He Let Our Daughter Die, I Became A Tycoon's Bride novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Rule Four Is Canceled

The nurse took Hattie back to the hospital at nine, asleep with her rabbit and her petals.

I stood in the upstairs hall of the Draper estate in a wedding dress with a pin still in the hem.

Cillian stood at the other end with his jacket over his arm.

Two doors stood open between us.

His room was on the left, and mine was on the right.

"Rule four," I said.

"Say it."

"No touching unless there's a camera or a lawyer in the room."

"There were two hundred people in the garden," he said.

"You kissed me like you meant it."

"I did."

"You wrote the terms."

"I wrote them so you could always say no." He didn't come closer. "I'll keep them if you want them kept."

I should have walked into my own room.

I could feel the whole length of the hall between us, humming.

"Why did you say nothing at the grave?" I asked.

His face went still.

"I called you a vulture. You stood there and took it, and you didn't say a word."

"I had a promise to keep," Cillian said. "I couldn't say the thing that would have answered you."

"What promise?"

"One I'm not allowed to explain yet."

"That's not an answer."

"I know."

He put his jacket on a chair, very slowly, and I watched his hands.

"You called me a vulture, and I took it, and for six years I kept the phone on in every meeting I ever sat in," he said. "I took it to funerals. I laid it face up on every table I sat at, and I looked at it."

"It never rang for me."

"No. Then yesterday it did."

I couldn't move.

"I didn't marry you because I owed your father," Cillian said. "I married you because it's you."

My heart went hard against my ribs.

"You told me it was a debt."

"You told me. I let you."

I crossed the hall.

I took his tie in one hand and pulled his head down.

"Rule four," I said against his mouth, "is canceled."

He made a low sound in his throat, and then his hands were in my hair, and he was kissing me against the wall with a hunger that made my knees weak.

I kissed him back as hard as I could.

I had been angry for days, and frightened for days, and I had not let one thing out of me.

It came out now into his mouth.

He turned me, and we went through the left door together.

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