Page 11 of Her Ex's Father
She stares at me, and I see the crack in her mask, just a flicker of surprise behind the veneer of composure. For a moment I’m certain she’ll walk away. She has every right.
But then?—
She flattens her hand over her belly like she’s steadying herself from the inside out.
“Where’s the ring?” she asks.
I nearly smile. Instead, I turn to the dumbfounded ring bearer—a distant cousin of hers, I think—and hold out my hand. The boy places the box in my palm as though handing over live explosives.
I open it, lift the ring, and without kneeling, without ceremony, I take Madeline’s left hand.
“If you agree to this,” I murmur low enough that only she can hear, “you’ll become Mrs. Benedict Bronson.Mywife. Not his.”
She swallows, her eyes searching mine. For a moment I’m convinced she’ll bolt—why wouldn’t she? Maddie Clarke was probably already an unwilling participant, and now this—marrying a man almost twice her age. No time to consider the consequences.
“Yes,” she murmurs, and the soft, single word is like a punch to the gut. I stare at her until she repeats: “Yes. Okay. I’ll be your wife.”
There’s something determined, solid, that I haven’t seen before in her eyes. She holds out her hand. I slide the ring onto her finger.
It fits perfectly.
“I accept,” Madeline says loud and clear, voice like the pop of a champagne cork—elegant, inevitable. The priest looks back and forth between us but seems to relax; he’ll accept this too, then.
My chest tightens.
Good girl,I think. And I shouldn’t. I really shouldn’t.
A flicker of heat licks at my gut, shame and desire twisted together like the vines of old grapes.
The priest is talking, words like a well-worn path as he initiates the ceremony. It barely registers. I’m having a hard time looking away from Madeline. She’s beautiful, and strong, and nineteen years younger than me.
I know because I vetted her when Derrick was just sixteen. I sat at the dining room table in my home, only miles away from here, and decided that we’d fit her into our future like the last piece of a puzzle.
But I never expected it to be like this.
“Do you, Benedict Richard Bronson, take Madeline Laurel Clarke to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I do.”
Maddie meets my gaze again. There’s a wall there, though, one I can’t see past; she has her parents’ cold strength, or at least she’s learned how to appear to. I wonder if behind that wall she’s regretting this.
“And do you, Madeline Laurel Clarke, take Benedict Richard Bronson?—”
“I do,” she says, cutting cleanly across him.
We don’t have vows. This isn’t a love story. This isa merger.
Georgiana is rolling in her grave.
When the priest says, “You may kiss the bride,” the air in the room turns electric. The temperature spikes.
I cup her face in my hand, my thumb brushing her jaw as I lower my mouth to hers.
Just a kiss, I tell myself.
One kiss.
But it’s a mistake.
