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“Penelope stop being so dramatic.”
He sits in the armchair across from me, and I lean in to make myself very clear. “My name is Pepper.”
“That’s not a name. It’s a condiment.”
I lean back, turning my eyes back on the trees outside the window, making me miss the mountains. Making me miss home.
“Look, it’s only three years. It’s not like I’m asking for a lifetime here. You’ll have money. A name. Connections. Anything you want.”
“Why do you care so much? What is this about anyway? Appearances? You already have a runaway bride in the press, do you really want to add divorce to it?”
“Half the politicians these days get divorced. I’m not concerned about it. You leaving me before I’m elected. That, I can’t have.”
“And you made damn sure of it.”
“I’m prepared.”
I cross my arms. “Yeah, well so am I. I have a lawyer and I will press charges for taking me against my will.”
He pushes off the chair and crosses the room in frustration, shouting. “Are you tied up? Were you brought here with a bag over your head? I’m not a monster, P, I’m your fiancé.”
“I don’t want to marry you,” I shout back.
He sighs, and there’s silence between us for a moment before his eyes fall to my ring finger. “But you want to marry someone else.”
“Yes.”
He licks his lips, his eyes growing soft. A flash of the man I used to know coming through. “I need three years, Penelope. And the money is yours,” he says softly, practically pleading.
This is new.
“What money?”
“The million dollars I promised to find you.”
“You didn’t give that away to whoever tipped you off?”
He shakes his head. “The deal was more than just a photo. And he got demanding. Asking for more if I wanted a current location. For half of it before he even showed us the image. He got nothing.”
“He?”
Troy holds my gaze. “The money is yours. My people will figure out how to handle the hockey player affair—”
“How long have you been following me?”
“Not long. We found out everything we needed to in the last forty-eight hours. Now we have two options. We can go the route where we tell the media you got cold feet and came to your senses. Or we can deny—”
“I pick option number three. The wedding is off.”
He presses his lips together. “I’ll take you back there myself—on a private jet.”
I scoff. “What, at the end of my term as your wife?”
He smirks. “You’re cute.” He crosses to me with caution. “Penelope.”
“Pepper,” I grit.
“Fine. Pepper. A million dollars can go a long way. Much longer than a woman from a small town who tricked a politician into a wedding she never intended to follow through with and left him for her next target. A hockey player. Think about the publicity Chase, the King, Reeves will have then.”
