Page 21 of Unwillingly His

I wondered if I would be so lucky as to feel that desire and love one day. I hoped that I could look at my husband the way Charlotte looked at hers.

“When will I find my husband?” I had asked my mother.

“As if there was any man in the world good enough for my baby girl,” my father said, wrapping his arms around my bare shoulders.

“I don’t know if I want a man who’s good enough for me,” I said, slurring my words just a little. “I want a man who’s strong enough for me. I don’t want a noble night like Charlotte has.”

“Oh?” My mother laughed. “Do you want a prince?”

“You mean like Amelia and Olivia have?” I thought about it for a second, like it was a serious question.

They both had amazing husbands who were kind, doating, and loved their wives more than anything.

They even supported their dreams and ambitions.

Olivia with her magazine and Amelia with her school.

Each man was also set to inherit a fortune and would continue to grow their families’ empire.

That didn’t sound appealing either. “No, I want a king. I want a man who rules over a vast kingdom with an iron fist. The kind of man who takes what he wants and doesn’t suffer fools.”

“Sounds like you want a hard man,” my father said, rolling his eyes when my mother and I both dissolved into another fit of giggles.

“It sounds like you want a cruel man,” my father clarified. “There’s nothing wrong with the cruel man as long as you are what he wants. The second he turns his gaze from you or decides that you are in the way of whatever his final goal is, you will regret that choice.”

“No, that’s not a king. That’s a president.” I wasn’t even sure what I was saying anymore. But the math was mathing in my champagne-soaked mind. “I don’t want a man who was just handed money on a silver spoon. I want a man who owns his empire because he took it by right and might. I want a man whose temper and fire for life runs hot. I want heat and passion and…”

“And,” my mother interrupted, swaying on her Jimmy Choo heels, “a man who looks like Henry Cavill.”

“That would suffice as well.” I nodded sagely.

“I don’t know who that is,” my father groused, before he slipped on the stairs, barely catching himself and doing a little dance to make it look like it was intentional, a trick to amuse us.

My mother and I erupted into more giggles as we made our way down the stairs.

Our earlier conversation was forgotten in an instant as my father made grand proclamations about the need to dance, to enjoy life to the fullest, and he sung something else that was so slurred my mother and I just laughed.

Until I also slipped on the ice…

Straight into the arms of warm marble.

That was the thought which first penetrated my champagne-fogged mind. That I had just collided with heated stone. As if I were pressing my cheek against the warm marble of a carved fireplace mantle.

Then I looked up into the narrowed dark gaze of Lucian Manwarring, Sr. “I’m sorry, I—oh, it’s you!”

Well over six feet tall, with a chiseled jaw and thick, bright silver and black hair, any girl would be forgiven for thinking the man a complete DILF.

Daddy-I’d-Like-to-Fuck.

I mean, holy hell.

He was like Christian Grey, the later years.

There was just something about an experienced man with money and power that was intoxicating, even better than champagne.

Who wanted to mess with an immature twenty-nothing who was filled with selfish misplaced arrogance and ego when you could have a man who commanded the attention of world leaders and business titans?

But none of that mattered.

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