The Fiancé by Stefanie London
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ava
One week later...
I’VETAKENDODGING my mother’s calls to a whole new level, including setting her ringtone as the Imperial March so I know not to answer. But the time has come. I can’t avoid her anymore.
“I really don’t feel comfortable doing this,” Daniel says as we walk up my mother’s driveway.
“You think I wanted to bring you here? Uh, no,” I scoff. “You’re raising my mother’s expectations so high that after we break up, no other man will ever have a hope of meeting them.”
Even thinking about the breakup sets my stomach churning. I can’t explain it, since the deadline has been approaching from the very beginning. But ever since we returned from France, things with Daniel and I have been...
Wow. I think I’ve had more orgasms in one week than in my whole life prior. We can’t keep our hands off one another. It’s sex like I’ve never experienced before. We fit. We’re so compatible we keep ruining his bedsheets and we can barely make it through a meal without touching.
And yet, there’s something else simmering away. It’s not just the sex. It’s the fact that we talk until late into the night, lying naked, hands entwined. It’s the looks he gives me when he thinks I don’t see him—the looks that aren’t simply heat, but curiosity and confusion and wonder.
They’re the looks I secretly give him.
“I’m that good, huh?” He winks in such an exaggerated manner that I can’t help but laugh. “Ultimate husband material.”
I ring the doorbell and roll my eyes. “You go in first. The doorway isn’t big enough for you, me and your ego.”
“Ah, my favourite threesome.” He grins and I grin back, feeling my stomach flutter and my hands get a little sweaty like I really am about to introduce the man I intend to marry to my mother.
But it’s a lie. All of it.
Daniel has the meeting with Henry Livingstone tomorrow to talk about acquiring his company. Marc has promised to stay out of it, apparently. Not for Daniel’s sake but for their mother’s. For everyone at the company who deserves for this deal to go well.
The media is on our side. Turns out my little outburst at the opera went down a treat—I’m a fierce woman in love and the internet clickers are eating it up.
Daniel almost has everything he wants... And then he’ll no longer have a use for me.
“Ava!” My mother opens the front door wearing the biggest, most charming smile I’ve ever seen. It’s entirely for him. “And you must be Daniel.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Matthews.” He sticks his hand out while keeping his other palm at my back. “I’m sorry it’s taken us so long to visit.”
“Oh, well...of course.” My mother is flustered in the face of such smooth charm. “Come inside so we can get to know you better.”
My mother always keeps her house spotless, but it’s even shinier than usual. The scent of something delicious wafts from the kitchen and the table is laid out with the “good” china. I’d tried to convince her to meet us out, but she’d refused—insisting that if Daniel were to be part of our family then he would need to come to the family home.
“I was surprised to hear that my daughter was engaged, I’ll be honest,” she says as she motions for us to sit.
I immediately reach for the bottle of red wine in the middle of the table and pour myself a huge glass. I can’t get through this without booze.
“That’s on my shoulders, I’m afraid,” Daniel says, rubbing my back in slow circles. I have no idea if it’s because he can feel my tension or if he’s playing the part—whatever the reason, his touch soothes me. “My life is a circus at the best of times and I was reluctant to expose Ava to that side of things. It’s an ugly thing to be in the spotlight all the time.”
My heart cracks a little at Daniel’s honesty. Over the past week and a bit I’ve come to see the toll such pressure takes on him, how he walls himself away from the world. How each night when he returns from work, he transforms into someone lighter, happier.
“I can imagine,” my mum says with a nod. She brings a big pot of homemade bolognaise pasta to the table, along with a fresh hunk of parmesan cheese and bread. “It’s been that way for you since you were a kid, right?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
At that moment, my grandmother hobbles out of the lounge room, roused from her nap by the scent of dinner. She’s walking slower these days, her cane permanently stuck to one hand, but her eyes are still wickedly sharp. Before I have the chance to even think about getting up to help her, Daniel is out of his seat and offering his arm.
My grandmother titters. “It’s been a while since I had someone quite as good-looking as you on my arm,” she says.
“Nan!” I scrub a hand over my face.
“What? Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m dead, dear.” She looks him up and down. “If you’re as pretty under those clothes, then I can see why my granddaughter wants to marry you.”
Daniel bursts out laughing and I will the ground to split open beneath me so I can disappear forever. “Kill me now.”
“Don’t be such a prude,” my grandmother says as Daniel helps her into a chair. “This is a wonderful thing. And to think, not a few weeks ago your mother was trying to marry you off to that stupid lump, Anthony.”
The entire room goes so quiet. I hear the rushing of blood in my ears, and flames crawl up my neck and pool in my cheeks.
“Mum.” My own mother steps in, looking as embarrassed as I am.
“He really wasn’t good for Ava, though,” Nan continues on, undeterred. “He was a little soft, if you know what I mean. Not too bright, couldn’t really think for himself. Oh, and he dressed terribly, wore those stupid hats all the time.”
I glare at my mother. This is all her fault—the fact that I felt compelled to take Daniel’s offer in the first place, that I’m here now being humiliated. Sometimes I wonder if she wants me to be miserable.
“Now you, on the other hand.” Nan nods appreciatively. “I bet you can think for yourself. Plus, you have good bone structure, very strong and muscular.”
“He’s not a horse, Nan. Jeez.” I gulp down half a glass of red wine in one go. I have never been more mortified in all my life.
“I hope you take care of her...in all the ways.” My grandmother winks at Daniel. Actually. Freaking. Winks.
“This is...” I plonk the wineglass down on the table so suddenly I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter the stem. “This is so inappropriate.”
