Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
“Katherine…”
“Why don’t we just eat before the food gets cold? Save our cheery disposition for later.”
Camden ground his teeth and dug into his steak. The bloody thing looked like something he’d massacred in his rage rather than something that he should be eating. But the turn of the conversation just made me feel sicker. I didn’t touch the steak, just picked around at my salad. I’d lost my appetite.
Silence lingered as our plates were cleared.
“Dessert?” the waiter asked eagerly.
“I’ll pass,” I said.
Camden’s jaw clenched. “Just the check.”
“As you wish, sir.”
“I thought you liked their bread pudding,” Camden said.
“I can’t stomach the carbs.” I shrugged. “Next time.”
Camden paid the check while I polished off our third bottle of wine. I was feeling good now. This dinner hadn’t been half as bad as I’d thought. Not that I thought the night was going to get better from here.
I set down my empty glass and began to rise, but Camden halted me. “Wait.”
I sank back down and arched my eyebrows.
Camden reached into his suit coat and pulled out a small navy-blue box with the letters HW on the front. Harry Winston. Shit.
I froze in place, going as still as a statue.
“Happy anniversary,” he said, sliding it across the table to me.
“What’s that?”
“Open it and find out.”
I didn’t reach for it. “Why did you get me something?”
“Because we’ve been married a year,” he said evenly. “Now, open it.”
His command sent a shiver through me, and I tentatively reached out for the box. I had no idea why he was giving me this. We’d never exchanged gifts before. Not on birthdays. Not for our wedding. Not for anything. I hadn’t expected a gift. Did it come with strings?
I popped the lid. Inside was a pair of obscenely large diamond earrings. They each featured a central diamond with smaller diamonds haloing around it, and then five teardrop-shaped diamonds winged out across the bottom, like feathers. They were gorgeous and must have cost a small fortune. I should have swooned over them. Instead, my stomach constricted, and the chains of our binding cinched tighter.
“Why?” was the only word I got out.
“I saw them and thought of you.”
I shook my head. “You do nothing that isn’t out of your own self-interest. I know who I married… and why.”
His eyes hardened. “You don’t accept them?”
“I want to know what strings are attached.”
“Why must you be difficult?”
“You knew who you married, too,” I shot back.
He said nothing for a moment, as if considering and then deciding to continue. A deliberate, calculated move like everything he did. “I thought we could… discuss what comes next in our relationship.”
I swallowed. “What comes next…”
“We’ve been married a year, Katherine.”
“I know how long we’ve been married,” I said, clenching the box.
I knew what he was going to say. The one thing that he truly wanted from me out of this arrangement. More than the linking of our two powerful names. More than submission in the bedroom. More than his desire to break me completely.
“I want us to have a baby.”
2
Katherine
“No.” The word tumbled out of my mouth before I could think. Before I could even process what I was saying.
Camden coiled like a viper. He was dangerous, deadly even, when he looked at anyone like that. I should have feared that reaction, but I couldn’t respond any other way.
I knew that I’d agreed to this. That I’d said I’d have his child, his heir to the great Percy fortune. His family couldn’t hope for one from his sister, Candice. God only knew which continent she was on at this moment.
But even though I’d known, I’d agreed, I wasn’t ready. It wasn’t that I never wanted a baby. I just didn’t particularly care one way or another. I always thought that when I fell deeply, hopelessly in love, it would happen naturally from there. I’d want it. He’d want it. And together, we’d be happy. Not… this.
And now, blind panic.
I wasn’t ready to have a child. To be responsible twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for another human being. Of course, there were nannies and governesses and au pairs. All the wonderful things I’d grown up with so that my parents could fuck up my childhood past the point of repair. It was irresponsible to bring another child into this fucked up world. Especially one where the kid’s parents didn’t even like each other. I knew what that did to a kid.
“We should talk about this,” Camden growled, low and predatory.
I stood from my seat. “Table it.”
He opened his mouth to argue with me, but there must have been something in my expression to stop him dead, and halt whatever planned speech he’d likely concocted for this precise moment.
“Fine. We’ll take the limo,” he said.
Then his hand was on my elbow as he steered me out of the restaurant.