She also wore a necklace that was probably worth more than my entire house back home. Her ash blond hair was short, just around her ears and curled up. Matching god-awfully expensive-looking earrings nestled in each of her ears.
After giving me the once over, she turned to my husband. “Lucas, you’re finally here.”
She kissed both his cheeks instead of wrapping him in a hug. It was a very European style of greeting. She struck me as highly sophisticated in her manners even though she sounded quite ordinarily American when she spoke.
“Mother,” he said evenly. “Thank you for the invite.”
Then the man stepped forward to shake his hand. “It’s been too long, son.” He was tall and finely built and Lucas resembled him a bit—coloring and build-wise, anyway. Their features were markedly different.
And the coolness in their greeting wasn’t lost on me. After the awkward handshake, both parents looked expectantly at me without saying a word. Was Lucas supposed to introduce me? Why was everything so uptight and formal? Even the way they’d called each other, “Mother, Father, Son,” was weird.
Well, screw that shit. That was so not me.
I pasted on a giant fake smile and stuck my hand out to shake. “Hi, I’m Katya.”
To their credit, they didn’t clutch their proverbial pearls over my casual greeting. The woman took my hand and smiled. “I’m Elaine and this is my husband, Arent.” She then leaned forward and putting her hands on my upper arms, touched her cheek to mine and kissed the air. She repeated this action on the other side before taking a step back. I stood still, bathed in her expensive perfume before pulling back stiffly.
Lucas’s father followed up by taking my hand and shaking it. His eyes slid down my form almost lewdly before he sent a quick wink to his son. Was that a wink of approval? Yuck.
“It’s short for Katharina, no?” Elaine asked.
I nodded, that ridiculous smile still fixed on my face. “Yes. Katharina Ellis.”
Without changing her neutral expression, she turned to Lucas. “She’s keeping her name?”
“It’s the twenty-first century. That’s what women do now,” Lucas’s father replied before either of us could. “Especially when our son prefers your name over mine.”
Lucas grimaced. “Not something we really need to talk about now.”
I frowned. Hmm. There was a story there. Van Den Dad seemed bitter about Lucas not using the extra lengthy Dutch name. But it was more than just for mere convenience. Obviously, my new husband was not good at coming clean. This mansion and estate were quickly revealing what I suspected was merely the tip of a very big iceberg.
Let’s hope all our carefully planned schemes and agreements were not going to suffer the same fate as the Titanic.
Lucas’s mother turned to me amidst the ensuing tension between her husband and her son. “We are so thrilled to meet you. What a wonderful surprise. We’re all looking forward to knowing you better but for now, welcome to the family. We’re serving champagne at the outdoor bar beside the pool. Lucas will show you.”
With no small relief, we turned from the chillingly formal parental greeting. I felt Lucas’s hand on the small of my back again, like when he’d escorted me out of his house earlier today. I could feel it resting there, maddeningly and inexplicably possessive. The touch burned through the cool silk of my dress.
We passed through the archway into the back part of the home and toward a huge set of open glass doors to a stone terrace. I muttered under my breath, “I’m going to fucking gut you later, dude.”
A quick expulsion of air, as if covering for a surprise bout of laughter was his only response. His hand on my back moved, the pressure deepening. I longed to bat his arm away but for some reason, didn’t. Regardless of how annoyed I was with him right now, we still had to keep up the appearance of a deliriously happy newlywed couple.
We moved through the high stone archway and through the glass walls to a sprawling terrace that overlooked the valley laid out below. If this was a mere family dinner, then Lucas had the biggest ass family I’d seen in a long time. There were at least fifty people here, with drinks in hand listening to live music. They ringed the gorgeous glass tile-lined pool full of floating flower arrangements. In fact there were white floral arrangements everywhere, perfuming the air with the scent of roses and hydrangeas. And even an