He hesitated. She held her breath.
“Fuck. If anything happens to you—”
“Nothing is going to happen to me under your watch. I love you, Parker Knight.”
He held her tightly, took her back to bed, and didn’t let her leave.
When she woke up the next morning, she found three of the strangest items on the bedside table. Two velvet envelopes, one larger than the other, and a velvet box.
A card with her name written on it lay beside them. Instinctively she knew it was Parker’s handwriting.
Tentatively, she opened the smaller envelope first and gasped. Inside were pictures of an Akhal-Teke horse, its coat so perfectly gold it looked like a statute. The most beautiful horse had she ever seen. The images were captioned with the name Solange and showed Everleigh as the owner.
What the heck?
Her heart pounding, she reached for the box next. Nestled in a cushion of more velvet was a diamond cut in the exact shape of a muffin. She didn’t need to be an expert to know it wasn’t fake.
Oh god.
The larger envelope contained the handwritten poems of Emily Dickinson. She couldn’t believe her eyes. Her hands trembled so badly she thought she would ruin the delicate paper
What was happening?
She had asked for the most ridiculous things because she didn’t think he would actually get them for her.
She rose from the bed at the same moment he came out of the bathroom. A white towel wrapped low on his waist. He cut the same image as he did the first time she fell in love with him without knowing anything about him.
“Parker?”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I love you, Mrs. Knight,” he said softly, gruffly.
Everleigh couldn’t stop crying. His saying those words at that moment was pure magic for her.
She didn't truly understand what hearing those words would actually mean to her until she did. He was her everything. Parker Knight was her everything and beyond.
And all she had to do was make sure that nothing ever happened to her.
His Unwanted Bride: Book 2 of the Knight Bride Series
Chapter One
Silas Knight lowered his head, clenching his jaw as he did so. He and his brothers had not been raised to show any kind of emotion, not when everyone and anyone around them could be a potential enemy. That was the kind of life they were given and they were either considered the prey or the predator.
They chose to be the predator. Always the apex. Always the alpha. That’s who they were. The Knight brothers. Parker. Silas. Elliot.
A rush of hot blood surged through Silas at the sight of Parker, their oldest brother. The resemblances between the three of them ran strong so seeing their over six feet tall sibling with his dark almost black hair bearing the evidence of his fingers threading angrily through the strands, his green eyes dark with wrath but sunken with worry, felt to Silas and Elliot as if they were looking at themselves. And that made Silas want to smash things. Break necks. Seek vengeance until satisfaction replaced his fury on his brother’s behalf.
Both he and Elliot, the youngest Knight brother, had never seen Parker this way before. If they were the apex of all things, it was because Parker had made them so when he had taken on the role as their guardian and protector when he had been a kid himself.
But to see their usually stoic sibling barely holding his fury and his fear in check, destroyed them both, and Parker Knight was afraid of nothing. Except now.
What they had always believed impossible for all three of them had happened to Parker. He had claimed a woman as his own and he loved her more than anything in the world.
Everleigh Rose, now Everleigh Knight was the light of Parker’s life. His universe. His soul. He had waited three years to take her as his bride. Everleigh might not have known it, but she was Parker’s from the moment he had set eyes on her.
They’d had a very unconventional marriage ceremony but then again nothing about any of them would be considered conventional in the least to the rest of the world.