Page 8 of Pretend

Well, she really didn’t like to think about that, mostly because of the nightmares, but what he did for her when her father died…

For that alone, Morgan would see this through.

CHAPTER5

“What the hell are you doing?” Eric found himself asking as he watched Morgan drop down on the window seat with a satisfied sigh.

“Preparing,” Morgan murmured absently as she followed that up by grabbing the neck pillow that he was tempted to steal out of the bag that she refused to share with him and placed it behind her head, shifted to get more comfortable, and promptly closed her eyes.

“For what?” Eric asked as he grabbed the bag off her lap and shoved it in the overhead compartment before he dropped down in the aisle seat and found himself watching the small woman that hadn’t said more than two words to him since she’d agreed to do this.

“For the bitching,” Morgan simply said with a firm nod as she gestured for him to get on with it.

Narrowing his eyes on the little brat, Eric bit out, “I don’t bitch.”

“Then, what would you call what you’re about to do for the next three hours?” she asked, not bothering to open her eyes as she shifted to get more comfortable.

“Seething in justifiable rage?” Eric said, watching as Morgan opened her eyes simply so that she could roll them at him.

“Justifiable rage?” she repeated with a pitying look that he really didn’t fucking appreciate at the moment.

“Yes,”Eric bit out, wondering why she wasn’t comforting him in his time of need.

“You’re not pissed,” Morgan muttered as she once again closed her eyes and settled in for a nap.

“Then, what am I?” Eric asked, even as he had to admit to himself that he had no fucking clue what he was right now.

He just…couldn’t seem to stop fucking up his life.

“Why did you plan a honeymoon?” Morgan asked instead, making him sigh because he knew where this was going.

“The curse is bullshit,” Eric said, wondering why he’d ever believed all the bullshit tales to begin with.

When he was six, his father and uncles regaled him and his cousins with tales of the Bradford Curse around a campfire, lamenting about all the ways that a Bradford could be brought to his knees. While his cousins shrugged off the warnings, Eric had been beyond fucking intrigued.

He’d hung on their every word, listening intently, terrified that he’d miss a single detail and when they were done…

He couldn’t stop fucking smiling.

“And what makes you say that?” came the curious question that had him swallowing hard as he watched her.

“Many things,” Eric murmured, thinking about all those bullshit tales that he’d been counting on and-

None of them were true.

Not. One. Fucking. Tale.

The tales of Bradfords marrying their neighbors and living happily ever after was complete bullshit because if any one of them had been true, any fucking one of them, he wouldn’t be sitting here pretending to be married to the only woman that he’d ever loved. It was all bullshit, no matter how badly he’d wanted it to be true and-

Some things just weren’t meant to be.

“You also proposed,” Morgan pointed out, leaving him with no choice but to glare at the little brat.

“Because the curse is bullshit,” Eric reminded her, wondering why she was being a pain in the ass about this.

“And you also planned a honeymoon within a year of the wedding,” she added as he narrowed his eyes on her.

“Did we not just cover that the curse was bullshit?” Eric demanded, beyond fucking relieved that the men in his family failed to tell her about the most important part of the Bradford curse.