Page 1 of Marrying the Gardener
Prologue
?
Unexpected. But I’ll take it.
Kaleb
Ever since Crisis’s friend has been coming around the Bachelor estate, my vision’s run shockinglyred.
Crimson Nightingale.
An heiress. An angel.
She is, by far, the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on. And I’ve had more experience laying eyes on women than I tend to admit to given my particular past.
Sometimes, when Crimson visits my eldest brother’s fiancée, I see her long red waves catch the sun while she passes me working in the gardens near the main manor. Taking her mercilessly out of my sight, her heels click—swift and steady—from her car, up the stairs, and into the home I’ve never quite come back to.
I can’t stop myself from watching her in the spare moments I’m allowed. She’s a candle. A blaze. A roaring fire.
And I’m a moth. Drawn effortlessly into the sphere of her gravity.
The sway of her body. The confidence in her pleasant smile. The warmth in her brown eyes.
On occasion, those beautiful eyes of hers take the sun prisoner and flash like gold. On occasion…I am helpless in her presence.
So it’s probably a good thing she doesn’t much acknowledge my existence.
According to Viktor, the Nightingales became businesspartners shortly after I left home at fifteen. At fifteen, I couldn’t take our parents’ abuse, their expectations, any of it anymore, so I stole all the cash in my mother’s purse and started walking.
I did not stop until I was several towns beyond Sunset, West Virginia. I did not stop until an older woman was pulling up to me in a sports car, smiling sharply, and saying,You’ll do.
My “work” began just weeks after I left home. Madame D’Clancy cleaned me up, put my gangly limbs in a suit, and had me waiting tables at her ladies’ club. Even now, I can call up the low-lights, the red lips, and thecome hithersmiles vividly. Those days linger in my skull like…home.
In the pit of a city, on the precipice of the illegal, I was treated more like a person when I was doubling as an object.
Thankfully, I was fifteen, so the moreobjectifyingactivities that the other male waiters offered weren’t on the table for me.
Because I was fifteen…and a minor…
For three years.
And then?
Then I wasn’t.
Then I was taller, and broader, and knew where the real money was.
So, with Madame D’Clancy’s blessing, I began escorting. Parties. Bars. Double dates. Lies. Just forfuns. Comfort. Kisses. Nothing more. Never anything more.
Okay. Fine.
Sometimesmore…
Once or twice,more.
But never as part of the price. Because, for starters, that’s illegal. And whether I felt more at home in the red light district than I did in my own childhood house or not, there’s a huge difference between selling my companionship and selling my body.
I just…
