CEREAL DATER (The Way To A Man's Heart Book 13) by Frankie Love (people reading books .txt) 📕

Of course, my parents chose the fanciest resort they could pay for to stage this wedding. Best way to make it look like it might be real. I know that my sister doesn’t really want much to do with the man she’s going to marry, but she wants an easy life, not one where our parents are hanging over her shoulder and telling her what she should do and how she should do it.

"Is everyone here a millionaire?" Lucky asks as she scans the room once more. "I swear I’ve seen most of these people in gossip magazines..."

"Most of them, yes," I reply, and she whistles and shakes her head.

"And here, I thought I would be the only one who got to travel to this place by private jet," she remarks, managing a wry smile. But before I can say anything else, my mother appears beside us, a worn-out version of my father by her side.

"Hey, Mom, hey, Dad," I greet them, going to give my mother a kiss on the cheek. Her eyes are locked on the woman I am with, and I can tell that she wants nothing more than to turf her out of here.

"Lovely to see you," I offer, hoping that it will break the tension. It doesn’t. Lucky smiles at them, biting her lip, and extends her hand.

"It’s so nice to finally meet you," she tells them. My mother doesn’t even move, as though nobody is standing there in front of her. I feel a flare of anger in my gut – I'm not going to let them treat her like this.

Lucky has worked harder and done more than most of the people in this room could ever dream of, and she doesn’t deserve to be treated as less-than just because her gown wasn’t custom-made by a designer, like the rest of the airheads here.

"Sophia’s waiting, Landon," my mother tells me, her voice clipped. This is it – the last chance that she’s going to give me to dump my date and go be with the woman that she selected for me. I shake my head.

"I have a date," I tell her, and I slip an arm around Lucky’s shoulders. My mother doesn’t have any choice but to acknowledge her standing there right now, and she looks her up and down as though she is a piece of dirt on her shoe.

"And who’s this?" she asks. I glance to my father, appealing for his help, but it doesn’t come. He’s never been good at standing up to my mother, and that’s not going to change now.

"This is Lucky," I tell them, and Lucky smiles up at me, snuggling against me and putting her hand on my chest. But as soon as she turns back to my mother, that smile drops. My mother is frowning back at her, shaking her head.

"I don’t think so," she replies. I almost laugh at how absurd she sounds right now, but the anger gets the better of me.

"What the hell are you talking about?" I snap back at her. "Show some respect–"

"Not until you show some to Sophia," my mother shoots back. "She came all the way out here to meet you, and you turn up with..."

She gestures vaguely to Lucky, and I take a deep breath to try and control myself. If I lose my shit at her, she’s going to find some way to use that against me. So, instead, I play by her rules, and I pretend that she’s not even there.

"Lucky," I murmur, turning to the woman beside me. "Could you give me a moment? I need to speak to my sister. And then we can go."

I ignore the stunned expressions on my parents’ faces as I brush past them to find Cassidy – if they think I am going to stand there and listen to them talk to Lucky like that, they’ve got another thing coming. I hear my mother’s voice calling after me, but I pay it no mind, instead scanning the crowd for my little sister.

It doesn’t take long to find her – she's with her husband-to-be, a broker from another wealthy family who my parents all but sold her to. She smiles and gives me a big hug in greeting, and then glances over my shoulder to see how pissed our mom and dad are with everything that’s going down.

"What’s going on?" she asks. "Why are you–"

"I came with a date who didn’t get pre-approved by our parents," I reply, and she widens her eyes at me.

"Oh, shit," she mutters. "Do you think that’s a good idea? Sophia’s really nice, you know, I met her and I–"

"Cass, I don’t think I can be at this wedding," I admit to her. Her face drops and we take a few steps away from her fiancé, out of earshot.

"What?”

"I can’t stand by and watch another marriage start just because two families want to make sure that they can’t stab each other in the back," I go on. "I love you, Cass, you know that. And I hope that you’ll be happy with your new husband, I really do. But I can’t keep doing this, pretending that I want something like this, too."

Her eyes gloss over for a moment, as though there is something clicking into place in her head. But I don’t have time to sit here and talk her through it – she has already gone along with what my parents wanted for her, and that’s the only thing that matters. I plant a kiss on her cheek, and turn to find Lucky again, to find the woman I really want to spend this night with, no matter what.

But when I look to the bar, she is already gone. And my stomach drops at once.

Chapter Eight

Lucky

Sitting there, my heels perched beside me and my bare feet dug into the warm, damp sand below me, I can almost pretend that none of this is happening.

His parents hate me.