Romeo and I slid into a routine.
A routine where I did whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, and he stopped bothering me about it.
This mostly consisted of lunch dates with Hettie, trips to local libraries, and Henry Plotkin binges in anticipation of the fourteenth and final one.
Not exactly life on the edge.
This evening crawled by like any other. While I hovered over the stove, forking down adobo pork belly before Hettie could even plate it, Romeo ate his boring chicken in his boring office.
God forbid he get caught being civilized with his wife in front of his staff.
“You’re not a mop, Dal.” Hettie jerked the pot away from me. “You don’t need to lick the cookware clean.”
“It’s called efficiency. I’m saving water for the drought.”
“The one across the country?”
“It’s called patriotism, Hettie.”
“We both know you finish dinner in point-two seconds every night to kick me out early so you and Lucifer can get freaky.”
Since she’d spoken nothing but truth, I did exactly that, ushering her and Vernon out the door.
By the time Romeo slipped into my room, I awaited him on my duvet, naked, Henry Plotkin in one hand and a highlighter in the other.
In truth, I counted the days, the hours, the minutes until my period. I wanted so badly to wake up in the morning (okay, afternoon) and discover I was late.
Nothing would make me happier than being pregnant. I was sure of it.
Even if my blessing would be Romeo’s curse.
Romeo strode to me and attempted to pry my fingers off the hardcover.
“Wait.” I pouted, tugging it back. “Madison is about to—”
He stood deathly still. “Madison?”
“The character. Henry’s sister.”
Madison the Scumbag, on the other hand? I hadn’t heard from him since the showdown at Le Bleu.
I’d be lying if I said I felt good about the way we’d left things. Not from guilt. Madison used me as a tool against my husband, who then used me as a tool against Madison.
If I were a judge, they’d both be convicted of crimes. It just sucked to know the three of us were stuck in this power, ego, and money limbo.
I released the book, allowing Romeo to set it on the nightstand. Then he proceeded to show me heaven in a place that should have been my personal hell.
We did everything but sex. Spent hours exploring each other’s bodies. Each muscle. Each curve. All licked, kissed, scraped, and sucked.
He knew my body inside out. The beauty mark below my right hip bone. Each individual freckle on my shoulder.
And I’d studied him acutely, learning exactly where he was ticklish (between his six-pack and hip bone), what made him suck in a breath (when I covered the crown of his cock with my mouth, then blew air on the tip), and what he merely tolerated because he knew I enjoyed it (when I licked the shell of his ear. It gave him goose bumps).
At two past midnight, he slid his pants over his legs. I lay in bed, lips puffed, hair a mess, body deliciously aching.
Romeo glanced at the poor flower and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “…incapacity to care for a houseplant, let alone an entire child.”
Vernon’s rose had prevailed the impossible—me.
My sun-deprived room, the dirty water it marinated in, and my general inattentiveness.
From time to time, Romeo would tend to it, swapping out fresh water. Once, he’d even taken the tiny scissors I used to trim my eyebrows, clipping the tip of the rose.
Maybe that was why only one petal had fallen from it since we’d started regularly hooking up.
I didn’t know what impressed me more—Vernon’s ability to create a sub-species of rose or my husband’s hidden trait of caring for things with the gentleness of a doting father.
The next morning, I danced around the kitchen island with Hettie, immersed in a chocolate challenge.
Every single brand under the sun sprawled before us. Godiva, Cadbury, Dove, Ghirardelli, Lindt, and La Maison du Chocolat.
Vernon, our judge, sat on a barstool, atop four thick finance textbooks I’d stolen from Romeo’s office for added height. Not that Hettie or I could see him through our blindfolds.
I munched on a raspberry ganache pearl. “Godiva.”
Vernon cleared his throat, interrupting my 4-3 lead. “Mrs. Costa, you have a guest.”
As always, he insisted on calling me Mrs. Costa.
And as always, I visibly shuddered.
I ripped the blindfold off my eyes, gasping. “Frankie!”
But it wasn’t her.
Not Momma, either.
My lungs emptied, a gust of air whooshing past my lips.
Shepherd Townsend stood before me.
