Why else would he want to marry her if not for that? She didn’t fit in his world any more than he fitted in hers.
But the ink had dried, and she was legally and binding Mrs. Parker Knight and unless she had as much money as he did, there was no way she could fight her way out of this marriage that was barely five minutes old. He had covered his bases and Everleigh was trapped.
But they both could give up all pretenses that this marriage was anything more than a farce and leave each other alone. He had it in writing. That was all he needed.
She angrily zipped up a suitcase, then started to tackle her toiletries, which she furiously stuffed into a small vanity case.
When her lips started to quiver, she sucked them in and shook her head. She wasn’t going to start crying over the fact that her father, who had been a social gambler at best, all his life, had gotten sucked in so badly one night, that he anted up his whole livelihood.
He had gambled in the wrong house, made the wrong enemy, and she was now the one to pay his debt.
Never in a million years would she have imagined that on waking up yesterday morning, her whole life as she knew it would be derailed. All because of Parker Knight.
A frantic call from her dad, one where he emphasized his life was over, had her scurrying out the door, her pajamas concealed by her coat, as she rushed to see her father.
She found him weeping silently in a disheveled suit, clearly from the night before, and looking as haggard as he had five years ago when her mother had passed away.
When she finally got him to tell her everything, she had been stunned. She also didn’t have the heart to ask her father what he had been thinking. He felt bad enough as it was.
He'd had a little too much to drink, then in a moment of delusional confidence, had gambled away not only the house Everleigh had grown up in but also the bakery she currently managed. The house and the bakery were two of her mother’s most treasured possessions besides of course her daughter and her husband.
The thought of her father having to give up the charming brick manor and the beloved, small bakery to a stranger devastated her as deeply as she had been when her mother had died. It would be like removing every physical trace of her existence.
The bakery was Everleigh’s whole life. It made just enough profit to ensure she got to open the doors the next day. Which was fine. She was happy.
She had inherited her mother’s talent for creating everything from elaborate wedding cakes to the perfect macaron. It was the only link she had left with her mother. She had grown up in the bakery, hanging onto her mother’s skirts as she baked and served faithful regular customers. The scent of vanilla and cinnamon and orange zest was synonymous with her childhood and awakened every memory she had about her mother. The bakery remained a priceless, irreplaceable connection for her. Just like the house served for her father and his connection to his wife.
By the time Everleigh’s uncle and aunt had arrived to try and help them, not that they could help cover the exorbitant amount required to clear the debt, her father had delivered the final blow:
“Give me your daughter, and I’ll wipe out your debt.”
The very words which Parker Knight had uttered to her father and what he had repeated verbatim when she had questioned him repeatedly.
Didn’t the man know what century they were in? No one in their right frame of mind would ask for something like that, which meant, apart from him being a bully, he was also deranged for wanting to marry a woman he didn’t even know from a box of cereal.
But it was at that moment that everything became crystal clear for Everleigh and at the same moment, she realized Parker Knight was nothing but a six-foot-three megalomaniac bully of the worst kind. And there was nothing anyone could do about it because he won—unfairly—but he had won.
As he had promised her father, Parker's lawyer had arrived promptly at nine that morning to conclude their business. The lawyer had brought with him two ginormous thugs in case her father didn’t do one of two things. Marry his daughter off or give up his house and the bakery immediately.
Everleigh had no choice. She either married him, or her father would forever be haunted by his one mistake, where he thought his luck would hold out in a game of poker against the devil himself.
After five years of grieving and only sometimes being aware of his daughter’s existence, giving up the house would send her father down an abyss he’d never return. He might have closed himself off from her when her mother had died, leaving her to grieve on her own, but nothing had changed for her. She would do anything for her father. Including this.
She married Parker Knight right there, in the living room of the house she had grown up in; her uncles and aunt watching helplessly, her father too distraught to lift his head from his hands.
And she, in her pajamas sticking out from under her coat, was married to Parker Knight, sans Parker Knight.
But it was only a marriage in name. She never wanted to see him for as long as she lived. Not that she had ever thought she would see him, but fate most assuredly had other ideas for her. He got what he wanted.
And it wasn’t her.
She knew all his actions had been premeditated. That it wasn’t a coincidence at all. He had sought out her father and gained what he wanted in the most underhanded way possible.
Everleigh’s grandmother had left her vast acres of land in a prime location in Montana, which surveyors had predicted was rich in oil. Everyone in the mining industry wanted that piece of land from her.
But the stipulation was the land would only become hers once she married. Everleigh had no intention of getting married. Not that a series of businessmen hadn’t tried to woo her for that exact reason.
She didn’t even date because she couldn’t trust anyone. If it weren’t for a clip on a news site about who owned the land and the clause that went with it, no one would know she existed.