Something two people who didn’t have a history would do.
“I’m nervous.” Emily unclasps her hands and sits them on her knees. “Not about Darius. I’m sure he’s as smart as you . . .”
There’s a twinge of acid in my chest. My father would pit us against each other.
Of course, he was always trying to control and twist things to his will.
“Darius got his marks back for GSCE levels. Better than you,” James told me.
Like I cared. I was out of college by the time Darius took his levels.
I knew exactly what James was trying to do.
But I wasn’t sure Darius did. When I brought it up to him, he laughed.
“Oh yeah, what a twat. He used to do the same thing to me back when I was in primary. I was crying one day, and Mrs. Smythe asked me why. I told her I could never be as good as you in school. She said you were the bomb in math and clueless in English, but it didn’t matter.
I’m not competing with you. I’m competing with myself.
” It was the moment I knew I had to protect him.
Keep him away from our father. Out of the crosshairs. And now I’m dragging him back in.
Emily eyes my bouncing leg but says nothing. She’s right. I’m nervous. Nervous about Darius. Nervous about tying Emily to me in a way even a divorce can’t sever. Nervous about the wedding.
There’s one thing I’m not nervous about, though: her fucking boyfriends. I’m not nervous. I’m fucking furious. I pride myself on never breaking my word. It’s one of the ways I’ve promised myself not to become like my father.
“Do you want me to drive?”
My eyes flick to the road. The tractor’s turned off, and the lane is clear. “I’ve got it.”