Page 22 of The Cost of a Bride
Alyssa chews her lip for a moment. I can see her contemplating. I just want to rush past her into the apartment, but I feel like that would only make things worse right now.
“Come on, Alyssa. You seriously think that’s the kind of man I am?”
“How the hell did you even get here?” she asks, but before I get a chance to respond, a look comes over her face. “Ah…Eric.”
“Five minutes, Alyssa,” I persist. “If she doesn’t like what I have to say, I’ll leave, okay?”
Alyssa thinks again for a moment, then shrugs with a sigh and moves aside. “Okay, but I don’t think…well, I don’t think this is going to go like you think it’s going to.”
I smile and step past her. “Thank you!”
As I enter the living room, I notice a man, middle-aged, completely passed out on the couch. His greasy hair is matted across his face, and he has a beer bottle clutched to his chest and is gently snoring.
I move quickly past him to the bedroom, where I find Nikki standing with her back to me. My chest swells, and my heart fills with happiness – that is until I see what’s happening.
Nikki is wearing gorgeous, clearly expensive lingerie, and is facing a large mirror where she’s doing her makeup. Her hair is already done, and there is a selection of heels on the floor beside her.
There’s only one reason she would be getting all dressed up like this, and that’s to be going out for the one job she told me she would never be doing again: working at the mansion.
“What – what are you doing, Nikki?” I ask, my voice low.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” she replies, not even turning to look at me. “I’m getting ready for work.”
I don’t even know what to do. The reactions that come over me are almost impossible to process at once.
My heart sinks yet fills with anger and jealousy at the same time. My stomach twists and fills with knots. I experience a massive adrenaline dump and am overcome with such confusion, but at the same time, I feel as though I’ve just been stabbed in the heart with a serrated dagger.
“Work?” I somehow manage to say, forcing the word from my lips. “But I thought…I thought you were all done with that?”
“Yeah, well, my dad”—she points over her shoulder into the living room, and I immediately put two and two together.The man on the couch is her father—“put himself into debt again and needs more money, so…”
“Nikki, that’s not your responsibility–”
“And I thoughtyouwere single.”
“Iamsingle!” I blurt out, the words spilling from my lips accompanied by an ocean of pain and rage. “Cheryl is myex-girlfriend!”
“Uh huh.”
“She ran off on me with my lawyer,” I exclaim, doing my best not to shout the words as the emotion builds and builds within me. “I haven’t evenbeenwith a woman since her.”
I don’t have a clue what girls do to do their makeup, but I do see her hand briefly pause before she goes back to whatever it is she was doing.
“Why would she lie to me, Russell?” she asks. “She doesn’t even know me.”
“To screw with me?” I suggest. “She tried to seduce me when I came back to the house and found her in my bedroom.”
She pauses again. This time, she glances at me in the mirror. “Seriously?”
I nod. “Seriously. She was even still wearing the engagement ring I gave her that I’ve been asking for her to return for months now.”
Despite everything that’s going on right now, my eyes are still drawn to her unparalleled beauty. Even though I know she’s dressing up to go back to work at the mansion, I can’t help but drag my eyes up and down her incredible physique.
The protective instincts inside me come alive. There’s absolutely no way I can let this girl go back there. Not tonight. Not ever.
She’s mine.
It simply cannot happen.