“Perfect?” I supply.
Celia’s smile doesn’t waver. “I was going to say miraculous. Which I suspect you know.”
“What I know,” I say, “is that I met someone wonderful and I’d like to marry him. I’m sorry that’s inconvenient for you.”
Slade squeezes my hand, out of view of the camera.
Celia’s mouth thins.
My father clears his throat. “What is it you do, young man?”
“Hockey,” Slade answers. “Professional. Going on fifteen years now. And ranch work between seasons.”
My father sighs heavily, clearly unable to decide whether the hockey or the ranch work is more worthy of his contempt.
“Mr. Rhodes,” he says, “let’s speak plainly. Crudely, if we must. Since that is clearly the method by which you prefer communicate. This money is protected in a trust. It will be solely my daughter’s, legally speaking, marriage or not.” Coolly, sliding his glasses down his long aristocratic nose, he adds, “Now, how does that affect your desire to marry her?”
I flinch, physically flinch, at the implication. My own father acting like I’m so worthless that no one would marry me except if they were doing it for the money.
I’m used to this, I remind myself. I need to let it roll off me like water off a duck.
Slade’s entire body tenses.
“Sir,” he says coldly, “my mama raised me better than to respond to an insult like that the way I want to. So I’m going to politely look past what you just implied about me and my beautiful fiancee here.” His voice has picked up just a touch more drawl than usual. “I’ll say this plainly enough for you: Where I come from, a man provides for his wife. He doesn’t leech off her. Or her family.”
My father’s eyes are blue and hard as ice chips as he stares down his future son-in-law. Or tries to. Because Slade has thestone-faced expression of a man who’s faced down the most lethal, aggressive, vicious fighters in professional sports. An old man in reading glasses is nothing to scare him.
Meanwhile, my mother has been studying me this whole time. “You’ve gained weight,” she says suddenly. “And that top is doing you no favors. Only small-busted women can get away with that. On you it simply looks tasteless. Haven’t you learned?”
I bite the inside of my cheek.
Slade’s hand, which has been resting on the back of the chair next to me, drops to my shoulder. Warm and steady. He gives it one brief squeeze, turning his focus to my mother next.
“I think Lila looks absolutely stunning,” he says. “She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
Warmth swells through me.
Then my mother smiles tightly. “Well. Love is blind, as they say.”
A brief silence.
“Twenty-twenty vision over here,” Slade says, a little more sharply now. The drawl is thickening by the minute. “Crystal clear.”
Peter rubs his forehead. “I’d like to go over the timeline again. You met in September. It’s now October. You’re telling us you’re engaged after what, four weeks? How did you even meet?”
“Slade rescued me—and our dog—from the side of the road.”
I think of his words.We’ll tell them it was love at first sight.I try them out now.
Aloud, I say, “It was love at first sight.”
Slade’s hand, still resting on my shoulder, tightens.
Peter looks to the lawyer. “Aldrich, are you getting this all down?” He turns back to Slade with a frown. “Lila may notlook like an heiress, but surely you researched her and found out who she is. What she stands to gain. What’s the plan, get married and split the profits?”
I glance at Slade, who’s scowling. He looks the way he looks in those videos I’ve watched of him on the ice. Like a force of nature. Something not to be trifled with.
I have a sudden visceral memory of watching footage of him bodyslam another player en-route to the goalposts, dragging him like he was like a ragdoll. Slade didn’t even break a sweat.
