Romance: JADEN: An MMA Fighter Romance (Bad Boy Tattoo Romance) (New Adult Pregnancy Short Stories)

by Kristen Chase

  Before Rosaline could contemplate that further, Edward stopped her at the bottom of the staircase. “Would you prefer your things in my room or the bedroom down the hall?” he asked, almost nonchalantly. Rosaline knew that she should say his room, knew that she should just give into this already, but her heart still belonged to Adrian, no matter what circumstances separated them.

  “Down the hall,” she murmured, attempting to gauge him for his reaction. He looked at her for several moments, eyes not quite narrowed, but on the verge. “If you don’t mind, sir,” she added dipping into a shallow curtsey.

  “Of course not. You must be comfortable,” he said amiably, and Rosaline looked back up at him. He slid his hat off, and for a moment Rosaline had to push back a gasp. He was so much older than her. Silver streaks wound through the dark hair and she could see that the wrinkles were not only caused by the sun but his own age. Edward Fitzgerald was a good twice her age, old enough to be her father, and she was marrying him.

  Covering her surprise, Rosaline dipped into another curtsey. “Thank you, sir,” she said.

  “Call me Edward,” the man said, and for the first time, she heard a note in his voice that sounded more fatherly than husbandly. Rosaline felt something that was stuck in between surprise and disgust rise up in her throat. How was she to marry a man who was a good twenty years older than her? People would talk. She came away from her home to get away from the people talking about her behind whispered gloved hands, speculating if she was actually the daughter of this man. How was she to stand this? This was worse than her so-called ‘illicit’ affair with Adrian, much worse. She would be trapped in this marital bond for the rest of her life and there wasn’t a single thing that she could do about it.

  Rosaline came to terms with her fate as they went up the creaking stairs. She resigned herself to whatever life she may have to live now as they walked down the hall, past a partially open door that looked to be Edward’s. Rosaline glanced inside and instantly began running everything she had seen through her mind. Unmade bed. Sloppy. Boots lined up at the edge of the bed. Organized. Already, her future husband was a contradiction. The curtains were open, letting pale light filter in, catching the dust motes that danced in the air like gold particles. On the desk there was a neat stack of papers, an assortment of quills and ink and blank paper. Also organized.

  Edward opened the door next to his, holding it for Rosaline much as he had the front door. Rosaline squeezed past him, dragging her bag inside.

  Clean, nondescript and completely what she had not expected. Her room looked like something she might find at home while wandering the cramped halls of her own house that had been in the family ever since her parents had emigrated over from Russia. It was, in a word, cozy.

  She dropped the bag onto the modestly sized bed and turned to face Edward. “This will suit me perfectly,” she said, glancing up at the rafters in the ceiling, spying many cobwebs that had collected dust over the years. So he was without a maid.

  When she glanced back down, Edward was giving her a disconcerting look with those soul-seeing eyes of his. She clenched her jaw and fought to keep smiling. She expected him to open his mouth to say something that would make her regret telling him that she liked the room, but he only turned away and closed the door. Just before it clicked into place, he glanced over his shoulder; not quite far enough to actually look at her and said, “If you want, I will prepare tea. Come down when you have settled.”

  Then, the door was closed, and she was the only one left in the room. For several seconds, Rosaline stood there. She simply stood, nothing else, looking at the door that had closed so suddenly.

  Rosaline’s friend Sasha who lived on their street back home had whispered that her sister had become a mail order bride and they had never seen or heard from her after. They could only assume that she had been killed by her husband. She had feared for Rosaline’s life and her peace of mind when she had informed her that she was going to the rural territory of Montana in order to become a man’s bride whom she had never met.

  Rosaline understood Sasha’s fear for the first time since leaving her home. Edward Fitzgerald had proved to be changeable in the snap of a finger, emotions flitting from one to the other without so much as a blink from him. She would have to attempt to feel him out before she could even begin to trust him—if that was even possible in her case. She was only here to save Adrian, nothing more. She only wanted his happiness and the ability for him to stay here so that maybe one day she could free herself from the confines of this marriage that was no better than arranged and fly back to him.

