Stubborn, infuriating woman.
She can buy all the clothes she wants and have all the alone time she needs to process, because at the end of the day, she's still my wife. Still wearing my ring. Still bound to me for the next three hundred and sixty-four days, and by the end of those days, she won't want to leave. I hear the suite door open and close. She's gone.
Go ahead and run, sweetheart. Shop until dawn if you need to. You'll still come back to me.
CHAPTER FIVE
ASHA
The Spanish sunrise is too beautiful for how I feel. I've been awake for an hour, maybe more, watching the light creep across the marble floors of this obscenely expensive hotel suite. My neck hurts, my back hurts, and the decorative throw blanket I used did absolutely nothing to counter the chill from the air conditioning. I slept like crap.
The past forty-eight hours have been a blur. I'm married, but for the first time in my life, I feel truly alone. I chose to marry my enemy, to lie to my friends, to go to war with my father. Alone has been my default since boarding school. Even the fakest of friends were still friends, someone to sit with, who needed me, even if it was for their own gain. I knew I had someone if I wanted to play the game.
Now, I have Trigger, my new husband, a new game, but the problem is I don't know if I can win this one. The way he looked at me during our vows. The way his hand was steady when he slid a ring onto my finger while mine trembled. The way he acts like this marriage is real. That's what terrifies me most.
He's not treating this like a business arrangement. Not really. Sure, he went along with all my terms, agreed to everything I demanded: separate quarters, professional boundaries, one year and done. But he doesn't act like a man who's planning to walk away in three hundred and sixty-four days. He acts like a man who's already decided I'm his.
The confidence in his voice last night when he said "you're my wife" like it was a fact of nature, not a legal technicality. The way he tried to insist we share the bed, not out of desire, but out of this possessive courtesy. Like, of course his wife wouldn't sleep on a couch. It was as though the very idea was offensive to him. Then there was the way he called the concierge, taking my request for space and bending it to his will while somehow still giving me what I wanted.This is me meeting you halfway.
I clench my fists, and my nails dig into my skin, the pinch of pain pushing out the thoughts that keep coming back to him. This can't happen. I can't let it. I have a plan. Get my land back, honor my mother's memory, fulfill the contract, and walk away. Letting him in or lettinganyonein, for that matter, isn't part of that plan. Because people let you down; they don’t stay. And even if they did, I have no room for anything else.
"Asha, we need to be on the road by—" Trigger's words die the second he sees me standing in front of the window. I see the way his eyes trail over my body, hear the subtle stutter in the intake of his next breath, and my heart skips a beat.This can't happen.
"You better stop looking at me as though you like what you see," I snap before dropping his gaze and cutting across the room to the kitchen. "Unless this outfit isn't suitable for today's meeting, I'm ready to go."
"Trust me, sweetheart, if I liked what I saw, you'd know it," he tosses back, walking toward the front door. Opening it, heholds it with his foot. "Your outfit is acceptable. Let's go before you ruin it by speaking again."
I grind my teeth. He truly knows how to get under my skin, but this side of him I can deal with. This side allows me to keep my walls intact.
Pausing in front of him, I say, "If you don't want me to speak, you'd better caffeinate me into submission."
Something dangerous flashes in his eyes. He bites the corner of his mouth, barely suppressing a smirk. "Submission. Noted." He leans in until I can feel his breath. "When I want you silent, I won't need coffee to do it."
I force myself to keep walking, ignoring the heat creeping up my neck. I hate how my skin feels too tight, how aware I am of him beside me. We're supposed to be playing the perfect couple, but this tension humming between us feels dangerously real. And that terrifies me more than anything he could actually say.
"We should probably talk about our story," I say, breaking the silence as we sit in traffic in the back of a town car.
"Our story?" he questions, not bothering to look up from his phone.
Of course he's not taking this seriously. "Yeah, our story... If you think these people aren't going to ask us casual questions about how we met, over lunch and as we tour their ranch, you're not as smart as I thought you might be."
"We already have a story. No need to change it," he states, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
"Enlighten me, because I'm not sure why we actually went through with getting married if it was to come all this way and tell them we got married to seal the deal."
That gets his attention. Finally. He shifts slightly, and I can feel his gaze on me even though I'm staring straight ahead at the traffic.
"It's the same lie we already committed to telling our family. Star-crossed lovers, two kids who fell in love before they knew the meaning of the word, torn apart by circumstance, brought back together by fate," he recites.
Star-crossed lovers.The words make something twist uncomfortably in my chest. I hate how easily he says it, like it means nothing. Likewemean nothing. Which we don't. Obviously. This is business.So why does it bother me?
"Okay…" I draw out the word frustrated, feeling like I'm walking into this business meeting that he's expecting me to help him land blind. "Who are we meeting and why did we have to come to Spain for it?"
He puts his phone in his pocket, finally sensing I'm not going to let this go. "We are here to meet with Arora Heritage. They currently only operate in Spain. I'm looking to partner with them and expand their reach in the US."
"Why would you want to partner and split profit? Hale Ranch is already international."
"I need support. Bull breeding is new territory for me. I'm sure I'm ahead on the curve, considering Hale Ranch is an elite horse breeder, but?—"
