Undeniable (Fated series Book 4) Page 3

  I wanted to dance around the room. I knew I hadn’t heard the words yet, but I was convinced they were coming.

  ‘You can go to the university and gain your degree in economics.’

  ‘THANK YOU!’ I couldn’t contain my sheer joy and jumped up, but sat back down immediately when I saw him holding up his index finger again.

  ‘You must travel backwards and forwards daily, I don’t want you staying on campus and neither does Anton. Also, you will complete the three-year course in two years. Two years is plenty of time for the length of your engagement. Once your degree is finished, you will immediately marry Anton and begin your married life.’

  A feeling of utter panic ran its sharp claws all the way down from my head to my toes. I knew that it couldn’t be put off forever, but giving it an actual timeframe made it instantly become a fear that I could no longer overlook. I closed my eyes with that thought.

  Think. Breathe.

  On the upside, I would get two years of life first. I was going to take it, it was too good an opportunity and one I knew would never come again.

  ‘I agree, Father. Only I have one small request. It is going to be really difficult condensing a three-year degree into two years, but with the additional travel time every day I worry that it might just be impossible.’ I was worried that I might ruin a good thing, but I had it in my mind that I wanted to stay with Katy and experience all the things we had talked about. I had never even had a sleepover with a friend. I had read about them in books, but that was all.

  Suddenly my mum’s gentle voice filled the room. ‘Albert, could Lily stay on campus Monday to Friday and then spend the weekends with us? It would help her to study.’

  Lily, breathe. Be careful what you say.

  I heard my father expel a long sigh.

  ‘Lily?’ He questioned.

  ‘Well, I did look at staying on the campus, and they had a shared room available with another girl.’

  ‘Another girl, that sounds promising.’ He nodded enthusiastically at my comment.

  I knew it would. I only hoped he wouldn’t want to meet my lovely Katy, because she looked like everything my father said he hated and despised about young people of today.

  ‘Princess, you can make the arrangements. Do you know when you need to start?’ He nodded his head conclusively like it had all been his idea from the very beginning.

  ‘Monday,’ I offered in a quiet, hesitant voice.

  ‘That’s fine, Monday it is. Make the arrangements and I will have one of my security drive you down early Monday morning.’ He lifted his eyes up from the post he was slicing open with his letter knife and captured my gaze. ‘Do not let us down, Lily.’

  ‘No, of course not, Father… and thank you.’ I made my way around to his side of the desk and kissed him on his proffered right cheek. ‘I’m going to make the arrangements now… I have to pack as well.’ I spoke to him but he was already reading the opened correspondence.

  I stopped in my tracks as I walked back to the door and turned as once again my father began to talk to me. ‘Anton will be here within the hour with the engagement ring he has already picked out for you. Please be ready to meet him in something other than the clothes you have been riding in.’ He didn’t look up at me, he just gave me the information I needed to make sure that I, his daughter, didn’t let him down.

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  I clutched my mum’s hand as we left his office and closed the door behind us. The feelings welling up inside of me were almost too much to cope with. Excitement, happiness and terror of the unknown, sandwiched together with even more excitement.

  ‘I’m so pleased for you, Lily,’ she whispered to me in the large echoing hallway. ‘Come on, I’ll help sort through your clothes while you shower.’

  I knew it wouldn’t take us too long, as although we had money I’d never spent it on clothes, because quite simply the clothes that I would love to wear I wasn’t allowed to buy. They would have been perceived as too revealing, too short, too bright. I had longed for a pair of jeans for years, but the nearest I had to them was a pair of black Jodhpurs.

  I would have to get Katy to help me buy some bits and pieces once I got settled in, that was for certain.

  I just wanted to fit in. I needed to fit in and blend into the background, so I could absorb everything that life had to offer, before I was chained to a man that I didn’t love and to be quite honest, a man that gave me the creeps. Bloody hell. I looked at the clock in my room and realised…that same man would be here in three quarters of an hour. I grabbed a tired-looking, yellow sundress off a hanger in my wardrobe and made my way to my bathroom. My happy feeling plummeted. I could get through it. I had something to keep me going now. Something that I had only ever dreamed about before. My own life, two whole years of my own life. I did a little happy dance in the bathroom as I waited for the shower to warm up.

