Twenty-Three
Her husband looked foxy in black pants, a pressed white shirt and the patterned black-and-turquoise tie she’d bought to match her dress. He looked so good, in fact, Stefanie was considering dragging him into one of the bedrooms of her mother’s massive home.
But her steps faltered as she grew closer and noticed that Emmett’s face was a mask of hard lines.
“Yikes. What happened to you? Did Mrs. Morrison ask you for a donation for the city statue? She’s been hitting up everyone this evening. Dad had to tell her to stop twice.”
Emmett watched her darkly, his jaw sawing back and forth before he opened his mouth and said something she never thought she’d hear. “I love that you love me.”
His words were gravel laden and accompanied by a pained expression that didn’t match what she felt upon hearing them. She was...elated. Cloud nine wasn’t high enough. All the complicated feelings that arose whenever she was in bed with him or next to him in the car or at his side converged into one indelible fact: she was married and in love with her husband...and he was on the cusp of admitting he was in love with her, too.
Her smile emerged, filling her with warmth, but his next words were ice-cold.
“I want an annulment.”
“An...annulment?”
“Or a dissolution.” He gulped the scant bit of remaining liquid in his glass. “Whichever one means I want nothing from you.”
“What are you talking about?” She was tempted to pinch herself to find out if she’d slipped into a dream. No, a nightmare. But this was real. As real as the guests at the party, who were carrying on their conversations and refilling their drinks as if Stefanie’s world wasn’t crumbling around her.
Emmett had just told her he wanted nothing from her. How could that be when she wanted everything from him?
“I don’t understand,” she tried again. “You don’t want to stay married to me?”
She was missing something. Unless...
“Did Zach threaten you? Did he—”
“This is my decision, Stefanie.” Emmett’s tone was dry, his face set in stone. “I can’t let you continue in a marriage where you feel more for me than I’m capable of returning.”
“I’m the one who decides that.” Her voice was thick with grief. Shaking with fear. The pain came next as realization set in.
He was done with her. Done with them.
“I agreed to marry you for one reason. It’s my job to protect you.”
“Your job is to protect my brother, the mayor. Your right, your privilege, is to love the woman who loves you.”
Tears welled in her eyes as the pain pummeled her with rapid-fire punches to the heart. Emmett’s expression told her all she needed to know. He didn’t love her. Not in the way she wanted—the way she needed. He felt loyalty to her because she was a Ferguson, because he was duty bound, but he was no closer to giving her his heart than before they were married.
His next words eviscerated her.
“It was a privilege to be yours.”
The ugly flare of hope fizzled out instantaneously.
Was.
He was saying he wasn’t hers any longer.
“You still don’t believe you’re worthy of me.” Tears trembled on the edge of her lashes. “I already told you—”
“You don’t know all there is to know about me.” His angry tone cut into her. “I grew up as poor as the families in attendance at your charity Christmas dinners. My family wasn’t from a wealthy section of Dallas. Hell, we weren’t middle-class. I didn’t grow up in a fancy neighborhood with college savings. I lived in a house with a dilapidated roof, a termite problem and a yard the size of a stamp.”
“Do you think I care where you came from?”
“No. I don’t. And that’s the problem. I’m a man who can’t possibly be what you need me to be. You’re an heiress to the goddamn Ferguson fortune and I serve at the pleasure of the mayor of Dallas.”