I Married a Stranger to Ruin My Groom novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Separate Rooms

At his house they set terms and she learns he walked past her door before the wedding. Cory's lawyers file to void the marriage.

Harvey's house was a grey stone place on a quiet street, and it still smelled like his grandfather's pipe.

It was almost one in the morning.

I stood in the front hall in a ruined wedding dress and a pair of shoes that had stopped being shoes an hour ago.

"Kitchen or study?" Harvey asked.

"Kitchen. I haven't eaten since seven this morning."

He found bread, a block of cheese and a bottle of wine somebody had left unopened on the counter.

We ate standing up.

"Terms," he said, setting down his glass.

"You have terms?"

"I wrote them in the car." He took a folded sheet from his jacket. "Twelve months. In public we're husband and wife, and we act like it."

"And in private?"

"Separate bedrooms. You have the one at the top of the stairs. Mine is at the end of the hall."

"Fine."

"I pay the hospital. All of it, whatever it comes to."

"Fine."

"You stay until the company is safe. Then you leave with whatever you want, and I never ask why."

I looked at the paper.

It was a neat list, six lines long, and not one of them had a feeling in it.

"What's the catch?" I said.

"There isn't one."

"There's always one."

"There's a cousin who will do everything he can to take it back," Harvey said. "That's the catch."

I signed the bottom, right under his flat, fast signature.

"One more thing," I said. "Before the courthouse, you were standing outside my dressing room."

His hand stopped on the glass.

"Mallory said it, and you looked at the floor," I said. "How long?"

"Not tonight."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the only one I have at one in the morning." He met my eyes. "Ask me again when you're not exhausted, and I'll tell you the truth."

I should have pushed.

But I could feel every hour of the day in my shoulders, and my mother had wanted me to marry a man who wouldn't lie to her, and this one at least admitted he was holding something back.

"Tomorrow," I said.

"Tomorrow."

He took me upstairs to the room at the top.

It was a big room with a white bed, a tall window and a bathroom with a tub on feet.

"There's a robe in the closet," he said. "Towels are in the cabinet."

I turned my back to him and reached behind me for the zipper.

It was no use. The dress closed with forty tiny silk buttons that my mother had spent six hours sewing on, one by one, in a hospital chair.

"I can't reach," I said. "The planner did the buttons."

Harvey was quiet.

"I'll call someone," he said.

"At one in the morning?"

I heard him cross the room.

"Hold still," he said.

His fingers touched the top button, and then the second, and the third.

The silk was loose, and the backs of his knuckles brushed my spine on the way down.

Every time they touched, the skin there went tight.

He stopped after three.

"That's enough to get your arms out," he said. "You can manage the rest."

His voice had gone rough.

I turned my head, and I saw him standing very still with his hand held away from my back and his other fist closed.

I told myself it was the hour.

I told myself he was a man who had lost his fiancée tonight, and I was a woman in a dress.

"Thank you," I said.

"Goodnight, Tilda."

He left, and he closed the door softly.

I stood there with my back bare and my pulse ticking in my throat, and I decided I would not think about it.

I took a bath until the water went cold.

At two, wrapped in his grandfather's old terry-cloth robe, I picked up my phone for the first time in an hour.

The top message was from the hospital: my mother was asleep and stable.

The second was from an unknown number.

It was a photo of a legal letter on thick cream paper, with a law firm's name at the top.

Under it was one line: Mr. Lorne's marriage is a sham, and the Fosdick family will petition to void it by Monday.

The third message was from Cory.

"You have until Monday to walk away with something," it said. "After that, I take everything."

← 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