She zoned out on the laughter and conversation around her. She really should tell her friends what had happened to her, but they seemed so happy and they had all worked hard to graduate, so this wasn’t only about her.
She took another sip of her drink, then beckoned a waiter for another round. She was only going to get through this a little inebriated.
They continued to pick out guys for her and she continued to say no until her friends fell silent and she could feel their curiosity as if it were a living thing. She looked up from her drink, looked at them, and then in the direction they stared in transfixed.
Holy fucking hell. Her pulse ripped through her skin, and hot blood shot to her cheeks. Her heart pounded so loudly and so heavily she wondered if everyone could hear it; it sounded louder than the music. Her breath came out in short pants and she was never able to get into a decent rhythm so all she did was heave like an idiot.
When her father had called her into his study and explained what was going to happen she had been struck completely speechless.
It was time she married, he had said. It was time she fulfilled her duty where she helped to put the Davenport family back on the map, back in the throes of high society. It was what she had been raised to do, schooled to do. And the time had come for her to pay her dues to her family.
Her shock hadn’t even worn off yet before she signed the marriage license with her father and Uncle Harvey present. She would be married with their lawyer acting as her proxy. Numbly she had looked at her father, but the sense of relief he had shown had the power to instantly lift the dark shadows that lived under his eyes, the fear and dread that had weighed down on his shoulders.
He had hugged her because even though her father was more concerned with his reputation and trying to uplift their tarnished status, he did love her in his own way.
She understood his plight. She had seen pictures and had read about their history. The Davenports had once been a proud family and was it so wrong that her father wanted to restore their image?
The bottom line was she had known it would come to this, that she would have to marry. But that it had actually happened and much too soon had left her frankly stupefied.
Drained of all emotion, she had trudged upstairs to her bedroom. The once magnificent and sprawling Davenport mansion had been reduced to nothing more than a two-bedroom house. The rest of the receiving rooms, lounges, and dining halls had been closed off, the furniture sold, and the doors locked. It was just her and her father, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the smaller of the kitchens in use.
She’d had a long heart-to-heart with her father and told him they didn’t need to carry on their family name. They could sell the mansion and move into a smaller apartment. She would work part-time while working on her doctorate and she could take care of both of them.
But that would have killed him. His asthma was already a worrisome burden that they both carried. She hated seeing her proud father so ruined.
Images of her mother and her grandmother had flashed through her mind. How they lovingly touched her face, telling her she was beautiful enough that even a prince would want to marry her, nostalgically assuring themselves that she would once again reclaim the Davenport name with a marriage of note.
Her mother had died but her grandmother was still alive. And so were her aunts and cousins. She owed them this. She was the only female of viable age for marriage and for some reason Silas Knight had chosen her. She waved aside the inkling of suspicion that her father was holding back something from her. What could he possibly be withholding when this had been her decided fate the moment she turned eighteen?
And all the while as she had made it to her bedroom, after signing the license the name Silas Knight had rung in her head. By the time she had sat on her bed, the name had echoed so loudly, before she knew what she was doing, she took out her phone from her jeans pocket and searched him.
When an image of a black-haired green-eyed man looked back at her, she threw her phone on the bed and started to pace the floor. She hadn’t expected the oddly thrilling and supremely terrifying reaction she had to seeing who her husband was.
Now that very same man had entered the bar.
An over six-feet tall body, clad in a suit that hugged his muscles and accentuated his broad shoulders, Silas Knight had people parting to give him way. It wasn’t only his suit that made him stand out, all the other men were basically college students or fresh graduates and dressed in jeans and t-shirts and Dazzlepants was within their budget for a drink or ten. No, it was his power. His aura. Something she could feel sitting as far away from him as she was.
Oh crap. Triple crap.
It seemed impossible in the throng of patrons that he could spot her, but the instant his gaze landed on her party, a cascade of heat fell over her. She could barely register the sounds that came out of her girlfriends’ mouths. It was just white noise lost in the avalanche of shock in her head.
“Is he coming toward us?”
“He’s coming toward us.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know but fuck me silly into next Monday with a neon-colored dildo.”
“No,” Arabelle murmured, her voice hoarse and clearly under duress. “No,” she said again. Her friends turned to look at her but soon reverted their attention to the magnificent man in the suit again.
She wasted precious, critical moments being indecisive. She knew she should have run but she hoped the plush, fat sofa had room enough for her in its thick cushioning and would welcome her below its velvet upholstery immediately.
She should have run.