Contractually Yours: An Arranged Marriage Romance by Nadia Lee

Author:Nadia Lee [Lee, Nadia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Four Isles Press
Published: 2023-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Lucienne

I’m shocked to see Bianca in the office on Tuesday. She said she’d try to get back soon, but I didn’t want her to rush. I was actually thinking about texting her to take more time, but it slipped my mind yesterday because I was swamped.

She stands up when she sees me.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, giving her a hug. “How are you feeling?”

“Back at work, obviously,” she says, returning my hug listlessly. “And I’m…okay, I guess.” The hitch in her voice says she isn’t okay.

“You weren’t supposed to be back until later.” I should’ve texted her yesterday, no matter how busy I was. She knows about some of the things I wanted to do once I got married—like auditing my finances—and she might’ve felt pressured to come back to help.

“Plans change. Wanna go into your office?”

“Yeah, sure.”

We go inside together. I gesture at the couch by the coffee table and sit down next to her.

She’s paler than usual, her eyes slightly bloodshot. But if you aren’t close to her, you wouldn’t know she’s exhausted, emotionally and physically. She’s done a good job hiding it with makeup and a sunny yellow blouse and blue skirt. But her smile doesn’t have the usual brightness, and her skin’s dull underneath the foundation.

I hug her again, harder this time, and feel her sag into me. I wish I could do more, but there’s nothing I can do to make things better for her. “When did you get back in the States, anyway?”

“Last night.”

Okay, so maybe getting in touch with her yesterday wouldn’t have worked because she would’ve been on a plane. Still… “You should’ve taken today off.”

“I didn’t want to. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Me?” I put a hand over my chest. “I’m not the one who lost her uncle.”

She shrugs helplessly with a forced smile, like she’s at a loss for words to describe how she feels, but she’d hate to impose her grief on others.

Empathy stirs. I couldn’t figure out what to say when my mom passed away, either. All sorts of feelings come forward, impossible to articulate when so many of them contradict each other, or magnify little things that you know shouldn’t matter much anymore.

“I think it’s best if I just keep myself busy. And I was concerned about your marriage to Sebastian. I mean, I knew you were going to marry him, but I just didn’t like the way he was with me.”

“You’ve interacted with him?” He didn’t seem to recognize her name at the Mexican restaurant.

“Well, yeah, of course. When I had to organize things like the lunch or flowers or send him the documents for the Sebastian Peery collaboration. He rarely responded, and when he deigned to bother, he was so abrupt. His assistant wasn’t any better, either.”

The details about the lunch and flowers feel off. I’m the one who texted him about both. But maybe she got in touch about something related to the lunch dates, and he blew her off.

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