Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 98398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
I aimed a little lower and shot the shorter man in the thigh, dropping him to the ground. He started wailing and screaming while I adjusted my aim toward the big guy who took several steps away from Eddie.
When I looked at Eddie, she was scrambling on the ground, reaching for the smaller guy’s gun. He tried to hit her and grab it himself.
She cocked her hand back and punched him right where the bullet had penetrated.
The man screamed bloody murder as Reid came in, guns drawn, from a door behind Eddie.
With his gun trained on the two men, I rushed forward, grabbed Eddie, wrapped her in my arms, and held her to my chest. The relief I felt holding her in my hands was overwhelming.
“Are you okay?” I asked her as I looked her over for any more serious injuries.
The large bump on her head and the cut on her foot told me I needed to get her to an emergency room immediately.
She wrapped her hands around my shoulders, laying her head on my chest as I held her and started to cry.
“Never again,” I said. “This will never happen to you again.”
“How can you promise that?” she said. “Your mother is the one that arranged this. If we’re still together, she’s going to keep coming after me.”
“No, she isn’t,” I promised. I cradled her head in my palms and looked deeply into her bloodshot eyes. “I want to make sure that everybody knows you are protected. You cannot be touched, because you are mine.”
“And how exactly are you going to do that?” she asked. Even injured and no doubt in shock, she was too smart for her own good.
I did the one thing a lawyer should never do. I asked a question I didn’t know the answer to. “Edwina Carmichael, will you marry me?”
CHAPTER 43
HARRISON
It had been three days since I almost lost the most amazing woman to ever step into my life.
And I was making damn sure it never happened again.
Eddie was wearing a simple white sheath dress with a white suit jacket over it. I’d offered her a custom-made ball gown and a big ceremony in a church. I’d offered her the princess wedding of every girl’s dreams. The kind that was splashed all over the tabloids, and the mayor attended.
She’d looked me dead in the eye and told me that people like us did not belong in a church making vows in front of God.
People like us answered to a much higher power—the law.
It made me love her so much more. She didn’t just understand how I thought. She was the same. I told her that once, and she didn’t believe me. Eddie harped on our different backgrounds, education, social status, and everything that I found irrelevant.
It didn’t matter.
She was wrong, and I got to spend the rest of my life proving it to her over and over.
Originally, we were going to do this the proper way. Plan a large reception, and make a spectacle even if it was just a judge to marry us, but my mother would not back the fuck off.
After we found out she was not only behind Eddie being taken by the mob, but she was also the mastermind behind Olivia’s kidnapping, I wasn’t willing to give her any time to plot. I hadn’t even told her where or when the ceremony would happen, although I had no doubt she would find it regardless.
We stood in front of Judge Thomas, a close friend of mine since law school. Only my father, Luc, my sister, Marksen, Olivia, and Eddie’s best friend, Sabrina—who had only threatened to butcher me a couple of times—were our witnesses as we professed our love to each other.
Judge Thomas was happy to officiate our wedding.
He even paused his murder trial for a fifteen-minute recess to get it taken care of immediately, before Eddie wised up and left me for a man with power and sexy robes. His words, not mine.
About three minutes after Judge Thomas started his speech, a commotion erupted outside the courtroom, filled with feminine screeches and loud banging sounds as things were toppled over. We all stopped and faced the door, waiting for the inevitable.
Sure enough, Mary Quinn Astrid threw open the doors like she was walking into a courtroom drama with the damning evidence that would lead to the real killer being arrested. That woman lived for the drama so intently she had dressed in a white pantsuit and had a net veil pinned onto the ridiculous, tiny hat perched in her hair.
“I object to this marriage. That woman is nothing but a two-bit gold digger, and she has tricked my son into marrying her without even a prenup.”
“There is a prenup,” my father said, standing up and blocking her path to where Eddie and I stood with our hands clasped.