CHAPTER THREE
My butt was numb from sitting, and the sun had set at least two hours before. I’d managed a shower after my very last ever shift with Butch, but I still knew I smelled like fish. The women at the New City Orphanage sprayed me with perfume, but now I smelled like chemicals and fish. It wasn’t an attractive scent, my nose still crinkling at the horrific odor floating on the air around me.
My brown eyes were no longer puffy and red from crying, but I was still in disarray. The curls framing my face were a frizzy mess, along with the rest of my hair. The late autumn wind continued to batter at my face, chapping my lips even worse than they were.
And still, I sat on my one lone suitcase.
At the end of a driveway.
Unable to make myself stand.
The man I would marry?
Oh, no problem.
It was only…Mr. Alaric Timon Wood!
He was one of the most untamable bachelors in all of New City. The sexiest man alive, in my humble opinion. He was one of the ‘kings’ of New City, rich and famous. The man owned Wood Corporation, the biggest architectural company in theentireworld. About seventy-five percent of the functional buildings on earth were designed by him.
And his friends?
They were all just as powerful as he was.
So, was I terrified?
Fuck yes, I was.
I continued to sit and stare at the mansion across the street from his mansion. I couldn’t see his from the road, but I sure as heck could see his neighbor’s. And if Mr. Wood’s home was even half as grand—which I was sure it was—then I was about to step into a world I knew nothing of.
The ins and outs of high society life?
Yeah, right.
Give me a gutting knife and a flopping fish any day over that. I would happily flay a fish than sit around someone’s living room for tea parties. Wait…
Were tea parties even a thing anymore?
Or was that only in ancient romance novels?
Goddammit. I was so in over my head.
Speaking of overhead, my eyes flew to the sky as a train’s clean, blue energy glowed in the distance. I held my breath and surveyed the transport. It was obviously an expensive one, just by the glow of the moon on the side. My eyes narrowed as it passed right over my head and onto Mr. Wood’s property.
He was either having company, or it was him.
I hoped like hell he wasn’t having a party for us. Though no other trains had flown by. Just that one. So that had to have been him.
I groaned, watching as my breath puffed white. I dropped my head down into my hands. The man was waiting for me, right on time for the twenty-four-hour guideline. I brushed my curls away from my face and shoved my hands down onto my suitcase, pushing myself to a standing position.
I cracked my back. Stretched a little more.
Grabbed my suitcase. And swallowed my terror.
It was time to meet my future husband.
* * *
Good. God.
