Arrogant Brit

“Yes?” he replied quietly, stroking my cheek.

I leaned into his touch, craving just a few more seconds of lucidity. “Stay with me… Stay with us…”

He nodded, leaning forward to press his lips against my forehead just above the bridge of my nose. “Always, Sandra,” he p

romised me. “I’ll always stay.”

I let his words wrap me in a tender embrace as I closed my eyes and drifted blissfully away.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Paris is cold in the winter. You never really think about that when you’re looking at pretty pictures of the Eiffel Tower and the quaint, narrow streets paved with cobblestones. It all looks so warm and inviting, and yet here I was, being forced toward shelter by the crisp and biting wind stinging my dark skin.

The dress wasn’t helping.

I shuffled up the steps of the huge church in the sheer, but billowing white folds of cloth. It draped beautifully over my frame, but did nothing to hide my obvious pregnancy. The strapless bodice was especially troublesome, as it exposed my expanding cleavage to the frigid air. At this point, I would have traded the whole outfit for a pair of yoga pants and one of Nathan’s big stretchy white t-shirts.

It was my fault, of course. I was the idiot who had to go outside for a breath of fresh air just a few minutes before the wedding. I’d taken on the Irish mafia, almost single-handedly dismantled a sex-trafficking ring, and exposed the corruption running rampant through my city’s police department, and yet nothing seemed so terrifying as walking up the steps and through the doors toward my destiny.

Everyone was waiting inside to start, cradled in the warmth of the cathedral. I was happy to see them, and obviously elated to be there, but this had all happened so fast… Was I ready? Could we truly be a family?

I thought back to everything that had led up to this moment. Unsurprisingly, Nathan didn’t want me returning to the force after I’d recovered, especially once I’d testified against the Captain. Right or wrong, cops looked after their own, and there was enough corruption to ensure I’d never see another promotion—or worse, that backup might not arrive next time I needed it. He told me I could oversee his security team, but that was just an excuse to keep me close while he found a suitable ring.

And what a ring it was.

I glanced down, the oversized diamond sparkling wildly in the colored light that streamed down from the stained glass windows. It was a platinum band with a sixteen-carat monstrosity situated right in the center of it. I wasn’t the kind of girl who spent her life dreaming of her wedding day, but on the occasions in which I had contemplated it, I never once imagined I’d have a ring or a dress as beautiful as this. Sure, it had to be custom-tailored to fit over my eight month pregnant belly, but that was a problem money could solve.

I looked away from the ring and toward the people staring expectantly at me from the pews. This was it. My moment. I almost laughed at the beauty of it all.

Everyone turned to watch as I stepped onto the red carpet leading to the altar. The organ began to play its marching tune, filling the space with warm, reverberating tones that disturbed the butterflies once lying dormant in my stomach.

Here comes the bride…

I tried not to look at the crowd, instead focusing on the man waiting for me just a few feet away. Nathan looked incredible. He was standing at the end of the aisle, that goddamn smirk spread wide across his handsome face, shifting in anticipation as he watched me steadily approach. I’d gotten used to looking at his thousand-dollar suits and his shoes that cost more than my car, but this was on a whole other level. There wasn’t a stitch on his clothing that had been made by a machine. It wasn’t just hand-tailored; it was molded, every fiber of the cloth handcrafted for this very moment. Ours were a pair of outfits suitable for a prince and a princess, worn by a billionaire and an ex-detective who wasn’t quite ready to wear several million dollars’ worth of diamond jewelry and a dress too pretty to sit down in.

I took my first step toward him, clutching my bouquet to my chest. I didn’t have a father to give me away. He’d left while I was still in elementary school, which either was because of, or had led to my mother’s addiction—I’d been too young to tell. Only a few distant relatives had come in his stead, and as much as I appreciated their support, I wasn’t about to let my uncle’s third cousin walk me down the aisle. Like everything else in life, if I was going to do this, then I was going to do it alone.

