Page 7 of Married to the SEAL
“Suit yourself.” She turned back into the house and he followed her, his eyes immediately going to the ornate molding that climbed up the ridiculously high ceilings.
The mansion was more elaborately decorated than he expected, and Grace seemed out of place, like a game piece thrown into the wrong box.
“How much are they paying you?” she asked over her shoulder as she walked.
She didn’t beat around the bush, did she? “My regular salary with HERO Force, plus a small bonus for the inconvenience.”
She stopped walking and turned to face him. “Inconvenience?”
“That’s right.”
She harrumphed, but turned and continued walking. She led him through half a dozen rooms, each decorated in a different color with furniture and artwork that screamed old money — and it just kept going.
He let his eyes slip down her back to the rounded cheeks of her derrière. She moved with a perfect blend of feminine sway and royal disdain, and Matteo searched for her scent on the air.
Something flowery and soft, the exact opposite of how she came off. He was intrigued. Who was this woman who found herself in need of a husband?
The information Jax gave him back at headquarters was limited. She had a baby six weeks ago in Switzerland, where she’d been staying for the past year. She left the name of the father blank on the birth certificate and returned home to Lutsia.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked.
“Water.” She pushed through a swinging door and held it open for him behind her. They were in a large industrial kitchen, metal counters gleaming in the sunshine. She pulled out a glass and filled it from the faucet before handing it to him. “Here.”
“Are you in some kind of hurry?”
“The priest has mass in forty-five minutes.”
He narrowed his eyes. “A Catholic priest?”
“Yes.”
Oh, shit.
He’d been expecting a justice of the peace or whatever the equivalent government official was in this country. Every Sunday school lesson he’d ever learned lit up in his brain with a flash.
While he rarely went to church, he still considered himself to be a Catholic at heart, and he hoped one day to get married in the Church. That would prove problematic if he had already done so.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“You can only get married once in the Catholic Church.” They didn’t recognize divorce, considering the couple still married no matter their legal status.
She shrugged. “So we’ll get an annulment.”
They wouldn’tbe having sex, so the marriage wouldn’t be consummated and they could get an annulment with a clear conscience after the divorce was final.
“That’s true, but it’s a lot more complicated than a divorce. A buddy of mine went through it a few years ago.”
“Look, if this is something you don’t want to do—”
Did he? It certainly made this whole thing a lot more complicated than he was expecting, but he was here to do a job he believed in. “No, it’s okay. Really, I’m fine.”
“Nothing to it but to do it.” She pushed off the counter and again took the lead back through the house.
“You don’t sound like you’re from here,” he said.
“I went to school in New York,” she called over her shoulder. “I spent a lot of time in the States with my mother. She was American so we were always going back there to visit.”
A high-arched doorway led to an opulent room with red-upholstered couches and a fireplace taller than he was. A priest stood waiting, with what could only be a Bible in his hands, and Matteo stopped walking.
