Page 78 of Earned Husband

She chuckled. “In some families, arranged marriages still work like that, yet here you are, complaining about not havingenoughtime with your intended. Just be happy you’re getting some time with him at all.”

I laughed, but she wasn’t wrong. As I turned back to dicing carrots, I wondered what it had really been like for her. “I can’t believe you married a complete stranger.”

“Watch your mouth, young lady.” She shot me a narrow-eyed glare and pointed a spatula at me. “He was not a stranger.”

“You literally just said you’d never met him before your wedding day.”

“Yes, but I knewofhim. I told you. I had pictures and I was told about him.”

“I’m not sure that counts.”

A strangely soft smile spread on her lips. She exhaled and a faraway look crept into her eyes as she lifted her gaze to the window and stared out at the sea. “It counted. It still does, because it’s our story.”

I sat down at the counter, abandoning the carrots for a moment to give her my full attention. In my almost thirty years on the planet, I’d never actually asked her about this and the look on her face right now said that it was time. I also suddenly really wanted to know, and not only because I was about to enter into an arranged marriage myself, but rather because I didn’t only want fragments of her and my grandfather’s story.

I wanted to know the whole thing and to hear it from her. Honestly, I had no idea why it’d never occurred to me before. This was my own family history. “What was it like, Nanna?”

Sea gulls called outside as she lifted the cloth that’d been covering the dough, toying with it for so long that I wondered if she’d even heard me. Before I could repeat the question, however, she finally looked up again.

“As soon as I saw him in person, I knew that I had never really lived until that very moment,” she said quietly, a sad, small smile tugging at her lips. “People are always carrying on about whether love at first sight is real and whatnot, but as soon as I saw him, I knew he was my future.”

My heart melted, but it also ached for her. “Is that why you never got married again after he died?”

She nodded, quiet for another beat before she lowered herself onto the stool across from mine while breakfast simmered on the stove, the most beautifully spiced scents starting to fill the air. “For those few precious months afterwe got married, I had everything I ever dreamed of. That was enough.”

Tears pressed behind the backs of my eyes, stinging them as I tried to imagine losing the person you thought you’d have your whole life to spend with after only a few months. I reached for her hand across the table, giving her fingers a soft squeeze.

“I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, but I’m sorry, Nanna. Truly.”

She gave me a watery smile, inhaling a deep breath and nodding before she stood up again. “Thank you, baby. But I was fortunate to have those months. Not everyone is that lucky, and you are even luckier.”

I stared at her for a long moment as her words sank in. She strode back to the stove, picking up the spatula and stirring the contents of every pan before she spoke again. “Your grandfather had to work for my dad for months before the wedding. My father was a very difficult man and he insisted that your grandfather earn my hand in marriage.”

I laughed. “What is it with the men in our family being difficult, huh?”

“Ah, Basel is difficult, but your great-grandfather was impossible. A good man, but a very stubborn one.” She smiled, striding over to the fridge and extracting a jug of water. “He insisted that your grandfather work for him in order to prove that he deserved me.”

“And he did it?”

She nodded as she poured us each a glass. “Your grandfather saw me just once, but that was all it took. He did everything my father asked and it was the same for me. I might only have seen him for the first time months later, but I knew as soon as I did that my life had arrived.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She slid a glass of water across the counter toward me. “Your father had to do the same thing, you know. He had to earn Layla’s hand in marriage. He worked damn hard for it, too.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Nanna chuckled at whatever expression crossed my face. “Basel worked his fingers to the bone for Layla, darling. Never let him fool you. White Water Lily itself was a side project he began while he was courting her, for her to design her own signature scent simply because she rejected an expensive bottle of perfume he bought her. To this day, she’s very picky about fragrances, as I’m sure you know. He wanted to prove that he could and would give her anything her heart desired.”

As she spoke, my thoughts started drifting to Colin and how he was enduring the endless meetings, factory tours, and familial obligations without so much as a word of complaint. For the last two weeks, I’d been feeling sorry for myself because Dad had been monopolizing his attention, appearing like he’d been summoned by magic every time I thought Colin might have a few minutes to relax.

He’d looked so exhausted yesterday and I was sure he was, but I’d been wondering why he was going along with whatever my father asked him without putting up a fight. He was certainly capable of pushing back, both as the CFO of the company Dad was trying to merge with and as a person, and yet, he’d been letting them drag him from pillar to post since the minute he’d arrived.

It occurred to me then that Colin knew about my father earning my grandfather’s blessing, and likely even about my grandfather earning my great-grandfather’s blessing, andthatwas what he was doing right now. He wasearningmy father’s blessing.

Earningme.

Nanna’s mouth twitched into a smile. “You understand now, don’t you?”