He handed me the box with the half curl of his lips that made him seem so boyish. I wanted to hug him. Tousle his hair. Whisper I love you against the pulse in his neck.
“Open it,” he said.
“You don’t have to—”
“I know.”
I opened the box and in it was a beautiful necklace. Antique. Victorian, maybe. A long gold chain with a diamond and pearl pendant. A giant diamond.
“I saw it and thought of you.” He took it out of the box to put it around my neck where the chain and jewels glittered and gleamed in the lights and mirror. The touch of his fingers against my nape made my breath hitch.
“I have something for you, too,” I said, and stepped away from his touch over to where I had put my clothes. My jeans and Converse. My purse. I pulled out the box for him.
This might be a mistake. So dumb. I mean, the man had no need for something as old-fashioned as this. But…I saw it and thought of him. I held the box out.
He seemed weirdly flabbergasted. Like he didn’t know what to do with the package I was offering him. Or maybe like he didn’t want it. He looked at the box and then at me, his armor totally in place.
How, I wondered in the back of my brain, have I managed to get engaged to a man I can’t read? Like, what kind of lunacy was that?
“You can open it later.” Embarrassed, I started to put the box back in my purse, humiliation a copper taste in the back of my mouth.
“No,” he said. “No, please, I’d like to open it now.”
I handed it back to him and wiped my sweating hands on my gown. Which was shit for that kind of thing, actually. The netting stuck to my fingers.
Clayton pulled one end of the red ribbon that made the elaborate bow on top of the small box and it was like he was pulling my stomach with it. I reached into my purse and grabbed my glasses.
My own armor, maybe.
Or maybe I just wanted to see his face clearly when he opened my present.
He pulled off the thin lid and lifted the antique gold pocket watch out of the box.
“Veronica,” he breathed.
“I saw it in a shop on Lucas Street. I mean, it’s a little silly, I guess. But it does keep time. The guy at the store said it was owned by a cattle rancher in the area in the 1800’s.”
He turned the watch over and hit the small knob that popped open the front.
“That inscription was there,” I said, wanting some distance from it if it was too much. Though the inscription was part of the reason I bought it. Because the woman who gave her husband this watch over a hundred years ago had had more courage than I did.
“For you, forever,” he read.
“It’s—”
He said nothing, just stepped toward me, stalked toward me, really, so fast and with such power I took a step back and my head hit one of the mirrors. And then he was kissing me. His hands cupped my face, like he was holding me still. Like I might possibly run?
Please.
These kisses, like he was trying to communicate something to me with his tongue, were a huge part of the reason I said yes when he asked me to marry him. Because this felt so important and real. His hands on my body. His tongue against mine.
It filled me with power, the kind of power that was bigger than I am.
It was epic.
He pulled back, rested his forehead against mine. “Thank you,” he breathed. His breath smelled like mint and me.
“Thank you,” I said back, and we smiled at each other. I beamed with all my heart, and his lip curled in a half grin, barely there.
“I might have messed up your hair,” he said, pulling me away from the mirror. The flower he’d tried to put back fell to the floor.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Leave it. I don’t think that flower was meant to be.”
He clicked open the watch. “We need to head downstairs.”
“Right.” I smoothed my dress and reached to take off my glasses.
“Leave them,” he said.
“Jennifer—”
“Hardly matters. Leave them. The whole point of tonight is for you to enjoy yourself. To have the kind of party that you deserve. I want you to enjoy tonight and you can’t do that if you can’t see.” He touched my glasses, straightening them on my face.
“Well, when you put it that way.” I twisted my lips. “Though I don’t know how much of tonight will be enjoyable.”
“Try,” he said.
The idea of flaunting this relationship to Dallas’s elite made me want to cringe. But I considered it my going-away gift to Dad and Jennifer. I’d do this dumb thing because they wanted it, and then I was done.
Because in one month’s time my life as a King would be over and I’d be a Rorick.
Veronica Rorick.
With so many hard consonant sounds I was practically a fortress. I loved it.
He kissed me again. “See you down there.”
After he walked out of the dressing room I folded forward, putting my hands on my knees.
Jesus. That man I was going to marry was so damn potent.
“Oh, my gosh! Ronnie!”
The whirling dervish that was my half sister rushed into the room. She was just a few months younger than my sister, Bea, because my father was a cheating asshole and barely waited until my mother was in the ground before making his mistress the next Mrs. King so he could continue his search for a son in the wombs of his wives.
I should hate Sabrina, by rights, but it was impossible to hate Sabrina.
Shallow as a puddle, but sweet as sugar.
“You are a dream!” She was all lit up from the inside because the girl loved a party and tonight’s was going to be a good one. A blowout, as she called it. “You’re gorgeous. That dress! Your hair! That necklace! Are you sure about the glasses?"
“Sabrina,” I sighed.
“Of course, your call. Totally your call.” She stood in front of me and beamed. She was lovely and I couldn’t help but smile back at her. We both had my father’s dark hair, but her eyes were dark, too. Sabrina used to be a roly-poly preteen but in the last few years she had sculpted herself into the kind of perfection that made Jennifer giddy.
