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She sniffs. “It does, thank you.”
“Besides, I don’t think it was fornothing.” Seven winks, and I drop my head into my hand with a groan.
“Nohooking up at the wedding. Please. Too weird.”
“Christian, you’re a doll.” Elle pats me on the head. “But you cannot presume to think you have any say over what I do. Especially when we have planning to do.”
“Planning?”
She laughs, but it’s more derisive than humorous. “I went to boarding school, pet. I know my way around a good scheme. Now, what are our problems?”
And maybe I shouldn’t be sharing it all with her since she’s from the family actively trying to fuck with my life, but Émile trusts her, so therefore I do by default.
By the time I’m done talking her through everything her parents said, she a) does not look shocked or surprised in the slightest, which I try not to be concerned about, and b) has slumped to the floor beside me, where she’s tapping her chin, eyes narrowed.
“How far away are you from having Carlisle Rosswell sign?”
“They haven’t mentioned. Reece said all of the meetings have been going well, and our ticket sales totally sold out after my, uh,incident. That’s gone a long way toward proving the show can be profitable with the right marketing. I mean, I didn’t realize I was vomiting up money at the time, but hey … apparently my humiliation was good for something.”
“Okay, so you’re getting him signed. Then we need to, what, wait out the cooling-off period?”
“Even with him on board, your gran said they’ll trash the show in the media. We’ll never make back the money, so it’d befor nothing anyway and then no one will ever want to work with us again.”
Elle frowns and it’s stupid how pretty she looks when she does it. “And how does she plan on doing that? All of the offense to my gran, becausenoneof her friends are the types to own a mobile phone, let alone troll a production from it.”
“Darcy. They said he owns some media thing?”
“Yeah, and Carlisle is his best mate. There’s no bloody way he’d trash something his friend was working on. In fact, it’ll probably lean ever so slightly in your favor.”
I give her my best doubt-filled expression. “You really think Darcy is gonna do something that helps me?”
“Why not?”
“Because he wants to marry my guy.”
She blinks at me. “Oh honey, you’re lucky your talent lies on the stage. Darcy is about as interested in marrying Émile as my brother is about marrying him. I cross my heart and hope to die, needle, eye, all that stuff, that Darcy will not be an issue. If that’s their only threat, carry on.”
“Why wouldn’t Émile know that?”
“Maybe because my darling brother has spent the last few years actively avoiding everyone here except for me. He’s never bothered to get to know Darcy, whereas I have. Every time I’ve tried to convince my brother that Darcy isn’t all bad, he doesn’t listen. He’s a champion at ignoring a problem until it goes away. But trust me, Darcy won’t fuck this up for you. Rossy would murder him.”
“Okay.” My heart feels lighter. “Okay. So. We get Carlisle signed on and then …” I’m trying to remember all the things. “The production is safe. Émile is sure his money is safe. That’s …” As much as I want to be excited, there’s something holding me back. “It feels too easy.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Xander asks.
“For us, yeah. But even if we get married and he gets his money … they’ve done a lot of shitty things—” I hold a hand up toward Elle “—no offense, and they’re going to get away with it all.”
And that’s the biggest thing for me. I’m going to be happy with Émile. I’m entering this marriage knowing we’re doing it purely for one end goal—the money—and that once he has that, our attention will turn to the relationship. It’s backward, yeah, but like Émile said, everything with us has been.
I don’t care about that. Married, not married, I only want to be with him.
But it burns me up that after threatening me, after squishing Émile down all his life, that they’re going to get away with it all.
They’ll still be rich and untouchable.
“To be fair,” Elle says. “I have a feeling they’ll do a lot more shitty things. Especially if they think there’s any way to stop the wedding. Dirt in your past? They’ll find it. Mass orgies happening in this house? They’ll know.”
As if on cue, the five of us recoil. “Fuck, no.”
