Five

Chapter Five

Hallie

TAM CORNELL WAS WITHOUT doubt the most intimidating person I’d ever met.

It wasn’t just the size of him—though I was hardly short myself at five feet eight—but more the atmosphere around him. Most men would be intimidated upon meeting my father, but Tam had barely blinked. In fact, he’d seemed completely at ease, especially considering he was taking Marlon Wynter’s only daughter under his roof. I thought back to all the boys, and later, men, I’d met as I’d been growing up. While, as a pre-teen and younger teen, I’d been a gangly redhead with braces that boys had completely overlooked. Once the braces had come off, and I’d finally developed a decent sized pair of breasts, they started to notice me. By sixteen, plenty had shown me interest, and there were some I’d liked as well, but when they realised who my father was, they’d run for the hills.

Tam clearly wasn’t fazed in the slightest, but then I guessed he’d grown up in the same business. It was different for boys, though, wasn’t it? They were expected to be tough, to take control and fight, where I’d always been made to feel as though my job was to sit pretty and be protected. I didn’t like it, but I lurked in the background, mostly unseen, learning whatever I could about my father’s business. Whatever my father thought, he wouldn’t be around forever, and I’d always figured things would come to me one day. Of course, I hadn’t anticipated being married into another crime family. If anything happened to my father, would it automatically become Tam Cornell’s once we were married? Or would everything go to Jayden now, even though I was the eldest, and was the one who had my head screwed on right. This was an important discussion we’d need to have before it came to that.

My stomach twisted with nerves. I didn’t want to be left here in this big house. I wanted to go home. But I didn’t voice my thoughts.

When my father had said goodbye to me, he’d leaned in and placed a kiss to my cheek, and at the same time, his fingers had wrapped around my wrist.

As he’d pulled back, he’d spoken low in my ear. “You’re doing this for family, Hallie. Don’t let me down.”

I sucked in a breath and faced Tam. I needed to be strong now. Men like Tam didn’t do well with weakness, and if I showed him even a hint of it, he’d use it against me.

“Right,” I said, lifting my chin, “are you going to show me to my room?”

A slow smile spread across Tam’s face. I had to admit, with his square jaw and full lips, he was annoyingly attractive. “You’re going to be my wife, sweetheart. Your room is my room.”

What? He expected me to share a bed with him? “Umm, I don’t think so.” “I don’t care what you think. I’m not having the woman who’s going to

be my wife sleeping in a separate bed to me. Who do you think I am?”

“I know who you are, and I want my own room. Look at the size of this place. It’s not as though you don’t have space.”

He smirked. “Maybe I don’t want space.” “Maybe I do,” I shot back.

He raised a thick, dark eyebrow. “Is this where you ask to go home, little girl? Do I have to phone daddy before he’s barely made it to the end of the road? You’re actually fucking disappointing me at this point. I thought you’d last longer than ten minutes.”

I scowled at him. “No, you don’t have to phone anyone.” Damn it. He had me up against a wall. I didn’t have any choice—just like with everything else in my life.

“Fine. Show me to our room.”

He glanced down at the bags at my feet. “I’ll take those for you.” He hauled them up as though they weighed nothing instead of the mountains of toiletries, books, and framed photographs I’d brought from my room. If I was going to have to stay in this place, I at least wanted it to feel like my home, too.

“Oh, look,” I said, lightly. “You can be a gentleman.” I was using sarcasm as a means of defence.

He snorted. “Don’t get fucking used to it.”

My stomach twisted as I followed his broad back to the staircase, and then upstairs. As I’d predicted, there were plenty of bedrooms, but Tam wanted me in with him. I knew what that meant. He’d want to have sex with me—no, he’d fuck me. It wouldn’t be sex or making love, or any of the other

names for it. It would be fucking, purely so he could do whatever he could to ruin Marlon Wynter’s daughter.

Despite myself, a rush of tingles flooded between my thighs, and my nipples tightened under my t-shirt. I’d had a taste of Tam Cornell three years ago, but it was something I’d tried to block from my mind. Was he thinking about that night, too? I squeezed my eyes shut, blocking out the sight of Tam’s hard backside in his jeans and the way his shoulders filled his shirt.

God, he was so much older than me and clearly had more experience. The thought terrified me.

He moved with a slight limp, favouring his left leg. I wondered what had happened there.

He led me into the bedroom. It was huge—bigger than my room back at the hotel. A four-poster bed took up prime position in the centre. He set the suitcase down on the side closest to the window.

“This is the side you’ll sleep on. Got it?” “I assume I don’t have much choice.”

He turned to me with a cold smile. “Good, you’re learning.”

I inhaled and forced myself to tear my eyes from the space where I was going to be sleeping that night—or not sleeping, as the case may be. Even if Tam decided to leave me alone, I still doubted I’d get much rest. Sleep had been near impossible since the wedding. Every time I closed my eyes my mind filled in the blank space behind my eyelids with Harvey Cornell’s ruined face and the disbelief in his eyes as he’d dropped to his knees. I couldn’t eradicate the sensation of his blood dripping down my face, and the moment sleep tried to claim me, it would be back again, and I’d lurch upright, my heart pounding as I wiped away blood that was no longer there. I’d scrubbed my face over and over after I’d been bundled from the wedding and taken home. My skin had been tender and sore afterwards, but it hadn’t helped.