But Daniel grabs my wrist and shoots me a look, telling me not to walk away. How is it that after such a short time we can communicate like this—through a touch or a look? It’s as though there’s a level of intimacy that shouldn’t be. It’s too soon. Too much.
Especially considering none of this is real.
“What?” Nan shrugs and holds her plate out to my mother, who simply sighs and starts dishing up the meal. I lean back in my seat, even though I’m tempted to walk out of there and never return. “A woman should know when she’s got a good thing, that’s all. Consider yourself lucky, Ava.”
“Actually, I’m the one who’s lucky,” Daniel says. “Ava found me at a moment where I was truly alone in the world...or at least I wanted to be.”
I can’t help but smile at the secret in his words, the little message of truth that only I will understand.
“It’s like she appeared right when I needed her most and every day since has been...surprising.” He looks at me and for a moment, my heart skips a beat. How can this not be real? Is he really so good at faking it? Need and want and joy shimmer inside me but I try to shut those feelings down.
This is no different from that day when I walked through my mother’s doors and she informed me of her plan to arrange a marriage for me. It’s a lie. A solution to a problem that doesn’t necessarily need solving.
You know that’s not true. You want love and marriage and babies and all of that.
I do. But I also want it to mean something, and I can’t settle for a man who sees me only as a means to an end. Yet I can’t help feeling this is something more. Something...so close to what I want I’m not sure if I’m staring at fantasy or reality.
“I’m a different person with Ava,” he says, still not taking his eyes off me. “A better person.”
I reach for his hand, and it’s entirely out of instinct and nothing to do with the two sets of eyes watching us. It’s nothing to do with keeping up appearances or selling the story or any of that stuff. It’s because I want to connect with him. Touch him.
“That’s all well and good,” Nan says, sticking her fork into her spaghetti and twirling the long strands. “But it certainly doesn’t hurt to have an ass firm enough to bounce a tennis ball on.”
Laughing and shaking my head, I raise my glass into the air before downing the rest of it in one fell swoop. Lord knows I’m going to need more wine to get through this evening.
We walk out of my childhood home a few hours later. The mortification continued through the meal, dessert and coffee after that. Daniel had good-naturedly sat through stories of my failed childhood crushes and looked at pictures of me as a baby and taken flirty-borderline-inappropriate comments from my grandmother on the chin.
We’d driven over in Daniel’s Maserati and I notice some of my mother’s neighbours watching us through their front windows, blinds cracked enough that I see familiar faces left and right.
“I don’t know whether I should thank you for putting up with that or throttle you for putting me in this position in the first place,” I say. We pause outside his car and for a moment I’m struck by how almost-perfect this is...emphasis on the almost.
The suburb I grew up in isn’t fancy. The houses are very ’90s and the Maserati sticks out like a shining Christmas bauble among forgettable Fords and Holdens. But the late spring air is mild and honeysuckle-scented, and the evening sky has that lovely purple tinge to it, with only the first few stars popping out to sparkle the night away.
This is how I imagined my life would be one day—a gorgeous man, family dinners, long, languid pauses as a prelude to kissing.
“Your grandmother is hilarious.” He grins and the smile is so genuine it makes my heart ache. I always thought there was something sexy about a brooding guy. But Daniel has shown me the true beauty of that same man offering you a glimpse behind his walls. “I would have dinner with her any night of the week.”
“You can have her,” I joke. “One grandma going cheap.”
“Your family is great, Ava. You should be thankful.”
“That’s very easy for you to say when you’ve only seen the good bits.”
He slings an arm around my shoulder and pulls me close, leaning against the side of the car and holding me tight. “You have good bits...which is more than I can say.”
“I love my mother and grandmother, I really do. It just feels like sometimes they don’t really know me. Or what I want. They’re trying to foist their ideas of marriage on me when they needn’t bother. I want to have a relationship and get married... But I want it to be for the right reasons and with the right person.”
“So not soft Anthony with the bad hats, then,” Daniel teases.
“God no.” I shudder. “The fact that my mother thought that was the best I could do... It’s insulting.”
“Ah yes, well now you have a man with good bone structure and nice muscle definition.” He chuckles and pushes the hair back from my face.
“Don’t forget an ass firm enough to bounce a tennis ball on,” I quip, trying my hardest not to let the swirling worries get to me.
What’s going to happen when Daniel and I call things off? How can I come back here and explain to my mother that...it’s over? That it was all a lie. I can’t tell her that, can I?
The thing is, selfishly, that’s not the main thing I’m worried about in breaking up with Daniel. I’m worried about me. I’ve grown closer to him than any other man before and, in some sick twist of fate... I feel like I’m falling for him.
Seeing him tonight, charming my family and doting on my grandmother and being the wonderful man the rest of the world can’t seem to recognise... I want that life. I want him. Not as a means to an end. Not for now.
But for real.
“Maybe we should hurry home so you can test that theory,” he says, lowering his head to mine and capturing my lips in a searing kiss. He tastes sweet, like the fruity red wine and chocolate brownie we had for dessert, and his hands are hot and greedy.
I feel my body anticipating him, my hips flexing toward his where he’s already growing hard against me. My hands thrust into his hair as I kiss him back, pouring all my worry and lust and my wishes and fantasies into this kiss.
“Fuck, Ava,” he growls against my neck as I rock against him. “We need to get you home now before I give your neighbours anything more to gossip about.”
“Yes, take me home.” I gasp as his hand finds my breast and squeezes, his lips trailing fire over my jaw. “I’m all yours.”
He looks at me with blackened eyes and need tightening all his muscles and I know, in that instant, that I am totally and utterly ruined. Walking away isn’t going to be easy. When he leaves, he’ll take a piece of me with him.
And I might not ever get it back.