Charming Husband Read online

  Charming Husband

  Celia Crown

  Copyright © 2019 by Celia Crown

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are from the author's imagination or folklore, legends, and general myths.

  The book or any portion of the book may not be reproduced or used under any circumstances, except with the written permission from the author. Public names, movies, televisions, and locales, or any references are used for atmospheric purposes. Any similarities and resemblances to alive or dead people, events, brands, and locales are all complete coincidences.

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  Cover Editor: Designrans

  Editor: Syeda Erum Fatima Naqvi

  Contents

  Warning

  Charming Husband

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Author’s other works!

  Follow the Author

  Warning : This contains sensitive material that will be triggering to some, and so reader discretion is advised. Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, and Death.

  Charming Husband

  by Celia Crown

  What started as a desperate attempt to get Katerina a fiancé before her parents come back home turned into a disaster; they gave her three years to find someone good and settle down, and maybe get a child on the way.

  After three years of partying and scamming men to lose their money and their hearts, she’s in need of a fake fiancé to fool her parents until she finally has the real deal.

  As a friend and a damn good one, I did not volunteer my summer vacation to search for the dream man of hers. Her standards are ridiculous; not a single soul that roams on this Earth can meet them.

  She wants a man who is kind and patient to her when she has her wild nights of partying. He must be over six feet with great hair and perfect teeth. He should be handsome; facial hair is acceptable, and he needs to have muscles to sweep her off the floor with roses on the other hand.

  Her biggest demand is that he must be rich.

  Nonetheless, Fate laughs in my face when she throws multibillionaire Kace Hawkins in my way.

  He is a force to be reckoned with; a breath of death follows him behind that charming smile and the touch of a devil’s honeyed touch.

  He wants me to marry him.

  Chapter One

  Malia

  If there is a way to poof out of existence, I would have done it a long time ago.

  I would have used that trick to avoid facing the dilemma of parents and teacher conference in fifth grade when I accidentally bumped a girl with vanilla body spray into a bees’ nest.

  I didn’t know there was that thing there; it’s just karma doing its thing because she was the biggest and meanest bully in the entire school.

  Queen Bitch. Everyone calls her Beatrice because she’ll get her other girly hellions to punish those who disrespected her.

  She became Queen Bee. Literally and honestly, I wasn’t even the slightest remorseful when I saw her swollen face. I might have laughed and choked on my own spit, but that was alright.

  Nothing hurt more than her face when her shrilling screams with tearful cries echoed in the entire schoolyard.

  Mom was expectedly upset, but she never liked Beatrice’s mother as that woman is spiteful and swore she would get revenge on our little family with her big-time corporate husband coming to the rescue.

  Our family has a humble upbringing, but that doesn’t mean we can't entertain clowns when the chance presents itself to us.

  Nothing happened after that; they were just big talkers with no spines.

  Mom and dad don’t condone violence, and we talk out our problems. It always works in family disagreements, but it just takes more time than the usual fighting and screaming that I have seen with other people.

  There are more times than I can count where I wanted to pray for the ground to open its maw and swallow me down to the depth of hell.

  This is definitely one of those times.

  I just wasted my summer vacation to help my friend and self-proclaimed best friend, Katerina search for her dream man. This journey has been tiring and mentally draining, and everyone we have come across has something she doesn’t like.

  He’s too tall, too short, oh no, he’s got uneven eyebrows.

  She might as well be asking for Ken doll at this point; no one is perfect in her eyes. I thought that some of the men she met were very handsome, but not Katerina-approved handsome.

  This journey in search of Mr. Perfect left me wanting to drown in my own tears because she would wake me up at the butt-crack of dusk to ask me how her makeup is at every step of the way because she thinks she would meet him that day.

  She has been saying that for two months and at some point, I just tune her out when she rants about how those men only want her for her money and beauty.

  Her family owns a massive oil rig company, and they provide business all over the world, and she is their sole heiress.

  It’s safe to assume that there are bodyguards at every shadow near her, and they are so stealthy that I thought one of them was a mannequin for the newest gloomy clothing line.

  He’s all black with a face tilted downwards as a scowl.

  They scare me, and I watch my every move. Their job is to make sure she is not harmed, and anyone within breathing distance from her is considered a threat.

  Being stared at is another reason why I wish being able to poof out of existence is a doable thing.

  None of that tops the ever-looming presence of a man that I have no idea how to deal with. The questions that run around in my head are if I should bow down or say a casual greeting; maybe I should get out of his way or better yet, become a mime so he can physically push me out of his way.

