How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas - Molly O'Keefe Page 0,59

small of my back. His breath against my skin as he leaned down to whisper in my ear.

“I’m marrying your daughter. I’m securing your assets for another generation, if not more. We signed a contract!”

Bea and I shared one shocked look and then I pick up the pace, spilling champagne everywhere as I practically ran down the hallway.

“You are clearly trying to renegotiate the baby bonus.” Dad’s laugh was familiar. Satisfied. The laugh he laughed when he had all the power and didn’t mind using it.

We got to the doorway of the study just as Clayton grabbed my father by the lapels of his tux.

“You wanted her married. I’m doing that. That was the deal. Now give me the deed to the goddamned land!” Clayton shouted.

The champagne glass fell from my suddenly numb fingers and found the small slice of wood between the carpeted hallway and the Oriental rug on the floor of father’s study.

It shattered spectacularly.

I felt Bea behind me. Could sort of tell she was trying to hold me up. Or back. Hard to say.

The world was moving so fast. Too fast.

“What’s happening?” I whispered.

If I’d had doubts about what was happening—if I’d thought I could find one shred of hope to cling to—that vanished when I saw Clayton’s face.

The guilt was all over his cruel, handsome features. In the dark pools of his eyes. His rude-boy lips were a straight ugly line.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“What are you doing here?” Bea demanded, but Clayton didn’t even blink.

“You should go back out to the party,” he said to me. Like I was a child. Or a pet he could send away.

“Tell me what’s happening. Tell me about…your deal,” I said.

“Veronica.” My father sat down behind his desk, looking far too pleased with himself. He twisted his pinky ring around his finger. “You can’t be this naïve.”

“What is he talking about?” Bea asked, grabbing my hand.

“He’s marrying you for money,” Dad said. “Specifically, my money. By way of my company. Oh, stop, Veronica. Don’t look so damn hurt. I have to protect King Industries, and the best way I can do that is get someone I trust in the family. You have your charms, but you didn’t think Clayton was suddenly interested in my plain, dull daughter. He didn’t choose you—”

“Stop!” Clayton snapped. “Not another word.”

My dad shut up, but the words were out.

Plain and dull didn’t even hurt. The rest of it, though…

He didn’t choose you.

“This is when you tell me it’s not what it seems,” I said to Clayton. Practically begging him to pull the wool back over my eyes. “Or…there’s an explanation. That this isn’t true.”

Clayton was silent.

“Say something!” I yelled.

“It’s true.”

I put my hand against my stomach and looked down at the pretty confection of a dress, expecting blood. Rivers of it. Because surely he’d killed me.

“Veronica,” Clayton said, and when I looked at him he’d pulled himself together and it was Clayton Rorick, impervious and distant, looking back at me.

Cold. So damn cold.

Had I dreamed he cared?

That he loved me?

Stupid, Veronica. You really are so stupid.

What made sense between a man like him and a woman like me? That he would feel something for my above-average wit and my below-average body?

Or that my father was paying him to marry me?

“The arrangement I have with your father has nothing to do with us,” Clayton said.

I opened my mouth to laugh. I really thought I was going to laugh. Because I wanted to be that woman who could laugh at the man who’d just ripped out her heart, but it came out a sob.

I swallowed it. “What, exactly, is the arrangement between you and my father?”

“I don’t think—”

“Tell me!” I shrieked, going full banshee on him.

“Upon our engagement and the securing of his property to the King bloodline, he will give me some property I have been trying to buy from him for a number of years.”

“Securing?”

“A baby,” my sister spat, and my heart shattered.

Clayton stepped forward like he might touch me, and I jerked back so hard I bashed into the doorjamb and sparks of pain filled my head. My knees buckled.

“Veronica!” He rushed toward me. “Are you all right?”

Thank God for Bea. My sister pulled me into her arms and put a hand out to stop Clayton.

“No!” she yelled. Unbelievably he listened and just stood there, a foot from me, strong and gorgeous and…evil. So damn evil.

Remember this. Remember this man didn’t choose you.

“The engagement is over,” I said.

“Now, Ronnie.” My father stood up. “You walk away from this and you’re walking away from King Industries. You’ll never own this company.”

“I don’t give a shit about your company.”

“But you do give a shit about that foundation.”

For a second, I wavered. Because the foundation was my mother’s legacy. My legacy.

Could I just…walk away from that? From all my plans? From the future I’d worked so hard for?

Bea put her arm around me. “Don’t listen to him. Don’t listen to any of them. Mom would want you to have more than this.”

She was right. Of course she was right.

“Get me out of here, Bea,” I whispered, feeling like I might pass out. Wishing that I could.

And my sister did. She put me in her car and drove me far, far away from The King’s Land.

From my engagement party.

From my fiancé, who didn’t even try and stop me.

From the life that was never meant for me.

I should have known better.

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