Fated to My Flash-Married Billionaire novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Lunch Among the Roses

Margaret grills Willa among her roses; Rowan lies smoothly; a zipper in his closet is the first touch; Margaret warns Willa to be careful with him.

Rowan's penthouse had a closet bigger than my old kitchen, and half a rack of it had already been filled with women's clothes.

Every hanger had a tag. Every tag had my size on it.

"My mother," Rowan said from the doorway. "She guessed at six this morning."

"She guessed correctly."

"She guesses correctly about most things. Pick one. She'll ask which one you chose."

I chose a yellow dress with a zipper up the back, and I put it on and couldn't reach the top.

I tried from above and from below, and I tried leaning against the wall.

"I can do it," I said. "Give me a minute."

"You've been trying for four."

"You've been watching for four?"

"I'm a patient man."

He came in and I turned my back to him without thinking about it.

His knuckles touched my spine at the bottom and moved up one tooth at a time.

He did it slowly, with his eyes on the work and no hurry in his hands.

At the top he stopped.

His hand stayed flat on my shoulder blade for one second longer than the zipper needed.

Neither of us moved.

"There," he said, and took it away.

I could feel exactly where his hand had been for the next hour.

Margaret Ashcroft lived in Lake Forest in a white house with green shutters and a garden you could smell from the road.

She was waiting among the roses in a straw hat with a pair of clippers, and she did not wait for introductions.

"Show me the ring," she said.

I held up my thumb.

"On the thumb," she said. "Good. He gave you one that didn't fit, so you'd have to keep it. It's the most romantic thing he's ever done by accident."

"Mother," Rowan said.

"Go inside. The housekeeper has made tea. I'm going to borrow your wife."

He looked at me.

I nodded, and he went.

Margaret handed me the second pair of clippers and began cutting spent flowers off a bush the color of cream.

"I watched the video nine times," she said. "The man on his knee is a fool, the girl in the cream dress is a snake, and you walked out of that room better than anyone I've ever seen walk out of one."

I stopped clipping.

"You knew about Lydia from a video?"

"I know about a woman who gets to the ring before the box is open." She tipped her hat back. "How did my son talk you into it?"

"I talked him into it."

"Even better."

She laughed, a short, dry laugh that I liked at once.

Then she stopped cutting.

"I'm going to ask you one thing, Willa, and I won't ask twice. Are you going to be kind to him?"

"I'm not here to hurt him."

"That wasn't the question."

I looked at the rose in my hand.

"I'll be kind," I said. "He's been kind to me for twelve hours, which is twelve hours longer than anyone else this week."

She nodded.

An old beagle came down the path with his back leg held a little high, sniffing at my shoes.

"That's Biscuit," Margaret said. "He hates everybody."

I crouched and held out my hand, and he put his whole gray muzzle into it.

I ran my fingers down his hip until he winced.

"It's his hip joint," I said. "Not the skin. He's been favoring it for months. Your vet should do an X-ray."

"Our vet says he's old."

"He's old and he's sore, and those aren't the same thing."

Margaret looked at me for a long moment, and then past me at the house.

Rowan was standing on the terrace with a cup of tea he wasn't drinking.

He was watching my hands on the dog.

"He hasn't looked at a woman like that in four years," Margaret said quietly. "I'm going to say something and you're going to keep clipping so he thinks we're talking about roses."

I kept clipping.

"He hasn't let anyone into his bed since he was thirty-one," she said. "He won't tell you why. I'm not going to either, because it's his to tell."

The clippers slipped. A thorn caught the side of my thumb, next to the ring.

"Be careful with him," Margaret said. "That's all. He's the kind of man who'll never say it hurts."

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