Spoiling My Sweet Wife to Her Core novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

A courthouse wedding, one rule, and an old phone with a voice memo that names the stepsister's secret.

Denton Kane's car smelled like leather and cold rain.

His driver pulled away from the Ashworth estate without being told where to go.

I sat in the back seat with his coat around me and my hands shaking in my lap.

Nobody had followed us out, and nobody had stopped us.

"You can say no," Denton said.

He sat beside me with his eyes on the road, not on me.

"I can say no to what?" I asked.

"Monday. The courthouse. I said it in front of two hundred people so no one could argue."

I laughed, and it came out cracked.

"You said it in front of two hundred people so Preston couldn't argue."

"Yes," he said. "That too."

I looked at his profile.

The scar through his eyebrow caught the streetlights and went white, then dark.

"I don't know you," I said.

"No," he said, and something flickered in his face. "Not yet."

It was a strange answer, and I let it pass because I was too tired to chase it.

My borrowed memories told me one thing about him.

Denton Kane owned half the hotels on Michigan Avenue and had never once been photographed with a woman.

"What do you want from me?" I said.

"Dinner," he said.

I stared at him.

"Every night," he said. "At my table, with me. That's all I'm asking."

"That's the whole price?"

"That's the whole price."

"And in return?"

"Everything the Ashworths took from you, and everything your stepmother is sitting on."

He finally looked at me.

His eyes were gray, and steady in a way that made my stomach turn over.

"You're the one who stood in that ballroom and put your ring in his champagne," he said. "I only opened the door."

I should have been frightened of him.

I was a nurse, and I had learned that the calmest man in the room is sometimes the most dangerous.

But he had put his coat around me without asking and he had not touched me since.

"Monday," I said.

His shoulders came down half an inch.

"Monday," he agreed.

The Kane Tower was sixty floors of black glass above the river.

His penthouse took the top two.

He showed me to a bedroom with a view of the whole city.

He told me there was a lock on the inside of the door.

Then he said good night, and he really went.

I stood in the middle of that room and understood that I was alone in a stranger's body.

I looked into the mirror over the dresser.

She had dark brown hair, hazel eyes, a soft mouth and a small scar on her chin.

She was twenty-six years old.

I had been thirty-one, an ER nurse on a night shift, walking home from the train in the rain.

I remembered headlights, and then I remembered a chandelier.

"I'm sorry," I told the girl in the mirror. "I don't know where you went."

She did not answer.

I did not sleep.

On Monday at noon, a judge who had known Denton's grandmother for forty years married us in a small chamber that smelled of floor wax.

Denton wore a plain gray suit.

I wore the green dress from the party, because nobody had thought to bring me another.

When the judge said "you may kiss the bride," Denton looked at me, and he waited.

I took a step toward him and put my hand flat on his chest.

His heart was pounding under my palm.

I went up on my toes and kissed him once, slowly, in front of the judge and the clerk.

His breath caught, and his hand came up and curled around the back of my neck.

For a few seconds he kissed me.

Then he stepped back and cleared his throat.

"Thank you," he said, and it sounded like he meant it for more than the kiss.

At the penthouse, a woman in a gray uniform had set a table for two by the window.

There was soup and bread and a pot of tea.

Denton poured me a cup with his own hands.

"Chamomile with honey," he said. "No lemon."

I lifted the cup, and the smell hit me, and I put it down.

"I hate chamomile," I said. "It tastes like a hay bale."

Denton froze with the teapot in his hand.

For a moment his expression tightened, as if my words had caught him off guard.

Then the corner of his mouth lifted.

"Good," he said. "Then we'll find the one you like."

He poured the chamomile down the sink himself.

After dinner he put a phone on the table between us.

It was an old model with a cracked corner and a purple case.

"This was in your room at your father's house," he said. "I had it brought out at dawn on Sunday."

I stared at the purple case.

"It was in a drawer under your sweaters. It holds one recording, from Saturday afternoon."

My hand was not quite steady as I pressed play.

The voice was mine, and it wasn't.

It was higher and thinner, and it sounded scared.

"Whitney," it said. "I know about the baby."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend