Page 12 of A Sinner's Truth

The man—no, I think this one might actually be a god—raises a single eyebrow at me. “Are you asking me if you’re sorry or telling me that you are?” His voice, deep and gravelly, goes straight through me.What the hell is that?

“I am… sorry. I don’t know what happened,” I reply.

He tilts his head to the side. “And here I was, thinking you just fell right out of the heavens.” He smiles.

I laugh. Like laugh so hard that I end up snorting. My hand comes up and covers my mouth. My face heats with embarrassment. It’s at this exact moment that I realise I’m still sitting on the guy and place my hands on his chest. Big mistake, because there’s nothing but rock-hard muscle under the suit he’s wearing. I push myself to my feet. His hands stay firmly on my waist until I’m standing.

I walk over and slide into the seat opposite him. “Does that line ever actually work?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried it before. Did it work?” His lips tip up into a smirk.

“No. But it did make me laugh, so you get bonus points for that. I’m Aria.” I offer him a hand, purposely leaving out my last name.

“Santo,” he says, wrapping one huge fucking palm around mine. “So, Aria, you make a habit of falling onto men’s laps?”

“Nope.” I shake my head. “I didn’t fall. I was knocked over.” I look around the bar. There’re more people in here than there was when I came in.

Santo’s face hardens. “Someone knocked into you? Who?” he questions while his eyes flick from corner to corner.

“I’m not sure. I am sorry, though,” I tell him. “But maybe it was fate.” I smile. This is a bad idea, but this guy seems to be exactly what I’m looking for. Well put-together, someone who looks like they won’t take shit from anyone. And I’m ninety-nine percent sure that he’s not the type to want to get married and settle down. Why would you if you look like a god? All he’d have to do is wiggle a finger and he’d have girls dropping their panties. “I think you might actually be exactly what I need.”

“Trust me, darling, I’m not what anyone needs,” he grunts in response.

Chapter Seven

The woman who looks like a fucking angel frowns at me. If I were a different person, I’d almost believe she was sent from the heavens. I know better, though. There is no God, but there sure as fuck is a devil. I see him every morning when I look in the mirror.

“Why would you think you’re not needed?” she asks me.

Aria.I roll her name around in my head. Long, strawberry-blonde hair that reaches her waist, big green eyes that scream innocence, and skin so pale it’s almost translucent. She’s gorgeous. It’s not her looks that have me captivated, though. It’s this foreign feeling I got when I touched her.

When she fell into my lap, my first reaction was to shove her off, but then my hands closed around her tiny waist, and something happened. Something that’s never happened to me before. I didn’t want to let her go. So I held her there until she moved herself.

My skin prickles with awareness, my heart picks up, and then an extreme wave of guilt washes over me. I quickly shove it down. I’ll let myself drown in it later. I shouldn’t be having a reaction to a woman who’s not my fiancée. Even if Shelli has been gone for well over a year and a half now.

“Aria, you got a last name, darling?” I ask, needing to know more about this creature in front of me.

Her teeth dig into her bottom lip. She doesn’t want to tell me.Interesting.“Do you?” she counters.

“De Bellis. Santo De Bellis,” I say, and wait for the recognition to set in.

Her eyes widen briefly before her smile does the same. “Well, Santo De Bellis, I think you are exactly the man for the job I have in mind.”

“I have a job. A couple actually.” I don’t know if this is her way of being flirty or not, but I need to squash it. Whatever it is. I have no plans of leaving here with this woman. Or any woman. I can’t do that.

“Okay, hear me out. Just listen, and if you’re really not interested in the position, then I’ll get up and walk away,” Aria says.

Curiosity more than anything else has me staying put and nodding in agreement. What could a woman like her possiblywant with someone like me? Unless she’s trying to hire a hitman. “Okay, I’ll listen to your proposal,” I tell her.

“Funny choice of words, because that’s exactly what this is. A proposal. I need a husband for twelve months. One year, just in name. I don’t need an actual husband. I just need someone who will fake a marriage with me for a year,” she tries to explain.

I blink. Did she literally just ask me to marry her for a year? That was not what I was expecting. “Why?” I can’t be the guy she needs, but I want to know why she thinks she has to enter into a fake marriage.

“My name is Aria Swan. My father is Ronald Swan and unless I marry someone within the next couple of days, he’s going to marry me off to Oliver Densper,” she says in one breath.

“You can say no. It’s not the fifteenth century, darling. You have a choice in what you do,” I remind her.

“I can’t. If I don’t go along with whatever he wants, he’s going to take the one thing that means the most to me in the world. Which I will get access to when I turn twenty-five, in a year. He can’t marry me off to suit his business deal with the Denspers if I’m already married. And if I’m married to you, well, my father’s not stupid enough to challenge your family.”

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