But perfection was so hard.
“I saw your gorgeous guy leaving. Is that why your lipstick is a mess?”
“Is it?” I pulled open my purse for the lipstick Sabrina had loaned me.
“Let me. You can’t draw a lip to save your life.”
Sabrina plucked the lip liner and gloss from the inside of my bag and got right up into my personal space. That was kinda Sabrina’s thing. No boundaries.
“Sooooo…” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I heard Dylan was invited.”
Our half brother.
“He won’t come.”
Sabrina projected so much hope. She’d followed him around like a puppy the summer he’d stayed with us. We all had. He still left and never came back. “Hank said—” Sabrina had refused to call our father by any other name.
“He won’t come because of Dad, Sabrina. Trust me. If there’s one thing you can count on with Dylan, it’s that he wants no part of being a King.”
She pouted and I did, too. Which must have been the right thing to do because she beamed at me as she finished the makeup repair.
“You look perfect.”
“You know…” I said, like it was a surprise—which it was “…I feel kinda perfect.”
She wrapped me in her thin arms and I hugged her back. “Garrett Pine is here,” she whispered.
Oh, boy.
In addition to Dallas society, we’d invited the entirety of the town of Dusty Creek, the arid clutch of churches and bars with one school, a medical clinic, and a grocery store that was about five miles away from the ranch.
Bea, Sabrina, and I all went to high school there with varying degrees of success and happiness.
And Garret Pine was a big part of that town.
And Sabrina loved him like a lunat
ic.
“He brought his fiancée.”
“Oh, honey,” I breathed. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m happy for him. Delighted.” She smiled so bright it almost blinded me to the heartache she couldn’t quite hide.
“Don’t do anything crazy,” I told her.
“I won’t.”
“Sabrina,” I sighed. “I mean it. No more stunts.”
She pulled a face. “I won’t do anything except make him sorry he’ll never be mine by being charming and amazing.”
“Well, you do look amazing.”
“So, do you, Ronnie,” she said. “Emma Stone’s publicist is here, too. And some TV executives. I’m going to go show them my star power.”
I hoped that didn’t mean her underwear.
And then she was gone, leaving the smell of her perfume and a sense of glitter in the air behind her.
I trusted Sabrina’s reaction to my reflection more than my own judgment, so I didn’t bother looking back into the mirror. Outside the dressing-room door, I turned left instead of right and headed down the back staircase.
“Veronica!” called a voice behind me and I turned, wishing I’d moved just a little faster.
James Court.
Ugh.
“Hello, James,” I said with a reserved smile. Which didn’t seem to matter. I could be cold and reserved and downright rude, and it never seemed to matter to this guy.
James worked at King Industries and was one of my father’s favorites.
“The boy’s got swagger,” Dad always said.
Which meant he had an ego and sense of entitlement a mile wide.
I hated him and I had no idea why, in the last six months, he’d gotten so interested in me.
“Congratulations,” he said, tipping his glass of scotch toward me—a little too much and some of the scotch slipped out. “The best man won. I should have seen that coming, I suppose.”
He was drunk.
I took a step back, keeping my smile small. “If you’re referring to Clayton, you’re right.”
He took another step forward, so close I could smell his hot breath. His blue eyes narrowed. Mean, I thought. This guy is just mean.
“You’re going to figure out sooner or later your old man made a mistake picking that fucker.”
“Jimmy, you’re drunk,” I said and put my hand up to push him away. I took four quick backward steps before I turned.
“You’re not even the hot sister,” he yelled after me. Like that was a newsflash.
Around the edge of the hallway I stopped to get my breath and calm myself down. So many assholes were trying to ruin my night.
I needed my sister and a drink.
And some cheese.
The kitchen was full of black-vested and white-gloved staff, and I ducked out the back door, grabbing a skewer of grilled halloumi and figs as a server walked by.
Delicious.
Another thing they didn’t tell you about orgasms. They made everything better.
Even cheese, which I honestly didn’t think could be better.
The moon was swollen and low in the endless indigo sky and the air smelled like the grills behind the long screened-in porch—hickory smoke and twilight. The stables in the distance looked like a mansion, with turrets and bright, sparkling windows. All the horses, the stable cats, and Sally the collie lived pretty damn well here on The King’s Land.
I pulled open the wide door and the cats came out to greet me. Sally, in the corner, lifted her head, thumped her tail once, and then sighed, tucking her nose under her leg. I heard the party in the far stall and rolled my eyes.
“Bea!” I shouted and there was a sudden silence from the back. The sound of guilt.
“Guys,” my sister said. “Relax. She’s not, like, my mom.”
“I’m the closest thing you’ve got.” I turned the corner and found my sister in her dark blue Versace gown with the hem pulled up around her knees, sitting on top of a bale of hay, the chalkboard from the office behind her.
A bottle of bourbon was tucked between her thighs.
Of course. Of-fucking-course.
The stall next door was full of a mare in the first stages of giving birth. Oscar, Tony, and a bunch of the other guys were milling between the two stalls.
