girl she’d been wasn’t still sitting around waiting for her Cinderella moment. If Drucella Chapman had a Prince Charming in her future, she’d yet to find him. And if he was lurking around, well . . . he’d have to get in line. She had a job to do.
Resting her hands on the balustrade, she thought of the so-called prince who was currently in her life. He was more like a snake.
He was the villain of the piece, in truth. And she was trapped with him. For now.
Two years . . . bloody hell. How had she lost two years to this?
Sighing, she lowered her gaze, stared at her hand. It wasn’t supposed to be this damned complicated. Patrick Whitmore wasn’t supposed to be part of her life, not like this.
Yet here she was, wearing his ring. And in a few short weeks, she was supposed to marry him. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. She should have been done by now, well before this travesty of a wedding. But if she didn’t find some way to end this, find some way to pull off a bloody miracle, she was going to be Mrs. Patrick Whitmore very shortly.
Backing out just wasn’t an option.
Too much was at stake.
If she had to marry the devil himself to fix things, then she’d do it.
Of course, that wasn’t too far off from what she was doing.
It made the bitter pill she had to swallow even more distasteful. The practical, cynical part of her knew she had to do it. So she pulled that practical bitch to the forefront as she turned from the window and made herself ignore what should have been a magical sight.
Patrick Whitmore was just another mark. A job. Nothing more. Nothing less. It was taking a little longer than normal to get that job done, but she’d get it done and then she’d move on . . . forget about the evil that was Patrick Whitmore.
If she could . . .
Finish the job first. Then she could worry about getting away . . .
You have to get away from him . . .
Scowling, she shoved that bit of memory back to her mind. Ever since meeting Whitmore, she’d been plagued by nightmares, nasty ones. Her dreams had never been particularly pleasant. So much worse than the typical dream, one where she’d be naked in front of a class, weirder than dreams of talking animals or nightmares where she ran endlessly . . .
There was no understanding her dreams, no understanding why they’d gotten so much worse lately.
And she’d rather not think about them if she didn’t have to. She always died in them. Why would anybody want to think about that?
The dreams got worse until she’d resorted to taking sleeping pills and hoping they’d helped. The dreams couldn’t interfere with the job. With the blasted wedding.
Dru sighed and pushed a hand through her hair. “My bloody wedding.”
At least she didn’t have to feign the interest in planning it. That was all being done for her, and all she had to do was fake interest in what they were doing. Pretend to be excited, pretend to be nervous.
And it wasn’t a far stretch for her. She was excited. Several years’ worth of work were coming down to the finish line. She was nervous, and she had every right to be so. After all, if he found her out, he’d very likely kill her. She was on her own and nobody would stop him. Nobody would care.
I could kill you . . .
She jerked her mind back to the matter at hand as those insubstantial bits of thought tried to settle inside her head once more.
He could kill her. And she knew it wouldn’t be a first for him. He could kill. He had. So she had to be careful.
The knock at the door caught her off guard.
Closing her eyes, she blew out a breath. It’s bloody well past time he let me sleep, she thought, scowling at her toes. Then she smoothed away the scowl, checked her reflection. She had a part to play. A job to do.
A job she was damn good at.
When Dru opened the door, she did it with a smile on her face.
“Hello, darling,” Patrick said, dipping his head to brush his lips against hers.
Her instinct was to flinch away. Dru had long since learned to control those instinctive little tells and she held still under the cool, dry brush of his mouth, smiling at him.