Page 18 of Her Diamond Deal with the CEO

‘You made it,’ he said, more for something to say than because he had doubted that fact.

She frowned. ‘I said I’d be here.’

‘You did.’ He felt the knot in his stomach loosen. ‘And you always do what you say you will.’

‘Are those for me?’ She gestured towards the flowers.

They had agreed to forgo all the wedding extras like a cake and confetti and flowers but on the way to the courthouse he’d spotted a florist and remembered the roses in Ondine’s kitchen and on impulse he’d bought them.

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘I know we said to keep things low-key, but I thought they’d help with the optics.’ He held them out, and as she took them the movement caused her jacket to part a little. His pulse jerked. She had nothing underneath her jacket.

‘You look beautiful.’

She gave him another of those ‘whatever’ kind of looks. ‘You don’t need to say that.’

‘You’re right, I don’t. I said it because I wanted to, and because it’s true.’

There was a sliver of silence like a crescent moon as her blue eyes met his through the veil and then she said with a studied carelessness, ‘Do you have the rings?’

He nodded. Plain gold bands. He had been going to choose platinum but then he had remembered the flecks of gold in her irises when she had looked up at him. He could see the same flecks now.

‘Shall we go in?’

As she nodded, he reached down and took her hand. He felt her tense and then her fingers tightened around his and they turned together and walked towards the marriage ceremony room.

Inside, the Florida sunshine was pouring in through the windows as if it really were a celebration of their joyful union instead of a pragmatic, mutually beneficial contract.

The officiant greeted them warmly. Jack shook hands with the courthouse-provided witnesses, and then the ceremony began. There were a couple of sentences about the promises they were making and the new life they were about to begin together. Thirty seconds later, they were on to the familiar ‘do you, Jack, take Ondine to be your wife?’ And then it was time to exchange rings.

Jack’s teeth were suddenly on edge. Before it had been just words but now as he stepped forward to take Ondine’s hand he felt his chest pull tight.

‘I give you this ring as a symbol of my love and devotion as we join our lives together today.’

Now it was Ondine’s turn. She repeated the vows carefully, lifting her face to his, her blue eyes wide beneath the veil, just as if she were his bride, but her hand shook a little and it suddenly occurred to him that she had said these vows for real and he felt a sharp stab of something almost like jealousy imagining her in the arms of other men, men she loved.

The officiant began speaking again. ‘By the virtue of the authority vested in me by the State of Florida and the American Marriage Ministries, I now pronounce you married. Congratulations!’ Taking a step backwards, he smiled at them. ‘You may kiss!’

Ondine was looking up at him but instead of moving closer as he lifted the veil, she hesitated, and he felt the tension in his jaw spread down through his body.

Normally it was the women he hooked up with tying themselves up in knots about their predecessors, but he got the feeling that there was some unfinished business between Ondine and her ex-husbands, a sense that their shadows still loomed large in her life, and he found himself wanting to erase them from her memory so that, instead of the G-rated kiss he’d planned, he wrapped an arm around her waist and jerked her closer. Caught off balance, she fell against him, and he fitted his lips to hers, kissing her deliberately, thoroughly—

He felt her shock, and her breath, soft and warm against his mouth, and then her lips parted and she was pulling him closer, her fingers tightening in his shirt and he forgot that she wasn’t his for real and the mess he had made of his life and that she shouldn’t move him this way, like flames licking all over his body. He didn’t think, he just was, and she was fire in his hands and his mind was nothing but heat and longing and hunger—

As suddenly as he’d started the kiss, she pulled away, cheeks flushed, breasts rising and falling with each breath. She looked as stunned as he felt. But he could guarantee that she wasn’t thinking about her ex-husbands, he thought with a satisfaction he didn’t understand but couldn’t stop himself from feeling.

‘Would you like me to take some photos?’

They both turned to where the officiant and the clerk were smiling, and, reaching into his jacket, Jack pulled out his phone and handed it to the officiant. And then turning to Ondine, he smiled too. ‘That’s exactly what we want, isn’t it, darling?’

Leaning back against the soft, suede upholstery, Ondine pressed her hand against the armrest. At the other end of the private jet, Jack was talking to one of the stewards. He looked relaxed and calm; exactly like a man should look after marrying the woman he had fallen madly in love with.

She, on the other hand, felt as if she were falling out of the plane without a parachute. There was a kaleidoscope of butterflies in her stomach, her limbs were stiff with tension, but then she had barely slept last night. Every time she dozed off, Jack would be there beside her,inside her, and she would jerk awake, body quivering, pulse racing because, even though she didn’t want to marry him, apparently her body was in thrall to his touch, a contradiction that was making her feel even more tense.

She shifted in her seat. In the past, she had never understood the fuss people made about sex. Before her first time with Garrett, she’d wanted to have the kind of sheet-twisting, urgent sex people had in the movies, and she’d assumed that it would be like that for her. But the first time had been awkward and uncomfortable and as the months had passed and she still hadn’t been pregnant, it had become charged with a kind of desperate and unspoken blame.

As for Vince... They’d met when she’d been at her lowest point, and it had been like having a golden retriever bounce into her life. He was handsome and happy, and always excited to see her and, swept along by his adoration and enthusiasm, she’d found it was easy to ignore their complete and utter lack of chemistry in bed.

And then suddenly there was Jack who was everything she had ever wanted in a lover but who lacked everything she needed in a man. Only now he was her husband.

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