Page 15 of Faithless Vows

I rise onto my toes and kiss him. When we part, tears fill my eyes. I try to blink them away, but a few slip free anyway.

Concern crosses his face. He leans in close, his voice low near my ear so I can hear him over the music. “Hey,” he says. “Are you all right?”

I smile up at him through the blur. “I’ve never been better.”

I glance around the room at all the faces turned toward us, at the people who came to celebrate this moment with us. When I look back at him, the words escape me quietly. “This is wonderful. I can’t believe you did all of this.”

He draws me closer, resting his forehead against mine. “Anything for you,” he murmurs.

As we sway together, the music carrying us, it finally sinks in. This isn’t something that was decided for us. It’s something we chose.

Right now, I don’t feel like I’m stepping into an arrangement.

I feel like I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.

Chapter Seven

Ronin, Age Twenty

Mick finds me in my office just after nine. I hear him whistling his way down the hall before he even reaches the door, and when he gets there, he raps his knuckles against the doorframe like the bastard doesn’t already know I know he’s there. “Let’s go,” he says.

I keep my eyes on the papers spread across my desk. Numbers, shipments, times. Anything but him. “Go where?” I mutter.

He snorts and steps inside, stopping in front of my desk. “Don’t start. You know where.”

I turn a page I’m not reading. “Not interested.”

Mick laughs. “Yeah. Sure. You’ve been saying that all week.”

That does it. He wants my attention. Fine. He has it. I lift my head from the papers and look him dead in the eye, saying the same words I’ve been telling him for weeks now, slower this time, since the message clearly isn’t getting through his thick skull. “I’m. Not. Feeling. It.”

His eyebrows climb halfway to his hairline, and I think maybe, finally, he’s going to let it die. Then a grin spreads across his face, like I’ve just told him the funniest thing he’s heard all week. “You serious?” he says. “Jesus. It’s only been a few weeks since you proposed to my sister and you’ve already gone soft.”

“A few weeks of you bugging me about the same shit,” I say. “I told you I’m not interested.”

“Not interested,” he repeats. “Funny how that started right after you got engaged.”

The amusement in his voice grates. “I was already engaged to her. The ring didn’t suddenly make it real.”

He scoffs. “That’s exactly my point. So why bother proposing at all?”

I lean back and scrub a hand over my jaw, feeling the rough stubble there. Lately, I’ve been leaving the office around midnight and getting back to my desk by dawn. This morning, I was too tired to bother shaving before I left the house. Business is booming, and I’m exhausted just trying to keep up with it all. I don’t have the patience to keep repeating myself just because he can’t stand hearing no.

Still, he isn’t wrong. I didn’t have to spend the last year dating my arranged fiancée, getting to know her better and letting her get to know me. I didn’t have to propose to her, either. I didn’t have to do any of it.

But I wanted to. And I’m glad I did.

Mick clears his throat, still standing there like he’s waiting for an answer I’ve already given him half a dozen times. Apparently leaving without dragging this out again is asking too much.

“It’s not like I never go out with you,” I say. “But every time I do, you start in about how I’m not really engaged to your sister. That it wasn’t my choice. That it doesn’t count yet.”

His grin tightens. “Because it doesn’t.”

“Then how the fuck does it make me soft?” I snap. “You can’t have it both ways.”

He doesn’t bother answering. He crosses the office to the small bar against the wall and pours himself a drink without asking. He takes a swallow before facing me again. “You’re different lately,” he says finally.

“Different how?” I ask, hating myself for taking the bait. He wanted me looking at him, arguing with him, and now I am.