Page 64 of The Marriage Bid
“Massimo is looking for financing from Damien. You’re deflecting again.”
“I am not!”
“Do you love her?”
I caught Saffron out of the corner of my eye. Her laughter trilled through the air. She was listening to Clarita and nodding at whatever the other woman was saying. She must have felt my stare because she turned and waved at me. I waved back. Over the past few days, I've been thinking about not divorcing her. I enjoyed spending time with her. She was a fun hang, and, surprisingly, we had a lot in common. But did I love her?
I turned to Ivy. “It’s none of your business.”
She smirked. “You do!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ivy could be overconfident about things she knew nothing about. Just because Saff and I were finally getting along didn’t mean I loved her. Certainly not the way Damien was in love with Ivy. I could see in that man’s eyes that she was everything to him. And Ivy loved him just as much as he did her. With Saff and me, things were different. But now that she got it in her head that I was in love with her, Ivy would blabber to the family about Saffron.
“Can you not tell the guys? At least not yet.”
She gave me a look as though to say, do you think I am stupid?
“Thanks,” I said.
“That’s your issue, and I am not touching it with a ten-foot pole.”
“Good.”
The other group, the men, was behind us, and when they caught up, Ivy took Damien’s arm and left me alone. I went over to Saffron. She jumped when she felt my presence and then smiled when she saw it was me.
“What did your sister say?”
I shrugged. “She was surprised, but she seemed to be handling it well. I am not the first in my family to marry insecret. She did the same with Damien. She married him so she could gain her inheritance and so he could gain a controlling stake in the family business.”
Saffron’s eyes widened. “No way.”
“Then they fell in love, so I guess it’s all good now. Then there’s my older brother, who also got married to gain his inheritance but didn’t tell anyone until it got reported in the papers.”
“Oh! Your family is weird. What about you? Is that part of why you married me? To gain your inheritance? Besides, you know… my father…”
“Blackmailing me? Not at all. I didn’t need the money then. My eldest brother, Nolan, invested at the jump, and luckily the company got profitable in a short time that I didn’t need to dig into the trust fund. Even to pay off your father.”
“Wow. You were that successful so early.”
“It was luck. Our first client was a rich Saudi prince with deep pockets who didn’t mind paying triple the price for us to build the apartment building of his dreams. Part of me thinks it was Nolan who arranged that client for us.”
“I would have loved an older brother or an older sister. A sister especially. I’ve always dreamed of one.”
“Five brothers and a sister are not as amazing as it seems. Siblings are nosy.” I glanced at Ivy, who kept peeking at us.
“But she seems so nice!” she cried in Ivy’s defense. “I really like her patisserie.”
Saffron strayed a little away from me, and I drew her to my side.
“Tyler.” She cast her gaze at Ivy and Damien, stiffening.
“What? They know we’re together.” To emphasize my point, I knocked her gun out of her hands, letting it fall to the ground, then spun her into my arms and dragged her behind a tree close by. The rest of the party marched ahead of us, leaving us alone.I pressed her against the tree and pushed against her thighs for a deep kiss. The world disappeared as her tongue met mine. Whatever initial point I had flew out of my head as I drank in her scent. Her sweet, shy kiss made me crumble.
“Tyler…” She pushed me away, and that’s when I realized my hands had strayed to her butt, and I was practically groping her in the woods. This is why I didn’t want to kiss her. My attraction to her was a potent force I had issues reining in, and I had felt it on that wedding night of ours. And now that I had tasted her lips, I couldn’t live without feeling them against mine for longer than twenty-four hours.
“If we don’t get back to the others, they might find us naked under this tree,” Saffron said.
