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I sit in the little reception area and wait in the silence.
Half an hour passes before I hear footsteps, but they’re not anywhere near me. Then I think I hear Jericho’s voice. I listen closer and realize I’m right. It is him, but I don’t know where he is.
I stand and follow the voice, which I now realize is coming from outside on the balcony. He must have come from the other side of the building.
I make my way around the corner and find him through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall. He’s on the phone, standing on the balcony. Seeing him again warms my body in an unwarranted way, and I can’t resist the memory of how he touched and tasted me.
I decide to get closer so he notices me, just to make my presence known.
What I have to say to him won’t take long. Maybe not even a minute. He should be able to fit me in after his call.
I can hear him better now, and I realize it’s because the glass door to my left is open. It leads out to where he’s standing.
“Luc, I just need to pick one of those women to be my wife before next Wednesday.” I stop short in my tracks, my ears burning as if someone placed hot coals in them.
Did I seriously hear him say the wordwife?
Wife as inwife?
Andpicking a wife?
What the hell?
Quickly, I hide behind the column and continue listening.
“Just narrow the list down to the best five. I won’t have time to go through all the others. I’m already way out of time.” He sighs with frustration. “Cross off anyone you don’t think I can trust and leave the girls who will appreciate the money. I’m sure you can agree that. A million dollars before the wedding and another at the end of the marriage in a years’ time is more than sufficient.”
My mouth drops when I process what I’m hearing, and I think of all that money.
Two million dollars to marry Jericho Grayson.Why?
Why wouldheneed to pay someone to marry him?
A man like him wouldn’t need to make that kind of payment to anyone. Unless it benefited him in some way.
That must be it, and whatever it is must be worth more than two million.
What could that be?
“Alright, I’ll speak to you later.” He hangs up and walks down the length of the balcony to where I guessed he came from.
Feeling dazed, I stay where I am and process the plans I just heard.
It doesn’t make sense, yet it does. I can bet that list of Luc’s holds nothing but the finest women. Pedigree women cut from the best cloth with fathers who will worship him. They’ll be daughters of moguls, socialites and heiresses.
Not a girl like me.
Listen to me. As ifIwant to marry Jericho Grayson.
I don’t, but the younger version of myself did at one point.
Perhaps… this was the closure I needed. The reminder that Jericho and I come from two different worlds and he was always out of my reach.
Sometimes, Cinderella is destined to be Cinderella. The floor-scrubbing, home-cleaning girl who worked her fingers to the bone. That’s me.
On that thought, I leave, and as I drive away, I promise myself I’ll never look back.
I get home an hour later feeling worse than I did when I left in the early hours of the morning.
