Page 4 of The Revenge Bride

“For our wedding.”

Chapter 2

Lucy

Seeing the expression on Rhett’s face was worth the joke. “Deep breaths. I was kidding. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He scrubs a hand down his face.

The sound of his palm sliding over the hard line of his unshaven jaw makes me think a crazy what-if thought. What if he went down on me?

“That’s definitely crazy,” I say aloud. Thankfully, he misunderstands what I was thinking.

“I agree. Us getting married…”

“Makes as much sense as us falling in love, right?”

“Exactly.”

He drums his fingers on his thigh. Muscular thigh. In jeans tight enough to show he’s well-packed.

I’d love to help him unpack. I jerk my gaze away, my cheeks stinging. I lower my window a fraction to let in the cool morning air. How sad am I that Rhett shows me a smidge of kindness and I want to be all over him?

“Then again,” he says. “Maybe itcouldmake sense. Not falling in love but getting married.”

I scoff as I let the car roll to a stop at a traffic light. I wave at Madison, the town doctor, as she hurries over the crosswalk. “Us? Enemies turned lovers? Sure, that’s going to happen.”

“I didn’t say we’d become lovers. Here…pull over.”

I find an empty spot in front of the library and idle the car. Somewhere between Yonder’s and here, Rhett lost his brain. He seriously is not suggesting we get married. Is he?

“I have an idea. Your grandfather has been begging you to get married. Everyone in town knows it.”

I nod. Grandpa is almost ninety now and keeps saying it’s his final wish to see me wed. He’d cried buckets the night of my engagement party when he’d thought I left the house. I’d stood on the other side of the door hearing him sob, “My poor Lucy.”

A lump develops in my throat when a brief thought of losing him flashes through my mind.

“It’s the same with my grandparents. Well, more so my grandmother begging me to settle down.”

Rhett and I do have that in common. We were both raised by our grandparents. Me because I lost my parents in a car accident when I was a baby. Him because his washed their hands of him.

“Married? Are you being serious? Have you forgotten we hate each other?”

He nods like what he’s saying makes perfect sense to him. “We can marry now to make our families happy, and us not loving each other makes it easier. There won’t be a messy emotion to deal with when we divorce later.”

Later. I know he means when something happens to my grandfather. When it does, I’ll be all alone in this world.

I bite my lip thinking of the conversation I’d had with Grandpa last night.

His eyes had filled with unshed tears and his lips trembled as he’d rasped out, “I know I don’t have much time left and I’d resteasy knowing you had someone. I want to walk you down the aisle and see you happy.”

“Then there’s Clyde.”

Rhett speaking the name of my slimy ex jerks my attention back to the present. “What about him?”

“Wouldn’t you like to be the one who stays at the company while he’s tossed out on his ass?”

My boss, Kenny, owns two radio stations. Clyde is the DJ at one just over the county line while I’m at the other here in town. But rumor around town has it that due to budget cuts, the station personnel will be combined, and positions eliminated.

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