  I was sat in the conservatory when Anton arrived. It was a ploy on my part. I’d chosen the room deliberately as it was somewhat private, but it was also just off the kitchen where I knew my mum would be. For some reason that I couldn’t figure out, I always preferred not to be alone with him.

  ‘Aunty Helen.’ I heard the smack of his lips on her cheek as he greeted her with the polite, but not factual, term of endearment. Just that small sound coming from his mouth was enough to have the bile rising in the back of my throat and a grimace attach itself to my face.

  I wasn’t sure why I felt so strongly against him. I just knew that I did. This wasn’t the first time I had pondered on the question, and it wasn’t the first time I came up with no definitive answer. I sincerely hoped it was just because I had no experience whatsoever with any man, other than my relationship with my father.

  I’m sure that’s what it is.

  I watched as he made his way into the warm room I had been sitting in awaiting his arrival. On the outside he was fairly tall, dark haired and handsome.

  Wasn’t that every woman’s dream?

  He wore expensive clothes, that fit him well.

  He carried himself confidently.

  He had the means to support a wife and subsequent children.

  But I wanted something more.

  I knew I wanted… no, I needed to have strong feelings for my future husband, I wanted to know him inside out and I wanted to like what I found there. That, I was beginning to believe, was the problem.

  Anton had always been a part of my life, but I felt like I knew nothing about him at all. As time went on my feelings towards him had changed, slowly at first and then with increasing vigour. He was the son of my parents’ friends, who were regarded as extended family. He was three years older than me and had much more experience of life than I did and that had made him seem interesting, at first. As a young girl I had read romance novels, and us being together seemed just that… romantic.

  We had been sharing a picnic in a nearby park one beautifully sunny day, with both of our families, when it had first been brought up that our parents had promised us to each other the day I had been born. It felt somewhat destined, but I was fourteen years old then. I wasn’t exactly worldly now, but things that I had seen Anton say and do had made me realise that although he may seem like every woman’s dream come true on the outside, inside he was as black as the ace of spades.

  Quite simply, he scared me.

  ‘Lily.’ I snapped out of my thoughts at the sound of his voice.

  ‘Anton, how are you?’ I always resorted back to my good manners to see me through.

  ‘Day dreaming again? Well… that will have to stop once we’re married.’ He said it with a smile on his face, but the smile never reached his cold eyes. I knew he hadn’t said it teasingly, it was said as a threat.

  I forced out a small smile, while my heart beat so frantically in recoil and panic I felt it might burst out of my chest.

  ‘I have something for you, Lily.’ I watched as he opened the button on his smart black suit jacket and pulled out a small
box from the inside pocket.

  ‘My father said you would be visiting today with my engagement ring.’ I offered him a seat across the way from where I sat, with an open outstretched hand.

  That’s it, get straight to the point and hopefully he will leave quicker.

  I immediately stiffened, losing the relaxed body posture I had been maintaining, as he sat down on a seat right next to me. My body retreated into itself as a way of self-preservation. His sweaty hand stretched out to grab hold of mine. I had to physically force my hand to stay in place, when every part of my body screamed at me to move it and to move it quickly. The overwhelming scent of his aftershave infiltrated my senses.

  ‘Soon you will be mine… I can’t wait to fuck your anus, Lily. In fact, maybe once this expensive ring is on your finger, I should do just that, before you go away. Then you will remember who owns you, won’t you?’ He rubbed my hand with his sweaty fingers and said the words so matter-of-factly, that I questioned my own hearing.

  WHAT? I had to have heard that wrong, surely?

  I couldn’t answer him, I just hadn’t the words. Is this the sort of conversation grown adults had with each other when they were alone?

  Surely not?

