Page 206 of Boyfriend of the Hour
“We’ll let you think about it.” Nathan just looked tired as he guided me around his mother. “In the meantime, I’m going to show Joni around.”
The inside of the great house was just as impressive as the exterior. Black-and-white marble floors stretched down an expansive foyer before transitioning to dark wood and delicate wainscoting that had to be at least a hundred years old. Luxe dark curtains dressed windows stretched up toward box-beam ceilings that sheltered antique furniture and paintings of distant ancestors that watched over everything else.
I couldn’t help but stare. The foyer alone could have contained Nonna’s house—I couldn’t even imagine how a single family used all this space.
Still stunned, Lillian followed us inside, along with the driver with our bags.
“Thanks, Carl,” Nathan said.
Carl nodded back with the tip of his hat and exited the house, leaving us alone with Nathan’s mother. It wasn’t until Nathan led me up a grand staircase that spiraled toward a second floor that she finally found her voice again.
“Nathan, stop,” Lillian called.
I sighed. I knew round one wasn’t going to be a knockout, but part of me had sort of wished it would be.
“You cannot expect us to take this girl, thishussy, into our home without a word?—”
Nathan whirled around halfway up the stairs and stepped down as if to shield me from his mother’s hateful words.
“Stop,” he said through gritted teeth that made a muscle in his jaw twitch dangerously. “Stoprightthere.”
He released my hand, and I watched as he jogged down the stairs, taking two at a time until he was in front of his mother, towering over her like one of the vast oaks on the property.
“Let me make something very clear,” he said in a voice that was quiet but still managed to thunder through the grand entrance. “I’ve given up my life to play your games. Given up my job, my apartment, my entire routine to heel to your manipulative tactics. But I will not give up her. Not now. Not ever.”
“Now, Nathan, be reasonable. The girl is obscene! The definition of vulgar! She humiliated you and the family with that obscene video?—”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m the one who is most humiliated by that,” I muttered, though I couldn’t stop my cheeks from heating up.
“Then you should have thought of that before?—”
“Stop,” he cut her off again. “And just fucking listen. For the first time in my life, I’ve met someone I love. Someone who loves me back, just as I am. I don’t care what horrible things were done to her almost a decade ago—I care about who she is now. And allyoushould care about is that she makes me happy.”
“But Nathan?—”
“But nothing,” he snapped. “I love this woman. I’m going to be with her. That means I’m going to date her, live with her, and one day, I’m going to marry her if she’ll have me.”
I sucked in a sharp breath as my stomach flipped.Marry? If I’d gone off script earlier, Nathan had just written an entirely new play.
I didn’t hate the idea, though.
“So, if you want her to go, she will go,” he finished. “But I will be going with her, and you will not see me again. Do. You. Understand?”
It wasn’t exactly the slow play of bargaining we’d imagined. Nathan had just laid our entire relationship down like a gauntlet, daring his mother to take it on.
A horrible silence echoed off the hard surfaces of the foyer while Lillian’s sharp gaze darted between her son and me. She looked torn between the fact that she’d really like to throw me out with the trash, but also knew her son would probably go with me.
I had only known Nathan a matter of months, but that was long enough to understand that he never said anything unless he meant it completely.
I had a feeling his own mother understood that as well.
Well, good.
“All right,” she said, already turning away as if she couldn’t bear the sight of her defeat. “I’ll just let the cook know we’ll have an extra for dinner.”
“Thank you!” I called a little too sweetly as Nathan rejoined me on the stairs.
“Marry, huh?” I murmured as he took my hand back in his and kissed the back of it.
