Page 16 of Marry Me Not
My gaze traced the delicate line of it. “What’s the issue?” I demanded.
Her shoulders rose. “I’m sorry?—”
“Stop apologizing and tell me what’s going on.”
Slowly, she turned to face me, and there was so much apprehension in her expression that my annoyance disappeared in a blink. Something protective rose inside of me.
“I hate having my picture taken, okay?” she said in a small voice.
“Why?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just do. I look terrible in them.”
I was pretty sure that was impossible. She was aggravatingly beautiful. “I guarantee you’ll look just fine,” I ground out.
“These are going out to so many people.” She wrung her hands. “I don’t want to get anything wrong.”
“It’s not that serious.”
Indignation flashed inside her gaze. “It is to me.”
I dragged my tongue over my teeth. I suppose I understood it. For her, this marriage was a performance she had to nail or risk disappointing her brother. She’d taken it to heart.
That didn’t bode well for me. How the fuck was I supposed to get her to call this off?
“What exactly are you worried about?”
“You heard him. I look stiff.” She rolled her lips and leaned against the column. “And I don’t feel comfortable with you.”
My mood darkened. Of course she didn’t. But wasn’t that the whole point of how I’d been acting toward her? Had I done my job so well that she couldn’t even get through a fucking photoshoot with me? The realization made something that felt suspiciously like guilt trickle into my bloodstream.
I held her emerald gaze and came to the unfortunate conclusion that I’d been hoping to avoid—this girl was a pawn in my mother’s game, not an active player.
That made what I had to do to her cruel, rather than warranted.
I raked my fingers through my hair, conflicted now. “All right, look, we’ve got to get through this. What would help?”
Her tongue darted out, swiping over her top lip. “Maybe tell me a bit about yourself.”
Fine. I settled on something innocuous. “I have twenty-five tattoos on my body. I got all of them in just one year.”
Her eyes skimmed over me, curious. “Where?”
“Most are on my chest and back. Some on my arms.”
“That must’ve hurt.”
“It wasn’t that bad.” I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned against the opposite column. “You got any?”
She shook her head. “In our family, women are forbidden from getting tattooed.”
I cocked a brow. “Messero gives a shit about that kind of thing?” I didn’t think he was all that old-school.
“He’s changing things, but slowly. There are many people in the family that hold our old traditions close to heart. My father was one of them.”
Her father was a cunt. We held a party when he died. It was a shame he croaked from fucking cancer instead of one of our bullets to the head. “What other antiquated traditions does your family follow?”
“Women aren’t allowed to work unless they’re given a special dispensation.”
