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Only flying is the last thing I want to do, especially with this man.
I’ll admit, I was scared to see him. Scared of how it would feel after all this time.
I’ve been avoiding Lenox Moore since I watched him walk out of my apartment at the start of my junior year and felt my heart shatter from within my chest. I had been in love with him my entire life. Before I knew what love or attraction even was. It’s why I used to beg my parents to let Suzie babysit me, even when I was getting a little old to have a babysitter. Even after we moved from Boston to LA, I still carried a torch for him. A torch that only burned brighter when I returned to Boston for nursing school, and we started our affair.
But now that torch is long since snuffed out, never to be relit, and I hate that this is where my life has taken me. To his doorstep, needing help only he can provide.
Lenox has been staring at me so long that not only am I starting to sweat, but I can actually feel my blood pressure climbing. He’s annoyingly stoic, as he always is, and I can’t tell if he’s genuinely considering my proposal of sorts or if it’s simply been too long since someone has demanded this much of his attention.
Still, I’m already over being this close to him—especially since he still smells the freaking same, like sandalwood, cedar, and musk with hints of leather and badassery, and his intense gaze is locked on me. I forgot how big he is. Tall enough that I have to lift my chin to see his face and broad enough that I feel eclipsed in his shadow.
It used to be one of my favorite things about him.
The way he could swallow my small body up with his while taking up eighty percent of my dorm mattress, and how occasionally, if I was feeling particularly playful, I’d jump up into his arms and make him catch me, marveling at how that would drag a rare smile from him.
I take a few steps back, needing distance as those memories sweep over me, and I hoist myself up onto his island, protectively crossing my legs at the knee and folding my arms over my chest as I wait him out.
I’ll be honest with you. I would have much preferred to ask Asher or Callan, but then they both went and fell in love. Good for them, but it totally sucks for me, and it’s not like I can just go out and ask anyone to be my fake husband. It has to be someone I trust, especially considering what’s going on in my life that brought me to this point. I may not trust Lenox after what he did to me, but Grey and Zax do and their level of trust in him is not one that I question.
Part of me also knows how unfortunately perfect Lenox is for this.
He lives in the middle of nowhere. The press leaves him alone. He never speaks. He’s genius-level brilliant with savantish hacking skills. He’s tall and forbidding and gives fuck-off vibes like no one else. As loathsome as I am to admit it, I’d feel safe in his presence.
And I know there is no chance of either of us catching feelings because I already know Lenox isn’t capable—at least with me—and I’m a fool me once but never twice gal. So here I am, standing in front of my quasi-ex, asking him to marry me. My lips bounce at the movie reference and he catches it, lifting an eyebrow as he folds his arms, matching my pose.
I puff out an annoyed breath that makes my auburn bangs fly up my forehead. “Just ask me already.” My hands shoot out, only to land with a smack on my thighs, far too agitated to play it cool for another second.
“Why?”
I glare at him, and it isn’t a kind glare either. “It straight up took you five minutes of staring at me like I’m Medusa and I turned you to stone to ask me why?”
“I’ve been trying to figure it out, but I can’t seem to make the I need to marry a man I hate thing fly in my head.”
That’s fair. “I’m going to need a drink or fifteen for this.”
Without skipping a beat, he turns, grabs a freaking martini shaker from one of his upper cabinets, and goes about making me a Manhattan. I can’t help but scowl. Six years, and the man still remembers what I drink. Only I already know that’s simply a matter of his massive brain and photographic memory, not based on anything resembling affection or caring.
God, I was so stupid. So young and naïve and so freaking blindly in love.
If I could crawl back in time and smack some sense into that girl, I would.
For two years, I gave him my body, my heart, and every piece of my soul. All the while, he never reciprocated a thing. It was one hundred percent sex to him, and yet I had convinced myself that I was going to be the woman to turn the bad boy good. To make him fall as helplessly in love with me as I was with him.
Even thinking about that now, I mentally roll my eyes at the idiocy of that. I knew it was toxic. I didn’t even require my friends to validate that for me, though the few who knew about it did and did so regularly. I didn’t care. I wanted him. And I believed he wanted me too, though, in the end, he proved me wrong.
Thank God he walked away. I never would have had the strength.
Lessons learned and pretty scars formed and here I am, stronger because he once made me so weak.
He sets the amber drink next to my thigh. “What? No cherry?”
He grunts and I smile. Still a bit easy to ruffle, I see.
Fuck it. I pick it up and down half of it. These last six months… my mom said it right. I was a little miss sunshine, and now all I see are overcast skies and nothing but rain. If Lenox agrees to this, she won’t be happy with me—for several reasons. But marrying Lenox will especially infuriate her. I cried to her on the phone for months after he ended it with me.
He retakes his position, a glass of bourbon now dangling idly from his long fingers as he waits me out.
I exhale a weary sigh, ready to tell him everything if it means he’ll do this for me. “As you know, when my father died, he left everything to me. What people don’t know is that my father’s will was very specific. I am to inherit fifty-four percent of Monroe Securities. But with one caveat. I have to be married in order to inherit the shares.”
