“I’d like a chance for any marks to fade before having to go through it again, though.”
Alex closed his eyes and silently counted to ten. If he ever encountered the shithead who had made Janine like this, he’d beat him to a bloody pulp. When he opened his eyes, he found her staring at him, waiting calmly for his answer. Son of a bitch. He wasn’t planning on keeping her, but something about the way she sat there, calmly waiting for him to tell her how frequently he would beat her. Something about this woman triggered every protective instinct he had.
“I will never raise a hand against you in anger. I might slap your ass once a while playing, but I would never hurt you. I will never leave a mark on you that you don’t enjoy.”
Confusion clouded her face for a moment and he wondered what that was about. He didn’t intend to leave a mark on her either way because he didn’t intend to sleep with her. This is a marriage in name only, he reminded himself. No matter how much he wanted to wrap his arms around her and protect her from anything that came her way, it wasn’t his place. He wasn’t going to keep her, and sleeping with her would only hurt her when it was over.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me for that. That’s just being a decent human.” He turned back to the road and they started moving again. The silence between them stretched until he couldn’t take it, odd for him. “Tell me about yourself. I want to know a little more than your name before we get married Janine.”
“Janie.”
“Excuse me?”
“Please, call me Janie. I don’t care much for Janine.”
He glanced over in time to see her shiver.
“Cold?” He didn’t see how she could be — it was the middle of summer for Christ’s sake — but who knew what the summers were like where she was from. It was 85 here and he was sweating in this hoodie, but he’d wanted to be able to hide his face and this was the best for that.
“No. It’s nice.” She looked out the far window again.
“You were telling me about yourself, Janie.” He used the name she preferred while reminding her of what she was doing on purpose. He wanted her to know he was listening.
“I grew up in Texas.” She fell silent.
“Any brothers or sisters?” He felt like he was interrogating her. Alex wondered again what she was hiding. He was going to have to run a search once they got back to the house. See if she had any kind of record. He couldn’t imagine she did. He’d been very clear to the agency that he needed someone whose background was clean, someone who wouldn’t endanger his security clearance. He glanced over at her again as they bumped along the rough track of a road and made a mental note to have something done about the lane. Was she going to answer him?
Chapter 4
Janie didn’t want to lie, but she couldn’t tell him everything. If she did he would look at her with the disgust he’d expected to see when he’d shown her his face.
“Yes, I have several brothers and sisters. You?”
“One brother. He’s why I’m doing this.”
“Your brother’s forcing you to get married?” Janie frowned. She’d been told that family doesn’t tell you when or who to marry, yet it seemed that her soon to be husband was having just that done to him, but his brother hadn’t chosen who Alexander was to marry.
“Not exactly,” he sighed. She thought he wasn’t going to explain, but after a moment he spoke again. “Dave is after me to date more. To get out. To see people. I’ve tried, but it never goes well. People, men and women alike take one look at me and either look at me with pity or fear. I can’t stomach either.”
Finally, he’d said something she completely understood. She didn’t tell people about her own past anymore because of similar reactions. They either pitied her or asked a million questions and looked at her like a bug they couldn’t wait to pull apart. They reminded her of the boys pulling apart bugs to watch them squirm when she was a kid.
“So that’s why the big reveal at the air strip.”
“Big reveal?”
“Showing me your face and asking if I could live with it.”
“Yeah, that’s why the big reveal. But you were telling me about you, not the other way around.”
“There’s not much to tell. I grew up, I am here.” She didn’t know what more she could tell him that wouldn’t make him send her back. She didn’t want to go back. The other girls had made being sent back sound like the worst thing ever. She didn’t know how their worst thing ever would rank on her experience chart and she didn’t want to find out.
“What about your parents?”
“What about them?” Her heart raced as she worried he might discover her mother was still part of the cult she’d escaped from or her father was in prison.
“Tell me about them.”
“They were parents. They did their best to raise me as they thought right.” She hadn’t known it was wrong until she was a teenager, then it had taken her several years and hours of planning to make her escape. She hated that she hadn’t been able to take her sisters with her. But the one time she’d mentioned anything about leaving the ‘church’ to one of them she’d been horrified. She’d told their father. That had been one of the worst punishments Janie had ever endured. She’d been beaten daily for two weeks straight, then given the worst chores anyone could think of for several months. She’d learned her lesson though. She didn’t tell anyone about her plans, and when the time had come, she’d slipped away and hidden for days, until she was sure they were gone. A lot of things had happened since then. Some good, some bad. She’d tried to contact her sisters once their father was in prison, but they ignored her. Janie had no doubt she had been shunned by the church and responding to her in any way would earn them severe punishment. She hated the idea that they were still there, still trapped in their beliefs, but she’d finally come to accept there was only so much she could do to help them, and she’d done it by getting their father locked up.
“Are they still alive?”
“They are, but we don’t talk. Same with my siblings. They don’t talk to me.”
