Page 45 of Reluctant Surrender

“Fine.” My mind raced for a solution. “A quick wedding and a fast divorce. My final offer.”

He huffed a laugh and put his drink down on the end table beside his chair. He pushed up to his feet, then casually sauntered over to his desk.

“Your final offer.” He picked up the deck of cards and flipped open the box, pouring the deck into his palm. “There is no divorce on the table, angel. Only marriage.” He made his way over to me, shuffling the deck between his hands.

“I’m just saying, we get married, stay married for, I don’t know, six months to a year, then we divorce. By then he has to have lost interest and then we can both go about our lives.”

Still, he shook his head. “Marriage is a one-time thing. A lifelong commitment.”

I had to let the words process for a minute. That proclamation was not anything I would ever think to come out of Lukas’ mouth.

“Exactly. And you shouldn’t have to make that commitment to me because I messed up. It’s not fair to you.” Or me. It wasn’t fair that I would make a vow to love a man for the rest of my life, knowing he had no love in his heart for me. Every time we celebrated an anniversary it would be as hollow as all the parties my father threw for his wife of the month.

If we even celebrated them. Lukas had the means to ship me off to live anywhere in the world. Just because we were married didn’t mean he’d stay by my side. He would still be able to walk out at any moment, leaving me alone and incapable of finding happiness.

“You think I made this decision lightly? That I didn’t think through what I was doing?” he asked, still shuffling the cards.

“I think you’re being a nice guy—”

His abrupt burst of laughter cut me off. “Nice guy? Don’t start insulting me now, angel.”

“I mean, you’re doing what you think is right, but it’s not. I can’t marry you.”

“Okay.” He placed the deck in his hand, face side down. “High card wins. If you win, no marriage. If I do, you’ll stop fighting me on this and will marry me on Friday night.” He held up his hand, the deck daring me.

There was no way for me rig this game. It wasn’t my deck; I had no idea which cards were where.

“You’re going to let our future be decided by a card game?” I stared at the deck, desperately trying to come up with some way to figure out the cards.

“I think that’s already been the case, so why not finish it off. Go on, cut the deck and show your card.” He pushed his hand toward me.

“Fine. This is stupid, but fine.” I bit down on the corner of my lip and picked up three fourths of the deck. I took a deep breath and flipped it over. “Queen of hearts!”

“Hmm. Fitting, I guess.” He took the cards from me and shuffled them back into the deck several times. He handed the entire deck to me, and I placed them face down in my palm. Confidence filled me as he reached for the cards.

He picked up only three cards. “Ready?”

“Just flip it.” I rolled my fingers in the air.

He turned it over.

He smiled and brought his eyes up to meet mine. “King of hearts.”

Chapter 22

Lukas

“Does he really need to be here?” Patryk jerked a thumb toward the corner of my office where Joey Bertonelli stood with his hands shoved into his pants pockets.

“He’ll be gone after the marriage certificates are all signed.” I glanced at my watch. If Maggie didn’t come down to my office to get this over with in the next five minutes, I’d have to send Patryk or Andrezj to drag her down. Or maybe I’d do it myself.

“Any word on Konrad Dudek?” Maggie hadn’t mentioned him, but her father should be at her wedding. Or at the very least the bastard should be aware of it. Not that he had any right to call himself her father after tossing her out the way he did.

“I left a message at the hotel he’s staying at in Paris and on the cell we have for him, but nothing.” Patryk frowned. “I knew he was a piece of shit when we did those jobs for him a while back, but ditching out on his only daughter like this, that’s really low.”

In the short time Maggie had been in my home, she’d become family to my men. They wouldn’t allow anything to hurt her, and it was confusing why her own father wasn’t the same.

“I think it’s time we sent someone over there. Who do we have available for a few weeks trip to Europe?”

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