A heartbeat later, he knew why.
The words were stamped in a thin yet elaborate script. He read it once, then again, just in case the frills and the loops had caused him to read it wrong. They didn’t and, on his third read, he was forced to accept that it said:
the honor of your presence
is requested
at the marriage of
Mr. Henry Thomas Mathers II
to
Ms. Grace Louise Delaney
It was an invitation. No doubt about that. The part he couldn’t get past? It was an invitation to a wedding where Grace was to be the bride. No wonder she wanted to hide this. How do you tell your current lover that you’re getting married to another man?
Not that he accepted anything he read. Stubborn ex? Try fucking insane.
Because she might have been sent an invitation to her own wedding—but there wasn’t a single doubt in his mind that this farce of an invite was the first time she was hearing about it. He refused to believe it, even if he couldn’t stop staring at it; he read it again and again, growing even more incensed every time he saw the delicately scripted lines that spelled out her name in conjunction with another man’s.
There was a date, too.
According to this invitation, Grace was getting married in less than two weeks.
Rick crumpled the invitation, hiding it beneath the waistband of his sweats so that it was out of Grace’s sight. Then he moved behind her and folded his big body over hers, pulling her back into his arms, needing desperately to prove to himself that she was still there.
This Mathers guy thought he was marrying Grace?
Over his dead body.
20
Rick packed Grace up, moving her out of Ophelia and into his home that same night.
He expected more of a fight. It was one thing for Grace to spend the night with him when she chose to. It was another entirely for him to take her from the space she made her own over the last few weeks. No matter how stricken she was to receive the invitation with her name on it, he expected her to refuse to go.
She didn’t, and Rick didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. Hell if he wanted her out of his sight, but it wasn’t like Grace to let him steamroll her like that. Then again, considering how rattled he was, she probably agreed in order to calm him down.
Rick Hart didn’t get emotional. When he got angry, he shut down. Sad? He closed himself off. He left fear and guilt and remorse back on the battlefield. After he returned to Hamlet, Rick wondered if he’d ever truly feel again. Caitlin’s murder was a blow, no lie, and he might have mourned the what-if’s and could’ve beens even more than the woman herself.
And then Grace arrived and things changed. He saw glimpses of the man he was before he enlisted. He could tease her, calling her by a nickname that he knew she barely tolerated and then appreciate how cute she was when it got to be too much. She made him smile, she made him laugh, she made him feel. Desire. Happiness. Contentment. And, following the arrival of the invitation, jealousy. In the six weeks since they met, Rick experienced more emotions than he had in the last ten years. And he was glad. He liked the man he was now.
But as soon as she finally fell asleep in his bed that night? All bets were off. Steeling his resolve, Rick shook off every other feeling except for grim determination. He was back in the Marines again, a brand new mission in front of him.
He smoothed out the invitation, glaring at the piece of card stock.
He finally had a name. The ghost that haunted Grace since she arrived in Hamlet… Rick had a goddamn name. He had a target.
Henry Thomas Mathers.
That wasn’t even the worst part. After all this time—after all of the secrets he suspected she kept—he had a motive. Mathers’ fixation on Grace wasn’t as simple as Rick first thought. Whoever he was, this guy wasn’t just hung up on her. He was obsessed with her. His fixation had a purpose: the bastard actually thought he could force Grace to marry him.
Once she recovered from most of her shock, she admitted that Mathers wasn’t just an ex—he was a powerful yet unstable ex-lover who used his brains, his money, and his associates to terrorize her into staying at his side. They dated for months until it grew so serious, she feared losing herself as he molded her into the perfect bride.
It was hard to hear. Rick wasn’t sure how much he wanted to know about the other man. Sergeant Hart knew he needed as much intel as possible.
The worst part about it? Mathers could do it, too. He could force her. The outsider had wealth, he had power, and he had connections that Rick couldn’t hope to compete with. While he might have Grace in his home, in his bed, Rick heard it in the resignation in her voice. If Mathers got to Grace, if he got his hands on her, he could force her to do whatever it was he wanted her to do.