Chapter 7: The Red Dress

"Nothing," I told Camille. "I just got dizzy."

She searched my face.

"Dad's money problems," she said gently. "That's all it is. Don't let it scare you."

I nodded and carried the coffee tray in.

In the car on the way home I did not speak until the driver turned onto the avenue.

"Two years ago," I said. "What did my father sign?"

Jasper was looking out the window.

"You said one fact at a time."

"One. Now."

He turned and looked at me directly.

"Two years ago, your father signed a private agreement with Spencer's father. It promised you in marriage to Spencer in exchange for a loan."

I felt the car move around me.

"Promised."

"Yes."

"Without asking me."

"Without telling you. You were twenty-five."

The driver's eyes went to the mirror and away.

I put my hands over my face.

All those dinners.

All those times my father had said Spencer's name in the same breath as the word family.

All those jokes I had thought were jokes.

"Did Grayson know?"

"I don't know."

"Did Camille?"

Jasper hesitated for half a second.

"I don't know that either."

I lowered my hands.

"Why didn't you tell me at the gala?"

"Because you would have thought I was one more man with a plan for you."

I said nothing, and he did not push.

Outside the building he took my hand and stayed holding it, and we walked in together without a word.

On Monday morning the photographers were outside my studio.

My studio is a small room above a bakery. Nobody had ever photographed it.

There were six men with long lenses on the sidewalk, and one of them shouted my name.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Mocked My Curves, So I Married the Billionaire Bartender from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.