Page 68 of An Inconvenient Marriage
Those icy-blue eyes found mine and pinned me in place as one corner of her mouth slowly lifted. “Evenyouwanted nothing to do with me.”
Shame coated my insides at how quickly I’d jumped to conclusions about her.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. I’m no better than the judgmental assholes your father surrounds himself with. For that I truly am sorry. You deserve better.”
Natalie’s smile stole my breath.
“You’re nothing like them, that’s why, when my father informed me I was to marry you, I didn’t fight it. He thought he’d finally worn me down, but actually, it was you.”
“Me?”
She nodded. “From the very first article I read about you, I had a feeling you were good. I held on to that because…” She took a deep, stuttering breath. “I need your help.”
Anything. I would give this woman any-fucking-thing she wanted as long as it wasn’t my heart. It didn’t matter how many new things she was making me feel or how much I knew she deserved the world on a damn silver platter, I couldn’t give her that.
I’d witnessed what giving your heart to a woman could do, and I wanted no part of it. Not now, not ever. So I hoped like hell she wasn’t about to ask for it.
“What kind of help?” I croaked out.
Her eyes glistened with a fresh batch of tears ready to stain her cheeks. “I don’t want to go back, Zach. I can’t. I don’t want a life where I’m not allowed to make my own decisions.”
In that moment, I knew the pleading look on her beautiful face would be my undoing. Because if she asked me to rid the world of Trent Stevens, there’d be no hesitation. Hell, I’d do it with a damn smile.
Of course, I couldn’t just come out and say it like that. “What do you need?”
Natalie’s tongue popped out and slid over her bottom lip. “I want to work.”
“You want to… work?”
With a sniffle, she wiped her tears away. “My father never let me, and that’s why I don’t have any money or savings of my own. I just want to earn enough to go to a place where he can never find me. And we have six months together… I figured that would be enough time to save up for a fresh start.”
Confusion pulled my brows together. “You didn’t inherit anything when your mother passed?” I knew her mother’s family was wealthy, and her mother must have received a decent amount and properties when Natalie's grandfather had died of a respiratory infection not long after she'd been born.
Surely the woman had made provisions for her own daughter.
But the way Natalie was shaking her head told me otherwise. “Everything went to my father. I never fully understood, but my mom wasn’t always in a right state of mind at the end.”
Sadness washed over her. So strong, I felt the churn of it in my bones.
I pushed to my feet and dragged her along with me. Once we were both standing, I wrapped my arms around her and held her to my chest. It didn’t take long for her tears to wet my shirt and her body to shake with every sob leaving it.
A vengeful fury rushed through my veins. Trent was going to pay. Not only for what he’d done to my family but for Natalie, too. He’d held her spirit captive long enough, and I was going to make sure the bastard knew I was the one to set her free right before I watched him fall to the pits of Hell where he belonged.
Holding on to that thought, I drew Natalie closer. “Shh. Don’t cry. He’ll never come near you again.”
More small sniffles filled the air when she pulled away and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for this”—she gestured to her face—“to happen.”
I was shaking my head from the moment she spoke. “Don’t even think it. You’re not the one who needs to apologize.” Stepping forward, I took her face in my hands and brushed away the remnants of her tears with the pads of my thumbs.
“He’ll never come near you again,” I repeated, accentuating every word.
She stared at me with those big blue innocent eyes for a long moment, then whispered, “That’s not everything.”
The fear in her tone filled me with dread. What the hell else could there be? Wasn’t it already bad enough that her bastard of a father tried to marry her off? What could be worse than that?
“I… I…” Shaking her head, Natalie drew away from my touch and put way too much distance between us when she moved to the doors that led to the balcony and turned her back to me. “My father’s business isn’t doing as wonderful as he’d like you to think. In fact, he’s pretty close to being bankrupt. It’s why he wanted me to marry. He wants your money, Zach.”
A rush of relief flooded my veins. This wasn’t news to me. But Natalie didn’t know that.