“Some days I dream of that.” He glanced over and gave her a half smile. “I’m sorry. I know being estranged from your family, no matter why, can’t be easy. I just sometimes wish Dave would get off my back.”
“It sounds like he cares about you. Tell me about him.” Janie didn’t want to talk about herself anymore, she never liked talking about herself. This way he didn’t have to talk about himself either.
“Honestly? He’s a good guy. I know he’s trying to look out for me and he’s only doing it because he cares, but damn. He gets on my nerves. A lot.”
“Where is he? Waiting for us?”
“Hell no. He can’t know where I met you.” Alexander shook his head. “He’d shit bricks. Then have a conniption fit.” His course language would take some getting used to. She knew now it wasn’t a mortal sin like she’d been raised to believe, but she’d not yet gotten used to hearing it used so casually. With time, she would get used to it, though she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to curse as easily as he did.
“All right.” She didn’t want to argue. “Besides the agency made me sign a secrecy agreement, that I wouldn’t tell anyone about them.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure how that works for them, but apparently it does, though.” Janie turned to her groom-to-be. “Where did you find out about them?”
“Huh?” he scowled. “What?”
“I was just wondering, where did you find out about the agency?”
“I found them online,” he said, his attention on the road.
Janie frowned. Mrs. Creed had told her the agency wasn’t online. They only used paper advertisements because they were easily destroyed, leaving no trace. That wasn’t so easy on the internet.
“It was a discussion somewhere, I don’t recall exactly where.”
So, it wasn’t an advertisement, rather people gossiping. Oddly, that made her feel better. But she didn’t kno
w why.
“What about you? How did you find them?” He glanced at her while he waited for her to answer.
“A newspaper ad. Mrs. Creed said they have them all over the country, carefully worded so no one knows exactly what they’re applying for.”
“They must get thousands of applications.”
“Probably, but not many make it through the screening process.” Janie thought for a moment about the hall-full apartment building where she’d stayed while waiting for her match to be found. They’d had lessons for the women in all kinds of things. How to dress properly, how to speak properly, but the ones that had intrigued her the most were the classes on proper behavior. What was and wasn’t appropriate. She’d been fascinated by what was considered all right that she would have been severely punished for growing up. While most of the other girls hated them, Janie had looked forward to them. They’d been liberating.
“What’s the screening process like for women?” He seemed to want to talk but not about himself. Janie didn’t want to talk about herself so why not tell him?
“Questions, hours and hours of questions. Medical testing, background checks, poly something tests, I don’t remember what they’re called.”
“Polygraph?”
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
His brows shot up as if that surprised him.
“One of the girls said they were new though. She said something about they found out that someone had lied to the agency — I don’t know why — and they weren’t going to let it happen again. Anyway, it took weeks to get through all their screening, then it was just the wait to get matched.”
“How long did you wait?”
“A few months.” She was reluctant to admit exactly how many.
“Did you have any matches before this one?”
Janie shook her head and looked down at her lap. She didn’t want to tell him she was difficult to match because she hated cities, she hated having too many people around. That had ruled her out for a lot of the men seeking wives. She’d been in the apartment building used for waiting brides for almost six months when the call had finally come that she had a match. She hadn’t been the only one surprised when that call came. She’d been beginning to wonder if it ever would. Thinking maybe she was just going to have to find something she could do and give up on the idea of a husband. Lord knew she wasn’t equipped to find one on her own.
“Look,” Alexander said, his tone surprising her into looking up and meeting his gaze. He’d stopped the truck again and she was so lost in her own thoughts she hadn’t noticed. “You’re gonna have to learn to talk to me.” He shook his head. “I know, I’m not talking either, but if we’re gonna make this work, even for a few months, then we need to get to know each other. Be comfortable around each other, or people will never believe this is a love match.”
Even for a few months? Was he not planning to keep her? Panic rose up in Janie’s throat and she struggled to swallow it down.
“I was there for six months. There were other girls that came and went. No one could remember anyone staying as long as I did. They said I must be difficult to match.” She desperately wanted to look away, to avoid the bright blue gaze that seemed to see into her deepest secrets. But for some reason she didn’t understand, she couldn’t.
He let out a sharp laugh that made her jump.
“I guess that’s fitting then because I have no doubt I was a difficult match as well. I’m broody and distant. Not to mention my damn near being a hermit. It seems fitting that we’re both difficult to find the right person to put up with them.” He took a deep breath, held it a moment then let it out in a rush. “Let’s get back to the house. I’ve got someone meeting us there to make this legal. We can figure things out from there.”
Janie nodded, secretly glad they were going to have the ceremony first. It would be harder for him to get rid of her once that was done.
Janie sat in the passenger’s seat of the truck with her mouth hanging open. She knew she should close it and try to look at least a little more worldly, but the house — well, mansion — they’d pulled up in front of was huge. It was bigger than even the prophet’s home and that had been the biggest dwelling she’d seen outside of a hotel or apartment building. He opened the door and slid out before looking back at her.
