Page 4 of The Princess & the Prospect

I glanced at my watch once more. “What’s up? Really? I’ve been waiting 45 fuckin’ minutes for this shit-show to get started. I’m done. They can come find me another day, when I’m not busy, and not being held up by their lying daughter doing God knows what in order to make her grand entrance.”

I heard the gasp and we both looked to the doorway where Double-D was standing with his daughter’s hand in the crook of his arm. She was wearing a pretty little ivory dress with peach flowers all over it. It fit tight to her much larger than they used to be tits and the baby bump she now had while swishing around her legs down just above her knees. Her long dark brown hair was pulled back on the sides and the curled length draped down behind her shoulders to disappear behind her back. Tears wrecked what I was guessing had been the perfect make-up job. Then there was her dad, spitting hellfire and brimstone at me. Well shit.

I watched as Anna tried to remove her hand from her father’s arm to no avail. He held her captive there in the doorway. He pointed a single finger toward the man waiting to marry us and I complied with a shrug of my shoulders. What did it actually matter to me anyway? I was marrying her for one reason only beyond the insurance shit. It would mean easier access to my kid, and the ability to get all the dirt I needed on her when it came time to go to court over custody because there would definitely be a time for that.

“Daddy, no, please. This is humiliating enough.” I don’t know what she thought she had to be humiliated about. I was the one who had been deceived, not her.

“Anna, you made your bed,” I heard him say to her. Here I was thinking he was trying to punish me with this marriage bullshit, but honestly I was beginning to think this was just his way of pushing another kid out the door. I felt a twinge of guilt for thinking that considering they’d all lost Toby not too long ago. Double-D’s son had been a club brother, or he would have been if he’d lived long enough to see me patched in officially. He was a decent guy, and I hated like hell that I knew at least part of what Anna had told me about losing her brother had been true. The emotion she had shown when she spoke of him is what had clawed at my heart and made me give her a chance. She was a horrible fuckin’ human if that had all been a part of her game too.

“Short version is just fine,” Double-D told the judge as he stood his daughter up beside me. The both of us refused to look at each other and instead chose to focus on the man marrying us.

The judge glanced back and forth a couple times between me and my sobbing bride-to-be. Then his eyes moved to Double-D. “You know we don’t really have to do this anymore for those in her condition.”

“It’s getting done,” Double-D returned and then stood quietly behind us. I guess he was there just in case one of us tried to pull a runner. I was fuckin’ tempted. I didn’t really need the club, did I? Fuck. Despite how badly I didn’t want to marry this girl now that she had shown me her true self, nothing could stop me from wanting to be there for my own kid. I knew what it was like to live without the love of one of your parents. Instead of running I stood there and swore vows to the woman who had put us both in this position by lying her ass off to me. I didn’t expect her to hold steady to her vows, considering she was untrustworthy already at best. I certainly hoped she didn’t plan on me doing any better. I was there for my kid, she was just incidental shit to deal with. This was a contract we were signing so that health insurance would cover her, and nothing more. I continued to tell myself that as I tried too damn hard not to see the way her shoulders shook as she cried beside me.

---