Page 205 of Time Stops With You

“Nardi, you shouldn’t be here,” he says in a strained voice.

“I need a pen.” I rummage around his desk.

“Nardi.”

“I’m trying to concentrate, Cullen. Dammit! How can a millionaire like you not have a single pen?”

“Why do you need a pen?” he asks, reluctantly walking to the desk and opening a drawer. There I see a bunch of neatly laid pens.

I grab one, scribble my name and signature on the document and stick it in his face.

“Let’s do it.” I pull the paper back a little so I can look into his silver eyes when I say, “Let’s get married.”

Twenty-One

CULLEN

The last thing I expected to see when I opened my door tonight was Nardi. But as I follow her through my cold, dark house like a puppy with its newly returned owner, it strikes me that I’d been waiting for her.

Some foolish part of me had hoped I’d be able to see her again, one more time, before I disappear from her life completely.

The shock of actually having that wish come true makes rational thought impossible.

It’s why I direct her to my office.

Why I allow her to rummage around my desk.

Why I show her the pens she so frantically demands to get her hands on.

But I finally wake from my stupor when Nardi holds up the marriage registration form with her signature on it.

For a moment, I can only stare at that piece of paper as if I’ve forgotten to read. And then I realize what she’s done and a quiet despair settles on me.

I try to snatch the marriage form away from Nardi, but she twists it behind her back, hiding it from me.

“The offer is no longer valid,” I growl.

“Unfortunately, your signature is already here,” she says. “So you can’t change your mind.”

I step forward. “Go home, Nardi.”

“No thanks,” she answers breezily, as if I offered her a refreshment.

“What part of the words ‘go home’ sounded like a suggestion to you?” I growl.

“You’re very good at being cold and unwelcoming, Cullen.” Her lips curl up in a prim smile. “I’ll give you that.”

“Did you forget what I told you in the car on Saturday?”

“Of course not. Who could forget words like ‘I’m going to die in three weeks’?” Her eyes land on my monitor that’s running a visual feed of the simulation. “Wow. Is that a plane’s cockpit?”

“I wasn’t lying to you, Nardi.” I exhale. “What I have isn’t curable.”

“I know.” She folds the marriage registration form up and slips it into her pocket. Turning her attention away from my office, she wanders around the living room. “Ashley wasn’t kidding. This place ishuge.”

Stunned, I watch her casually make her way into my kitchen, open my refrigerator and exclaim over how neatly my produce is arranged.

Is she really not leaving?

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