Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“Campbell Wakemont,” my father said. “She’s the daughter of an old friend of mine. Her father has promised her hand to you.”
“I don’t want to hold her hand,” I said, studying my cone to optimize my next bite. The more the conversation continued, the closer I was getting to the sugar cone—the best part.
“Hand in marriage, my love,” my mother clarified. “It means the two of you are promised to each other. She’ll be your future wife and you’ll be her future husband.”
My parents had done some weird stuff before—like the time my father hired someone to dress like Santa and sneak into our house Christmas Eve because he thought I still believed.
But this didn’t feel like that.
“You’re going to meet her this summer,” my mother said, studying me. “We’re going to Maine to visit the Wakemonts. I’m sure the two of you will hit it off. You might actually become good friends. The best marriages are built on a foundation of friendship.”
I’d never had a girl friend before.
I sure as hell didn’t want one either.
“We thought maybe the two of you could start exchanging letters?” my mom continued. “To get to know each other better?”
“Like pen pals?” I asked before crunching into my cone.
“Exactly,” my father said. “And we know how much you love to write.”
It wasn’t that I loved to write—it was simply that I was insanely good at it. The English language had come early and easily to me as a child. By the time I was one, I was speaking in complete sentences. Short but complete. By two, I was writing my name. By three, I was reading at a kindergarten level. By first and second grade, I was devouring middle grade chapter books.
At school, I insisted on writing everything in pen, not because I liked the way it looked—I did—but mostly because I never made a mistake. Pencils were a waste of space in my already crammed desk.
“When we get home, maybe you could write the first letter?” my mother suggested.
“I think we’ve thrown too much at him too soon,” my father said, leaning into her. “Let’s just let the boy enjoy his ice cream.”
They didn’t bring it up again—for a week.
For days, I dragged my feet writing that stupid letter. And by the time I did, I was so annoyed with the whole thing that I simply told my “future wife” that I hated her. In my eight-year-old mind, I was certain that if I was a jerk, she’d call off our wedding. That’s the kind of stuff that happened in the movies, anyway. It seemed logical enough.
A month later, our jet touched down at some hole-in-the-wall airport in Maine.
Standing next to an idling Escalade were a man and woman my parents’ age, and a little girl with ice-blonde pigtails and a scowl on her face.
For the entire first day, she wouldn’t talk, look, or so much as breathe in my direction.
I was certain my hate mail strategy had worked, that it wouldn’t be long before she told her parents she didn’t want to marry me and I’d be off the hook.
God, I was a naïve little shit back then.
“Ah, here’s the young woman of the hour,” Cedric announces, pulling me out of my bittersweet reverie. “Fashionably late, of course.”
Like a proper gentleman, I rise until she takes the seat across from me, and I pretend not to notice that her lips are slicked in the palest pink balm, her lashes are painted dark, her blonde waves are pressed to silken perfection, and her entire look is rounded out by a curve-hugging little black dress.
Black must be her signature color because lately it’s all she wears.
She’ll stand out in Palm Beach if she continues to dress like she’s in mourning, but I’ll let her learn that on her own.
My gaze pierces hers for a single endless moment before we sit down.
“You look beautiful, Campbell,” I tell her while her parents watch with bated breath and stars for eyes. “As always.”
It’s as if they’ve forgotten this entire thing is unnatural and orchestrated.
But we haven’t.
Campbell’s steel-blue eyes flash, as if she thinks I’m lying—as I’ve done before with various compliments.
But the thing is, this time I’m telling the truth.
She’s, unquestionably, one of the most sinfully gorgeous women I’ve ever laid eyes on. Feminine in all senses of the word. Every detail of this obnoxious creature—from her delicate collarbone to her Coke-bottle silhouette to her long runner’s legs to the delicate arch of her size 7 feet—is sheer perfection.
She could wear a paper bag and still turn heads.
This woman—without question—is the very definition of a bombshell.
I’d have to be blind, stupid, or crazy to state otherwise.
“You look tired,” she says with a coy smirk, instantly reminding me that the game we’re playing here has never been checkers.
It has always been chess.