“Are you coming?”
“This is your house?”
He turned and looked at a moment. “This is it.”
Janie blinked. Holy Carp. This place was big enough to house her entire family with their own bedrooms, both her parents and all eleven siblings. Numb, she opened the door and slid from the seat while her soon-to-be husband lifted her suitcase from the back of the truck. She stood in front of the truck staring up at the huge, imposing house wondering how she would live there, how she would clean the whole thing. Just dusting it must take a whole day.
“Coming?”
His voice drew her back to the moment. Janie shook her head and looked around. Finding him on the stairs leading up to the porch that surrounded the place, she hurried to catch up. She’d told him she could do whatever he required, and she could. Even if it meant caring for a home big enough for three families.
Inside the front door she stopped and looked around. The walls were mostly bare, painted a light blue with only a couple paintings on the walls in what seemed to be a large hall like entry way. There was a huge stairway directly in front of her and rooms going off to either side. The one on the right had swinging double doors like she’d just come in through, closed so she couldn’t tell what was in there, and the other side had a huge archway revealing what Janie could only describe as a parlor or a reception room.
“Mr. Fortenberry, you have a visitor. He said you were expecting him?” an older woman who vaguely reminded Janie of someone she’d seen on the TV at the agency apartments. What was that woman’s name again? Aunt Bea.
“Thank you, Mrs. Barrett. Can you have this taken up to my bedroom?”
“Sure, I’ll get Kenny right on that.” The older woman nodded at her boss, gave Janie a polite smile then turned and left.
“In here,” her groom turned to the parlor looking room and left her to follow. Not sure what else to do, she trailed after him.
“John, it’s good to see you.” She couldn’t see his face, but something about the tone of his voice changed, making Janie wish she could. The man she would marry soon approached the other man and shook his hand.
“Good to see you too, Alex. I’m a little confused why you asked me to come out though. The message said something about getting married? I assumed it had gotten garbled somehow.” Alex, so that’s what he went by. All she’d known was the name she’d been given by the agency, Alexander Fortenberry. He hadn’t said otherwise so she’d been thinking of him as Alexander. She looked at him a moment, deciding Alex fit better than Alexander. She couldn’t help the small smile that curved her lips at the decision.
“Actually, it didn’t. I asked you to come out for just that.” Alex stepped back and looked for her. “There’s someone I want you to meet. Janie?” He held out one hand toward her and she smiled and took his hand. If this John was a friend of Alex’s she had to make him think they weren’t strangers. “John, this is Janie Hamilton, my fiancée. Janie, this is my friend John Harris. He’s the JP. I asked him to come out, so he could perform the ceremony.”
“Now, Alex. You know I’m happy to marry you, but we got to do this legal. You need a marriage license first.”
Janie remembered the paperwork Mrs. Creed had given her just before she’d boarded the plane and opened her purse. She pulled out the envelope and handed it to Alex, then watched as he opened it and gave the license to the JP.
“All taken care of,” Alex said with a smile.
“And you’ll need witnesses. Two of them.”
“Give me just a minute.” Alex darted out in to the hall where she could hear him speaking to someone, but couldn’t make out the words.
“So,” the
Justice of the Peace said to her, “where are you from?”
“Texas.” She didn’t see any reason to lie when she didn’t have to. Janie knew she sucked at lying, so it was safer to keep things as close to the truth as possible.
“How did you meet Alex?”
“Online.” She’d been thinking about that one since he’d mentioned having found out about the agency online. She’d learned that a lot of people dated online, and weird as she found that, it made sense for them to have met that way. She hadn’t cleared that answer with Alex, but she’d tell him about it later.
She was saved from having to answer any more questions by Alex stepping back into the room.
“We’ll have our witnesses in just a moment.”
“All right then, I think we have everything we need.” John looked at them both. “Going casual for this?”
“Yep. This is for us.” Alex glanced at her, but she had no objection.
The jeans she now wore cost more than anything she’d ever had on before, and the top was almost as expensive. She had nothing better to wear for the ceremony. Besides, she’d never expected to pick out a wedding dress anyway. That would have been done for her. Kind of like what she was wearing now. The agency had provided it, along with nearly everything in her suitcase. They’d told her they knew what she would need for where she was going and had provided her with the nearly packed suitcase, she’d only added a couple personal items before getting on the plane.
“Ahh. Here they are.” Alex’s voice brought her back to the present.
Janie blinked, realizing that two people had joined them. Mrs. Barrett from a few minutes earlier in the hall and a kid who didn’t look all that much younger than her. He was maybe twenty with shaggy blond hair and thick shoulders. She wondered if maybe this was the ‘Kenny’ Mrs. Barrett had mentioned.
“I was hoping the two of you would do me the honor of being the witnesses for our marriage. I didn’t realize it until John said something, but we need two,” he shook his head, “and I forgot to make other arrangements.”
Billionaire Bachelor: Alex (Diamond Bridal Agency Book 8) Page 2
