She Stole My Fiancé, So I Married His Enemy novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Heads Up

A hockey puck, a room full of her favorite flowers, a fake-date deal with Finn, and Keir catching her outside his study.

The front door opened before I could knock, and a hockey puck whistled past my ear.

It hit the doorframe so hard the wood rang.

"HEADS UP!"

I ducked too late.

A shirtless man skidded around the corner in his socks, a stick in one hand and no shame at all.

He had dirty-blond hair, freckles across his shoulders, and the build of a man who got paid to be hit.

"Sorry," he said. "Wrist-shot practice. Indoors. My mother says it's illegal."

I knew that face, and so did everyone in Boston.

Finn Stroud, center for the Ironclads, a tabloid regular who had once been photographed with three different models in one week.

"You almost took my head off," I said.

"Almost," he agreed, grinning. "Around here that's a welcome gift. You're Millicent."

Before I could answer, footsteps came down the hall.

Then he was standing at the end of it.

The man from the pillar.

The black suit was gone. He wore a gray T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up, and ink ran down his left forearm to the wrist.

He was taller than Finn, and still, and those pale eyes landed on me with weight.

My pulse jumped, which was stupid.

He asked for you by name.

I lifted a hand. "Hi. I wanted to say thank you."

He walked past me.

He didn't nod or look back.

There was a smell of cedar and cold air, and then his steps were on the stairs.

My hand stayed in the air.

"Ignore him," Finn said. "He talks to four people, and I'm the only one of them who lives here."

"He called my mother tonight and asked for me."

Finn's grin slipped for half a second. "Did he."

The housekeeper led me upstairs to a room at the end of the east hall.

I stopped in the doorway.

This was not a guest suite.

The walls were cream, the bed had a canopy, and a window seat was heaped with pillows.

The shelves were already full of books, and they were mine.

My favorite authors, in the editions I had lost in college.

On the nightstand stood a glass vase of lavender peonies.

I had told one person in my whole life that these were my favorite flower.

My father.

"Who decorated this room?" I whispered.

The housekeeper smiled and said nothing.

I opened the closet and found dresses in my size, with the tags still on.

Someone had known I was coming before I did.

The housekeeper said breakfast was at seven and left me standing there.

I picked up one peony and held it against my face.

It smelled exactly the way it had in my father's study.

Later, at the kitchen island, Finn made me a bowl of three kinds of cereal mixed together, because he said it was the only thing he knew how to make at midnight.

I told him everything.

He listened with the spoon stopped halfway to his mouth.

He didn't interrupt me once.

When I showed him Bree's text, his jaw went tight.

"She wants you at the wedding."

"She wants a trophy," I said. "Proof that she won."

"Then go." He leaned across the counter. "With me."

"With you?"

"I'm on a billboard over Storrow Drive. You walk in on my arm, Porter forgets his vows, and Bree has to smile through the photos."

He held out his hand. "Deal?"

"What do you get out of it?"

His grin faded into something harder to read.

"Every Thursday night my brother drives off alone and comes back after midnight. It's been nine years. If I ask where he goes, he talks about traffic."

He tapped the counter once.

"You find out where, and you're my date."

I should have said no.

"Deal," I said.

That night I couldn't sleep.

Around two I went down the hall for water and heard a low voice behind a door left open a few inches.

Keir's study. Finn had told me never to go in.

"She's under my roof now," Keir said. "Winslow can't touch her here."

There was a pause.

"No. She doesn't know about her father. And she can't find out what happened that night. Not yet."

The cold went through me.

My father.

A floorboard creaked under my bare foot.

The voice stopped.

Slow steps crossed the room, and the door swung wide.

Keir stood in the frame with the phone lowered, his eyes on mine.

"Come inside and shut the door, Millicent," he said. "You've heard half. You'll want the rest from me."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

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