Page 47 of Mating of Convenience
Ishould have known that my grandma’s sudden generosity wouldn’t end with the trip to Paris. I never could have expected that the old hag would fetch me and my new husband from the airport, though. Sitting in the back of her car with Nathan felt surreal. Before this moment, I couldn’t even have told you what kind of car my grandma owned. Now I knew it was a black Mercedes-Benz and the driver she hired looked almost fancier than the car itself.
“Damn, your grandmareallyhas money,” Nathan muttered under his breath, lightly dragging his fingertips over the leather of the car seats.
I shrugged. He wasn’t wrong. “That’s why we’re married, remember?”
Nathan gave me an odd look that I didn’t know how to interpret. “And here I thought you married me because you just can’t live without me.” He tried to make it sound like a joke, but there was a definite edge to his words.
Right. If we were going to be a couple again, I should probably stop taking all of this so lightly. Nathan was an alpha, but he didn’t have the sort of inflated ego so many other alphas had. If I wanted him to believe that he mattered to me, I was going to have to show him. Somehow. For now, all I could do was reach out and take his hand in my own. “You know why I married you and no one else,” I said with emphasis.
Nathan looked at me and then away again as a faint blush colored his cheeks. I got the feelings that he might have said something if we hadn’t been sitting in the back of my grandma’s car. Honestly, I couldn’t wait to get out of there and be alone with my alpha again. My silly alpha who needed some reassurance.
I got my wish a little sooner than expected. The car stopped shortly after we’d entered Oceanport, but when I looked outside the window, we were neither at my grandma’s place, nor at Nathan’s place--where I’d asked my grandma to take us.
We were in the driveway of a two-story house I’d never been to before. It was a cute house with a well-manicured lawn and a spacious porch. I had no idea who lived there, but looking at the generic garden gnomes sitting in front of the white picket fence, I was convinced whoever it was, they were probably the most boring people in all of Oceanport.
“Why are we stopping here?” I asked my grandmother.
My grandmother turned to me with a beatific smile. “Because you live here.”
“What?” Both Nathan and I stared at her in disbelief.
“Did I forget to mention that I bought you a house?”
I blinked. Had this old hag seriously bought us a house without even consulting us?
“C’mon now,” she said before we could recover from our shock. “Get out of the car and take a look at your new home.”
When I didn’t move, Nathan squeezed my hand. “We might as well,” he said softly. “It’s not every day someone buys you a house.”
He was right about that. I took a deep breath, forced a smile on my face, and got out of the car, pointedly not looking at the white picket fence. Seriously, how cliché could you get? Just a few weeks ago, I was making a living tattooing people in the heart of the city, and now I was supposed to settle down in a house with a fucking white picket fence?
Was this a joke?
Pinpricks erupted at the back of my head as tendrils of panic started to stretch out under my skin, weaving around my lungs. The last time I’d felt like this was when...
When I ruined everything.
Closing my eyes, I made myself focus on my breathing. I wasnotgoing to freak again.
I would have to call Jared and tell him that my move to Oceanport was going to be a little more permanent than I’d thought, and I’d have to get the rest of my things, but…
But it was going to be fine.
I was going to be with Nathan.
And as if Nathan could tell what I was going through, he was by my side when I opened my eyes again. I sensed him before I saw him. The comforting warmth of his body. His sweet scent, so unlike any other alpha’s. But he didn’t just smell sweet. He smelled likehome, and I hadn’t felt home anywhere in a long time.
Being with Nathan was better than being in the city by myself, wasn’t it?
“You okay?” Nathan asked, laying an arm around my shoulders.
“Yeah, I’m good.” I exhaled. “I guess we should go check out our new house, huh? I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a heart-shaped Jacuzzi.”
“Seriously?”
I shot Nathan a grin. “You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that thing in the hotel. I was there when you--“
Nathan clamped a hand over my mouth. “You don’t have to finish that sentence,” he said, glancing at my grandmonster who was waiting by the front door of the house, easily within earshot.
