Page 40 of Accidental Groom
She stares at me, her hand tightening on the edge of the counter, the glass clutched in her hand like she’s considering either chucking it at me or letting it drop.
“Let me take you out,” I add carefully, the words dripping from my tongue. I don’t miss the way her thighs clench, the way she leans and hooks one ankle around the other. “You’re my wife, after all.”
She downs half her orange juice in one gulp.
I bite back the smirk threatening to break free.
“Fine,” she huffs.
Chapter 13
Elena
Ishouldn’t have worn the dress.
It’s too tight, too low in the back, too black. And yet, I’m standing at the base of the helipad wearing it, shivering just slightly in the wind the helicopter’s whipping up, acting like I didn’t pick it out deliberately. Like I didn’t pull it down over my hips with shaking hands and check my reflection from four, five, six different angles before deciding to pin my hair up to show off even more.
I hate how aware of my body I am.
But I also hate that somehow, in this, in his gaze, I like how I look. Hate that he’s the reason for that.
Every time his eyes linger on me, every time his voice goes low like it did earlier when he’d saidlet me take you out, it’s like a part of my brain short-circuits and wants to be seen for once. Because when he looks,reallylooks, it feels like he sees me in the way I want. The way I didn’t even realize I craved.
He steps up beside me in his dark green suit, the wind from the rotors pushing his perfectly styled silver hair out of place. He’s shaved since this morning, his facial hair trimmed right down, and when he looks down at me, I can’t help but stare backat the way his green eyes stand out far more in that color than they have before. He looks like sin in human form.
I hate that too.
“You wore that on purpose,” he says, just loud enough for me to hear over the helicopter. His eyes drag down the length of me like the dress has personally offended him.
“You saiddinnerandwear something nice,” I shoot back, adding air quotes. “Are you expecting an apology?”
He mutters something in response, but it's lost in the roar of the blades spinning.
Harry helps me up into the helicopter, his hand locked in mine for half a second as my heels threaten to send me falling to the ground, and passes me a set of headphones with a little mic on the side. Just as I manage to get them on, he’s finishing saying something I can’t hear at all to the pilot, his phone glowing in his free hand. The name on the screen readsMatthew, a single incoming text, and before I can tear my gaze from it, he notices.
I hear his voice through the headphones, tinny and weird. “Should’ve told you this morning, but got distracted,” he says carefully. “Matt found George. Kind of. We know where he is, what hotel he’s at. Tracking him down is another story.”
My lips morph into a flat line as the words hit. It feels like a shard of ice in my chest. “Oh.”
“Thailand,” he says, as if that explains everything.
I nod once, not bothering to answer. He doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t ask him to — I don’tneedhim to. George is still running, still actively choosing anything other than me.
I press my hands to my thighs and turn away from Harry as the land begins to fall away from us, the helicopter lifting in a way that makes my stomach clench.
I’m not going to marry him. George. Even if he comes back tomorrow, apologizes, and insists that Harry and I divorce so that we can fulfill the original contract.
I can’t do it to myself. Not after what I went through, not after leaving me hanging for four weeks now, not after… Harry.
We fly low over the Hudson River, the vast green sprawl beneath us slowly shifting into the jagged grey of the outer boroughs. Manhattan rises at the tip like something carved out of steel, lights flickering, the lowering sun reflecting off the skyscrapers as we bank over the city.
I’ve never flown in like this — always the train, or a car, or a plane if flying in from further away. But this, with the aerial view of the Empire State Building and One World Trade Center further to the south, is like something out of a life that always felt a step above my own.
And tonight, oddly, it feels like it belongs to me.
The helicopter touches down on a private pad atop a mid-level roof in Midtown, and before I can even try to find my footing, Harry’s hand is at the small of my back, steadying me like he didn’t even think aboutnotdoing that.
I glance up at him, pausing just as both of my feet make it to the ground. His eyes flick down the length of me again, lingering but unreadable. “Youdefinitelywore that on purpose,” he repeats, the sound nearly lost if I wasn’t paying such close attention to his lips to read them.
