The Marriage Dare

by Wylder, Penny

  I ignored the insults that they were yelling at me, and ignored their laughter. I let it roll off me like I did every day at school. I was used to it. This was no different

  Monica got out of the car as I walked over, and it was the first time I remember ever seeing her nervous. But all the same, when her friends cheered her on, she smiled, flipped her hair over her shoulder, and looked at me like a bug that she was ready to squash.

  “I need my oil changed and my tires rotated,” she said.

  “You do realize that were closed, right?”

  “I know,” she said. “But I’m hoping you’ll do it anyway.”

  “I don’t have a reason to do that.”

  She looks nervous again. “Please? I was supposed to do it earlier because my dad asked me to but didn’t get around to it because they made me drive around to all these parties.”

  Only rich kids partied on a Sunday. Only people with the luxury of not having to work at all, even on the weekday, would consider going on a drinking spree the day before school. I don’t know what possibly possessed me to say what came out of my mouth next, but I did. “It’ll take me some time. I’m the only one here, everyone else has left for the day.”

  She looked incredibly relieved, and I felt my heart start to race in spite of myself. She looked beautiful that day, in a white dress, brown hair gently curling around her shoulders. Even though it had gotten me into trouble before, I couldn’t help but imagine myself leaning forward to kiss her. It was what I had always wanted to do, inexplicably. Because how could I have this kind of desire for someone so shallow? For someone who had no regard for others? But as I had discovered many times in my life, the heart wants what it wants and there’s nothing that you can do to stop it.

  “Thank you.”

  Brakes squealed from the other side of the garage, and a new car skidded to a stop. Instantly there was a guy I recognized as Monica’s boyfriend stepping out of the driver seat and calling her name. “Monica, let’s go. The next party awaits!”

  He was obviously more drunk than the rest of them. To the point where he couldn’t even pretend that he was safe to drive, but he was doing it anyway. I remember feeling a burning anger sizzling through my veins, and the desire to put him in his place. To put them all in their place.

  Monica looked at me. “I’ll be back later for the car.”

  “Hurry up, Mon!”

  Up until this point, I’d always stayed silent. It’s how I’d survived. But I couldn’t watch her get into that car and say nothing. And a smaller part of me hoped that she would say yes, and stay with me. “You don’t have to go with him.”

  Her face suddenly changed, going slack with shock. For a moment, just a moment, I thought that she was going to change her mind. But then the guy was beside her, gripping her arm with a nearly bruising force and pulling her toward the car. “Let’s go. Now.”

  I took a step forward. “She can make her own decisions. And you are way too drunk to drive, so back off.”

  The guy started to laugh, the kind of laugh that only drunk people have going for them. “Who the fuck are you, man? Just fix the goddamn car and stop talking to my girlfriend.”

  I didn’t respond to him. I only looked at Monica. “You’re welcome to stay here while I fix the car. I’ll make sure you get home.”

  She still looked shocked and surprised, and it’s the last thing I saw before I went flying. The boyfriend had come at me and I hadn’t even seen it. His intoxicated state hadn’t altered his speed at all, and he shoved me backwards into the wall of tools. I didn’t even know that until later. All I knew in that moment was pain. My head had cracked against the wall, and all I could see was red.

  I opened my eyes to Monica’s horrified face. It’s the face I remember most. All she did was stare at me. Even as her friends dragged her into the car, and pulled out so quickly that they left black tire marks on the floor, all she did was stare.

  The reason I remember so clearly was because it was the first time I had ever seen Monica Blast show her humanity.

  Eventually, after a while, I picked myself up off the floor. I had bruises for a week from flying into the wall. But I fixed the car. The entire time I was doing it, I thought about Monica. I hoped that she would be okay, and that her asshole of the boyfriend wouldn’t get in an accident and kill her. Or that the way he grabbed her arm didn’t extend to the rest of their relationship and was just because he was drunk. I remember thinking that it wasn’t any of my business. I remember being angry that it was her fault I was working so late, even though I had agreed to it. I remember being angry because of the unfairness of it all.

  But mostly I remember just hoping that she would be okay.

  I never spoke to Monica Blast again after that day. I saw her a few times at school, but it wasn’t long after that that I had to drop out of school entirely in order to make ends meet.

  If the boy in that garage had known where he would end up, and where Monica would end up, he wouldn’t have believed it. I still don’t believe it. But now she’s here, and she certainly not okay.

  The coin is still in the air about whether she will be after I’m through with her. No matter how I feel about her, there’s still a debt to pay.

  6

  Monica

  When I wake up, my memory is hazy. I remember that I was at the casino last night, but not much else. I am in a bed that is not my apartment, and the sheets that are over me probably cost more than my rent. I haven’t been poor enough to forget the feeling of thousand thread count sheets. When I look at what I’m wearing, the lingerie—a sky blue baby doll nightgown trimmed in silver lace— is equally as expensive.

  I sit up, and look around. Holy shit, where am I?

