Mrs. Matched | Complete

Chapter Fifteen

I don't know what I was expecting out of the rest of the night, but what I got was a pleasant family barbeque where everyone politely included me in everything and actively tried to make me feel welcome and included. It was almost enough to make me lose my resolve. Maybe it was enough to make me lose my resolve, at least for a minute. But when I woke up the next morning to the sounds of Christopher making breakfast in the kitchen, I was reminded what the deal was here: marriage.

A marriage I neither asked for nor wanted.

The clock's green numbers flashed and switched to 7:52 as my mind ran away without me, thinking of the dark corner of the internet where I'd found the sample contracts. Before I could figure out what I was doing, my fingers were on the mouse, clicking the bookmarked page on my browser.

You are really lucky he didn't look at the bookmarks. Oh no! What if he looked at the bookmarks?

Fortunately, I had named it only "contract terms," so I could probably spin it as an attempt to understand our situation rather than try to get out of it.

"Okay," I said to myself as the sounds of blending from the kitchen secured my solitude. "How do I get out of this?"

Except I can't just type that in or he might notice. So my only option is scrolling through topics like "Does anyone else have this gift clause?" or "Help! Decode my page 312!" until I found one titled: "Whose parents gave them the tasks?"

I was at least three hundred messages deep in the thread when I finally found something useful: the name of a lawyer. Halfway through writing the name on a sticky note, Christopher's head appeared in the doorway. "Hey! You working already? I thought we had a couple weeks off."

His face is so relaxed, body leaning against the door frame, hand gesturing as he speaks.

"No! I'm not working, just catching up on some stuff to do with the move and everything, you know?" Phew, quick lie, Aubrey. I quickly finished scribbling the name on the sticky note and shoved it into the pocket of my pyjamas.

"Okay, take your time. I just came to tell you breakfast was finished. I'll wait for you down there."

"No need, I'm done!" I quickly closed out of the browser and shot up out of the chair to follow him into the hallway and down the stairs.

The smell of pancakes and bacon fills the air before we even reach the dining room, where he has laid out a spread of all my favourite breakfast foods and a huge pot of coffee.

"Are you trying to impress me with breakfast?" I asked without thinking.

"Why? Is it working?"

If I'd stopped to look at him, or consider him at all, I would have surely noticed what I was about to step into when I said, "Maybe a little."

As it was, I only noticed after the words had come out of my mouth. Man, I really hope he does something truly horrible or I'm going to be the massive jerk who strung him along.

He pulled out the chair in front of one of the plates and made an exaggerated gesture with his arm to indicate that I should sit down, so I did, unable to contain the laughter that bubbled up after he pushed in my chair and offered me a napkin as though he were the queen's butler.

When we finally stopped giggling and were nearing the end of our meal, he put his fork down with a clatter. "Okay, so now that we've met my parents, what should we do today? Disarm some nuclear missiles?"

"We do seem well-equipped for such a sensitive mission," I laughed. "But I was thinking maybe I'd just unpack so I can find my things. Maybe you want to cook me dinner?"