He was good looking. He knew he was. For a fact.
Just last week, his sometimes-fuckbuddy, recent divorcee Felicity Atwell, told him that he was a “real-life Gideon Cross.” And while he had no idea who the fuck this Cross fellow was, hearing her purr the words “sexy and powerful…just like Gideon” into his ear while he thrust inside of her had made him come twice as fast.
Thankfully, Felicity was out of town this weekend, visiting friends in Scotland, so inviting her to the wedding as his date hadn’t been an issue. But frankly, he wouldn’t have invited her even if she was in town. He’d never promised her anything, after all. Theirs was a conscience-free, commitment-free arrangement of convenience, and either of them could walk away from it at any time. It was his favorite type of relationship, in fact: no expectations, no assumptions, no feelings. Just two mutually consenting adults who occasionally had drinks or dinner or fucked. It was perfect.
Perfect because J.C. had no interest in committing himself to one woman when the world was full of delicious ladies of every color, shape, size, and age. Perfect because J.C. didn’t want the pressure of living up to one person’s expectations of him. Perfect because he didn’t want to be on either end of a two-person relationship when feelings that were meant to last forever would inevitably start to fade.
He’d watched it with his own parents: his father’s disinterest in his mother as she aged from a graceful and nubile ballerina into a middle-aged mother of four. He’d been witness to his father’s philandering, even included regularly when his father went to meet a paramour in the city. He’d been so familiar with the Morris House Hotel, in fact, that the concierge and bartenders knew his name. The first time J.C. had ever gotten drunk, it was at the Morris House Hotel, in the lobby bar, where Monsieur Rousseau had handed the bartender his gold card and told him to “babysit” J.C. while he disappeared for an hour.
Faced with his wife’s hostility when they returned home, his father would slap thirteen-year-old J.C. on the back and use father-son bonding time as the excuse for them missing dinner or coming home so late on a Saturday afternoon or Sunday evening. Her face, a mixture of brittle and betrayed, would search J.C.’s eyes for a truth he was unable to offer. After a while, he couldn’t look into his mother’s eyes without flinching, so he stopped. He stopped looking into them altogether.
And he promised himself he’d never, ever make a woman look that way at him. And the best way to achieve that goal? Stay loose. Stay free. Enjoy women, as his father had, without the caustic damage to a disillusioned wife while using his young son as an alibi.
“Do you, étienne Xavier Rousseau, take this woman, Kathryn Grey English, for your lawfully wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony?”
“I do,” said étienne softly, his gravelly with emotion.
“Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keeping yourself for her only, as long as you both shall live?”
étienne’s head jerked in a small nod before he whispered, “I will.”
“Kathryn Grey English, do you take étienne Xavier Rousseau to be your lawfully wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony?”
Kate English locked her gaze on étienne, her eyes full of tears, her lips tilted up in a smile so sweet and genuine, it was unbearable to see, and J.C. had to look away.
“I do,” she said, her voice soft and tender.
“Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keeping yourself for him only, as long as you both shall live?”
“I will,” she murmured, her voice breaking just a little.
It was a promise.
A promise J.C. had no doubt she meant. He could hear it in the sweet seriousness of her voice. He could see it in the glistening vulnerability of her eyes. She meant it.
But hadn’t their mother meant it once upon a time? Hadn’t their father meant it too?