“I’m all in,” he’d assured her as he’d walked her to her door. “Just say the word, and we’ll do this.”
Adelie’s mouth had been too dry to reply. She’d chewed her lip, thanked him again for his help, and gone inside and straight up to her room.
“Of course, I think you should go for it,” Suzie said. “He said it’s not permanent, right? You’d have your own wing in his mansion. You could finish your degree while living in the lap of luxury. Just don’t forget about me while swimming in his room full of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck.”
Adelie folded another shirt and laid it in the suitcase. “I don’t know, Suz. It’s so—marriage.”
Suzie flung a hand in the air. “Pfft. Tons of people only see it as a piece of paper anyway. No big deal. Ella’s doing it. You might as well, too.”
Adelie went rigid inside. That was just it. For Ella and Hawk, their engagement was the real thing, prompted by true, resounding feelings of love for one another that had come over time. Adelie wanted her marriage to fit those criteria. She wanted it to matter.
She’d fantasized about her wedding since she was a young girl. Walking down the aisle toward the man she loved more than anyone else in the world. Declaring herself his and having a forever kind of love, the way her grandparents had.
To marry a man she barely knew, knowing their marriage had an expiration date?
“What?” Suzie asked. “You’re staring at nothing like a major, internal debate is going on in there.”
Adelie closed the suitcase lid and flopped onto the mattress, resting her hands on her stomach and staring at the ceiling. “It’s just so sudden. I’ll be at his house…alone with him.”
“You mean you don’t want to stay alone with the mad Hatter?”
“He’s not mad,” Adelie said, too quickly.
Suzie rolled onto her side and rested her head in her hand. “Then what’s the problem? Too tempting for you? Secluded quarters with a handsome billionaire… Security sees what’s on the outside, but probably not the inside. You guys would have the place to yourselves. And with that whole ring-on-your-finger scenario, there wouldn’t be much in your way.”
“Suzie!” Adelie couldn’t remember ever shrieking like that in her life, but her cheeks were so hot they might as well have been sunburned.
“You do know that’s what happens when two people get married, right? Please tell me I don’t have to have ‘the talk’ with you.”
Adelie covered her face with her hands and then whacked her sister with a pillow. “That is not why I’m going.”
“But you can’t say the possibility of getting to know him a little better hasn’t crossed your mind.”
“And if it has?”
“See? This is your chance, Adelie. You guys already had a connection at the photo shoot. You were gushing about it like a schoolgirl.”
The prospect of anything like that with Maddox would be off-limits. It had to be. Adelie changed the subject. “What about you? I couldn’t relax there, living at his house, knowing you’re here all by yourself.”
“I have my job and my life. Fletcher will come over in the evenings—he’s practically here all the time anyway. Besides, someone needs to stay in Grandma and Grandpa Carroll’s house. We just got the plumbing fixed. Who knows? Maybe I’ll talk Fletcher into a marriage of convenience. Won’t Ella love that? Three marriages all in a row. Jane Austen-style.”
Adelie didn’t laugh. She knew Suzie had been waiting for years for a proposal from him and wasn’t likely to get one soon.
“You sure you’ll be safe without me?”
“What can you do to protect me, sis?” Suzie’s tone was too skeptical for Adelie’s liking. “I’m the older one. It’s not my face all over the place. No one ever noticed me before. They still don’t now. It’s totally fine.”
“Well…” Adelie traced a finger along the quilt’s stitching. Possibility seared through her, but she worked to keep it in check. She was not going there to be with Maddox. The whole marriage thing was just a façade, to help keep her safe.
She would be going to keep out of the public eye. She would complete her online schooling and wait for the publicity to settle.
Suzie gave her a knowing smile and squeezed her hand before rising from the bed and heading into the hall. Adelie reached for her phone and tapped Ella’s number. Regardless of Suzie’s joke about double and triple weddings, she needed to double-check.
“Hello?” Ella answered in her perky, bubbly way. She’d always been the positive, plucky type of person Adelie both admired and envied.
“Hey, it’s Adelie. Do you have a minute?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
Adelie spilled the whole situation—or the marriage part of things, anyway. She left out the fact that Maddox had made the offer out of guilt.
“It’s just that, I know it’s so rushed,” Adelie said, “and you’ve been planning your wedding with Hawk for months now. I don’t want to steal your limelight.”
Ella giggled. “I never even thought of that! Of course, I want you to get married. If you’re happy and you love the guy, go for it. Hawk and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“You—you want to come?”
“Uh, yes! You were planning on inviting me, weren’t you? And you know Grammy will want to know, and she’ll probably make sure everyone on the Larsen side comes—”
“No,” Adelie said too quickly. Her heart pranced within her chest.
This couldn’t be a huge event. It was meant to be a temporary fix to what was becoming an increasingly problematic situation. Now it felt like Adelie was making things worse.
“Sorry. We want it to be small. After all the publicity my images have gotten, we want to make sure as few people know about it as possible.”
She was beginning to wish she’d never mentioned it to Ella in the first place.
“I get
