We need to be the kind of couple that doesn’t make sense to normal people.
We need to be anythingbutnormal to be believable.
Which you’d think would be easier for someone like me—but it isn’t.
Words constricting in my throat, I say, “My…apologies. Crow.”
He smiles, radiant and mildly evil. Setting his elbow on his desk, he rests his chin in his palm. “Which do you prefer—blue or gold?”
“Blue or gold for what?”
“Your dress.” He scans the dress I’m currently wearing—it’s a gossamer lace that billows around me, loose and gauzy andwhite. “I’d like to get it custom ordered while we have time.”
My heart stumbles at the very idea of wearing something other than white. Cleanliness aside, I’m convinced something bad will happen if I break the pattern now. In my brain, Iknowthe anxiety can’t be grounded in reality, but it’s still there. It’sthere, and…
A thought occurs to me.
I say, “No.”
Malcolm’s smile mellows as his brows rise. With a darkening undertone, he repeats, “…no?”
“No. If you insist that I go, I’ll wear one of my own dresses. Awhiteone.” A bubble lodges itself in my esophagus. I speak around it. “And that’s final.”
Malcolm…blinks. Lifting his chin off his hand, he stares, lips parted, for many long, flesh-curdling moments. Finally, he regains himself. “Oh, darling.” His shoulders fall, as he melts,peering at me with some twisted illusion of adoring love. “You can’t.”
“Then I’m not going.”
“I’d really like for you to go.”
“Tough.” Notably, he hasn’t threatened to fire me, which I’m realizing now is what’s always made me conform to his commands before. If he’s not putting my job at risk, why in the world have I spent so long bothering to adhere to his insanity?
“You have to,” he says, as though he hasn’t got a single thing he could hang over my head to make me.
I cross my arms over my iPad full of ridiculous notes and plans for thisFlag Dayevent. “No, I don’t. It’s on a weekend. I don’t work weekends.”
“You don’tregularlywork weekends, but your employee agreement does, in no uncertain terms, say that I own you and am allowed your time at any hour on any day so long as there’s reasonable cause.”
“A Flag Day ball is not reasonable cause for anything.”
“First of all, how dare you.” The humor in his tone is positively unmistakable. “Second of all, I am coercing you as your lover, not as your employer.”
I puff. “All the more reason I can sayno, then, isn’t there?”
“May I tell you a secret, dove?”
I do not wish to hear a secret, and I highly doubt I’m going to like it, but my infernal curiosity riles at the very notion thereisa secret to tell—even when I doubt it’s actually a secret that holds any merit. Irritated with myself, I glare at Malcolm.
He hooks a finger, beckoning me closer.
Stomach churning, I take calculated steps across the dark floors toward the dark desk and make certain not to put my face anywhere close to his. “What?”
“It’s a wedding.”
The tension in my shoulders releases. “Huh?”
“It’s Ivy’s wedding, sweet dove. I’m inviting you as my plus one to my younger brother’s wedding. Does that make my request that you refrain this once from your signature color more palatable?”
It makes it more reasonable, sure. But it certainly doesn’t fix the nerves that revolt against the concept of wearing anything but pure white. And, yet, assuming Junction doesn’t get his act together and murder this man in time, I cannot hope to skip out on an event like this. Not now that our relationship would be unavoidably apparent once a detective gets involved in the investigation of Malcolm Swallow’s demise. Even assuming the authorities don’t track back to the footage at the hotel, no doubt Malcolm’s had to explain the strangulation marks around his neck to his brother. And his brother will be one of the first people police talk to when Malcolm winds up dead.