  This is one of the nicest hotel suites I’ve ever been in, and I’ve been in my fair share of the nice hotels. The carpet is plush when my feet hit the ground, and I quickly open the curtains to the morning sun. The city of Las Vegas sparkles before me, so I clearly didn’t go home. I’ve been living on the outskirts for a couple of years, because everybody needs lawyers in Las Vegas and usually they don’t have qualms about the past history of their lawyers. Unless you’re me.

  Go figure, I would run into the one person I least expected.

  With that thought, everything comes rushing back. My bad first run of poker, Daniel’s appearance, my second bad run of poker and the bet that I cannot believe I actually made, and everything that came after it. The blush that rushes up my chest and face is painful as I remember what we did. I was on my knees for him, and I liked it.

  I wish I could say that it was all the alcohol that I had, and my head is certainly pounding with a hangover. But even at my drunkest, I am never a person that does things she doesn’t want to. Everything that happened last night came from a place that I cannot explain and don’t understand.

  I didn’t see him after he left me last night, though the clothes he ordered appeared barely a half-hour after he disappeared. I looked for him, but he was nowhere to be found. This suite is huge though, and I remember feeling like I might get lost, so I just went to bed instead.

  I sit down on the bed and run my hand over the comforter. I can’t remember the last time I felt such luxury. It was truly years ago before I left my parents house for college. College was great. Granted, I’m sure my college experience was much more luxurious than other people’s, but at the time, to me, it felt like slumming it.

  And then after that is when it all started to disappear. The scandals and the lies were starting to unravel, and suddenly there just wasn’t enough to go around anymore. It’s only been the last couple of years that have been truly bad, but still, touching fabric like this brings back memories for me. I can’t even say that the memories are bittersweet. I enjoyed being wealthy. People will call me shallow for admitting it, but there are huge benefits. It’s nice to not have to worry about money, and these last few years, in financial panic, have really shown me how good I had it.

  And have it
again, apparently.

  He said he was serious, but he can’t be, really. People don’t make bets about marriages. That just doesn’t happen. Would he really have let me walk out of his casino with $2 million? Maybe he would have. But this new Daniel doesn’t seem like the kind of person that makes bets he doesn’t know he is going to win. So why would he bet the marriage at all?

  It’s all so confusing it makes my head spin.

  I remember last night he said that he would buy me clothes, but right now, I don’t see any. All I have is this nightgown, the panties I’m wearing beneath it, and the gown I wore last night which is likely still on the floor of the living room. Part of me doesn’t dare leave this room wearing this, and the rest of me is saying that I’m silly. After everything that happened last night, after being on my knees with his cock down my throat, it seems a little foolish to play the prude.

  But still, I’m hesitant. What is he going to say when he sees me? How do I face him after that? But it’s not like he doesn’t know I’m in here, and it’s not like I can just sit in here all day and hide. As if to get me off my ass, my stomach growls at that moment. I guess my body is telling me to stop being a chickenshit and leave the room.

  The room I’m in is bigger than I remember last night. It’s actually a suite, with double doors that lead into living room. I try to open one of the doors quietly, but the large door isn’t quiet. In fact, the loud clicking of the lock opening seems like it’s screaming into the silence just for me. Of course.

  If Daniel is awake, there’s no chance that he doesn’t know I’m here.

  I think that there was a dining room somewhere on the other side of the living room, and maybe a kitchen. But I don’t have to explore much, because I can smell food cooking. It smells delicious, like eggs and pancakes. All I have to do is follow my nose.

  I walk around the corner from the living room into the open dining room, and I’m proven correct—there is a huge table piled with food. Everything that I smelled along with fruit and yogurt, bacon and sausage and ham. It’s a literal feast, and my stomach growls again.

  Daniel is sitting at the head of the table, reading the paper. I didn’t realize that people even read the paper anymore, but it looks so natural for him to be doing it that I don’t doubt it’s something that he does every day. He’s dressed in just a jeans and t-shirt, but is no less sexy than he was in the suit. Just in a different way, more casual. Though I don’t doubt that feral side of him is lurking just beneath the surface. I take a moment to drink him in, examining the way the jeans hug his thighs, and the way the t-shirt exposes the perfect physique I only got to feel last night.

  He lifts a cup of coffee to his lips, and just like last night when I watched him drink the whiskey, I’m fascinated by the motion. It’s so simple and so graceful, and yet it holds that restrained power that radiates from every inch of him.

  He sees me standing in the doorway, and I’m suddenly aware of how little I’m wearing. His eyes take me in from head to toe, slowly. The feeling is almost visceral, like he’s dragging his fingertips from my scalp down the back of my neck across my shoulders and down my ribs and thighs to my toes and all the way back up. My nipples harden beneath my nightgown, and there’s no way he doesn’t see it. The fabric is far too thin to hide anything.

  He raises an eyebrow. “Good morning.”

  “Morning.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  Awkward. Insecure. Embarrassed. Utterly unsure of what you want from me. I don’t say those things out loud, though. “Okay, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry that I haven’t ordered you clothes yet,” he says. “I wasn’t sure of your sizing, and I don’t know what kind of clothes you like to wear, so I figured I’d just let you choose.”

