“See you soon, brother!” Bardil says, laughing as he hangs up.
I stand next to my bed starting at the rumpled sheets with my hand halfway pushed through my hair and a scowl on my face. Shit.
Blair is not going to like this one bit. And if I don’t convince my family that this is a genuine marriage between two people who bothwantedit… fuck sakes. They will have a thousand questions about how and why it happened, and there will be no way to hide my plot against Jaco.
I need Blair to play the role of a perfect wife in front of my family. But things between us aren’t exactly that great at the moment, so I can’t see this going down that well.
My head is spinning with possible solutions to try and make this work, but each one I come up with isn’t good enough. Heading downstairs, I decide I need coffee, and maybe I need to jump into the ocean to properly wake myself up and restart this day on a more positive note. Then, hopefully, after that, I’ll have an idea of how to address this problem. And Blair should be up in the next hour or two as well. I won’t delay asking her. Better to get it over and done with so she can be angry with me now and maybe have calmed down by Friday’s dinner.
Dammit. This does not fit well into my plans. But it’s fine. I’ll work it out.
***
The ocean water is refreshing. I stay floating in the clear salted waves for twenty minutes while I meditate on how to tell Blair. My skin soaks up the magnesium from the water and helps relax my body. When I step out of the ocean and onto the white sand, I look up and see Blair standing on the deck holding a cup of coffee.
Lifting my hand, I wave. She tilts her head to the side, but the halfhearted wave she sends back at me is only a brush of her fingers through the air.
Rubbing the towel over my hair, I walk toward her with a smile on my face.
“How did you sleep?” I ask when I’m close enough.
“Fine, thanks.”
“The water’s great. I should start every morning with a soak in the ocean,” I remark, trying to set the mood before I broach the tense subject.
She sips her coffee, and I notice how her eyes drift over my body. It makes me smirk. She is terrible at hiding it when she checks me out. She might not like me very much, but she’s attracted to me whether she wants to be or not.
“Listen, Blair, we have a dinner with my family on Friday night,” I say casually. “At seven,” I add, watching her expression to try to read her reaction.
“Ok,” she says skeptically. “And they know about you forcing me to marry you?” she asks with a challenging tone.
“They know we are married, yes.”
“That’s not what I asked, and you know it.”
I smirk. She’s sharp-witted. It’s something I rather enjoy about her. I love how one moment she seems shy and timid, but as soon as you cross a line, she’s fiery.
“I need them to think we are happily married,” I sigh. “What are the chances of that happening?” I ask with one brow raised.
“Why do you need them to think we are happily married? What difference does it make?”
“Because I don’t want them to know about Jaco Marcas and my vendetta against him. If they know I forced you into marriage, they will ask questions, and I don’t want questions.”
“Mm. You need me to keep your secret,” she says, her eyes narrowing and a dark expression crossing her face.
She tilts her head to the side and scrunches her nose thoughtfully. I love how she looks when she’s just woken up. A little messy. Her hair wild over her shoulders. Her eyes a little red, and her lips soft and slightly pouted.
“I think that the possibilities of your family believing our marriage is real depend on how well negotiations go.” She says critically.
“Negotiations?” I ask, confused.
“I can pretend to be a happy wife, in love with my new husband, whom Iobviouslyadore, if you can agree that after the dinner you will let me do whatever I want.”
“You need to be more specific,” I growl, not liking the sound ofdo whatever I want.
She smirks. “Freedom, Simon. Without you trying to control every single thing I do and every place I go,” she says.
“But you will remain married to me?”