  Taking a deep breath, Rosaline realized that, once more, she was still confined in the heavy corset her mother had forced her to wear even though she would be riding all day for several days in order to reach this distant land that people called Montana.

  She quickly undid the clasps of her dress, shucking it onto the bed. A plume of dust billowed up from the area that she had laid the dress down, and Rosaline made a sound of disgust. Apparently no one had been in this room for years. She wondered who it had belonged to initially, and how long the inhabitant had been gone. A sudden morbid thought of her sleeping in a dead person’s bed shocked Rosaline, and she took a sharp breath, quickly undoing her corset so that she might get out of this room more quickly until she could convince herself that this was no more than childish folly that was playing with her brain. As she dusted her dress off and dragged herself back into the loose fabric, she let out a deep sigh of relief. She didn’t understand why her mother required her to wear a corset; it hardly changed her shape at all. Perhaps it gave her more of a waist than she had naturally, but she thought it made her look comically proportioned. Mama had insisted, however, and because Mama was the head of the family and made all of the important decisions, Rosaline had listened to her mother. She usually knew best.

  Not in this case. Rosaline took her first deep breath of free air, relishing the ability her ribs had to expand and contract without any hindrance. Feeling better than she had upon entering the room, Rosaline put a bright smile on her face and opened the door once more to go find the enigmatic Edward who would become her future husband and talk to him over a nice cup of tea.

  ###

  Rosaline shifted uncomfortably in her sleep as a sudden sound that didn’t belong in her quiet room met her ears. She wasn’t quite awake, and passed the sound off as something that she had heard in her dream and flipped over to her other side, flipping a few errant locks of hair out of her face when they cut off her supply of cool air. She opened her eyes a moment later to slits as she heard a creak. Now, she was most definitely awake.

  She moved her hair off of her face completely and widened her eyes. The glow of a candle illuminated her room, coming closer. She blinked at the dancing flame, trying to place the source of it in that way that people who still happen to be half asleep have the ability to do. At first, she believed it to be her mother coming to check on her and she mumbled out an incomprehensible testament to her perfect health, and then she realized that the light was hitting the walls wrong for it to be her own room. With crashing reality, she returned to her senses and yanked the blankets up further around her thin nightdress that was the only thing covering her nearly translucent shift.

  It was Edward coming towards her. Rosaline feared for herself in that moment, feared for her virtue and her reputation. Edward set the candle down on the nightstand beside Rosaline’s bed and sat down on the bed, back facing Rosaline. She couldn’t help the small sound that came out of her at the foreign movement that was completely unexpected.

  “Do not fear,” Edward said. His voice was smoky and distant, as if he were speaking to her through some mystical mirror that Mama had always told her existed. “I will not lay a finger on you if you do not wish it. I have learned much about you from our conversation over tea, and I know that you are not ready for any kind of physical interaction.”

  Rosaline blinked several times, looking at Edward’s bac
k. He was still garbed in his clothes he had been wearing during the day, and she briefly wondered what time it was. What had he been doing, and what had he figured out from Rosaline? She had kept her answers monosyllabic or little more than that in an attempt to stave off him knowing that she was already promised to another in heart and soul. This wouldn’t work if she couldn’t fake feelings for the man. But the things he was talking about, physical interaction as he put it, she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to stand.

  “You love someone else, that much is clear.”

  Rosaline sat up in bed, her modesty be damned. How had he known that? He didn’t turn to look at her, even though he would have felt the movement, much as she had felt the cant of the bed as he had sat down beside her. “Sir?” she finally managed to get out. Her voice was still logged with sleep, and she coughed delicately in order to clear it enough to not sound like a croaking frog when she spoke. “What do you mean?”

