Page 3 of The Sweetest Devotion

We hadn’t spoken at all since my father summoned me home to his room to tell me the news. Cain hadn’t even done the traditional asking on one knee. The morning after my father had told me the worst news of my life, there was a knock at my suite and a courier delivered the ring with a simple note from Cain reading,Yours, C. Carter.

The two men ambled off and Cain was now alone. I had his complete attention and that only heightened my sheer terror.

The closer I got to him, the more I wanted to disappear into the crowd around us.

Cain stood back, observing me knowingly and expectantly. His black eyes as cold and hollow as his presence before me.

Dark. Foreboding. Soulless. My fiancé.

I came to a timid stop in front of him, unsure whether to speak or shake hands.

Tall, handsome, with skin as dark and brown as my own, Cain was aesthetically pleasing to the eye, I wouldn’t lie, but the lack of warmth around him was startling. No, I would not touch him.

Cain peered down at me, taking me in. His face was indifferent, almost as if he couldn’t care less about this party or our engagement.

“There’s our happy couple!” A photographer jumped out of nowhere, armed with a camera to snap our photo. Journalists and bloggers were also in attendance to take note of our magical pairing. Cain was a beloved bachelor, and I was Hampton Hills’s princess, known for my fashionable influence when spotted out in LA, my last public relationship with an NFL player, and my being the daughter of one of the most successful Black men in the United States. Someone online had already dubbed our impending nuptials as “the Royal Wedding.”

Being a Nichols, it came with the territory. We were the premier family of the West Coast. We caused a spectacle everywhere we went. To the public eye, it was only right that I marry the youngest billionaire in the boys’ club. With his dashing good looks and my stunning beauty, we were a match made in a dazzling haze of mergers and acquisitions.

Cain’s arm came around me so we could pose for the camera.

I studied his hand where it rested on my hip, taking note of a single long-stemmed rose tattoo stretching the length of his hand, from his wrist to his pinky. The stem held a few thorns and the ink was done in black.

Gazing up at my fiancé, I wondered if he had any other tattoos.

The photographer snapped our photo where I smiled stiffly as my body brushed against Cain’s. We raised champagne flutes and toasted to our engagement, posed with my mother, and alone as a duo.

“Can we expect a big wedding?” a journalist from some magazine asked as soon as the photographer had stolen every smile he could get from me.

My mother was behind her, nodding at me, telling me with her eyes that everyone was counting on me.

My voice, nervous, weak, came out of me on autopilot. “Oh, I definitely am going to need ayearto plan all that I have in mind.”

“Ooh, can we expect something local, or remote?” the blonde journalist pressed further, her green eyes bouncing from me to Cain and back. “Ilovedestination weddings.”

Cain’s hand lay heavy on my hip, a boulder keeping me in place. To the journalist, I forced out another smile as I pretended to hold my finger to my lips as if I had a secret. “Wait and see.”

She bought it. They all did.

As annoying as pretending was, it saved me from the feat of facing my fiancé one-on-one. But that only lasted so long.

With the party well under way, I was finally alone with Cain and there was no escaping where his dark eyes were locked on me.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t touch me. He didn’t break that empty mask of his. “Do you like your ring?”

His voice was firm, commanding, and surprisingly warm.

“I’m sure it cost you a lot of money,” I responded.

Cain looked at my ring before meeting my gaze once more. “That’s not what I asked you.”

I swallowed. “It’s a lovely gesture, thank you.”

A muscle in his jaw ticked as he nodded, staring down at me silently. I still hadn’t answered his question, and something told me he was practicing his utmost patience just then.

A gust of cool wind cut into our tension as a figure approached Cain. A man in an ill-fitting gray suit went and leaned into Cain’s ear, whispering something I couldn’t hear. I’d seen this man a few times around Cain, one of the few men he kept close to him who did not look like the regular business type I was used to.

Cain kept his attention on me as he listened to his friend speak. And then, in a coded manner, he patted the man’s back twice before dismissing him.

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