He hovered by the doorway, hat in hand, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
He wore that suit I liked the most. Black with yellow stripes. A hilarious combo that earned him the nickname Bubba Bee.
Those days seemed eons ago.
I wasn’t laughing now.
“Dallas. You haven’t been taking my calls.”
I pushed the chocolate aside. “Yes, I am aware.”
“I was hoping we could talk.” He lifted a shoulder, unsure of himself for once.
It tugged at my heartstrings, if not completely knotted them together in a tangled heap. Despite his actions, I couldn’t hate him all the way.
I gestured to the dessert-laden table in front of me. “Clearly, I’m busy.”
Thorny anger climbed up my throat. It went beyond the act of promising me to Romeo without my consent. Daddy had done that before with Madison, too.
What charred me inside-out was the eye-opening moment my now-husband hauled me from my childhood home, barefoot and in my sleeping gown.
In that instant, with the clarity of a newly polished mirror, I knew my father would not save me.
Fathers were supposed to protect their children. Not their family’s reputation.
Shepherd Townsend operated in a man’s world. Where women were a novelty. Simple, ditzy creatures to be quieted by the drop of a credit card.
He believed I’d find happiness with Madison, just as he’d wagered I’d grow accustomed to Romeo. After all, they were both easy on the eyes and filthy rich.
What more could a woman want?
What, indeed?
Perhaps a voice. Agency. Respect.
My father was a chauvinist. Just like the rest of Chapel Falls. Now that I no longer lived under his roof, I could show him exactly what I thought about his worldview.
A wave of surprise drenched Daddy’s face. “Surely, you could spare me a few minutes.”
While Hettie and Vernon scurried away, giving us undesired privacy, I gallivanted around the island, gathering the ingredients for homemade whipped cream.
“What makes you so sure? Because I don’t have any children to raise? Any floors to sweep? Luncheons to organize? Because I’m a woman, Daddy?”
At this rate, he would need a forklift to return his jaw to its upright position.
On the bright side, perhaps he could apologize to society for his chauvinism by donating his eyes to science. I didn’t even know those puppies could grow that big. Or be that empty. Like two deserted planets.
“Where is this coming from? You used to be so sweet.” Daddy’s hat slipped from his fingers, feathering to the floor. “What happened to you?”
“What happens to every girl who escapes Chapel Falls.” A sad smile hovered at my mouth. “I grew up and realized there is life beyond the ivy-laced walls of Chapel Falls. That in this life, women are allowed to make mistakes, to be human, to experience life as fully and as wholly as men, without paying a horrible price.”
“You knew what would happen if you got caught with a man before marriage. I didn’t make the rules. Society did.”
“Two thousand years ago. Most of American society doesn’t live like us anymore.”
“You’ve been mad at me since before you moved to Maryland.”
Somehow, he looked smaller. Older. Far less powerful than I remembered.
Time apart had extinguished that supreme glow that once radiated from him. The one every girl saw from her daddy before reality scrubbed it raw.
“Yes.” I rinsed my hands, wiping them on a rag, along with every illusion regarding my father’s concern for me. “I realized, after you gave me to Romeo, that I’d never chosen Madison, either. At the time, I agreed to avoid upsetting you. You’ve never given me a voice. How ironic that I found mine, anyway, and in the gilded cage you sent me to, no less.”
Daddy observed our surroundings.
The beauty. The lavishness. The wealth.
“I thought he’d be good to you. Costa’s reputation is unimpeachable. Is it really so bad here?”
No. Not at all.
But it wasn’t my choice, either.
Just as I readied to give him a piece of my mind, swift footsteps echoed down the corridor. The pace. The quiet confidence.
It could only be my husband.
Two things happened at once. First, my heart somersaulted, eager to see him again, though only three hours had passed since he’d feasted on me for breakfast.
Second, my nerves—already strained so taut I feared they’d snap my skin like rubber bands—jumped to attention.
Romeo strode in, larger and more forbidding than my father.
Than the kitchen.
Than his mansion.
How had I not noticed it before? That my husband—dressed to the nines with his too-sharp jaw and ashen eyes—was a weapon of war himself.
He shouldered past my father, caught my expression, and swung his glare on Shep Townsend.
