Page 33 of The Marriage Bid
“Thanks.” He slid down in his seat and straightened his legs, widening them and boxing mine in his. “Now I can fully move on to actually finding someone worthy of being my wife.”
My heart clenched. I don’t know why I cared that he wanted to get married. “I feel sorry for the unlucky woman. She’s going to have to contend with a cheater.”
He frowned as though I had said something offensive. “What makes you say that?”
“You cheated on me, didn’t you?”
“Come on. That hardly counts. Don’t tell me you kept yourself for me all these years?”
I didn’t, but I didn’t sleep with as many men as he did women. “It still counts as adultery in a court of law.”
“Oh, my God.” He rubbed his chin with a smug grin I wanted to slap off his face. “You are jealous, aren’t you?”
“No! No, I am not. Just stating facts, that’s all.”
“Regardless, when I finally do it for real, believe me, I will be loyal to her.” He was telling the truth.
“Interesting. Do you have any candidates willing to be shackled to you?”
“Yes, actually.”
Another twist in the gut. “I feel sorry for her. Or them.”
“Why?”
I shrugged as casually as I could. “Someone only thinking of me as a candidate for marriage and not a person they’ve fallen in love with. That’s not a marriage I want to be in.”
“Isn’t that what you did with me?”
This again. “That was my father, not me. Don’t you want to be with a woman you love and who loves you back? Shouldn’t you be looking for love?”
He scoffed, folding his hands in his lap. “I didn’t take you for a romantic.”
“I just think you’d have a more successful marriage if you looked for that instead of someone who ticked your boxes.”
“Tell that to the fifty percent divorce rate.”
I never took Tyler to be that much of a cynic, but I guess it made sense. He has never shown much emotion beyond the little quips and snarks he liked to throw around. And then there was the odd no-kissing rule. He had refused to kiss me during our most intimate moments. It was odd the first time; now that he did it again, it was clear it was a rule. Or maybe it was just me he didn’t want to kiss. The evil woman who had forced him into a union and kept what did he call it? ‘Sword of Damocles’ over his head.
“So what are you looking for in a woman?”
“Why? Do you want to put yourself as a candidate?”
I scoffed. “I know I don’t qualify, but I have had enough experience with you never to want to apply.”
“Trust me, you know nothing about me.” He sounded a bit harsher than I expected him to.
“Never claimed to. But I do wonder what it is exactly you’re looking for if it’s not love.”
“A woman who’s smart, sophisticated, and can host a dinner with, I don’t know, the ambassador of France without freaking out.”
“Of course you would want a woman who went to finishing school.”
“Not really, but definitely one with a college education.”
I assume the college in question was not the Fashion Institute. “Then why did you date all those models and actresses if that’s what you really look for in a woman?”
“How obsessed are you with me, really? You know my dating history that much?”
