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“Sorry, Father,” I whispered.
“Do better,” he bit out.
How was I supposed to do better when I was doing the absolute best that I could? I had nothing left to give them at that point.
* * *
I softly sang the hymn, my voice barely carrying. The hymnal was open in front of me, but I knew the words by heart, so while my parents were looking down at their books, making sure they hit the notes just right, I discreetly glanced around at the people surrounding me.
It felt like the entire town was in this massive room. We were all shoulder-to-shoulder with barely any breathing room. The man next to me was sweating already, even though we’d barely been in church for thirty minutes. The woman behind me smelled like too much cheap perfume with an undertone of cigarette smoke. It was making me claustrophobic, but I’d never voice my discomfort out loud.
And then, when I looked up toward the front, my eyes landed onhim, and the words to the hymn got stuck in my throat, lodging there, practically choking me.
He was already watching me, a dark, dangerous glint in his eyes. He was standing behind his father, mouthing the words to the hymn. Somehow, Iknewhe wasn’t actually singing them. A woman, who I guessed was his mother, was standing beside him, and on the other side of him was a boy who was probably somewhere around my age, but he was actually singing the words.
The guy who had knocked the words from my throat smirked the tiniest bit, still mouthing those words as he taunted me with his eyes. I wasn’t sure what he was daring me to do, but my body was tingling in response to the dark challenge glimmering in his eyes.
And when those eyes swept over my body, lingering on my breasts and then falling to the dip in my waist, that tingle turned into a raging fire. My breath hitched in my throat, and I quickly dropped my eyes from his, my chest heaving as if I’d just run a marathon.
A pinch to my arm had me jerking away, almost knocking into the sweaty, overweight man next to me, my wide eyes snapping up to my father’s. He narrowed his eyes down at me. I swallowed thickly, my heart hammering hard in my chest, fear clawing up my throat.
I had no doubt he’d caught me eyeing the preacher’s son.
Gripping my arm, he tugged me closer to him and lowered his lips to my ear. My eyes snapped forward, staring at a blank spot on the wall, my pulse trying to crawl out of my throat. “You are in church. Stop acting like a whore,” he hissed so only I would hear.
The blood rushed out of my face. He didn’t have to say the words out loud. I heard the promise of punishment in them regardless.
The man I’d been staring at suddenly narrowed his eyes at me, no longer bothering to mouth the words to the hymn. His eyes dropped to my father’s hand, narrowing even further, his jaw clenched. I jerked a little in surprise, standing up a little bit straighter when Father squeezed my arm before dropping his hand.
And then, like he’d never looked angry or bothered, the man up front began mouthing the words again, a pleasant expression on his face.
It was unnerving how quickly he could adjust his moods like that.
* * *
“Lillian,” my father called, his voice, while pleasant, sending chills of trepidation down my spine. Excusing myself from the conversation my mother had dragged me into with the preacher’s wife, I walked over to him, my hands clasped in front of me, a pleasant, forced, practiced smile on my lips. No one could see through it, not even my own father. He wrapped an arm around my shoulder when I was close enough, tugging me against his side. “Gabriel, this is my daughter, Lillian. She’s the last one I’ve got. My other two are already married.”
“Oh?” Gabriel eyed me, making my skin crawl. To anyone else, it looked like he was just taking me in. But his stare told me everything I needed to know about the man. He wasn’t faithful to his wife, and he really enjoyed ‘em young. “She’d make a fine match for my son. Been trying to get him married off for the past year since he’s so close to finishing college, but he hasn’t been interested in the girls here in town.”
My heart raced in my chest at the mention of marriage, something I certainly wasn’t ready for but would happen regardless. And then, like he was the Devil that had been summoned, the man from earlier appeared, a brow arched at Gabriel. “You summoned?” he asked, holding up his phone that had a text thread opened up.
Gabriel nodded and clapped a hand on his back. “Son, I want you to meet Lillian. She and her parents are new to town. How old is she, David?”
I demurely cast my eyes to the floor. It was my turn to be married off to a man I didn’t even know, and it was making me sick to my stomach.
Feeling his eyes on me, knowing it washimby the way my skin tingled and burned, I looked up again, locking my eyes on the preacher’s son. “Lillian is eighteen,” Father informed him. “High school graduate—graduated at the very top of her class, too,” he stated proudly.
But he wouldn’t let me do anything with that. I wasn’t meant to go on and have a college degree and work. I was meant to stay home, cook, clean, and raise babies. My grades just meant I might be able to help produce smart children, hopefully a boy. Boys were idolized.
“Lillian,” the man rumbled, his deep voice sliding over me, a sensual promise in his tone that had parts of me responding that had never been awakened before. I barely bit back a gasp of surprise at my response. He grabbed my hand in his and pressed a kiss to the back of it, making my cheeks heat and turn crimson as my breath got caught in my throat. His eyes flashed when he noticed, and a low rumble that only I seemed to be able to hear sounded from deep within his chest. “Such a beautiful name for a beautiful woman. I’m Amadeus Stone.”
“Hi,” I managed, sounding choked. My father tightened his arm around my shoulders, his fingers biting through the sweater. I bit my tongue to hold back the sound of pain before forcing a wide smile to my face that painfully stretched my cheeks. I cleared my throat. “Sorry; I’m not usually much of a talker,” I explained, hoping that lie was sufficient enough for my father. “It’s lovely to meet you as well, Amadeus.”
He grinned, but there was a darkness about it that made fear thrum through my veins. He dropped my hand, and I clasped them back in front of me again so I wouldn’t be tempted to play with the skirt of my dress or the ends of my sweater. Men hated to see nervousness in a woman.
His eyes slowly moved from my face and focused on my father. “Will she be available for dinner on Friday?” he asked.
He was really going to go through with this? Something told me he didn’t like his moves being dictated, that he was just about as independent as they came. So, why would he be willing to allow our parents to play matchmaker with us like we were mere dolls in their silly game?
