Page 155 of Filthy Promises

His eyes snap back to me. “It’s not safe. Not for you. Certainly not for the baby.”

“So you’ve said. Multiple times.”

He finally sits, perching on the edge of my couch like he’s afraid it might contaminate him. His face shifts, that mask of control slipping just enough to show me something anguished underneath.

“We need to talk about what happens next,” he says.

“Yes, we do.” I wrap my arms around myself. “Starting with your engagement to Anastasia.”

“The arrangement with Anastasia was never what you thought,” he replies. “It was meant to be a marriage of convenience. A business arrangement that would satisfy my father’s conditions for my inheritance.”

“So romantic,” I mutter. “Is Hallmark aware? Have you informed Nicholas Sparks?”

“We both had an understanding,” he continues, ignoring my sarcasm. “She has someone else, too. Someone her family wouldn’t approve of.”

I stare at him, trying to process this information. “So you were just going to… what? Marry her on paper but keep sleeping with me on the side? Do I have that right?”

The silence that follows tells me everything I need to know. Everything I’ve asked sarcastically again and again but been afraid to actually learn the answer to.

“Wow,” I whisper into the silence as a fresh wave of hurt crashes over me. “I was right all along. I was just going to be your dirty little secret.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like, Vince? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks exactly like that. You get the suitable wife from the right family, and I get… what? Scraps of your time in dingy hotel rooms? Fuck Hallmark and Nick Sparks; someone get Shakespeare on the phone. I’ve got something great for him.”

“Plans change,” he says firmly. “The baby changes everything.”

“The baby doesn’t change anything. I told you I haven’t decided?—”

“Marry me.”

For a moment, I actually wonder if I’m hallucinating.

“… What?” I manage to croak out.

“Marry me,” he repeats, leaning forward until his face is all I can see. “You’re carrying my child. It’s the logical solution.”

Logical solution. Not exactly the proposal every girl dreams of.

“Are you—” I sputter. “—are you seriously proposing to me right now? Likethis?”

“Yes.”

“In my crappy apartment, while I’m still wearing my vomit clothes, with absolutely no hint of actual feeling beyond ‘It’s the logical solution’?”

His brow furrows. “The setting is irrelevant. The practical considerations?—”

“Thesettingis not irrelevant!” I explode, jumping to my feet. “And neither are feelings, Vince! God, could you be any more… more…?”

“More what?” he asks, rising to match me.

“Moretransactional!” I throw my hands up in exasperation. “Do you even hear yourself? Christ, am I going insane?!”

“This is about more than just us, Rowan,” he says, his voice taking on that edge of impatience again. “This is about our child. About security and giving that baby everything it deserves.”

“Including a loveless marriage?”

“Who said anything about love?” His face is a carefully controlled mask now. “This is about practicality. We have to do the right thing.”

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