They Mocked My Curves, So I Married the Billionaire Bartender novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: One Year, Separate Rooms

Roz's father and brother demand she retract it, and Jasper shuts them down. At his penthouse he offers a one-year marriage and she writes her own terms. Her closet is already full of clothes in her size, and the license appointment was booked days ago.

The ballroom would not stop staring, so Jasper walked me out through the kitchen.

Nobody stopped us.

Two waiters nodded at him and one of them said, "Good evening, Mr. Rhodes."

I stared at the side of his face.

"You pour your own drinks at your own party?"

"I like to know who's drinking," he said. "And I like to see who is alone."

He held a steel door open, and I stepped into a quiet service corridor.

I had not even let go of his hand.

I let go now.

My palm was shaking, and I put it flat against the wall.

"I just said yes to a man whose last name I learned thirty seconds ago."

"You said yes to getting out," Jasper said. "I can give you the rest in the car."

The door banged open behind us.

My father came through it first, red in the face, with Grayson at his shoulder.

"Rosalind," my father said. "You will go back in there and tell them this was a prank."

Gerald Abbott has run his company for thirty years, and he has never once said please to me.

"It wasn't a prank," I said.

"You embarrassed this family in front of the entire city."

"You were about to do that yourself."

Grayson stepped around him and jabbed a finger at Jasper.

"You think you can buy her? She's a hundred and eighty pounds of nothing. Take her. Nobody else will."

I felt that one in my stomach.

Jasper did not raise his voice.

"Say her weight again," he said. "In front of me. I'd like to hear it one more time."

Grayson opened his mouth and shut it.

My father put a hand on his son's chest.

"Mr. Rhodes," he said, and his whole tone changed. "We should talk. In my office. Monday."

"Monday is fine," Jasper said. "Bring your accountant."

My father's face went gray again.

I noticed it, and I put it away for later.

Jasper turned to me.

"My car is at the back. Do you want to come, or do you want to go home with them?"

I looked at my father and my brother.

Neither one asked if I was all right.

"The car," I said.

He did not touch me.

He just walked half a step ahead and held every door open.

It was a black sedan with a driver who did not speak.

Jasper's penthouse was forty floors up, and the whole city lay below the windows.

He took off his watch and set it in a dish.

I stood in the middle of the living room in my green dress, and I did not know what to do with my hands.

"Sit," he said. "Please."

I sat on the edge of a grey sofa.

He poured me water from a pitcher and sat in the chair across from me.

"Here is what I can offer," he said. "One year. You're my wife in public, and in private we are two people sharing a very large apartment."

"A fake marriage."

"A real one, legally. The paper is real."

"Why?"

He looked at the window for a second.

"I need a wife for a year. My grandfather's trust says I have to be married by thirty-four, and I have three weeks. I would rather it be someone I like."

"You like me. You met me ten minutes before the speech."

"I watch people at that bar all night," Jasper said. "Everyone at that gala looked at the stage. You were the only one who looked at the bar."

That was true, and it did not feel like the whole answer.

I let it go.

"Terms," I said. "I want terms. In writing."

He smiled for the first time.

"Good. Write them."

I took a pen from a drawer and a legal pad he gave me, and I wrote them down myself.

One year, with thirty days' notice for either of us.

Separate bedrooms.

No sex.

I underlined the last one twice.

"Affection only when someone is watching," I said. "In private, we don't pretend."

"Agreed."

"And you never say a word about my body."

He took the pen from my hand and read the page.

Then he looked up.

"I'll never say a word against it," he said. "I can't promise I'll never say a word about it."

The room got warmer.

I took the pad back, quickly.

"That's the only one I'm not signing."

"Then I won't ask you to," he said, and he was still smiling.

He walked me down a hall to a guest room with a door that locked.

There was a closet full of clothes in my size.

They had tags on them.

I stood there with my hand on a pink sweater, and I turned around.

"Jasper. When did you buy these?"

"Last week," he said. "Before the gala."

I opened my mouth, and my phone buzzed in my clutch.

It was the city clerk's office, a recorded reminder.

"Rosalind Abbott and Jasper Rhodes, your marriage license appointment is confirmed for Friday at ten a.m."

I had been his fiancée for forty minutes, and the clothes and the appointment had been waiting for days.

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