13. Daisy
13
DAISY
“ U gh, Mondays. I wish I had some lasagna,” I groaned as my alarm blared at me.
“Is this another pathetic attempt to ruin my morning?” a deep voice asked in the dark.
“You are so self-absorbed.” I pushed my hair out of my face. Should I listen to my mom and use a silk pillowcase? Sure, but they felt weird.
And up until I found myself saying “I do” to a man I hated, I’d assumed I would never attract a man and therefore who cared if I woke up with pillow creases etched in my cheek?
“Some of us have to, you know, work at minimum-wage jobs. We can’t just roll into the office at eight thirty,” I goaded him. “When you get in, I’ve already been working for hours.”
“Sometimes you see me and I’ve been there all night long,” Aaron shot back, yanking off his shoe.
It was a little weird to see him so domestic, in sweaty exercise clothes, back from his workout.
“I have the bathroom first!” I yelled, racing to the door.
Aaron grabbed my arm and spun me around. My back thumped against the textured wallpaper.
“You have to quit your job. No wife of mine is working, especially not as a coffee-cart girl.”
“And no husband of mine is going to work uncaffeinated. I’m not quitting at the café.” I glared up at him.
“You are my wife. I take care of you, and in return, you do what I say.”
“You can’t control me.” I tried to jerk away from him.
“I am your husband. You will obey me.” The smell of him—the sweat, the heat, the testosterone, the maleness , was making me wonder if signing his creepy sex contract would be worth it.
No, self, we aren’t attracted to him. Well, not superattracted.
“What am I supposed to do all day?” I complained.
“Shop. Read. Bathe that disgusting cat.”
“Oh, so I can go spend all your money?” I waggled my eyebrows.
“Wrong. You get an allowance.”
“An allowance. I'm not a child!”
“Not with hips like those,” he said snidely.
Asshole.
Who commented on a woman’s weight? Aaron Richmond, that was who.
Face hot, I demanded, “What if I spend my newfound free time finding a man who appreciate hips like these? ”
“That’s not what I—” He blew out a frustrated breath.
“What if I say, ‘Fuck the contract,’ and cheat on you?” I added, angry.
He just smirked. “Everyone in this city knows you’re my wife. No man is going to come anywhere near you.”
“Why, because you’d kill them?” I rolled my eyes.
“I’m not the mob boss in one of those books you read—and yes, I know everything about you and your terrible taste in reading material, Coleman—I’ll just collectively punish anyone they are financially associated with.”
“I could pay them,” I retorted.
He huffed out a laugh. “If you have to pay a man to have sex with you, it’s not cheating. It’s just pathetic.”
“You are so awful.”
“Yet accurate.”
Like I would listen to a goddamn thing Aaron had to say.
I shut myself in the bathroom. Turned on the fancy shower full blast.
Daisy: Might be a little late today. Aaron’s being a dick.
Reese: When is he not?
I was going to wait until he left then sneak out the back door.
At least his mansion wasn’t in Connecticut or upstate somewhere. The subway was just a block away.
But when I tried the bedroom door, it was locked.
“Real fucking mature.” I banged on the solid wood. “Let me out.”
I ran to the window in time to see the driver open the car door for Aaron.
“Help!” I screamed out the window. “I’ve been kidnapped. Help!”
Aaron looked up at me and silently shook his head.
“You locked me in.” I shouted down the accusation.
“I didn’t lock the door, Coleman. You have to pull the handle up. It’s an old house. Things shift. It sticks.”
“Oh.” I raced back to the bedroom door.
Just like he said, I pulled up then out, and it opened, damn him.
I rushed back to the window. Aaron was standing there, looking smug.
“Weirdo,” I shouted for good measure.
Screw him. I was going to work.
“Ma’am, where would you like to take breakfast today?” Jared asked. “In the drawing room, perhaps?”
“I—” I needed the servants not to rat me out to Aaron.
“Yes, and can you take Dorian?” I handed Jared my cat. “I’m going to do a little yoga.”
“As you wish, ma’am.”
Fuck that. I’d tried doing yoga one time, and I was pretty sure I threw out my back.
I was not my mom. I took more after my dad’s stocky relatives. Though they were wealthy now, they were technically Welsh coal mining stock. I was built for repopulating the serf numbers after the black plague, baking mutton and potato-filled pasties, and running a household on nothing but lard and spite.
Not with those hips…
Fuck Aaron.
I looked down.
“Guess I could stand to do a little exercise.”
It irked me that I’d had to get married to him at my heaviest. It would be so satisfying if I were actually, like, sexually appealing and he had to suffer like I did.
Him with his maleness, the way the mass of him made the mattress dip slightly to my right so I always felt like I was going to slide and cuddle next to him. That intoxicating scent of his, which I now had full confirmation was just him because there was no way he was putting on cologne before working out just to fuck with me.
“PhDs are stressful,” I soothed myself as I went from bedroom to bedroom to find the best escape route. Yeah, in hindsight, the doors weren’t locked, just sticky.
“There!” I tossed my purse down first to the lower roof then eased myself out the window. I hung by my fingertips, my arms trembling, then let go. I hit the metal roof below with a dull clang. When I swung down off the roof, I narrowly avoided the patchy flower bed. Crouching, I made my way through the brambly backyard while confused office workers watched from the skyscrapers surrounding the house.
Aaron might talk a good game about being a husband and giving me money, but in twenty-nine days, he’d have me out on my ass on the sidewalk and slam the gates. I couldn’t lose my job. My Coleman trust fund paid for my education, sure, but my parents didn’t want my siblings and me growing up completely spoiled. We always had to work for fun money.