A certain solemnity hit me, just for a moment. I wished my mother could’ve been here, and Jenny—or at least, the versions of them I held so near and dear to my heart. In my mind’s eye, they were always sober, happy, and at peace, always living the best days of their lives. Nothing could have made this day any more perfect except for their smiling faces beaming at me from the pews. I felt a pang of regret sting my heart as I envisioned them doing just that.

I couldn’t let them bring my moment down. Nathan and I had decided back in that shitty Peachtree Overlook apartment that there was no use in hanging on to ancient history. We couldn’t change what had happened back then to either of us, but we could certainly change our futures.

That was what I was moving toward now, I realized: my future. My heart swelled as I began to step toward him in time with the music, tears brimming in my eyes as I let go of my guilt. I walked away from the ghosts of my mother and Jenny, and I reached out for Nathaniel Hale.

With every step, the one that followed seem to come even easier. I walked past the rich and the famous and the row of cameras capturing the event for the evening news. A real Cinderella tale, they’d say: a pretty detective from the Bronx finding her billionaire prince. They’d talk about how lucky I was.

And they’d be wrong.

Nathan Hale was the lucky one. He’d found the woman who could love him for all of his strengths and all of his flaws—of which there were many, I reminded myself with a grin. He’d found someone who could satisfy his most secret desires and make his dreams come true.

That was why I was marrying him. I was doing this because every single day, he made me feel like I was worth all of this. Every challenge we faced, big or small, every danger we’d overcome and every dollar spent—I was worth it.

And I couldn’t have loved him more.

His eyes sparkled with the same tears I was holding back as I stepped up onto the platform. The priest said the words that would bind us for all eternity, but I wasn’t paying attention. My whole world consisted only of the one man who had become a bigger part of it than I had ever anticipated. When Nathan whispered his “I do,” it barely even registered. My reply was just as simple, the two words slipping out breathlessly and effortlessly from my lips.

The priest closed his book. I could hear the smile in his words as he said, “You may now kiss the bride.”

We collided, the world melting away in that moment as our lips made their first contact as husband and wife. Everything around us was simply a farce. The fairy tale wedding, the dress and the church and the pretty faces—none of it mattered. The only real thing was this, our love and passion. Nathaniel Hale belonged to me, and I to him, and as our kiss stretched on and on, I was in no hurry to return to reality.

Everything else could have gone to shit. The church could have burned down around us, for all I cared. This was perfection, and nothing could ever compare.

“I love you, Sandra,” Nathan said, his lips finally parting from mine.

“I love you too,” I whispered in reply, smiling as I stared into his glittering eyes. “Now, can we get out of here before these cameras see things unfit for broadcast?”

“What about everybody else?” Nathan said, glancing past me at the crowd as if he hadn’t noticed them before.

“We’re in Paris,” I replied, laughing. “Let them eat wedding cake.”

Everyone in the room erupted into cheers as Nathan lifted me from the floor, my billowing white dress pouring over his strong arms as he carried me to the doors at the side of the cathedral.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” Nathan shouted over the noise. “Grab some champagne and enjoy the party!”

The room cheered again as we burst through the doors and into a short hallway leading to a sunlit path. Cold wind bit into me again, now infiltrating from beneath my dress as Nathan carried me ou

tside the church. I shivered in his arms, but quickly found myself thrust into the backseat of a long, black limousine that was waiting for us. The heated seats immediately brought relief to the chills sweeping through me.

Nathan just stood there at the door, letting the cold in as he stared at me, my legs awkwardly kicked up over the seat. I leaned forward, grabbing at his tie and pulling him in through the door, laughing as the chauffeur closed it behind us. Nathan tried valiantly to get the blacked-out divider up as the amused driver looked on. The window was closing too slowly as I ripped at Nathan’s belt, straddling him in my dress and lowering myself around his raging erection.

“Slow down,” he chuckled. “We have all night and if you’re not careful, we’ll have a baby with French citizenship...” He gripped me and moaned, shuddering as our bodies once again came together, though this time felt like it meant so much more than the last.