  I focussed my eyes on his moving fingertips as I fought to keep my hand still.

  ‘Oh! You two are so sweet. I came in to see the ring, Anton.’ My mum walked into the conservatory, smoothing out her skirt as she did so.

  ‘You must start calling me Tony, Aunty Helen.’

  ‘Oh yes! I keep forgetting that you prefer that now. You know us women, Tony. We’re always more concerned with the romantic things in life.’ I found her eyes with mine and silently pleaded with her to rescue me. She smiled and walked over, closing the gap between us and her.

  I let out a breath I hadn’t even realised I was holding until that moment.

  That was the reason I didn’t like him.

  He was an evil, cruel bastard.

  I didn’t care how far back our families went, or what name he wanted to use, there was no way I could marry him. But, in the conservatory with my mum witnessing, he went down on one knee and slipped a large ruby and diamond ring onto my third finger.

  I couldn’t protest.

  I was leaving tomorrow.

  If I protested now, I had the feeling that I would never leave.

  ‘There, my darling, a blood-red ruby.’ He looked up into my shocked face as I moved my gaze from the ring and then back to him, over and over. He leant closer so only I could hear him. ‘I thought “blood-red” would sum up our impending marriage nicely. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  SHIT! Clark was going to kill me. I took in the digital clock on the illuminated screen of my phone, through the one eye I had open. My other eye flew open fast to join it.

  Charlie was a bad influence, I should never have gone out again last night.

  I banged the phone back down and sat up in bed in one swift movement. Reaching down I picked up the pile of yesterday’s clothes and started to thrust my legs into my black jeans. I pushed my bare feet into my black Dr. Marten’s and pulled the laces tight, not doing them up in my trademark way. I picked up the crumpled heap of my T-shirt and tucked a small part of it into my jeans pocket, so it hung down the front of my leg, and threw a crumpled shirt over my bare shoulder. I fastened my button fly with one hand, grabbed my toothbrush with the other, squirting on some paste as I reached the small sink by the door, and quickly ran it under the cold water. In just under a minute flat, I vacated the small room I rented and ran to my only lecture of the day.

  I ran between my room and the lecture hall in eight minutes, cleaning my teeth and spitting as I ran. I might just as well have walked. No amount of grovelling was going to get me out of this one. Perhaps I should have e-mailed that I was sick, but my attendance was running close to the margin of being kicked out, I just couldn’t risk it. The trouble was that even at this level of academia most of what was being taught I already knew and the lectures were like “water torture.”

  I didn’t want to be kicked out. So, here I was skating that fine line between pissing off all my professors with my tardiness, but producing coursework and exam results that meant I was fairly near the top of my year.

  That just meant they hated me even more.

  I could see the clock through the narrow rectangular pane of glass in the auditorium door. I was exactly fifty minutes late. I pulled my crumpled T-shirt over my head, thrust my arms into my shirt, and placed my toothbrush in my back pocket. I took a deep breath before I pushed the door open to my economics class.

  He was going to have a field day with this one.

  Give him his due, he didn’t even turn at the noise of the air being sucked from the room as the door opened. The only tell I recognised, to show he knew I had arrived, was the teeth-on-edge scraping his chalk started to make on the blackboard as I started up the steps to find a vacant seat.

  Yep, he was old school, Professor Clark. He refused an interactive white board and as he got the top results in the country the faculty let him get away with it.

  I jogged up the final few centre steps, stealing a pencil and piece of paper on the way, and offering a wink as my thanks to a girl that I had fucked a couple of times. I couldn’t remember her name, I think it began with a C… Carrie… Claire… Connie?

  Face facts! I hadn’t got a fucking clue.

  I sat down in a vacant seat as near to the back as I could find and laid my head down on the small desk in front of me.

  I listened to his monotone voice as he carried on explaining whatever the hell he was teaching today and gradually my tired eyes closed…

  The sound of a plastic ruler smacking hard against the wood right beside my ear made my eyes jolt open fast.