While the office workers in their tower could look down on the mansion, passersby from the street couldn’t look in because of the twelve-foot stone wall.
Out in the overgrown garden was a small stone outbuilding. Well, it was small compared to the mansion behind it. The outbuilding was, however, tall enough that it could get me over the wall.
I eased the door open and was greeted with happy neighs.
“Oh my god, horses!” Hi!” I said to the huge animals. “I have a horse baby too.” They nuzzled my face and neck with their velvety noses. “Love me, love me. Are you Aaron’s? No, I don’t have any treats, but now that I know you’re out here, I’m going to make sure we’re best friends. Now how do I get out?”
The roan mare neighed, and I looked up at a window.
“Perfect.”
She must have been a well-trained horse because she stood stock-still as I clambered up her back to the window, which was just big enough for me to wiggle through. My boots scrabbled for purchase, then I was slipping and sliding.
“Oof!” I landed in a heap on black trash bags and blinked up at a confused homeless man.
He pointed. “You could have just used the gate.”
“Crap.”
He helped me up then shooed me aside so he could dig through the trash bags in the alley.
“Success!” I crowed as I walked out of the alley and to the subway. Aaron thought he could control me? Think again.
“You’re the most stressed-out new bride I’ve ever seen. You should just sign that contract he gave you and enjoy the perks of marriage.”
“It doesn’t sound like a perk,” I whisper-shrieked to Reese. “There were words like lacerations .”
“I bet it’s just because he’s huge,” she said, salivating. “I mean, look at how tall he is—and those shoulders.”
“We don’t like him, remember?” I sounded whiny.
“Be careful bringing him to the English department mixer next week. A lot of those girls will be all over him. There’s a lack of men, especially ones with real, paying jobs, in the English department.”
“Why so he can crap all over it? Not a chance.”
“How ya doin’, girls?”
I was not in the mood to pretend to be nice to entitled customers.
“What can I get for you today?” I was really digging deep.
“You two on the menu?” He smiled, revealing a gold tooth.
Like I hadn’t heard that one before.
“Not today!” I said, trying to keep my eye from twitching. “But we do have a lavender sky latte with house-made—”
“I don’t want none of that girlie crap. Do me a ristretto. And,” he added, sliding a business card on the counter after paying, “if either of you two ladies decide you’re tired of serving hundreds of men and want to narrow it down to just one, give me a call.”
“You need to tell your husband,” Reese hissed at me, “to stop letting these shitty customers come here and harass us.”
“I’m not asking him for anything,” I whispered as the greasy guy and his fellow goons at the nearby tables laughed and shit-talked one another. “Aaron must have let them off easy today. Normally they slink out of the elevator, tails tucked between their legs. I don’t want to owe him anything.”
“You need to read that contract,” Reese pressed as I began making the ristretto. “Maybe there’s a line in there about buying presents for your friends. Who knows? You could be passing up a nice payday.”
The nearby ribbing stopped as a chill settled over the lobby.
“Hide!” Reese tried to shove me behind the counter.
I wasn’t going to give Aaron the satisfaction.
“Hubby the First!” I said. “Hopefully soon to be beheaded like Anne Boleyn. Are you going through caffeine withdrawal, or are you just happy to see me?”
His gaze swept over to me, but before he could berate me for disobeying him, his cold green eyes shifted down to the business card with the cell number scrawled on the bottom under the black text.
“One ristretto,” I called, sliding the ceramic cup on the counter.
Aaron’s eyes tracked the movement.
There was shuffling among the goons. The man who’d dropped his card was pushed out of the pack.
Sweating, he tugged at his jacket and scurried over to the coffee counter, where Aaron waited, his six-five form leaning against the wood counter.
The motion was casual, but it was a lie.
Aaron never did anything causally.
Every action he took was calculated.
Everything had an ulterior motive.
The cup rattled as the goon picked up the porcelain saucer, looking around nervously.
“I didn’t, ah—” he stammered, “In the picture I saw, she had brown hair, Mr. Richmond.” He clutched the cup.
The business card rotated in Aaron’s hand.
“And she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring,” the goon added hastily.
“Yes, that would be confusing,” Aaron said simply, green eyes still locked on the smaller man.
The goon sweated.
The cup rattled.
“Don’t let me stop you.” Aaron’s teeth flashed. “Drink it while it’s hot.”
“Stop fucking with my customers,” I said.
Aaron ignored me as the goon guzzled the boiling hot coffee, choking it down.
My husband handed him a napkin, and I rolled my eyes.
Aaron tracked me as I handed the goon an ice water.
He almost thanked me then thought better of it when Aaron stopped spinning the card and handed it to him.
“Senor Donatello,” Aaron called to one of the suited goons.
The slightly older man straightened his back.
“Tell your boss I don’t ever want Mr. Shekov in my tower again.”
“I’m so sorry, sir,” Shekov babbled then stumbled back to his friends.
I slow clapped.
“Very impressive, Aaron. Are you going to piss on my espresso machine for good measure?”
Aaron’s face darkened.
“Where is your wedding ring?”
“I’m not wearing it. We hate each other, remember?”
“I don’t care if you sit here plotting my murder for the next twenty-nine days. You wear those rings, do you understand? Now where are they?”
“I can’t work with them on,” I complained, pulling the wedding and engagement rings out of my pocket.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t work,” Aaron said simply.
He waited, watching as I slid the jewelry onto my left hand.
“Don’t ever”—his voice dropped an octave—“take those off again. Otherwise, I really will lock you up.”