I scowl at him. “If I’m marrying a man, I’d like to at least know what his last name is.” After all, I’m probably going to have to change mine after we’re married. The psycho stranger I’m waiting to be wed to is probably old-fashioned like that. Just my luck.
You know what else is old-fashioned?my inner psycho pipes up.Murdering your husband. May I recommend, if you don’t want to go the guns-blazing route, something more subtle… like poison?
Oh, poison might work, I think.After all, doesn’t cyanide taste like almonds? I can probably work with that. Wait, no, what am I thinking? I can’t kill someone. I am not a killer!Damn it. I need to get a handle on Mean Daisy; she’s a sneaky bitch.
Hearing that, my inner psycho grins at me and gives me more of her finger guns. Crazy bitch.
Otello seems to take a moment to consider my earlier words, and I force myself to focus on him. With a nod, Otello straightens his shoulders. “Giulio La Rosa,” he murmurs, answering me.
La Rosa? That’s not such a bad name. Daisy La Rosa. Hmmmm. All the flowers, it appears.Geez, and he had a problem with my name.
The doors open before I can voice a response, and all of the air I’d been struggling to hold in evaporates. Otello grips my arm as the blood in my face rushes away and my stomach drops out from under me. It’s only by the grace of Otello—playing the part of both guide and guard—that I manage to take those first steps up the aisle as the pianist begins to play.
One foot in front of the other, I can’t help but look around as several men and women on either side of the aisle stand. The music rings through my head, getting louder and louder, or maybe that dull, drumming beat is just my heart. That makes sense. Either way, they sound the same.
Otello gets me to the end of the aisle without me falling on my face, and I could kiss the man—even if he’s not on my side, this wouldn’t have been any easier if I’d made an ass of myself and tripped on the way to the death of my single life. Not that it’s been a spectacular single life, but I’d at least have liked to be able to choose my own husband.
Beggars can’t be choosers, Daisy, I can hear Michelle murmur in my ear. Of course my best friend’s voice would pop up at this moment. Then again, she’s the reason I’m in this mess. It should be her standing here in an itchy, uncomfortably—not to mention,ugly—wedding dress.
To be fair, though, marrying this guy would probably be better than her current tool of a boyfriend. How she keeps managing to find reason after stupid reason to stay with a loser who rarely has a job and never takes her on dates or even remembers her birthday—but who am I to judge? I’m about to marry a criminal so he doesn’t kill me.
Damn, I think as Otello helps me up the small dais and ontothe platform where an ancient-looking priest and my soon-to-be husband wait.I’m never going to live this down. Then again, I won’t be living if I don’t do it so, yeah.
The model guy from earlier—Giulio La Rosa, my mind reminds me—holds out his hand, and Otello dutifully passes me over.
Is this what women in the 1800s felt like when their fathers would marry them off to husbands a thousand years older than them for a cow?
Giulio keeps my free hand in his, as my other clutches the bouquet that had apparently been held in a separate room and therefore hadn’t needed to be replaced. I drift a bit as the priest begins to talk.
Michelle is going to be so pissed that she wasn’t at my wedding. Then again, this is just a wedding in name only, right? It’s not like I’ll have to live with this guy. This is just to make sure they know I’m not going to traipse off to the police about the original bride’s death. I relax at that. Yeah, this is totally going to be fine. It’s not even real.
“Miss Turner?” I blink, coming back to myself as I realize that the priest is referring to me.How the hell does he know my last name?I certainly didn’t tell him. My eyes shoot to Giulio, who looks at me expectantly. Oh fuck, wait, I’m supposed to say something.
My eyes move back to the priest. “Wh-what?”
He sighs, but before he can answer me, Giulio leans down. “Say, ‘I do,’” he hisses between clenched teeth.
“I do.” The words fall out of my mouth on autopilot, the instinctive need to say whatever the psycho next to me wants me to say so he doesn’t put a bullet in my brain taking over.
The minister turns to Giulio. “You may now kiss the bride.”
Ice-blue eyes bore into me.
Oh. Fuck.
Giulio leans down, and my heart rate picks up speed, growing faster and faster as if the organ can somehow use speed as a way to break out of my rib cage and go running back down the aisle. At the last second, though, Giulio turns his head to the side and presses his lips to the side of my cheek in a very chaste peck.
My breath releases, and my shoulders sag. I’m not sure, though, if it’s disappointment or relief. I’ve never been a make-out-with-strangers kind of girl, but neither have I been a scaredy-cat. I watch horror movies for fun, so I can handle things that go bump in the night—even though something tells me this man would totally beat the boogeyman’s ass.
There’s just something about starting a marriage to a stranger with a public kiss meant to hold so much meaning, love, and care that rubs me the wrong way. So, I’m glad he didn’t follow through with that. It almost makes me think I might be able to trust this guy—almost.
“Smile,” Giulio reminds me as we turn back down the aisle hand in hand. The pianist begins to play again. I don’t know if I follow Giulio’s command and smile, but I do know that I don’t remember the walk back.
My last thought? The wedding march sounds a hell of a lot like a funeral march under the wrong circumstances.
4
DAISY