  SHIT!

  ‘MR. CARPENTER!’

  ‘Yes, sorry.’ I sat up quickly.

  ‘Now that you have decided to open your eyes, perhaps you would like to join me down at the front.’ It wasn’t a question that he asked, but more of a demand.

  I had the decency to feel embarrassed as I stood and followed Clark down the steps of the nearly empty room, my heavy boots banging on every wooden step. I could see one girl with shoulder-length, nearly black hair sitting with her back to me. I wondered what she’d done wrong. The rest of the auditorium was empty. Give him his due, Professor Clark had dignity. He could have balled me out in front of very nearly a hundred other students, but he had chosen not to.

  I owed him big time.

  ‘Take a seat, Mr. Carpenter, and do try to keep your eyes open for just a few minutes, won’t you?’ I let him have his little sarcastic joke, fuck knows I deserved the dig. He disappeared out of the room talking to someone on the other side of the door. Holding up his hand to us and gesticulating five minutes.

  I reached the bottom of the stairs and sat down on the seat at the end of the row, biting the end of the stolen pencil and compressing the small piece of metal into the tiny rubber it held. I looked across the aisle to the girl that was sat there. I was sure I hadn’t seen her about before. She didn’t look over at me, not once. I watched fascinated as she picked nervously at the skin around her nails. To be honest, I was used to having more of an effect on girls in my presence, except Katy of course. I leant forward and shifted again in my seat, and then tapped the end of my pencil up and down quickly on the table trying to attract her attention. But still nothing.

  ‘Hi, I’m Jack Carpenter,’ I offered, stretching out my right hand towards where she sat.

  Hesitantly she began to turn her head towards me. I watched as her tiny hand lifted and pretty-pink fingernails hooked some of her hair behind her ear, allowing me my first real look at the side of her face.

  She was beautiful.

  Not in a “Yeah I’d do that” sort of way. But in an “absolutely fucking stunning” sort of way. I could honestly say I’d never seen a girl like her before in my twenty-odd years of life, and I’d seen a lot of girls.

  She sti
ll hadn’t replied. I watched as her face literally lit up into a shy smile, finally she turned fully and her emerald green eyes met mine. She had the longest eyelashes I had ever seen. Those long eyelashes flickered at me as she geared herself up to speak. It was mesmerising and vaguely reminiscent of watching the Venus fly traps catching flies in my mum’s greenhouse, she fluttered those lashes and I was captivated.

  ‘Huh, hmmm.’ I quickly coughed, closing my eyes to break our connection, as I tried to snap myself out the embarrassing situation I found myself in, just staring at her with my mouth opened wide.

  ‘Hello… I’m Lily Green. I’m pleased to meet you, Jack.’

  Just then, the sound of the door being reopened broke the moment.

  ‘Right then… I hope you two have introduced yourselves?... Yes?’

  I nodded at the Professor’s question and fixed my gaze downwards, staring intently at the pencil I held as I rolled it around quickly with both forefingers and thumbs.

  ‘Miss Green, believe it or not this rather scruffy, dirty-looking individual is top in my class.’ He spun his head around to fix me with one of his glares, I knew as I felt it penetrate the side of my head. I fought to maintain a straight face, as I lowered my nose and sniffed inside the baggy neck of my crumpled T-shirt.

  Scruffy maybe, but not exactly dirty.

  ‘It appears that he manages this with very little to no exertion on his part… It pains me to say that I still, despite those facts, believe he would be the best man for the job.’

  I furrowed my eyebrows at the “job” part, thrust out my jean-clad legs in front of me and crossed them at the ankles, leant back in my seat and linked both hands together at the back of my head.

  ‘I ain’t looking for a job, Professor.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, my boy. But this job will see that you manage to maintain the credits you need to pass the modules in my classes.’ He slowly lowered his gaze to look over the silver-framed, semi-circle glasses he always wore, checking to see if I had caught his meaning.

  Right, I understood now. This was my punishment for basically offering zero effort.