Page 6 of Reluctant Bride

The evening air has teeth in it, that first real bite of cool that shows up once the sun drops behind the ridge, and I’m glad for the light jacket I grabbed off the hook on my way out the door, not for the warmth, or not only for the warmth. I keep it zipped instead of shrugging it off. I take the chair nearest the door. I do not, under any circumstances, let this table feel smaller than it is.

“No suitcase,” he says, leaning in the doorway like he owns it, which he does, technically, along with everything else in this valley that isn’t nailed down with a Blackwater name on the deed. “I was told brides usually pack.” His eyes cut past me to the black Range Rover parked crooked in the drive, the skull stenciled on the door, Blackwater Ranch lettered beneath it, like he’s memorizing it for later.

“I’m not moving in today. I’m negotiating.” I set the folder on the table between us, square with the edge, Gideon’s rule for opening every meeting that matters. “You get all of me the day the county clerk says so. Today you get paperwork.”

“Direct. I respect it.” He shuts the door and the sound of it echoes heavier than a door should. “You want a drink?”

“I want you to sit down and read this.”

“I asked if you wanted a drink.”

“And I answered a different question, which is a skill I learned from watching your father dodge a subpoena.” I slide the folder an inch closer to him. “Sit.”

He doesn’t sit. He crosses the room instead, taking his time about it, and for a second I think he’s going to make this about proximity, tack room all over again, and my whole body goes tight and ready for it, and then he just pulls out the chair across from me and drops into it like a man settling in for a show he’s already decided he’ll enjoy.

“Fine,” he says. “Impress me.”

I open the folder.

“Separate bedrooms.” I don’t look up. “Nonnegotiable.”

“Agreed.”

“No sexual expectation, implied or otherwise, for any reason, including but not limited to alcohol, proximity, or the general ambient tension of living in the same house.”

“Ambient tension.” He says it slow, like he’s tasting it. “That’s very carefully worded for something you claim isn’t happening.”

“It’s a contract, Dawson. Everything in it is carefully worded. That’s the entire point of a contract.”

“Agreed anyway.”

I flip the page, and the tight coil in me that was braced for a fight starts leaning forward looking for one that isn’t coming.

“No pregnancy clause. None. I’m not producing an heir for either family’s peace treaty.”

“Agreed.” He says it fast this time, almost bored, like I’ve handed him a lease renewal.

“Independent finances. My money stays mine. Anything I earn during this marriage stays mine. No joint accounts, no Sullivan credit cards, no situation where I have to ask you for cash to buy groceries.”

“You think I’d make you ask me for grocery money?”

“I think your family’s had generations to figure out how to make a woman feel small enough to stay put, and I’m not volunteering to be case study number one.”

That hits somewhere. I watch it go in, a flicker behind his eyes, there and then not, and for a second the bored, unbothered version of Dawson steps aside and the boy I knew at twenty looks at me instead.

“Agreed,” he says, quieter now.

“Full authority over my own schedule and my own work. I still run point on Blackwater’s legislative contracts. That doesn’t stop because I have a new last name.”

“Agreed.”

“Full threat disclosure. Anything that touches my safety, I hear it from you directly, the day it happens, not filtered through your father or mine deciding what I can handle.”

His jaw moves. Barely. If I didn’t know this man’s face better than I know my own signature, I’d have missed it entirely.

“Agreed,” he says, fast, too fast, the word coming out clipped at the edges like he bit down on whatever was underneath it before I could hear it.

“No unilateral decisions.” I keep my voice level, because if I let it shake even once he’ll hear everything underneath it. “Concerning my safety, my schedule, my money, my body, or my future. You don’t get to decide what’s best for me and inform me later. You ask. Every time.”