Page 9 of The Marriage Negotiation

That rat bastard.

"You won't have to take responsibility for it." I'd pay it if I had to. "Peter is the one that cancelled the wedding by running away with his mistress. He should be the one to pay whatever fees there are."

I sat down in the chair next to Zaq, resting my elbows on my knees. "I'm really sorry about this, Zaq. My brother is a bonehead. Even if he decided he didn't want to marry you, he shouldn't have waited until the day of your wedding."

"It's not your fault," Zaq replied. "If I remember correctly, you haven't even been home in ten years."

"I've come back to visit every now and then, but just my parents. Peter and I don't really get along."

"I'm not surprised," Zaq replied. "He didn't have a lot of good things to say about you."

"I'm not surprised either." Peter never had anything good to say about me. "It doesn't bother me much anymore. Having spent the last ten years not being called derogatory names or being bullied has actually been kind of nice."

Zaq winced. "He really did that?"

I shrugged. "Water under the bridge."

Zaq sighed before rubbing his hands over his face, his sigh growing into a loud grown before he dropped his hands. "I don't know what to do now. My parents are going to flip when they find out I'm not getting married."

"Why?" I asked. "I'd think they would be happy you're not marrying a man that not only has a mistress, but leaves you at the altar on the day of your wedding."

Made perfect sense to me.

"The whole mistress thing isn't an issue in my family. My mother is perfectly aware that my father has a mistress and even encourages him to spend time with her."

"No shit?"

"My parents' marriage was a marriage of convenience. They did not marry for love. They don't have that kind of relationship. They live together and attend all public outings together, but behind closed doors, they live very separate lives."

"That must be pretty tough for you."

I couldn't even imagine it. My parents might not have been the best parents in the world, but at least I knew that they loved each other and me.

"I grew up that way so it was more of a surprise when I learned that other families weren't like that than anything. I'm not in real favor of having a side-piece, but it's not my place to tell someone else they can't do that."

"So, if the mistress thing isn't a problem in your house, then why will your father be upset if you don't marry Peter?"

"A couple of reasons really," Zaq said. "The biggest reason is that I am thirty-one year old gay man and not married. My father says it doesn't look good. He seems to believe this is my only chance to ever get married."

"You're gorgeous," I stated. "I'm sure you have plenty of men clambering to marry you."

Zaq chuckled even as his cheeks heated. "You'd think that, but there are a lot less than you'd think."

"I don't believe it."

"My dating life had been dismal. Most men I have been interested in either wanted to treat me like a delicate little doll, arm candy, or were repulsed by what I do for a living."

I hated dating, too, so I could understand where he was coming from. When people learned that I was a doctor, they saw gold plated dollar signs, not me.

"The other reason is that your father and my father do business together," Zaq continued. "Once both our fathers retired, the companies were supposed to merge and Peter was set to take over as CEO of both companies. My father can't exactly let Peter take over if we're not married."

"Don't you want to take over the company? It's your family's company."

"No." Zaq smiled as he shook his head. "I've never wanted the family business. My career path took a totally different direction."

I was intrigued by the smile on Zaq's face. "What do you do?"

"I'm a nurse. I know it sounds odd for a man to be a nurse. Believe me, I hear it from my father all the time, but I love what I do. Currently, I work in triage in the emergency room, but over the last five years I've worked all sorts of different departments."

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