Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 63862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
“Nice to see you again, Willa,” Harrison said, all charm.
“You too. Even if you are holding my cousin’s freedom hostage.”
It was nice to have one ally in this room full of traitors.
“Though, I think we all owe you a debt of gratitude for saving her in L.A.”
“He didn’t save me!” I squeaked.
“I’m sure Layna could have handled the situation on her own,” Harrison agreed. “But I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.”
“Did you just say ‘aw’ at that?” I grumbled at Willa.
“It was sweet,” she said, giving me an apologetic shrug.
“You’re supposed to dislike him.”
“Listen, it’s not our fault you married someone as charming as Harrison Valentine,” she said.
She wasn’t wrong.
I might have been determined to dislike him on the grounds of his refusal to divorce me. But I’d yet to find a single genuine reason to hate him as a person. And I’d been really looking.
I spent the next hour standing there listening to every freaking single one of my cousins, aunts, and uncles fall half in love with Harrison.
“Careful,” he said, reaching out to rub between my brows, “you’re going to get wrinkles frowning at me that hard.”
“Is that a deal-breaker? I could abandon my skincare. Make myself real ugly.”
“No,” Harrison said, letting out a little chuckle. “You really can’t.”
“You’re only saying that because you haven’t seen my ugly.”
“Sweetheart, I’ve seen you in a butter-covered dress, mascara running down your face, hungover, and fresh off of throwing up. Trust me, you can’t be ugly.”
We were just going to go ahead and pretend that didn’t make my heart go all fluttery.
I wasn’t going to be sucked into his charm like the rest of my family, dammit.
They weren’t the ones who woke up in Vegas married to a man who wouldn’t divorce them. They wouldn’t understand.
“Why won’t they stop liking him?” I grumbled as I went to the bar for a drink.
“It’s hard to hate someone who looks at you like that, kid,” my mom said.
“He’s not looking at me like anything.”
“No?” she asked, nodding her chin behind me.
When I glanced over my shoulder, there was Harrison glancing in my direction as he spoke to one of my uncles.
“Mom, don’t be Team Harrison on this, okay?”
“I’m always on your team. I support whatever you decide to do. I’m just curious if maybe you’re not on your own team here, that’s all.”
When it came to voices of reason when it came to relationships, I felt like my mother was maybe the best person for the job. She wasn’t a hopeless romantic like a bunch of my aunts. She was madly in love with my father, but admitted that she really didn’t intend to fall for him.
My mom was grounded, cynical, and not easily charmed.
“I don’t want to be forced into a marriage.”
“Okay,” she agreed. “I’m just saying… you’ve been to Vegas how many times over the years? I’m sure you’ve met men and enjoyed their company. And I’m sure drinks have been involved. But you’ve never woken up married before.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“I’m just curious if it might be worth it to figure out why you married Harrison.”
“Tequila, that’s why.”
“Okay. Sure. Whatever you say,” she said, patted my arm, passed me a drink, then made her way back to my father.
The drink?
A damn margarita.
“Oh, we have jokes,” I grumbled.
I reached to push it back and got another flash of a memory from that night.
Me sitting on Harrison’s lap at a lounge, a margarita in my hand.
But it was gone even as it formed.
For that split second, though, there was a moment of almost overwhelming joy.
My head whipped over toward Harrison.
Seeing something on my face, he excused himself from his current conversation, then made his way over to me.
“You alright?” he asked, coming up to me. “You look pale.”
A sigh escaped me.
“Tequila,” I said, waving to it.
“I think I’ll always associate the taste of strawberry margaritas with you,” he said, pushing it away. “You want me to leave, don’t you?”
“I want you to stop making my people fall in love with you.”
“If it makes you feel better, Willa is really trying to be cold to me.”
“One ally in the group.”
“Two of your uncles glowered at me.”
“Yeah, until they started talking to you.”
And that was the problem, wasn’t it?
He wasn’t supposed to fit in there. With my family, my people.
We came from almost comically different worlds.
Me, the daughter and niece and cousin of outlaw bikers. Him, the white-collar trust fund kid to hedge fund manager… or whatever the hell he did.
He shouldn’t have been able to fit in with them, converse easily with them, win them over.
True, maybe my family was all on their best behavior. But even at their best, they were the rough-around-the-edges sort. Not charity galas and personal drivers sorts.
But, somehow, he’d won them over.
Why couldn’t they see that he didn’t fit here?