Page 36 of Sweet Wicked Vows

I laughed, causing Evelyn and her little gray-fluffy demon to jump. “Vous devez vous moquer de moi.”

“I’m not pregnant. Why does everyone keep saying that?” Evelyn asked, her bare leg brushing my knuckles. “I can go and pee on a damn stick if you want the proof, but I can assure you that I wouldn’t marry someone just because I got pregnant.”

Olivia was unconvinced. “Then it will appear that you are rebounding after the loss of your last engagement.”

Her slender throat bobbed. “I don’t give a damn how it looks. We got married in secret because of my dad. I never told him that I was seeing Jaxon, because like you said, we’re competitors, and my dad’s history surrounding competitors speaks volumes.”

It spoke more than volumes.

He destroyed my father’s business, leaving him without a single penny to his name. Our family’s business was nothing compared to the empire Lexington built, a blip in his radar that he could have easily ignored. He and my father were once partners with plans to take over the world, but Lexington had other ideas.

Ideas that didn’t involve sharing.

Bitter ash coated my mouth. The memory of the family falling apart and the sun shining less bright as we found ourmamandead.

Lexington did that.

Evelyn’s father did that to us.

She was the enemy’s daughter –myenemy’s daughter.

“We knew that he would never approve, that he’d do whatever it took to stop me falling in love with Jaxon.” The lies fell from her full lips easily. She didn’t skip a beat. “We got married, just the two of us, because we didn’t want anyone getting in our way.”

“Then why throw a party?” Olivia asked. “You’re married now. You could simply publish a press release with a couple of photos and announce it to the world that way.”

“Because, surprisingly, my dad showed that a parent’s love knows no bounds.” Evelyn smiled sadly. “He accepted what happened, and despite what I thought, he wants to be able to celebrate our love with us. Make no mistake, I’m more than happy to keep Jaxon and my… our love to ourselves. Throwing this event is for my dad.”

I was impressed with how real her words sounded.

Olivia’s phone ringing interrupted the conversation. She excused herself and disappeared out into the hall.

“Her bark is worse than her bite,” I said vaguely. “Don’t take it personally.”

Evelyn twisted the diamond and emerald engagement ring on her finger. I hated the sight of it. Not just because of what it represented, but it was too typical, too average for someone like her.

“Have you worked with her before?”

“Non,we’ve never worked together. Though, we are aware of each other in a different manner.”

Her head snapped up. “Oh, god. Please don’t tell me you slept with our event organizer.”

“She hasn’t agreed to be our event organizer yet.”

Her lips slammed into a tight thin line.

A smile crept onto my face as her shoulders tightened and her nostrils flared. “Are you jealous,douceur?”

“Don’t be absurd.” She refused to look at me, adjusting the slitin her skirt to hide her skin. “It seems only fitting that out of all the event organizers I contacted, the only one that was willing to discuss trying to throw a party in such a short frame of time was one of your ex-girlfriends.”

“Olivia and I never dated.”

It was the truth. Our relationship could have been categorized as nothing more than an almost moment. We never tried to rekindle that one time, neither of us were interested enough to see if the chemistry had been real or due to the heavy amounts of alcohol in our systems.

Though, watching the way Evelyn was reacting, it was enough of a reason not to disclose that little bit of information to her.

She rolled her eyes in disgust. “Ex-girlfriend, fuck-buddy, whatever you want to call it.”

Shewasjealous. Oh, how delightfully delicious.

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