Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 78634 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78634 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Embry was none of those things, though. He was the sweetest, kindest, most thoughtful person I’d ever met, and he’d quickly become very important to me. He was also undeniably beautiful, inside and out.
I desperately wanted to kiss him again.
It was confusing, to say the least. I’d never imagined feeling this way about a man.
And there were so many ways it could go wrong. What if I tried to turn what we had into more than a friendship, but he wasn’t into it? All of this could become painfully awkward, and he was stuck with me for the next year.
Maybe I should be reminding myself this was just pretend, instead of believing the story we were trying to tell my family.
13
Embry
Bryson’s great uncle lived in a giant Olive Garden. Okay, not really, but there was a definite resemblance.
The house sat on a hilltop, surrounded by endless rows of dead sticks that apparently weren’t as dead as they looked. We pulled into a circular driveway and parked with a bunch of Mercedes and other expensive cars. I already felt out of place.
About a minute after we arrived, my brother-in-law confronted us. Fallon and Bryson looked a lot alike—or they would have, if Bryson was a douchebag. I didn’t know why Fallon thought the three-piece suit, slicked back hair, and aggressively white teeth were a good idea, but I wasn’t impressed.
It seemed Grandpa Baudelaire had spread the news of our elopement after we got off the phone with him, and this jack wagon wasn’t buying it. Fallon was obviously right to be suspicious, but I hadn’t expected him to be all up in our faces from the get-go.
For some reason, he assumed that if Bryson failed to get his inheritance, it would mean more money for him. That gave Fallon a lot of motivation to prove this marriage was a sham. We’d really have to be on our toes around him.
I thwarted his first attempt at undermining us by planting a big, wet kiss on Bryson. I didn’t know what else to do. Words definitely weren’t going to convince Fallon we were a real couple, but maybe actions would.
Bryson played along in a big way. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was actually into it. He was so good at making it seem convincing that for a minute there, I forgot it was pretend and started kissing him for real. Some tongue might have even been involved.
When I finally came to my senses and took a step back, my head was spinning. Then I was immediately introduced to Bryson’s grandfather and his great uncle. I’d been hoping for two cute, little old men. Instead, Edmund and Charles Baudelaire were pretty intimidating. They were both tall, with thick, white hair and square jaws, and while they were friendly enough, I definitely got the impression they were sizing me up.
I hugged my dog and clutched Bryson’s hand as we went into the huge villa. I was fully prepared to follow Bryson everywhere, even to the bathroom, instead of being left alone with his family for even a minute.
The interior looked like what would happen if Olive Garden decided to open a hotel. It was very nice, but also oddly faux rustic Italian, with its stucco walls, beamed ceilings, and tile floors.
Uncle Chuck had obviously hired a designer to decorate for the holidays, and they’d done a beautiful—but not very festive—job. They’d made huge wreaths and thick garlands with olive branches and eucalyptus leaves, and embellished them with expensive bronze and burnt orange ribbons. The colors went with the earth-toned interior, but they didn’t exactly scream “Christmas.”
The huge tree in the living room was decorated in that same color scheme and looked like it belonged in a mall. I didn’t have a chance to take in any more of the décor though, because the room was stuffed full of people who were waiting to meet me.
Bryson introduced me to ten or twelve people, one right after the other. I instantly forgot their names, and I barely understood how they were related to him.
That last part was his fault. He basically called everyone over fifty his aunt or uncle, and everyone younger than that was called a cousin. In reality, Chuck’s daughters would have been Bryson’s dad’s cousins, which would make them, what? His second cousins? I had no idea. All I knew was that they weren’t technically his aunts, but that was what they got called anyway.
These “aunts” had an assortment of husbands, kids, and grandkids with them. The grandkids included two little boys around three and five, dressed in tiny suits and bowties. They’d obviously been told to stay seated, and they were fidgeting on the couch and looked bored out of their minds. If that was how Bryson had been treated when he was brought here as a kid, then I felt bad for him.