  College tuition, here I come.

  This is what going to school for another four years did to my mind; broke college students can do anything to get money. They are not above projecting themselves out of the window to avoid doing a ten-page paper and get some compensation in return.

  Their excuse would be the wind was too strong, and the railing wasn’t sturdy enough to hold their weight, and they propelled out of the window like a missile.

  What their sleep-deprived and mentally detached brain don’t realize is that they need to account for physics and common sense.

  If that excuse worked, I would have used that a long time ago.

  Though, it doesn’t sound bad using it not to get this freakishly handsome man away. He’s so good-looking that it’s unnatural and unsettling.

  Maybe it’s the crisp black suit and obsidian hair of perfection that makes me want spaghetti.

  Did I mention that I am in this fancy party with Katerina and a few selected people that are permitted in this winery?

  Also, being a careless clumsy fool has put me in a ten-million-dollar debt from one bottle of wine. It was one ancient and dusty wine that smelled like rotten grape and radioactive waste, but freedom of speech can get me in trouble if I actually said that out loud to the man that owns this vineyard.

  I wasn’t even on the guest list, but Katerina had gotten me in. She said that she isn’t going to meet her future husband by herself without any other opinion.

  This part is smart of her because she’s blinded by love whenever she thinks that she has found the one.

  Katerina steps in with her gorgeous accent, but she doesn’t try to flirt with him.


  I don’t understand what happened.

  This is her dream man, and he’s everything she described in her long ass list of traits that he needs.

  I can’t say much about his personality other than that he’s a super kind host when he let me in his vineyard even though I’m a low-class peasant that might breathe dirt into his precious wine.

  He looked shocked at first, and maybe that’s because I was an uninvited guest.

  For the record, I did not want to be here either, and it gives me the creeps knowing that I’m surrounded by wine.

  Could I get drunk from the smell alone?

  All was fine; we had a delicious breakfast that is made of something that my tongue can’t curl to pronounce to save my life; the afternoon is the time he let everyone wander around his massive place, and then he let us taste the wine that took years of fermenting.

  I think that was the word, but he said it more elegantly.

  Then when it was time to leave, I got lost in the endless hallways and barrels of wine. I came across one room that I don’t think I was supposed to be in, but I went in anyway. A stupid move, but I was scared at the time and scared Malia does more than killing her own brain cells by overthinking.

  I mean, it’s not technically my fault that I broke something so expensive that my brain can’t even comprehend the restitution money that will equate to my soul—maybe more.

  If he didn’t sneak up behind me and called my name, he said Malia as if he and I are old friends, and I accidentally knocked over a bottle of wine that I was admiring because it had its own casing and a whole room by itself.

  I must have been apologizing profusely for the last ten minutes and am about to go into a mental breakdown when Katerina casually slips in the room with her gorgeous silken dress and mentions it’s a one of a kind wine that cost ten million dollars.

  I’m crying.

  Wetness drips grossly down my exposed collarbone, and the uneven heavy heaving shows clearly that I’m going to die today, from fainting and never waking up ever again or having this unfairly handsome man use my blood as coloring to deepen his other wine barrels.

  “Honey, my dear,” Katerina coos with a smile.

  This is not the time to be smiling at me as if I just did something adorable. This is a time which I would describe to be the equivalent to the end of the world. My world just shattered with the same velocity and messiness as the broken wine under my heels.

  The heels that Katerina paid for.

  Even celebrities can't get their hands on it.

  “It’s a mere wine bottle; there is no need to shed tears over it.”

  I am offended for the thing that I broke, “It’s a ten-million bottle of bitter grape juice.”

  It is also not a bright idea to insult wine in front of a wine fanatic and the multibillionaire that owns this place, and probably this whole country of France if he wanted to.

  “Miss. Rushkoff,” the man smiles; there is no animosity in his beautiful green eyes when he looks at me.

  They suddenly turned warm, and I can't for the life of me understand why. He should be imagining me in flames and screaming my head off for breaking a bottle of wine that he’s saving up to drink at the most appropriate time.

  Marinating with time and the dust of forgotten ghosts, it must taste like the bitterness of history.

  My tongue isn’t that sophisticated to distinguish the type of wine or the slight difference of ingredients depending on where they are harvested from.

  When other people in the vineyard asked him questions, I pretended to be interested at first because it’s the polite thing to do, but then it just got repetitive with complicated and deeper context than the complex flavors of bitterness.

