Marriage by Law (45 page)

The kid judged the ring and then looked at me and nodded. “Well, if you’re married, you’re married. Sorry.”

It was a surprise when he turned around to walk back to his group. I looked at Adrian, telling him, “See? No need to cause a fight.”

Adrian rolled his eyes as he grabbed the chalk back from me while I placed the ring on my thumb. At least it wouldn’t fall off this finger.

I don’t know why I had decided to step in. I remember when I urged Darius to punch the guys at the café for making a remark. Maybe I was saving the kids from these two.

I could only imagine the damage they could do, and I didn’t want that. After all, the immature teens reminded me of many of my own friends back in school. It was at the age that they were immature, trying to act like men when they really had no idea how to be.

“Your turn,” Adrian called and I walked over.  Right, the game.

It was after another solid ten minutes that the others returned, the noise level in the room increasing by eighty percent as those three came in.

“What took you so long?” Adrian asked, going straight for the bags they were holding. Whatever that was in the bags smelled amazing.

“Calm down, we were only gone for half an hour,” Matthew said as he checked his watch. He had gotten an actual ice bag for his bruise.

“Is it better?” I asked guiltily as I pulled his hand back to see the bruise. It looked much worse, but that was expected since the bruise was darkening, which meant all the good things, like platelets, under his skin were getting to work to heal it.

“The pain stopped, just looks nasty,” he said, voicing my opinion. I nodded. The ice should help.

“Who are they?” asked Lee ,nodding to the other table. He earned a grunt from Adrian who was busy shoving the kebab into his mouth.

“Mayor’s son,” I said when no one decided to reply. “Or something he said.” I thanked Kristoff when he handed me a kebab as well.

After we all ate and talked for a bit, it was back to another game, and Adrian cleaning up the mess he made on the floor.

“Seriously, Adrian, you don’t want to get kicked out for leaving meat everywhere,” Lee told him off as he stood up and I laughed. When Adrian stood up, crumbs, meat, vegetables, everything fell off his lap onto the floor.

He ate messily than a child.

“Are you blind? Because I am cleaning, duh.” Adrian rolled his eyes, picking up the mess he made.

“Come on, Ivory, do you want to break?” Lee chucked me the white ball.

“Probably won’t really break,” I told him. I wasn’t the best at breaking but he told me to have a shot anyway. And my shot was pretty pathetic. Three of the balls broke and Darius started laughing loudly, one of those laughs that started deep in your stomach and came out.

“Shut up,” I said, in embarrassment, nudging him as I stepped away so Kristoff could break it properly. “At least I tried.”

“We can go after this game finished.”

Darius’s voice made me jump and I realised how tired and out of focus I was. I yawned again and nodded.

I had lost count of how many games I had played. It was simply too enjoyable to stop playing. Lee was long done playing, already on the couch with one leg propped up. He was on his phone, laughing and reading out random tweets he found funny every now and then.

Made me wonder, did Darius have twitter? What would he tweet about if he did have one?

Another business deal.

I smiled as I imagined him tweeting that. No, Darius would have a
boring
twitter feed, but probably millions of followers.

“What are you smiling about?” Darius questioned as he gave me the cue stick.

I shook my head walking around the table. “My secret,” I replied, leaning down to take a shot.

The game was nearly done. There were less than four balls on the table. But at the same time I didn’t want to go back home. We had a great day. I had met his friends who turned out to be hilarious, telling me stories about all the mischief they got up to during business school. 

Something rammed into my backside, making me crash onto the pool table. I looked behind to see it was one of the guys, who decided to hi-five my butt with his and I glared at him when he smiled.

“Shouldn’t have been standing so close.”

Darius narrowed his eyes, taking a step toward the guy. I shook my head at him. He raised an eyebrow, silently questioning me when my lips curved into a smile.

The guy wanted to play like that, didn’t he?

The teenager smiled, flicking his brown hair out of his hazel eyes and leaning back against their pool table smirking at me.

I turned around to take a shot. I exaggerated my movements, my back hand causing the end of the cue stick to rib him. I smiled when I heard his grunt. I turned around to see I had a pretty good shot. Hit him right in the ribs, hard.

“Shouldn’t have been standing to close,” I muttered, walking around to give the cue back to Darius who was smiling, and shaking his head.

“What?” I asked innocently, looking up at him as we swapped again.

