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Dean laughed. "I want you to calm your tits."
"What the fuck am I going to do?" Panic, like I never felt descended inside me.
"Looks like you're going to figure out how to be a decent husband and father."
"You think I can?" I wasn’t sure I could be either of those people.
Silence.
"Stop with the silent treatment, yeah?” I scoffed irritated.
"People can learn stuff, right? I mean…even you can, right?" Dean spoke tentatively.
I walked to the bar in the study and poured a finger of Laphroaig into a glass. "You don't always have to be brutally honest. Sometimes, you can just fucking lie."
"I learned how to be truthful from my big brother," he said glibly. The son of a bitch was enjoying himself.
I drank the Scotch down and winced at the fire in my gut.
“This is a clusterfuck,” I blurted out.
"Duncan, jokes aside, you're a good man. You're going to make a great husband and father."
"Are you lying?"
"Yeah," Dean said without hesitation. "You asked me to."
"Fuck you, asshole."
Chapter 3
Elsa
Istood in the middle of Duncan’s apartment, feeling entirely out of place. The grandeur was off putting. With its high ceilings, intricate moldings, and walls lined with original art, everything exuded wealth and sophistication. But it lacked warmth. It lacked heart.
What didn’t help was Madame Lefèvre, Duncan’s tight-lipped housekeeper, who showed no warmth—only icy, professional politeness.
Duncan’s house, I thought with a churn of acid in my stomach, felt like my father’s. I didn’t grow up with him—I grew up with my mother in an apartment in the Marais. She and Papa separated when I was a baby. He had lied to her about what he did for a living. When innocent Solène Sainte-Croix discoveredshe was married to the son of the leader of organized crime in France, she told him she wanted nothing to do with his illegal life.
Mamman was a strong woman, and Papa had let her go, even though I knew he loved her. For all his flaws, she never kept him away from me.
I saw Papa often enough, but I lived with Mamman. She raised me. She never let me spend the night at his home, and I didn't mind; neither did he. Papa's new girlfriend at the time was not particularly friendly. By some twist of fate, I was Jean-Luc Moreau's only child. His girlfriend resented that I existed because of that. But that relationship, which was the longest one he had after Mamman, didn't last.
After Mamman passed away two years ago, Papa felt he could invade my life, and hedid. I owed him for helping me start myboulangerie, but I didn't owe him my life. So, when he began to push me to marry one of his associates who would then be announced as his heir, I knew I had to do something.
Fighting with him would get me nowhere. I couldn't run from Papa. I also knew he was a dangerous man. He may not hurt me—but he'd have no problem forcing me. I had visions of being kidnapped and married away.
Desperate people make bad choices, and taking Angelique's place in Duncan's bed was epically that.
As Angelique had said to me, "C'était une idée stupide." It had beena stupid idea and now, in retrospect, even dumber.
Butif I had to marry someone, I'd rather be married to a man like Duncan Archer, who wasn't a criminal, than someone who was my father's heir apparent.
"There are three guestrooms." Madam Lefèvre stoically walked me around Duncan's apartment. "This is Monsieur Archer's bedroom."
I set my bag down in the room to let her know this would be my bedroom as well. She didn’t seem to like that at all, and I rolled my eyes.Seriously? We were married. And this wasn't the Bourbon court where couples slept separately.
I had decided that no matter how unorthodox the start of this marriage might have been, I'd try to make it real. I had to because we would have a child together, and no matter how our marriage was, we'd have to find a way to co-parent. I wanted our child to have both a mother and a father the way I had not.
