Page 47 of Bound to Him
Antoine:Yes, sir. I assume you’ll toss me in the lake if I see your husband.
I stared at the unusual sass. Was I being over the top about Noah? Eh, fuck it. So what if I was? I’d never had a husband before, and I didn’t care if it was too much.
Alton:Yep. So don’t fucking look.I don’t care if you’re straight, keep your eyes off him.
He sent nothing back and I felt like I’d had the last word, so I continued on. I wasn’t expecting to find Antoine in my office, with a very droll smile slapped on his face, standing next to Russ.
“You couldn’t have said someone was waiting for me?” I flung my arms out to my sides and noticed the tang of spunk on the air. Russ grinned, so I could only assume he’d picked up on it—and I knew he was familiar with sex funk.
“I assumed you were on your way back here, and you were.” Antoine shrugged.
“I wanted to let you know it wasn’t me.” Russ’s smile vanished. “My people would never go back on an NDA. We take our clients’ privacy seriously—”
“What happened?” I held up a hand to keep him from going on about whatever he was worried over. “I know you. Just tell me.”
“Something leaked about the wedding—”
“The Divines had a wedding announcement out.” I shrugged. “It’s not the end of the world. If that’s all—”
Russ let out a banshee-like wail and shoved his phone screen in my face. “I swear we didn’t have anything to do with it.”
I grabbed Russ’s wrist and moved the phone back enough to read:
“Billionaire Married a Gold Digger: New Husband Cheated During Engagement—New Gothenburg Mainlineexclusive!”
I scrolled through the bullshit piece of clickbait. The face of that little shit Christian Bloomberg came on the screen, and he was still in the suit he’d worn to my wedding.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, seriously?” Rage spiked through me. As the seconds ticked by and that ridiculously huge headline swirled through my brain, I started to chuckle, and that progressed to laughing until I had to wipe at my eyes.
“Oh no, it’ll be okay. If he cheated you can get an annulment!” Russ was sweet and I was glad I hadn’t told him exactly what was going on. He patted my shoulder like a champ while I continued to lose my shit, howling in laughter.
“No, no. How—how did you hear about this?”
Russ shook his head and tucked his phone away. “Tilly, who works for me, said she saw this Christian person in a bar on the east side with Neven Alexson. He’s a well-known snoop around New Gothenburg. She had her suspicions when she saw the boy she recognized from the wedding talking to Neven and kept an eye out for any unsavory articles. The second she saw this she told me.”
“Shit,” I said and finally caught my breath. I went around the desk and flopped onto my chair. “Well, I was waiting for it.” I was mad, sure, but my relief outweighed the anger by a mile.
“What do you mean?” Russ asked, and Antoine studied me like he wanted to know the answer as well.
“Have you ever had any project go off without a hitch?” I asked Russ.
He shook his head quickly. “Absolutely not.”
“Me either. So, this is good. Something finally went wrong with my hairbrained scheme, and I’m just glad this was the thing to do it. I don’t want anything to happen to Noah.” I stopped talking and trekked back through my mind to think about what I’d just said, but it was true. “Yeah.”
Russ’s brow furrowed. “You’re not mad about your husband?” He shook around his phone as if to remind me of what I’d read.
“Oh, I am, but Noah did nothing wrong. There’s going to be hell to pay, and... I have no idea what I should do publicity wise, but—” I shrugged. “—I have a publicist on staff. I’ll call him.”
Russ let out a relieved breath, and Antoine gestured toward the office door. “Mr. Bouchard is very busy at the moment with some business.”
Russ frowned and pinned me in place with a far-too-astute stare. “But you just got married. Shouldn’t you be leaving for your honeymoon? If he didn’t cheat on you, and you’re not upset with him, you have to take him on a honeymoon, Alton. It’s... cold not to do that, especially for someone like you, where money isn’t a worry.”
Closing my eyes, I fought back a sigh. “We’re doing something over the holidays.” The lie came easily to me, and Russ was all smiles as he nodded, seemingly satisfied, and left the room. But then my stomach sank. “Billionaire Marries Another Filthy-Rich Guy” might not have gotten much coverage in the media, other than a blurb my parents would’ve missed, but this seedy headline was going to be everywhere. We would have to fucking fix it.
“Damn it,” I grumped and picked up my phone, dialing the number for the farm. This was going to be a difficult conversation to have. I almost kissed the phone when the call went to the ancient answering machine.
“Mama, I got married. Don’t believe a thing you read about my husband in the papers. Uh, sorry. Love you. Bye,” I said in a rush and ended the call in nearly the same second. I stared at the phone with my heart racing and felt about ten. She was going to whoop my ass for not having her at something like this. For not involving her. For not introducing her to the man I swore holy vows and committed myself to. I carefully turned my phone off and slid it away from me on the desk like it was poisonous.