A chill zigzagged between us.
“Have you an invitation to be here?”
Ego puffed up Daddy’s chest.
Earlier, wrinkles had pleated his forehead, betraying his frustration with me. At Romeo’s words, they ironed out. Shepherd Townsend refused to be schooled by a man half his age.
“I don’t need an invitation. My daughter—”
“Is my wife, my responsibility, and therefore my business. She currently does not want to speak to you. Unless I’m mistaken?” Romeo swiveled to me, raising a brow.
I didn’t need to shake my head.
He read my eyes.
He read me.
He turned back to my father. “Leave.”
“Dallas…” My father—no longer Daddy to me, I realized—wrung his suit in his hands, attempting eye contact. “Are you really going to treat your own dad this way?”
Guilt burrowed through my chest, past my ribs, and into my heart. I ignored it, folding my arms.
He tossed his hands up as Vernon materialized behind him, guiding him away by the elbow. “You told Momma you were happy.”
“I told Momma a lot of things so her heart wouldn’t break.” I swallowed. “Your heart, however, deserves to crumble to dust.”
“Allow me to make it easier for you, Shep.” Romeo planted a hand on my father’s shoulder. I was surprised the latter didn’t sink all the way through the floor and disappear between its cracks. “If I catch you here one more time, uninvited and unwelcome, I will cut your legs off to ensure your mistakes do not become a habit. Do not underestimate my mean streak. After all, I did ruin your firstborn’s reputation, engagement, and life, all within the span of one evening. I am terribly proficient where cruelty is concerned. It’s an inherited talent. Making me an enemy is not for the faint of heart.”
The steel calmness that settled into my shoulders at the sight of my father’s forced removal should have rattled me.
I didn’t recognize myself. Yet, I knew I would never return to the old me.
No matter what happened.
Georgia would always own my soul, but I suspected my heart lived here. In Potomac.
Dangerous hope bubbled inside me. Maybe my pregnancy wouldn’t tarnish Romeo’s immaculate existence.
What if I could convince him that giving someone else life was worth more than ruining his father’s?
My eyes clung to Romeo, who braced the back of an upholstered stool, glaring at me with a mixture of tenderness and aversion.
In the rare times he showed me kindness, he despised himself for it.
He scowled, misreading my longing stare as an accusing one. “I thought you wanted to get rid of him.”
“I did.”
“Why are you looking at me, then?”
“Don’t I normally look at you?”
“Only when you want to be eaten out or you’ve lost your credit card and need a new one.”
Lord, was that true?
I’d been so busy comparing him to Shakespeare’s love-struck character that I’d failed to notice I hadn’t earned any Wife of the Year awards, either.
“Well, I’m looking at you now,” I snapped. “And I like what I’m seeing.”
He jerked his head back. “Are you drunk?”
“Can’t I pay you a compliment?”
“I’m the one who does the payments in this relationship. Whatever you’re doing, stop it immediately.”
Somehow, our gazes had tangled so thoroughly, I didn’t know how to pull mine away.
He retreated first with a shake of his head. “I’m going to the gym.”
I would’ve followed him. Truly. But exercise equipment resembled distant cousins of the guillotine. Not my fault I’d entered this world with sky-high self-preservation instincts.
I pouted. “You’re always going to the gym.”
“That’s right.” Romeo threw the fridge open, snatched a water bottle, and downed the entire thing in one go. “I want to see a greater age than thirty-three, and your sole mission in life seems to be wearing me down.”
He crushed the plastic in his fist, tossing it into the recycling bin.
“Will you come to my room afterward?”
I immediately regretted the question. It sounded clingy.
I never waited for Romeo to arrive. He simply did. And on the rare occasion he didn’t, I pretended not to notice.
Romeo turned to me fully, taking me in. “Why?”
Okay. I could’ve done without the incredulity.
“Maybe I’ve missed you,” I muttered.
“I should hope not. We may not be enemies anymore, Shortbread, but we will never be lovers.” He brushed his shoulder against mine as he exited the kitchen. “Make sure Hettie cleans all the melted chocolate from the counter. Heads will roll if I find an ant inside my mansion.”
