Page 94 of Tail, Dark and Handsome: Celestial Mates
No way. She was over Tomas. Done. Maybe she still had some lingering anger, but the man saddled her with a huge amount of debt and ran off with her maid of honor. It’d be weird if she didn’t feel some sort of way about it, if she was all peace, rainbows, and harmony. She wasn’t her mother.
Marigold pounded her hand against the steering wheel, wanting to scream. Her neck hurt from where the necklace snapped. She wondered if it would leave a bruise.
When Chase grabbed her, she hadn’t been frightened, but she didn’t know him. She supposed that didn’t matter. Anyone was capable of violence. She took a self-defense course as part of getting her pilot’s license. Some people assumed that if they hired a pilot, they got all access.All access. Ships were isolated, and journeys could be long. Wasn’t that what she thought Winter expected when he initially offered her a job?
Mari might have worked with her mother and catered to a touchy-feely, positive energy crowd, but she picked up the odd job occasionally. Rarely she encountered the entitled customer who expected more than the job description. Even more rarely did those customers get forceful. An elbow jab and a foot stomp had always been enough to make her point and stop wandering hands.
She didn’t expect that from her husband’s family, and she sure as the stars did not expect her husband to turn that around on her. Like it had been her fault. Like she had asked for it.
If what Chase had hinted at had been correct, then Winter was projecting his issues with the dearly departed Rebel onto her, which was what really upset her. Mari couldn’t defend herself against another woman’s faults.
She didn’t even know.
She had doubts. There were so many things Winter refused to discuss. He kept secrets the way some people collected bad habits, hoarding them like a dragon.
Okay, that made no sense but she was upset. She felt like a dragon, wanting to stomp around and breathe fire.
The point was that they got together fast, probably too fast. They both had baggage. Like, so much baggage. They couldn’t go forward together if one of them was refusing to admit to the mountain of emotional baggage and claimed he had only one little carry-on.
It might be smarter to admit to making a mistake and leaving, but she felt tangled up in Winter’s life. She signed a contract to work for a year. He paid off Nox and got him off her back. Sleeping with him had been a mistake, and then she went and married him, because Mari made the best choices.
Fuck.
The speakers chirped with an incoming call. Joseph. She hesitated to answer. Keyed up from their argument, she wanted to vent to her brother, but she also didn’t want to hear his smug I-told-you-so voice.
“Joe,” she said, working to keep her voice from breaking.
“Were you even going to tell me?” Joseph’s voice echoed through the vehicle’s speakers.
Gritting her teeth, Mari eased down the volume. She was not in the mood. Maybe she could play dumb and delay.
“Tell you what?” she asked sweetly.
“You know what, Mari,” he said, not buying the act.
Oh, sugar.
“Fine. Fine,” she groaned, because nothing was easy today. “So it’s all over the media?” Then, just to be certain because miscommunications happened, “You mean the engagement, right?”
“Oh my stars, Sunshower Marigold, what else have you done?”
“Nothing! Nothing.” Just promised herself to a reclusive tech tycoon who may or may not have murdered his wife and kept a secret locked room and he totally flipped his lid because his creepy cousin sort of hit on her. Granted, Chase was a jerk, but still. Winter acted like she betrayed him when she had been the victim. She needed his support, not his moody grumpiness.
Just thinking about her last conversation with Winter sent her blood pressure sky high.
“Are you okay?” Joseph asked.
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Wow, that was so convincing.”
“Just feeling grumpy today.” She kept her words vague, hoping that her brother would think her moodiness hormonal-based and drop it. She wanted more time to process what actually happened with Winter before she commemorated with her brother. His mood went from warm to savagely cool quick enough to give her whiplash.
Joseph huffed, the speakers blowing static for a second. “Eat some chocolate or something. And Mom’s not happy with you either.”
“But her star chart said I’d be getting married. You’d think she’d be over the moon about being right.” Mari relaxed her grip on the steering wheel. She needed to keep her voice level.
“Don’t joke. You don’t know this guy.”
