The Stand-In Wife and His Only Obsession novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Section Nine

Jules negotiates the marriage contract at midnight and marries Lucas at St. Thomas, then watches Kitty dance with his kind cousin.

I looked at the scar, then at the note, then at him.

"Every year since?"

"Twenty of them. The first came on my thirteenth birthday."

"And today's your birthday."

"Thirty-two," he said. "Happy birthday to me."

【Wait. Typed notes? That's not in the book.】

【The book never mentions any notes. Is the author retconning?】

【It's a manipulation tactic. He's making the cop feel sorry for him.】

I put the note back in its envelope by the corners.

Nine years on the job teaches you not to smudge things.

"Okay," I said. "Then we negotiate. Sit down, Mr. Thackeray."

He blinked at being told to sit in his own study.

Then he sat.

I took the chair across the desk and uncapped his fountain pen without asking.

"My badge stays. I go to work every shift, and I don't quit when it gets ugly."

"Agreed."

"Separate bedrooms."

"Agreed."

"One year. Then we both walk, and my family's debt stays forgiven."

"Agreed."

"I pick my own security. Not one of your guys. Mine."

His jaw moved. "Agreed."

"And I read the file. All of it. 2006."

That one landed.

He looked at the window for a long second.

"The police file is sealed."

"You're a Thackeray. Unseal it."

"Agreed," he said, very quietly.

【He's agreeing to EVERYTHING. Where is my possessive king?】

【Wait for section nine.】

I tapped the tab. "That leaves this."

"That's the one I don't give," he said. "I know where my wife is. Every hour of every day."

"Fine."

He hadn't expected that.

"Fine?"

"You'll know where I am," I said. "And I'll know where you are. Same app. Same rules. You go dark, I go dark."

"I'm the one who gets the notes."

"And I'm the one who walks into rooms with guns in them. Both of us or neither."

It was almost one in the morning.

Somewhere beyond the door, eighty guests were pretending not to listen.

He took the pen out of my hand.

He wrote the clause in the margin in small, neat capitals and initialed it.

Then he turned the page around and held out the pen.

I signed Juliet Halsey.

He signed under me.

"Eleven o'clock," he said. "St. Thomas. Do you own a dress?"

"I own a windbreaker."

He almost smiled.

It changed his whole face, and then he put it away.

The next morning I wore a plain ivory slip dress my mother had bought for Kitty's honeymoon.

It fit me badly in the shoulders.

I didn't care.

Four hundred guests packed St. Thomas, and every one of them had heard the bride was a different sister.

My father walked me up the aisle.

Marge sat in the back pew in her rumpled blazer with a coffee she'd smuggled in.

She raised it at me as I passed.

【The cop sister is actually doing it. I need popcorn.】

【Kitty would've looked so much better in that dress.】

【Rude. The cop has shoulders. I'm into it.】

Lucas waited at the front in a charcoal morning suit.

He watched me the whole way up.

Not the dress. Me.

The priest got through the vows.

I said mine like a statement to a detective.

He said his like he'd memorized them.

"You may kiss the bride."

I expected a peck for the cameras.

He put one hand on my jaw, slow.

I didn't move away.

So he kissed me.

His mouth was warm and careful for a moment.

Then my hand closed on his lapel all on its own and he made a sound into my mouth I felt in my knees.

He tilted my head and took the kiss deeper.

His thumb pressed under my ear where my pulse was going wild.

I bit his lower lip, because I'm a menace.

He breathed in sharp and pulled me flush against him, his palm flat on the bare small of my back where the dress dipped.

Four hundred people.

A priest.

My mother.

I forgot all of them.

Somebody coughed very loudly.

He let me go one inch at a time.

His eyes had gone dark.

"That wasn't in the contract," I whispered.

"Add it," he said.

【EXCUSE ME??????】

【That was NOT a stand-in kiss.】

【He never kissed Kitty like that in five years. Not once.】

The reception was at the Plaza.

I danced with my husband once.

He moved with stiff, expensive elegance, keeping his hand exactly where it was supposed to be.

Then he was pulled off by a board member, and I went to find a drink.

That's when I saw my sister.

Kitty was in pale pink silk in the middle of the floor.

She was dancing with a man in a tweed jacket and wire-rimmed glasses.

Soft sandy hair. A kind, crinkly smile.

He was laughing at something she'd said.

"Lucas's cousin," a woman beside me said. "Aldous. He runs the foundation. Isn't he lovely?"

【IT'S ALDOUS. My baby. My second male lead.】

【She's going for the second male lead this time!!! YES, GIRL.】

【Aldous was the only good thing in that entire book.】

The song ended.

Kitty kissed Aldous's cheek and came straight to me, flushed and glowing.

"You looked very convincing up there," she said.

"Who's your dance partner?"

She glanced back at him with real softness.

"In my first life," she said, "Aldous was the only one who was ever kind to me."

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