  Edward paused, glancing over at her over his shoulder, a knowing smile twisting his lips up at the corners. He looked different in the flickering candle light. It was as if flesh had shifted to light and darkness. The hollow between his cheekbone caught her attention first. Had his cheekbones truly been that high the first time she had laid eyes upon him? For being twice her age, he was an attractive enough male, but she hadn’t realized just how attractive until now. His long nose that wasn’t long enough to be ugly was caught in light, the warm candle dancing off of the straight and sure swoop of flesh and bone. She blinked several more times. The sleep must have been clouding her judgment and her ability to make informed choices. She was not looking at him as she had looked at Adrian. There was only Adrian. She replaced his visage with Adrian’s dancing green eyes and dimples that she found completely enduring as he smiled at her, bearing teeth that were as white as Edward’s.

  “It is quite easy to see,” Edward said, shattering the image she had put firmly in place. Curse it. She had wanted to avoid him speaking to her until she could rid herself of this strange ability to see his beauty. He reached out suddenly, and Rosaline drew in a breath that sounded akin to a scream. Edward hesitated, fingers a hairsbreadth from her wrist that lay on top of the blankets that had pooled somewhere around her lap. “I will not hurt you,” he murmured, grasping her wrist. His hands were cool and calloused from years of hard work, and Rosaline couldn’t help a shiver as he lifted her hand up to the light. It seemed much too intimate, though he was touching a part of her many strangers had ready access to at multiple times of the day. Past the scalloped edge of her nightgown hung the twisted ropes of the yarn that Adrian had given to her when they had first declared their love to each other.

  “Why would a lady carry such a ratty old thing?” Edward mused. Rosaline felt a shock go through her. This man knew too much for his own good. He saw things that other people would miss. It was those eyes that could see straight through her and look directly at her soul as if it were no more than child’s play. “You fingered this constantly during tea, whenever I would ask you about home. I can only assume that you have a loved one back home. I planned this night from the moment I knew that you were coming. I would come to your room and offer that you come to mine, but now I see that you will not be able to fulfill my request.” He paused, letting her wrist drop. She let it, not even bothering to shift it away as the body part struck her thigh.

  He sounded calm, but she held her breath all the same as he shifted so that he faced her. Would he hit her? Cast her out of his house in the dead of night? Perhaps it was good that she hadn’t unpacked her bag yet because the trunk was covered in a layer of dust and she needed to clean it before she could place anything inside. She tensed. “I do,” she admitted. It was best to be honest, and these quiet hours that were somewhere between dusk and dawn seemed to be the hours where secrets were readily explored and revealed. “His name is Adrian Ivaskov and I am here to pay for him to stay in the Americas.”

  “Is he from Russia as well?” Edward asked. “I assume by your surname and his surname that you knew each other from a very young age, perhaps emigrated from Russia together?”

  “We met when we were twelve,” Rosaline said on an out breath. Why was she telling Edward this information? She held her breath once more as he reached forward again. This time, he grasped her left wrist, taking it up to the light. His fingers rested lightly against the beating pulse in her wrist. She could feel the raw power that was contained in his limbs. He could easily snap her wrist in half with just the power of his fingers if he desired to do so.

  He didn’t apply any force, simply held her wrist so that they could both see the way her hand trembled in the light. “You have yet to wear a ring,” he murmured.

  “We were not married before I left,” Rosaline admitted. Should she really be telling him all of this incriminating evidence that lay against her? He could easily take her back on claims that she had been deceitful.

  His face was blank for several long moments in which Rosaline felt herself holding her breath, waiting for a blow that may or may not come. Then he smiled that disconcerting smile that looked all the more so in this light and dropped this wrist as well. Rosaline yanked it back against her body, cradling the limb against warm flesh. She wanted him to leave, and she wanted him to stay. He smelled of pine trees and wood smoke, like the kinds of things that one would find in the wilderness, and she loved that smell. She wanted to stay and smell it for the rest of her life. But his disconcerting smile set her on edge. “I accept this challenge you present to me, Rosaline. You will be my wife before the end of the year; willingly.”

