Page 5 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

“I am your guardian,” he said.

“And I’m an adult. Not a child. But you have failed to notice this.”

“The stipulations of the guardianship indicate that your father would not have considered you a full adult until you were twenty-five.”

She had kept her emotions locked down for so long. Kept herself in check. And for what? He would never look at her and see why she had done it. He would never understand how much she had loved him. In that way, he was the same as her father. The sharp hook of emotion that curled around her gut at that thought left her gasping.

Was this how it would always be? Her loving men who didn’t have the time of day for her? Was she such a cliché that her daddy issues were manifesting like this? She was just so overwhelmed. By shame. By anger. At herself. At Apollo.

“My father wouldn’t know,” she said, the words wrenched from deep within her. “He didn’t spend any time with me. At sixteen, I did a competent job managing my own life because I had to. Because my parents were ever off on adventures. They got themselves killed in a canoeing accident, for God’s sake. It isn’t that there’s... There’s nothing wrong with going off and having adventures, but they did it instead of caring for me. That things became more heavy-handed after their deaths just seemed all a bit wrong to me.

“You’re not in charge of me,” she said. “Not really. I might not have access to my trust fund, but I have a job. I have friends. I don’t need you intervening in my life.”

“Sadly for you,agape, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You do. Because should I decide to withdraw my support from you, your trust is locked for a further five years.”

“What?”

“That is the way of it. If I decide that your behavior is immature and unwarranted, I can hold your money up for five years.”

“And what if I marry?”

“If you marry, then your husband is...”

“My guardian?”she spat. “You can’t be serious.”

Yes, her whole life was supposed to be this. Authoritative men telling her what to do, building her little gilded cages. Never, ever loving her the way she wanted them to.

“I am your guardian, exactly. And yes, I am serious. But do not take your rage out on me. I did not create the stipulations of the agreement.”

“You’re threatening to enforce them.”

“For your own good. Your father entrusted you to me. I have done an excellent job with you.”

“You have donenothing,” she said. “You have laid down a series of arcane rules and regulations, and I followed them because I was nothing more than a doe-eyed child where you were concerned for years and years. But I am not that girl anymore. I am a woman. You cannot tell me what to do.”

“I can and I will. Go to bed. Go to your work shift tomorrow and give them your notice. Then come straight home afterward.”

“I won’t.” And that was when she decided she would make him unreasonable. She would make him prove himself a liar because he wouldn’t do it. Shortly. He wouldn’t push it, so he was her guardian until she was thirty. Not even Apollo would go that far. There was no point to it. But then, she couldn’t understand why he was being so unreasonable now.

“I will do what I think is best,” she said.

“You know nothing of the world,” he said. “That is why your father put me in charge. He was very aware that he had raised a little princess who knew nothing beyond the walls of your gilded cage, and he would no longer be here to protect you. He put me in charge because I know what’s beyond the gold and glitter,agape. And you do not.”

He knew it was a cage. He just didn’t care. His use of the word she’d just thought herself made her even angrier. It was difficult for her to hang on to what the goal was right now, not when she just felt...rage. At all the years of being so lonely, so unseen, so unloved.

“He put you in charge because he was amisogynist. If he had a son, he would never have done that.”

“You’re a daughter. The world is not a kind place for women. Surely you know that.”

“He might have had some confidence that I was smart enough to avoid—”

“Regardless of gender, avoiding victimization is not a matter of being smart. Believe me. I know.”

There was something in his eyes then, something different even than the heat that had been there a moment before. It was a weakness. And it stopped her short.

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