“Summer,” he snapped. “We have ten minutes and you look—” He made a tsking sound. He gripped the sides of my face and smoothed his thumbs under my eyes. The smeared mascara. “You’re a mess.”
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.
He scowled and tried to rub the black off his thumbs with his fingers. “You know what I mean.” He closed his eyes and seemed to collect himself. “You’re beautiful, but I know you want to be radiant on your wedding day.”
He did that a lot, didn’t he? Reframed a situation to be about what I wanted so I’d look foolish if I disagreed. He was saying whathewanted. He got me to do whathewanted.
I lifted my chin. “I wanted a summer wedding.”
He got a dumbfounded expression. “Okay? You’re telling me now?”
“I told you before. I wanted to wait.” I was dancing around the topic and that was unlike me. Summer Kerrigan did not pussyfoot. “I’m not going through with the wedding.” I blew out a hard breath. There. I’d done it. A spark of pride lit in my chest.
He barked out a laugh. “Good one. How did you know I was getting tense and that I needed to lighten up?” His eyes twinkled, but there was an aura around him, an accumulation of ominous energy.
The feeling wasn’t new. I usually acquiesced when I sensed he was displeased. Boyd was a catch—on paper. In person, I was no longer sure. “I’m not kidding, Boyd. I don’t want to get married right now.” I squared my shoulders. I wasn’t just canceling a wedding. The last fewminutes had been more than enlightening. I was ending the whole thing. “I don’t want to marry you.”
His features went deathly still and that vibe grew stifling. I didn’t see him move his arm until the slap rang through the hallway. My head snapped to the side, but even then, I needed an extra second to figure out why.
He’dslappedme. I put my hand to my face. Stinging heat spread through my cheek, and he crowded close.
“We’re not playing this game today,” he said in a low, threatening voice.
“You hit me.”
“That was not a hit. Now, go back to your room. Clean that shit off your face and don’t come out until you’re my gorgeous bride.”
Thoughts tumbled through my head. He was pressing me against the wall and looming over me. Menace dripped from his voice while he talked to me like I was a child. Like I was a lifelike doll that was his to position the way he wanted.
I’d been letting him do just that all this time.
Humiliation spread through my body where shock had just been. How had I not seen it?
“You’re not embarrassing me like this.” He snapped the lapels of his tux jacket. “I’ll buy some extra time while you get presentable.”
A shard of steel lined my spine. “I’m in a wedding dress with pretty ringlets cascading from my head like an icy waterfall. Isn’t that presentable enough for you?”
He shoved my shoulders and the back of my head thunked against the wall. “I’ll deal with that mouth tonight.”
“I don’t want what you have planned for it.”
He pulled his arm back and too late I saw the fistaiming for my gut. My lungs turned to ice. I couldn’t breathe.
Then, he was yanked away from me and slammed into the wall across from me. A pair of wide, familiar shoulders blocked my vision, longish dark brown hair with a slight curl touching the collar. The curved wooden handle of a cane stuck out from between the men, horizontal to the floor.
Boyd was pinned to the wall by a cane.
I straightened. He’d almost punched me, and I had cowered.
I had cowered in front of the man I was supposed to marry. The man who had just slapped me. How could I have not seen Boyd for what he was? His parents were awful. Why’d I think he’d be different?
“You keep your goddamn hands off her,” the new arrival snarled in a deep voice that wiped away cobwebs from memories I’d rather forget forever.
It couldn’t be him.
I’d invited him because Mama had put his and his parents’ names on the list, and I’d been too busy to protest.
I crept around to see his face. Boyd was struggling, but he was no match for the man with the cane who had his knee to Boyd’s groin. One swift shift upward, and Boyd would be swallowing his balls.
