Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Ugh, to say I’m worried is weak sauce. This is going to start out tepid and heat up into the hottest of hot messes.
“Does your silence mean you’re not saying no?”
I sigh exasperatedly. “How can I?”
“That’s right.” Mika’s grin is absolutely entering into shit-eating territory. She knows I’d do anything for her the same way she’d risk life and limb for me. We’re best friends. I can’t just leave her alone in this. “You can’t.”
Chapter five
Rowleigh
Idon’t know why I agreed to this.
No, I suppose that’s not true.
It was because Mika, with tears shimmering in her eyes in all her goth queen glory, begged me to do this right if I couldn’t be swayed from doing it. Despite her professing to reject most social norms, Mika is a romantic at heart. She wants to believe this can all work out for me. That I’ll have one of those marriages on paper that ends up turning into something more, where we both fall madly in love with each other.
But that’s not going to happen, mainly because Geneiva has already found her person. She’s madly in love with him, and he’s madly in love with the mob. They might appear to be a strange match, but the one time I met and talked to her in person, I could tell she believed her feelings were the real deal.
I’m walking into a quaint little brick building on a busy touristy street simply because my daughter asked me to go for coffee earlier. She’s never done that before. It’s amazing that I have any sort of relationship with her at all. I’ve tried over the years and been stonewalled. My ex-wife convinced me that my being around wasn’t good for Mika because if I couldn’t be there properly, I shouldn’t be there at all.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes at the glamourous, over-the-top wedding dress in the far window. It’s sparkly, and it glitters as the sun hits the crystals. The other windows all boast decor and photographs of destination places, elegant tables, flower-strewn arches, and a happy-looking couple clutching each other and smiling on a beach.
Their smiles are so bleached, and their pose is so awkward that I have to believe it’s staged. They’re probably little more than hired models. Is anything in this place real?
It looks small from the outside, but inside, the open layout gives the illusion of more space. The huge windows let in good natural light, spilling over the displays of faux wedding cakes in the corner, the gold gilt frames on the gallery wall displaying more venues, enchanted forests, rocky mountain escapes, and happy couples. The settee and chairs are antique replicas, but with their red velvet upholstery, golden carved legs, and sweeping backs, they’re impressive enough. Glitz and glamour, the building screams, but trust us not to fuck up your low-key weddings too.
A bank of glassed-in offices line the far side.
There’s no one currently behind the front desk with the stone façade creeping halfway up and the backlit mood lighting behind it. I sweep my eyes around, feeling distinctly as though I’m stepping into a trap, though I can’t say why.
Right. Marriage of convenience. I did this to myself.
Mika begged me not to go through with it. My daughter, whom my ex-wife shielded from me, the girl who grew into a teenager and was too busy for me no matter how badly I wanted to be there, and the woman I have no idea how to relate to. She had coffee with me and cut through all the years and bullshit and straight up begged me to reconsider.
When I couldn’t do that, she swallowed her devastation and her tears and sent me a link to this place, encouraging me to plan a wedding I could be proud of because I deserved the best.
Mika wrote under the link that this place works magic and that I needed some. If this place were actually located in a cave deep in the bowels of the earth and inhabited by six-foot spiders that I’d have to lovingly caress eight times a piece, I would have agreed, just because Mika asked.
Maybe the place is magic because I get an odd pull in my chest. A feeling that something monumental is going to happen.
When I turn my head to locate the source of the discomfort, I lock eyes with her through the glass of her office.
The piano goddess.
Goosebumps break out on my arms, the hair on the back of my neck stands up, and my pulse skyrockets into something I can’t calm because I have no breath left to try and regulate. Whatever tangled strings wrapped around us six days ago now feel like they’ve arranged themselves around my throat, and they’re cutting off my air supply.
It’s not that crazy that we should meet again. She did say she was a wedding planner.