AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was human nature for the good to blur and for the bad to stick out like a sore thumb.
For myself, I wished that when I thought of my mom, I remembered all the times we baked together, the times we’d played dress up, and the times she’d tugged the blankets around me before sleep. But I didn’t. My memory instantly went to the one sliver I should forget.
His jaw tensed. “The stuff in here isn’t mine. She brought it over tonight.”
Pain flashed through me. “Why? Did you think I wouldn’t—” What could I say? He’d just vowed not to have sex with me? Maybe—
“Hush,” he rumbled. “It was a setup, but we’re working on figuring that out.”
I hadn’t expected him to apologize, so the absence of one came as no surprise. However, his replydidshock me. Not only because he’d explained something that was business-related, but because it made no sense.
Why would someone sabotage our wedding night?
Before I could even think about if it was the Italians or the Albanians, he ruptured my thought processes, by murmuring, “You know I’ll protect you, don’t you?”
Taken aback, I mumbled, “I-I guess.”
“No guess about it. I don’t promise to be a good husband, Inessa. I just promise that you won’t hurt when I’m around.”
Somehow, that meant more to me than the vow we’d just sealed together in blood, and I thought he knew that, because his eyes softened, and he murmured, “How do you feel about burning this dress?”
A grin twisted along my mouth. “Sounds like fun.”
“Little arsonist,” he teased with a soft laugh, chucking me under the chin like he was an uncle and I a favored niece. “Do you need help getting out of it?”
“Just the ties.”
He arched a brow. “Are you okay with me doing that?”
I nodded. Because I was.
He’d said he wouldn’t touch me tonight because of my injuries, but I knew he didn’t expect it also because of what I’d walked into…
Eoghan, I was coming to see, in his own way, was a man of honor.
Sure, it wasn’t the kind of honor that most people thought of, but in my world, any honor at all was like digging in your backyard and finding a trove of treasure and not a dead body you’d buried there six years earlier.
And while the evening had promised to go downhill from the second the elevator doors had opened, if anything, Eoghan had sowed the seeds of something he probably didn’t want or need, but which I freely gave.
Trust.
It was nothing more than a fragile sapling right now, but if he tended it?
It would turn into a mighty oak, and everyone knew about those kinds of trees. They withstood even the worst of storms.
