Page 9 of Fighting Mr. Knight

On the plus side, it makes her teeth and eyes look really bright.

“My flower girl peed her pants when she tried on her dress and now it has to go to the dry-cleaner’s. Apparently, there’s only one in the area, in England, in bloody Europe that will do it in a day! We have to change the seating planagainbecause Sean’s dicky cousin is turning up but never RSVP’d. Sean keeps telling me to relax while he gets drunk on the lawn and honestly, I’m close to telling him to go fuck himself.” She says it all in one breath.

No mention of the botched tan.

“Okay.” I nod encouragingly. “We’ll sort out any minor mishaps. These are all fixable.” I’m talking out of my ass because I’ve got no clue. The furthest I progressed in the matrimony process was sending out invitations. “It’ll befine, Kate. It’s just pre-wedding jitters.”

“We’re at your service,” Nisha chips in, nodding vigorously. “That’s what we’re here for.”

Neither Nisha nor I are qualified to advise.

Kate doesn’t look convinced. She draws in a deep breath. “Sorry, I’ll start over like a normal person. Come and say hi to everyone.”

Heads turn as we stride towards the lawn. Not because Nisha and I are an exciting duo but because the conversation between families forced together has clearly dried up.

Glancing around the crowd, I feel self-conscious. I have that disorder where your brain empties names when you’re nervous. Also, there appears to be a pre-wedding dress code I wasn’t informed about, centred around trouser suits, tailored dresses and professionally blow-dried hair.

I’m wearing black leggings that have been washed so many times they are grey and balding at the knees. My hair is scraped up into a donut, which adds about two feet to my height, and I’m wearing an oversized jumper with theFriendscast on it. I expected to go to our rooms to freshen up before the meet and greets.

My gaze flits across the crowd at familiar faces—Max, Sean, Kate’s sister and maid of honour Becky, among others—and many strangers. Kate’s creepy uncle Dom eyes Nisha and me like a man on hunger strike eyes steak.

Holding court at one table is Kate’s mum, talking two octaves higher than necessary. Kate’s tanning expert cousin has attacked some of the table’s occupants who glow like they have bathed in mustard.

At the opposite table, marking her territory, Sean’s mum issurrounded by Knights and other members of Sean’s extended family.

Awkwardly, I wave at everyone.

“There’sPoppy, the little monster who decided to wait until she was in her flower girl dress to piss her pants,” Kate says through a tight smile as we approach them. “See how innocent she looks? She doesn’t realise how close she is to getting sacked.”

I follow Kate’s gaze to the animated girl dressed as a princess as she acts out a scene with a collection of sparkly ponies.Large muscular armswrap around her waist, preventing her from falling off the knee of the person she’s seated on.

Kate mutters something about Poppy being clever enough not to piss in her princess dress yet conveniently pissed in the flower girl outfit she screamed she didn’t want to wear.

My attention, however, is stolen by the savage creature directing his signature grin at Poppy. The guy holding her. The hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention like a cat ready to attack.

“Where’s the entourage?” Nisha asks in too loud a whisper.

Kate shushes her with an elbow.

“He doesn’t look like a man that belongs in an office, does he?” Nisha murmurs.

No, he does not.

I wish he was grotesque.

With his masculine frame, Jack Knight looks like he lived up a mountain with wolves all his life instead of ruling from a glass box in the sky, trampling on the little people.

I guess he built his muscles on the construction sites. Maybe muscles built from old-fashioned manual labour rather than crafted in a gym are carved sexier.

Jack Knight’s a grafter; I can’t deny him that. He worked his way up from builder’s apprentice at sixteen to property tycoon one brick at a time, or so Max’s copy of the biography says.

And I also begrudgingly can’t deny that no one could describe Jack Knight as anything other than handsome. Show-stoppingly, in fact.

But, boy, does he know it.

Dark eyes from his Italian mother match his thick, dark brown, overgrown hair, styled in a topknot. Strands fall messily over his forehead framing the scar that runs through one of his thick eyebrows.

He’s dressed even more casually than me,in a black singlet T-shirt revealing his thick biceps and a glimpse of chesttattoos,declaring zero fucks given. It’s an outfit only he could get away with.

---