Chapter Eighteen
“So, no meeting after all,” Mary said.
Jarrod shook his head. “No meeting. No changes with Briony – she’s still heavily sedated. But it’s a beautiful evening and I’ve got dinner set up for us on the balcony. Maybe we can forget our worries for one day and have a beautiful evening together. There’s just one thing left that I need to do.”
Mary glanced at the wall. It was 7:00 p.m. sharp. They had fifty minutes.
“Give me your phone,” Jarrod said to Mary.
“Why?”
“I need to make a phone call.”
She handed it to him, and he scrolled through her contacts.She heard Hilda’s outraged squawk. “You dare call me after you ruined my life? I never want to hear your voice again! You have the nerve—”
“You dare speak to my bride-to-be like that after I told you not to?” Jarrod said, his voice harsh.
There was a stunned silence on the other end.
This didn’t sound like Jarrod fixing things with Hilda. This sounded like Jarrod making sure that Hilda made a voodoo doll of Mary and burned all their family pictures.
Jarrod ignored Mary as she frantically signaled at him.
“Let me tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to call every Alpha on the East Coast and tell them that if they do business with you, it’ll be a Death Challenge. That’s just for starters. Then I’ll move on to the Midwest. Then I’ll do the West Coast. Matched and Mated will never see another bridenapping in the history of the universe.”
More silence.
Mary glared at Jarrod and made throat-slashing motions with her hand.
Jarrod’s voice went calm and soothing. “Of course, I have a lot of influence with Alphas. A lot of friends. I know several Alphas who are looking for mates right now, and who would like to be able to arrange very public bridenappings. I could call them up and tell them how you ensured that I found the love of my life. I could offer alliances with them if they went through your agency. But I would only do that if you apologized to your sister. Right. Now.”
And he handed the phone to Mary.
What followed was several minutes of the most obsequious groveling that Mary had ever heard.
Finally she handed the phone back to Jarrod.
“That’s better,” he said coolly to Hilda. “Call my business manager in the morning. And don’t ever let me hear you verbally abusing your sister again.”
He hung up the phone and turned to Mary.
“So? Dinner?” he said, with a gleam of triumph in his eyes.
She glanced at the clock on his wall again. 7:08 p.m. Yikes.
“Will you talk to me about why you were such a jerk to me back in high school?” she asked.
“I’d rather talk about which wine you’d like to enjoy with our dinner tonight.” There he went again. Deflecting her questions.
She knew better, she really did, but she found herself letting him feed her chunks of lobster dripping with salty butter, all the same.
As he sat there and talked about their wedding plans, about the dress fitting she’d have next week, about the food they’d selected for the wedding banquet, she found herself relaxing.
Towards the end of dinner, she was glancing at her watch with both regret and trepidation. She wanted to stay. Of course she wanted to stay. But she needed to keep a clear head. There were strange happenings on the pack lands that Jarrod still wasn’t coming clean about
She had three minutes left. Why had she drawn it out for so long? Why had she savored every bite instead of eating faster?
She set down her fork sadly.
