Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 92411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
A chill melts down my spine. “Can you stop being so nonchalant about being a vampire? At least pretend to be offended.”
“I’ve heard worse.”
“You have? What’s worse?”
“Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m assuming you don’t actually think I feed on people’s blood. So why would I be offended?”
He’s unlike any man I’ve ever met. Cool. Cocky. Unreadable but kinda funny, and charming in his own way.
“You really have an answer for everything. It’s exhausting.”
“Then maybe stop trying to trip me up. Let’s get down to business. Where was I born?” He turns and heads out of the kitchen. I follow.
“Hertfordshire. Me?”
“This is my office.” He opens a door off the magnificent hallway and steps aside to let me in first. “Madison County, upstate New York. Where did we meet?”
I stand in the middle of the booklined room and spin around, taking it all in. The room is more library than office, with built-in shelving lining the walls floor to ceiling. I move toward one wall of shelves. It’s not just business books, though there are plenty of those. There’s also fiction that looks well thumbed, including a particularly worn copy of The Hotel New Hampshire—the seminal modern classic of misfits and oddities—and next to it, a huge coffee-table book simply titled Washington State. I want to be left here for a week to do nothing but investigate every corner and page of this room.
Ben moves behind me, and I spin again to take in the parts of the room I’ve not seen yet. There’s a heavy mahogany desk on one side and two large navy couches facing each other by the window. I could live in this room. Other than bathroom and kitchen access, I wouldn’t need anything else. I hadn’t exactly envisaged what Ben’s house would look like, but the warmth here is unexpected. I suppose I was expecting his home to reflect his aloofness, but instead of cold and clinical, this place is a warm blanket and a bucket of popcorn.
“I love it,” I say and glance at Ben.
I swear there’s a flicker of a smile before he lowers his head and pushes his hands into his pockets. “Where did we meet?”
“Green Park, of course. I was a tourist wanting my picture taken. Was it love at first sight for you?”
His brow furrows and he looks up, catching my gaze. “Not love, exactly, but I was intrigued.”
I try to disguise my smile. “How did you know you’d fallen in love with me and decided to ask me to be your wife?” The question wasn’t part of the packet, but it is something people ask. I remember Jed being stumped by the question when his grandfather asked. Maybe that should have been a warning sign for us both.
“The first night we had dinner, I knew it was special. I’m used to people being . . . relatively subservient. Not because I demand it,” he rushes to add. “People self-edit. But you didn’t. It caught me off guard. You saw yourself as my equal, and that shifted things for me.”
My spine tingles and I can’t help wondering how close we’re skating to the truth. I turn slightly, to check I’ve not missed anything of the room and to cover the flush of my cheeks. “And when did you decide to propose?”
“I didn’t like the fact you were going back to America so quickly. I realized I wasn’t ever going to like you going back to America.”
He sounds so earnest in his explanation that even I’m starting to believe what he’s saying. I guess people believe what they want to believe, and the idea that someone like Ben could be in love with me? That’s something I wouldn’t mind being the truth.
I turn to him. “You’re good at this game.”
His eyes search mine. For once, I’m not waiting for a witty comeback, just looking at him, enjoying him looking at me.
Ben clears his throat, then turns and heads back into the hallway. I follow. He pads upstairs, and I’m faced with his perfect ass flexing beneath his soft gray joggers. Is there a possibility this is a Melanie setup? Maybe she and my dad got together and devised a way to send me overseas, and they’ve hired the perfect man to help erase Jed from my brain.
In one of his first on-screen appearances, Daniel De Luca had a supporting role in a Sean Penn movie where the main character’s life had been turned into a disaster by his best friend because he was getting bored. I can’t think of another explanation for why I’d be in this beautiful house, with this beautiful man, getting thirty thousand dollars to pretend to be in love with him. This isn’t a hard gig.
There’s only one sticking point to my theory: Neither Melanie nor my dad has thirty grand. It can’t be them. This must be real life, but I’ve never come so close to living out my fantasies.