My troubles sleeping certainly weren’t going to be something I planned to discuss with Tam. I highly doubted he’d want to know that his potential future wife was lying in bed next to him reliving how his brother’s blood had dripped down her cheek.

Tam rounded the bed and trailed his fingers across the top of the covers.

The room was tastefully decorated, white with silver filigree bedding, eggshell-blue cushions, a plush carpet in a light grey. I assumed it wasn’t Tam’s work, and that he’d brought in a designer to work their magic. Either

way, I was pleased the place wasn’t overly macho—all black leather and chrome. If I ended up staying here for any length of time, maybe I’d be able to put some of my own stamp on the place as well.

You will be staying here. Where else do you think you’re going to go?

I couldn’t go back to my father’s, could I? He’d made his thoughts on that perfectly clear. I was marrying Tam Cornell, no matter what, even if he didn’t want me either and was also being forced into this.

“I know this isn’t exactly what either of us wants,” I said, trying to be consolatory, “but perhaps we just need to make the best of it. Even if we’re not lovers, we could at least be friends.”

He regarded me with amusement. “Do you actually think someone like you would be a friend? Believe me, when I think about my friends, there isn’t a single one who looks anything like you.”

“There’s always a first.” I kept my tone light.

He ignored me. “And as for us not being lovers, I assume you’re only talking in the emotional sense. If you think I’m going to be married to a woman and have her in my bed every night and not fuck her, then you really don’t know me at all.”

“I don’t know you.”

He flashed me a grin that made me think of a wolf.

“Isn’t that what this is all about? Us getting to know each other? I had no intention of marrying a woman I’d spent no time with, and there’s no better way to know someone than when you’re living with them.”

He hadn’t relaxed that wolfish grin, and he’d fixed me with an intense kind of gaze that I shrank beneath. But what he’d said made sense. Perhaps I’d been a little immature thinking it was a good idea to have a traditional wedding with Harvey and save myself until then. If we’d not been compatible in that way, it would have been awful to discover once we were already married. But still the idea of sex with Tam frightened me. I’d known it was most likely in my future—I wasn’t naïve enough to think I’d marry the man and remain a virgin—but having the reality of it standing right in front of me, next to the bed where it would happen, was downright terrifying.

“I hope they put you on some decent birth control before trying to marry you off to Harvey,” Tam continued.

Was he worried I’d end up pregnant if we had sex?

But then he finished, “I don’t want to be taking on not only you but my dead brother’s kid, too.”

Oh, no. He wasn’t worried about him getting me pregnant—he was concerned that Harvey might have already knocked me up before the wedding.

I blushed hard. “You don’t need to worry about that.” “I think I do.”

I cringed inwardly as I tried to explain. “I am on birth control, but that’s not the reason I couldn’t be pregnant. Harvey and I never...you know.”

His eyes narrowed for a moment, and then understanding lit his face, quickly followed by disbelief. “Fucked? You and Harvey never fucked?”

I stared at the floor. “No, we didn’t. He was a gentleman, unlike you. We were waiting until the wedding night.”

Tam slapped his thigh and barked laughter. “You think Harvey was a gentleman? If Harvey wasn’t fucking you yet, it was because he was busy dipping his cock into every other woman before he became a married man. Not that being married would have stopped him.”

I blinked back tears. “No, you’re wrong.”

His tone hardened, and any joviality fled the conversation. “Are you actually trying to tell me you knew my little brother better than I did?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Let me tell you something about Harvey. He was a fucking criminal, just like the rest of us. He played on that public schoolboy bullshit, but he was no different than me, or our dad.”

Could he be right? I’d been imagining my life as being so different had Harvey lived through our wedding. I’d pictured romance and tenderness, and basically everything that was the total opposite of Tam. But I’d barely known Harvey. We’d spent time together, we’d dated, despite our marriage being arranged by our fathers. During our evenings together, he’d never made me think he was anything less than considerate of me. We’d shared a couple of heated kisses that could have easily gone further, but he’d always forced himself away, telling me that he didn’t want to get either of us in trouble with our parents. I’d gone up to bed on those evenings, my head crammed with thoughts of him, picturing what our life would be like together, and how incredible it would be once we were married and could do whatever we wanted. I’d always thought that Harvey had done the same, going home thinking about me, but suddenly I doubted that. What if Tam was telling the truth, and upon leaving me, Harvey had gone to one of their clubs and picked up a woman or two, and spent the rest of the night screwing them? Maybe it

shouldn’t have upset me so much, but it did. Tears came to my eyes. What did it even matter? Harvey was dead.

I dared ask the question that had been bothering me the most. “Are...are you planning to have sex with me tonight?”

His tongue snuck out and touched his lower lip. “I haven’t decided yet. I thought I might taste you first.”

I drew in a breath. Taste me. Did that mean what I thought it did?

My face was burning up again. I wished I could figure out how to control my blood vessels.

“And if I refuse?”

“Then the alliance is broken. You’re to be my wife, Hallie, and husbands and wives have sex.”

“We’re not husband and wife yet, though.”

“Like I said, I won’t be marrying you unless I’ve tasted the goods first.”