  “From where?”

  He shrugs. “Anywhere you like. There are boutiques in the hotel— like the one I ordered from last night— that will deliver here to the suite. And you know Las Vegas is filled with stores. Most of them know who I am and will send a selection over if that’s what you want.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”

  Daniel grins at me, and impish grin that does strange things to my stomach. “Which part?”

  “You’re just going to buy me clothes?”

  He looks at me again, taking in my appearance. His eyes dark, in a way that’s familiar and arousing, but he doesn’t make a move toward me or say anything about it. “Do you have any?”

  I do. But they’re not nice clothes. I sold all the nice ones. And the ones I do have are at my apartment forty miles away. So I shake my head. “No, I guess not.”

  “Then yes,” he says. “I am buying you clothes. I can’t have my wife walking around like that. Though you can feel free to walk around here like that anytime you want.”

  I walk over to the table and sit down in a chair close enough that I feel like we can still have a conversation, but far enough away that I don’t feel that gravitational pull toward him. “So I suppose that dream I had last night where I bet that I would marry you and you won wasn’t a dream?” I know it’s not a dream, but I still have to ask anyway.

  “No, it wasn’t a dream. I have a lawyer coming here in an hour to draw up the papers.”

  “Okay.” The conversation that we had just before he left my room last night is coming back to me, and I don’t want to go over it again even though I still don’t get it.

  “I’m assuming you have your passport and other important documents at your apartment?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Honestly, there’s not much left there, but I should probably get that stuff.”

  Daniel stands and goes into the living room for a second. When he comes back, he’s holding my purse, the one that I had completely forgotten about. He holds it up. “Are your keys in here?”

  I nod.

  He reaches inside and grabs the keys and then taps out a quick message on his phone. Elsewhere in the huge suite, I hear a door open. The huge bouncer that I remember from last night, guarding both the door of the poker room and me when he left me here, enters the dining room. Devon. I flushed bright red in embarrassment, because I’m only wearing lingerie. But neither Daniel nor Devon seem concerned in the slightest. Devon barely glances in my direction. “Mr. Argent?” he asks.

  “Monica, what’s your address?” Daniel asks me as he hands Devon the keys to my apartment.

  I give it to them. There’s nothing there worth stealing, and Daniel has no reason to steal.

  “Get a crew together, and go to the apartment. Empty it of anything left of belonging to Miss Blast and have those things sent to my home. Have her important documents—passport, birth certificate, Social Security— anything like that, here within the hour.”

  “You got it,” Devon says. And then he exits the apartment without another word.

  “He’s your go-to guy?” I asked.

  Daniel nods. “He is one of them. I found it’s not good to have just one go-to guy. If you give someone that kind of power, they are likely to abuse it.”

  How true that is. I remember when I was a kid, my father employed a man named Matthew. Matthew was in charge of almost everything directly below my father. Though I haven’t had the guts to voice this opinion or ask the question, I deeply suspect that Matthew was the source of my father’s corruption. That he saw an opportunity to make more money than he had ever dreamed of and thought nothing of the consequences of the people he was hurting.

  But then again, that might just be hoping and wishing that my father isn’t as terrible of a person as the rest of the world believes him to be.

  I fill my plate with some of the amazing smelling food and eat. Daniel goes back to reading his newspaper like someone who stepped out of the men’s fashion magazine.

  So there’s going to be a lawyer here. This is actually going to happen. “Are you going to have me sign a prenuptial agreement?”

  Daniel looks up from where he’s reading. “Do you think I need to do that?”
>
  “As a lawyer, I would say yes. You’re a man who’s worth is likely in the billions of dollars. You’re marrying somebody on a whim and any divorce in the future would likely immensely reduce your net worth.”

  “And what would you say as a woman and not a lawyer?”

  “That I don’t know why you’re marrying me in the first place, so I wouldn’t even know what to put in a prenuptial agreement. Of the two of us, you have all the assets. Of the two of us, you’re the one who can choose to drop me at any time. Because of that, it is to my benefit not to sign one. In case you decide you’re done with all this. Even if the split wasn’t 50-50, I wouldn’t be back on the street.”

  He nods. “That sounds fine then. No agreement it is.”

  “You’re crazy,” I say.

  “That’s not the first time that I’ve been told that in my life. You don’t get to y position without people thinking that you’re some kind of evil genius. Even if all it was was a combination of luck and determination.”

  “You’re really going to risk your entire fortune on a marriage that you are going into because you won a hand of poker?”

  Daniel folds the newspaper and sets it on the table. “I guess luck and determination aren’t all that’s required. I am very good at reading people. And I’m very good at predicting how things will turn out. I may have bet our marriage on the hand of poker, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought it through.”

  “So you were serious when you said you’d give me a big wedding?”

  “Of course.”

  This could go so many directions. Weddings get expensive fast, and I wonder what it will take to realize that he’s in over his head. “What about Paris?”