Page 9 of Claimed By the Silver Fox

My mind drifts to Julia, in her room, as Marcia nods her farewell and makes her way down the corridor, leaving me alone once more. I should check on her. Though, no doubt, her mind would go where it did when we first stepped into the car, when she all but accused me of orchestrating this to take her to bed. I would never force her hand like that, but I suppose she has no reason to trust me.

She knows nothing about me. Only that I was quick to stand there at the altar for her when the time came, to kiss her and take her as my wife, when she hardly knows a thing about me.

The thought of her, standing there outside the car in her wedding dress, her jaw set tight and that defiant expression on her face…it stirs something in me, I have to admit. Something that it shouldn’t. I’ve noticed her beauty before—I’m a red-blooded man, after all—but a woman that young, a woman who was with my son, feels like she should be off-limits.

Like I should know better.

But those sweet blue eyes, staring up at me…the feel of her mouth on mine…there’s only so much I can do to deny the desire that rose in me in those moments, and I know I need to get a handle on myself.

The memories will fade soon enough, I’m sure of it.

Once I have this shit with Andreo under control, we can break up, she can leave this behind, get it annulled, whatever she wants. I’m sure there are a thousand men she would rather be with than the father of the man she was due to marry until circumstances conspired against her today.

All I have to do until then is make sure she’s safe. That’s the least I can do for her, given the way Andreo fucked her over. And that’s what I will keep my mind focused on, in these coming weeks.

Not the way she looked at me after she kissed me.

And certainly not how badly I want to do it all over again.

5

JULIA

I strain to reach behind myself in the mirror, attempting to see the tiny ivory hooks that hold the dress together. My fingers brush against them, but refuse to take hold, and I mutter a curse under my breath as I try to right my balance once more.

I feel like I’m losing it. It has been nearly twenty minutes that I’ve been trying to get out of this dress, to no avail. One of the glam squad at the hotel helped me into it, and I guess it’s not designed to be taken off by just a single person.

Ugh. I sit down on the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands. This is supposed to be my wedding night, for goodness sake. Not that it would be my first time doing something like that—I mean, this isn’t the eighteenth century anymore—but I thought, at least, I would get to spend it with my husband.

And the distance Andreo has taken from me, the way he dumped me out of the blue, it’s more than I can wrap my head around. Everything we planned together, everything he promised me, all of it torn away in a matter of moments.

And I still don’t know why.

All of this was his idea in the first place, choosing to get married like this. He was the one who pushed for us to get engaged, the one who moved forward the date of the ceremony, only for—what? For him to change his mind at the last moment, decide he has better things to do than spend his life with me?

I’m going to be stuck in this dress if I can’t find someone to help me out of it. I know it’s meant to be my husband who does that for me, but the thought of going to Antonio and telling him I need help…yeah, he’s made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want anything like that from me, and no matter how deeply it stings, there’s nothing I can do to change it.

Unless…I mean, he’s the one who married me, right? And he should be the one to step up and handle everything that’s to be expected of him now that I’m his wife. If he wants to do this whole marriage thing, then he needs to act like it.

I rise to my feet and head for the door, not even sure where I’m going or what I’ll say when I get there—but I know I need to see this through. I can feel it tingling all the way through my body, something inching close to desire, as crazy as I know that is.

What kind of person am I, if I’m willing to go to this man I barely know and ask him to undress me on the night of my wedding? My heart thuds in my throat and I do my best to ignore it, willing myself to keep calm in the face of what I’m doing.

Because there’s a part of me, a crazy part of me, that wants him.

Antonio has always been attractive to me, but I could fool myself into thinking that it was just because he had a few traits that I liked in Andreo. Now, though? I’m not so sure that’s true. He has a self-possession that his son doesn’t, a far cry from Andreo’s jittery, uncomfortable urge to keep everything under control. He’s a man of few words, compared to his son’s constant conversation after several beers.

And he married me on the day that his son abandoned me, stepped up to do the right thing when his son didn’t or couldn’t. And that is, right now, the most important part of all of this for me. That this man did not abandon me on the day I was supposed to walk down the aisle…

And that now, whether I’m ready to accept it or not, I belong to him.

I slip out of the room and down the quiet corridor, passing by a couple of guards on the door. Neither of them seem to look at me, and I pad quietly, barefoot, toward the other side of the house. I’m not entirely sure where Antonio is, but the way he was talking, it seems like he wants to put as much distance between us as possible, so I assume that he’s at the far end of the mansion.

I make my way through a few doors, most of which lead to bedrooms or other empty rooms. One leads to a library, which is so full of books that I can’t help but take a moment to linger and look at them, wondering if I would be better off just reading tonight to try and soothe my overthinking mind. But I brush that aside. What, just sit there in my wedding dress, flicking through the classics? Yeah, that’s not going to happen.

Eventually, I turn a corner and see a light on at the end of the corridor, warmth spilling out from a half-closed door. It has to be him, right? I can’t imagine he’s sleeping any better than I am this evening, probably caught up in the shock of the fact that he’s married to me.

I take a deep breath and make my way toward the door, and sure enough, when I reach it, I peep around to see Antonio sitting within.