  That seemed preposterous, and it was Rosaline could do not to laugh at the notion. “What?” she asked, hardly able to keep the amusement out of her voice.

  Edward shifted so that she could see the play of light on his collarbones. He had unbuttoned his shirt two buttons, exposing a chest that was mostly free of hair—another myth about the people who lived in the wilderness debunked. “You present me with a challenge I haven’t had to face in many years. I will woo you until you become mine and forget about this childhood lover of yours. You are here now, and I might as well take up the challenge instead of sending you back for a new one. I rather like the looks of you.”

  Rosaline gaped at him as he stood and grasped the base of the candle holder in the same fingers that had just been around her wrist only moments ago. He was truly cocky if he thought that he could divert her attention so easily. Rosaline felt a hot spike of anger drive its way through her body as she watched him leave her room, whistling a merry tune that shattered the calm of the night.

  ###

  The smell of the store took Rosaline back home. Every apothecary’s store seemed to carry the same scent, and this one was no different. The moment Rosaline stepped into the store, she was hit with the sweet scent of herbs that was over-crowded by the sharper smell of the alcohol that was used to preserve the various tinctures and potions that were available at this store. She took a deep breath in and closed her eyes, imagining that it would be Adrian that stood behind the counter instead of a stranger she had never met. She imagined that Mama was standing beside her, not an empty space that wasn’t occupied. Edward had told her that she needed no escort into town; the folk had been known to him for decades and they wouldn’t harm a hair on her head. She had taken one of his horses since he had no carriage and didn’t fancy walking the entire day for a simple tincture to help a calf that seemed to have a bad case of running eyes and nose.

  “Miss?” the voice was utterly unfamiliar, crashing Rosaline out of her reverie. She glanced at the woman behind the counter. She was about Edward’s age, plump and friendly-faced. She gave Rosaline a slightly confused smile. “Is there something I can help you with? Are you a traveler in need of something to ease back pain or chafing?” the woman began to reach behind her counter, but Rosaline held up her hand.

  “I was recently married to Edward Fitzgerald who lives out of town,” she said. “I am looking for somethi
ng to cure a calf’s running eyes and nose.”

  The woman looked up from reaching down, a curious spark in her eyes. “Do you now?” she asked. There was a moment in which Rosaline felt the nervousness that had accompanied her ever since she had stepped foot on Montana soil rear up like an ugly beast at the woman’s clearly disapproving face. Then, that face split into a wide smile that made her eyes almost invisible, and the woman bustled around the counter. She reached forward and grasped Rosaline’s hands in her own. They were rough, not as rough as Edward’s, though that was to be expected. Rosaline was still unused to feeling these kinds of rough hands on a woman, though. Mama always took good care of her hands, keeping the soft and pliable enough to paint or grasp a tea cup in high company and made sure that Rosaline did the same. The habit had stuck, and Rosaline still applied cream to her hands and massaged them a hundred strokes each every single night, though there was no Mama to scold her if she failed to do so.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, miss…?”

  “Rosaline,” Rosaline said. “The pleasure is all mine.”

  “Where do you come from? Your accent is different from any we have around here,” the apothecary asked. She finally let go of Rosaline’s hands. Up close, the woman smelled of sweet herbs especially, and the bitterness of the alcohol faded. The ache that Rosaline felt in her chest at the familiar smell was almost unbearable.

  “My parents emigrated from Russia when I was but a wee babe,” Rosaline said. It felt distant as she tried to make herself stop feeling such awful pain. She needed to stop thinking of Adrian at every available moment. He was halfway across the country and out of her reach at the moment—perhaps for the rest of her life. Even after three months, the pain of leaving him seemed as raw as ever.

  “What brings you to Montana? Other than marrying old Edward, of course.” The apothecary seemed blind to her pain. Perhaps she was getting better at hiding it.