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I groaned. "Fine. You'd better fucking bring that shit, because I have no idea what's going on here."
She sniffed and took another sip of coffee. "I think I do," she said.
My attention was suddenly riveted on her. "You do?" I asked eagerly. "Tell me!"
She put her coffee cup down. "You are totally into this guy," she said.
I sat back in my chair. I stared at her. Then I started to laugh.
Sadie looked offended. "What?" she said. "I'm right."
"No way," I told her, still laughing. "He's just interesting."
"And hot. You like fucking him, don't you?"
That quieted me down. "Well, yeah." Frightening glimpses into the bottomless abyss of the psyche aside, the sex was pretty hot. But that was all it was. Anton Waters wanted a wife for a reason, and he'd hung me over a barrel to get me to sign on. I hadn't really had a choice, all his protestations that I could say no notwithstanding, and it stuck in my throat. "But he basically bought me. That's totally not what a good relationship is built on." A sudden pang of doubt struck me. Since when had I ever seen anyone in my life have a good relationship? "Right?"
Sadie shook her head at me. "Waters isn't the only person around here with control issues," she told me. "You want to figure out some way to get back at him for forcing you into marriage."
"Duh," I said.
"But why?" she wanted to know.
I didn't really have an answer for her. "I guess..." I trailed off. "Maybe because my mom spent so much of her life getting shafted in a bad marriage to a rich asshole who didn't really love her. I didn't want to end up like her, but now I'm just like her."
Heaving a sigh, Sadie shotgunned the last of her coffee. “You really need to get over your parents, Lis. Your mom could leave any time she wanted to. She's a big girl. She makes her own choices. And so do you.” She shook her head again. “After your mom is all better, you can cut ties with Waters and never have to see him again if you don't want to.”
“I don't want to,” I said. Of course I don't.
Do I?
I bit my lip and thought of the incredible sex we'd had in the limo, mere minutes after tying the knot. I thought of Anton's face in the dressing room after I'd surprised him and turned the tables, sucking his cock and leaving him with that lost, abandoned look. There was more to him. And I wanted to know what it was, because...
...Oh my god. Did I really want to get to know him better? Not just to have something to hold over his head? Why did I want to have something to hold over his head, anyway? Were we in some kind of competition? To blackmail him when I was done with him? To get money? To... what?
I resented him for making me marry him, didn't I? I hated that rich shithead, that arrogant jerk who was in cahoots with my jackass father, the guy who thought he could buy me, the kind of guy who thought everything in the world was for sale and his for the asking... right?
The guy who said he'd listen to you. The guy who makes you come so hard you have an out-of-body experience. The vulnerable guy under all that calm Buddha bullshit. That's the guy you hate, right?
I pressed my hands to my face and tried to think, but my thoughts were suddenly a jumble, confused and tangled—
The front door burst open and I jumped halfway out of my skin. “Shit!” I leaped out of my chair and raced to the foyer just in time to see two burly, handsome men dragging my personal effects—far too shabby for this beautiful house—up the front steps.
“What's this?” Sadie said from behind me.
“My stuff,” I told her. “I'm moving in.”
She snorted. “You got it bad.”
“Shut up,” I told her. “And once they're done you have to help me find something to wear for dinner tonight. I don't want to end up on Perez Hilton looking like something the cat dragged in.”
“I'm only human,” Sadie said.
“Shut up.”
*
I had the movers install my stuff in an extra bedroom for now. Together, Sadie and I picked out a dress for me, a little black affair that Sadie said was classic, and then we went hunting for baby pictures of Anton. Or old school yearbooks, or high school love letters... anything really.