“Your dad told me you have a temper.” He smiled. “I like it.”

And my stomach flipped, not only because of what he said, but what I saw when I placed my hand on the edge of the table. “Um, Dairy?” I asked, my cheek going red.

He looked up.

I smiled sheepishly. “I think I lost your ring.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

I kicked my feet as I lay on the couch flipping through the magazine. It was still fairly early in the morning and somehow I just couldn’t sleep and was up and out of the bed. I was surprised. I loved my sleep.

I sighed as I flipped to the next page and turned my head to see the picture. Another famous star, another scandal. Didn’t the paparazzi have anything else to do?

Well, then again, it
was
their job.

I hummed a song as I heard sounds upstairs. What was that? I paused, half way through flipping a page. It was like something was knocking everything over.

Something sounding like hulk. I smiled.

I guess he was awake.

Thankfully, we did find the ring when we were leaving. Adrian had picked it up when he saw it on the flooir. So that made me get rid of the guilt I felt after I realised I could have lost it. Note taken. Never wear his rings again.

There was a louder thud.

Did he knock the lamp over or something? But my answer came fast enough when I saw him, or more like heard him, come down the stairs yelling my name.

The sound was like an elephant crashing into the walls, but it was only my husband crashing against the wall as he came down the stairs, sending what
few
photo frames there were on the wall to the ground. I winced.

“You know, I really don’t like this house either, but you don’t need to demolish it to the ground,” I joked as I flipped the page. I heard him grunt as he banged into the railing.

“Do you mind giving me a hand?”

My eyes flicked up and I held back a giggle seeing him currently stuck, or tangled, which ever describes the situation best, in a black shirt.

“I could,” I said, sighing and stretching my legs out. “But I’m so comfortable here.”

This couch was comfortable, and I didn’t really mind the view either, his shirt riding up and flashing me. It was a good view.

He grumbled something under his breath and I sighed. Fine, if I
had
to.

“Fine. Walk straight.”

He stopped moving around and froze. “What?”

“If you want me to help you, come over here. I’m too comfortable to get up.”

He made a noise, which was probably him getting frustrated at me and ended up grumbling. “Where?”

“Straight.”

He took a hesitant step forward. Really? Was it that hard to get out of a shirt? Just pull it off and then put it back on.

“No, no, no, no. Stop!” I yelled as he nearly ran into the coffee table. He froze, so close to the coffee table. We can’t have the glass antique break now, can we?

“Ivory,” he warned and I rolled my eyes.

“Don’t worry, I won’t kill you. Now turn. No, the other way. Okay, wait, you turned too much. Um,” I knotted my eyebrows in concentration. How was I supposed to do this? Maybe it would have been easier for me to just go up and do it myself, but too late now, and he was so close.

I really couldn’t be bothered getting up when he was within arm’s reach.

“Hurry up.” I winced and placed my magazine on my stomach. “Alright, turn three degrees to your left.”

“I thought you failed maths,. Are you sure it’s three degrees?”

I gasped, my cheeks warming up. “
Excuse me,
I did not fail maths,. Who told you that?”

“Your dad. Now, three degrees?”

I huffed. Trust my dad to tell him everything. I did
not
fail maths, I quit it. There was a good difference. And I was good at it too, well sort of. I was okay, not that bad, I just didn’t like it.

“
Aluminium
.”

“Huh? Oh right, yes I am positive it is three degrees. Okay, maybe ten. No, five,” I said nodding. “Yes, five.”

He turned around a bit. I wasn’t sure exactly how many degrees it was, but it was enough. “Now take a step forward. Yep. Whoa-!” My palms went up in a protective defense in case he fell on me. Thankfully he didn’t.

“I said step, not a lunge, T-Rex,” I told him as he steadied himself from running into the couch. What was he, a bulldozer?

“Just help,” he said with gritted teeth. Aw, was the big boy asking for help? Ew no, that sounded weird.

I raised my hands, but got disappointed they didn’t reach him. I then slowly sat up, tugging at his shirt.

Oh wow, he was actually stuck. “What did you do?” I asked, trying to give it a harder tug. He shrugged, which then made it worse.

“Ouch!”

I winced. “Sorry. This is why you don’t put clothes on,” I shook my head and froze when I realised what I said. “I mean, like when you come straight out of the shower, ya know? You have to completely dry yourself off-”