Her Collateral Bride: A Lesbian Age Gap Romance

slowly relaxed them and stood with as much grace as she

could muster. Claire didn’t raise her head. She didn’t notice.

She’d uprooted Haley’s entire life, threatened everything

she knew, and for what? She wasn’t even interested in her

guest. She’d spared a few minutes out of her day, and that was

the most she was willing to dedicate to the situation. The

situation being a living, breathing person. Claire barely paid

attention when Jenny came and ushered Haley out of the room

and back into the hall.

Claire had done it because she wanted revenge.

She’d done it because she could.

Chapter 3

Claire

It wasn’t that Claire was a stranger to laughter in her own

house, but when the peals of it sounded from somewhere deep

in a room that was a good distance from her office, high and

light and melodic, she found herself freezing.

She glanced up from the spreadsheets she’d been working

on. That was to be taken with a grain of salt, because ever

since Haley Watt arrived, she hadn’t done much of anything

except inhale the scent of her perfume, which was as young

and sweet as she was. She favored Robert, but she’d somehow

gotten the better parts of him. She’d grown into a real beauty.

Miles of wavy dark hair, thick lashes, and her dad’s blue eyes.

She was so young and so pretty. All innocence and sunlight,

and it did something to Claire. Something that had made it

impossible to work for the remainder of the afternoon. She’d

been lost the past few hours, she realized, and she’d just

surfaced at the sound of that laughter.

Bubbly laughter.