My sister looked like me but scaled to a different size. She was small. Short and slight. Her eyes—and her attitude—were the biggest things about her.
Bea was eighty percent attitude, ten percent eyes, and the rest of her was fun.
The combination was catnip for a certain kind of man.
The dress she wore made her catnip to the rest of them.
“Bea.” I propped my hand against the doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Well, Cosmic is having a baby.” Bea pointed over the stall. “And I’m just taking a few bets.”
This shouldn’t be a surprise. Drinking bourbon during my engagement party and playing bookie was completely par for Bea’s course.
“Has the party started?” she asked and took a swig of bourbon. The hay was stuck all over her dress and her super-expensive shoes with the red soles had been kicked into the corner.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Oops.” Bea winced and hopped off the hay bale. Once we were face-to-face she only came up to my shoulders, but she hugged me, smiling at me all the while.
“You look hot, sis,” she said.
“Thanks, Bea.” It was impossible to stay mad at her. My sister sparkled like midnight. Like the fun and possibility of a night, just as it was getting interesting.
She turned to Oscar and Tony. “No playing with the board. If that baby is a boy and born before midnight you owe me a shit ton of money.”
The guys laughed and she handed Tony her bottle of bourbon so she could put on her shoes and stand another three inches taller.
“Let’s go celebrate.” She smelled like hay and horse, bourbon and perfume. Eau de Bea. “Pretty necklace,” she said, smiling at me.
“You think?” I put my palm over it.
“You think, and that’s all that matters.” Bea pulled us to a stop just outside the back door. “You deserve this.”
“A big awful party?”
“A big beautiful man. A big beautiful love.”
My chest felt too small to hold my heart. “It’s going to be all right, isn’t it?”
My sister—dangerous, impetuous, and reckless, but also wise—cupped my face in her hands. “Better than all right,” she said. “It’s going to be perfect.”
We walked back into the kitchen and down the hallway to the sounds of the party. We turned a corner and nearly ran into Jennifer.
“There you are.” Jennifer’s smile barely made a dent in her face. “Veronica, your father would like to see you in his study.”
“How about me?” Bea asked, sarcastic and smiling. “What should I do?”
“Clean yourself up and try not to embarrass your father.”
Bea wrinkled her nose. “Boring. I’ll go with Ronnie.”
We plucked the last two glasses of champagne from a waiter’s tray and turned left down the hallway, away from the party, to my father’s study. The door was on the other end of the hallway, and Bea and I were sipping our drinks and whispering about Jennifer’s Botox addiction, but still we were able to hear Clayton’s voice.
“That was the deal, Hank,” he said.
He sounded mad and I picked up my pace. Clayton rarely got angry, but when he did, it took him a while to cool off and I didn’t want him angry tonight. I wanted him smiling. His hand on the small of my back. His breath against my skin as he leaned down to whisper in my ear.
“I’m marrying your daughter. I’m securing your assets for another generation, if not more. We signed a contract!”
Bea and I shared one shocked look and then I pick up the pace, spilling champagne everywhere as I practically ran down the hallway.
“You are clearly trying to renegotiate the ba
by bonus.” Dad’s laugh was familiar. Satisfied. The laugh he laughed when he had all the power and didn’t mind using it.
We got to the doorway of the study just as Clayton grabbed my father by the lapels of his tux.
“You wanted her married. I’m doing that. That was the deal. Now give me the deed to the goddamned land!” Clayton shouted.
The champagne glass fell from my suddenly numb fingers and found the small slice of wood between the carpeted hallway and the Oriental rug on the floor of father’s study.
It shattered spectacularly.
I felt Bea behind me. Could sort of tell she was trying to hold me up. Or back. Hard to say.
The world was moving so fast. Too fast.
“What’s happening?” I whispered.
If I’d had doubts about what was happening—if I’d thought I could find one shred of hope to cling to—that vanished when I saw Clayton’s face.
The guilt was all over his cruel, handsome features. In the dark pools of his eyes. His rude-boy lips were a straight ugly line.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“What are you doing here?” Bea demanded, but Clayton didn’t even blink.
“You should go back out to the party,” he said to me. Like I was a child. Or a pet he could send away.
“Tell me what’s happening. Tell me about…your deal,” I said.
“Veronica.” My father sat down behind his desk, looking far too pleased with himself. He twisted his pinky ring around his finger. “You can’t be this naïve.”
“What is he talking about?” Bea asked, grabbing my hand.
“He’s marrying you for money,” Dad said. “Specifically, my money. By way of my company. Oh, stop, Veronica. Don’t look so damn hurt. I have to protect King Industries, and the best way I can do that is get someone I trust in the family. You have your charms, but you didn’t think Clayton was suddenly interested in my plain, dull daughter. He didn’t choose you—”
“Stop!” Clayton snapped. “Not another word.”
My dad shut up, but the words were out.
Plain and dull didn’t even hurt. The rest of it, though…
He didn’t choose you.
“This is when you tell me it’s not what it seems,” I said to Clayton. Practically begging him to pull the wool back over my eyes. “Or…there’s an explanation. That this isn’t true.”
The Saint Page 22
