Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99700 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99700 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
“There is no catch. Well, I mean, obviously, there are, you know, things we would need to iron out.”
“Such as?”
“Getting to know each other. This has to be convincing. My mum is really good at sniffing out lies. We have to have some ‘getting to know each other’ dates, so we can stand up to any sort of questioning.”
“That makes sense,” he said. “What else?”
“We would have to go through all of the wedding planning together. Decor, cakes, engagement parties, the whole thing.”
“OK. What then? We fake a relationship, convince your family, what then?”
“Then we get married,” she said, watching something flash across his eyes, but it was gone too quickly to pin down just what it had been. “For a set period of time. A year seems … fair. Long enough to convince my family we gave it a real chance. Short enough that it doesn’t feel like we’re losing a chunk of our lives.”
To her utter amazement, Victor just nodded at that. He wasn’t laughing in her face. Or, worse yet, running out of there while telling her how bizarre she was.
“But how long would the engagement charade go on beforehand?”
“That’s probably the best, or worst – depending on how you look at it – part,” Pandora told him. “My birthday is in three months. I have to be married before then.”
“How are you going to convince your parents that you went from single to ready to be married in such a short period of time, though?”
“Well, they’re sort of … romantics,” she said. “They got engaged on their first date.” She left out the fact that they’d stayed engaged for fifty years before they’d finally made things official. And that they’d needed to postpone the wedding because the witch trials had been sweeping through Europe and it had been too risky to have so many vampires and succubi gather in one place at one time.
“My parents are … less so,” Victor said. “They sort of run their marriage like a business,” he added, the distaste clear in his voice.
There she was, asking him to do the same thing.
“I understand if that is not something you want.”
“But it’s not a real marriage. It’s just, like you said, an arrangement.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Though I’ll be honest and say I didn’t consider the fact that you would also need to lie to your family and friends. I can see that being a dealbreaker.”
“It’s really just my mum and dad,” he told her. “We don’t have much family. And my best friend. That’s it. It wouldn’t be that bad.”
He seemed to genuinely be considering it.
Pandora felt hope surge but tried to tell herself not to let it run away with her.
Of course she would prefer to be fake-dating Victor. If he decided this wasn’t for him, though, she was going to have to be OK with it being someone else.
“I … er … I have a lot of family,” Pandora said. “Just wanted to give you all of the facts. Half a dozen aunts and uncles. Even more cousins and distant relations. And most of them will likely be attending wedding festivities.”
“Consider me forewarned,” Victor said, though Pandora thought he seemed visibly less comfortable compared to a few moments ago.
He didn’t exactly strike her as a people person. Which was fine. She was usually talkative enough for two. Besides, it wasn’t like he would be around her family constantly. In fact, it was in everyone’s best interest if they interacted as little as possible.
She would just have to claim that Victor was very busy with his studies, if her family kept wanting to have him over.
“If I agree, how would we go about this?” Victor asked. “I feel like things need to be as official as possible, when we are both going to be spending a year faking this.”
“I think it’s probably smart if we draft up a document and sign it. I don’t know if that is legally binding or anything if we don’t go to a lawyer, but it’s better than nothing. I mean, we could totally go to a lawyer, I guess. I was just kind of worried about this, you know, getting out, and my parents maybe hearing—”
“An informal contract will be fine,” Victor cut her off. “What would that document entail?”
“The exact parameters of the engagement. One-year commitment from the day we are married. What is expected: wedding festivities, living together after the wedding to really sell it, then the dissolution of the marriage and my giving you half of my inheritance.”
“I wouldn’t be chuffed taking half of it,” Victor said. If possible, she just fell a teensy bit harder for him. He didn’t even know how much she would be getting and, therefore, how much he was forfeiting. He didn’t care. He just wanted things to be fair.