  I couldn’t have understood the meaning behind every little thing about the wine industry and the art of curating such beauty as one of the curly mustache men had quoted from a well-known philosopher.

  Or so he says. I’m not the internet that can readily correct him.

  “Please allow us a moment of privacy,” Mr. Kace Hawkins says with a hand extended towards me.

  Katerina nods curtly and picks up my hand to be placed in his. I would have said something, but I rather keep my mouth shut to stop the ugly sobbing from ruining what little dignity I have left.

  His hand is big, warm, and calloused. It’s not the hand of a businessman or the president of his wine company; it’s the hand of a man who has done physical labor to get these rough patches. I withdraw too late, and his hand closes with mine trapped like it’s in a fly trap; he’s not letting go with that demonic possession in his grip as his eyes curve with the patience of a saint.

  “Please, take all the time you need,” says Katerina in her godawfully graceful Russian accent.

  This is not how I imagine today would end. I thought she would be in the arms of his hunky man and they would be riding off into the sunset with a horse that he must own.

  All rich people have horses; it’s a proven fact that I have seen with Katerina’s friends. They either own horses or they breed horses, one or the other and sometimes both.

  “I will send a chauffeur,” she says and bids us goodbye.

  What does she mean? Why do I need one? Of course, I need a driver to pick me up if I survive this. I’m in a foreign country without the slightest idea of how to speak French other than a greeting.

  Even that is pushing it. It took me a couple of butchered tries to get it right with the help of that silver Russian tongue of hers.

  Mixing French words with Russian accent makes learning a new language harder, especially when this is a spontaneous trip which didn’t give me adequate time to learn the culture of France.

  All I know is the Eiffel Tower and pasta. The winery is a whole different level of interest that I never thought I would have the chance to tap into.

  This world is not a place for ordinary peasants like me to enter. I have to be brought in by a rich person that already has years of experience in having eight different cutleries for one meal, which takes three hours to make and three hours to consume.

  I want my cheeseburger back.

  “Return her safely to me,” Katerina says with a smile as she turns to push her lips on my cheeks.

  The red lipstick is sticky on my skin, but that’s hardly the issue when I have a man who looks like he wants to devour me and puts himself between Katerina and me.

  Katerina the Traitor is what I’m going to call her from now on. No friend, not a single person in friendship, does this. She should be hauling my butt out of this vineyard while we still have the time, but she just plopped me down on a silver platter and handed it to him.

  Also, need I remind her that this is supposed to be her husband?

  Her perfect husband that a deep part of me wants.

  I watch her leave with a sway of her full hips, shutting the door that seals my fate. She didn’t look back at me once as if she knows that this man won’t do anything too horrible to me.

  Mr. Kace Hawkins still has that ten-million-dollar broken wine to deal with, and I’m going to be working like a slave for the next fifteen generations to even scrape off the tip of that debt.

  Please poof me out of existence. I pray with a sob when he smiles.

  He’s enjoying this; my misery is his food, and he’s going to do more for those tears.

  “My love, please,” Mr. Hawkins brush away my tears with his warm hand.

  They are so big that they are easily the size of my face and my face isn’t exactly small, but it’s not outrageously ginormous either.

  “It’s painful to see you in tears,” he says as his lips stretch over his white teeth.

  These are not the words to be spoken from a man who takes pleasure in seeing me cry, and he’s not even trying to hide the wicked glee in his eyes.

  I swallow a hiccup, “I’m sorry…”

  An apology for his wine and for the tears, but I’m hoping it does the trick of smoothing the loss of his wine. Any amount lessening
that monumental debt would be great because I still have rent and loans to worry about.

  As a young woman, I’m just barely a foot into the world, and I feel like I have been hit back with a tsunami of debts that drowns me with the smell of anguish and despair.

  “Come, we will discuss this matter at a later time,” Mr. Hawkins takes me to another area.

  We went into a different hall after being guided through a rough terrain of scary doors that have locks on them. The military-NSA encryption keypad and eye scanners can only mean that there is something important behind those doors.

  More wine, my mind unnecessarily makes me remember the exact moment the bottle of wine shattered on the ground.

  “Have a seat, my love,” he says, pushing a hand onto my shoulder and my knees buckle like a deer on ice.

  His affectionate name doesn’t make this situation better. In fact, I’m going to throw up on his expensive suit.

  “Do not be frightened. I am not upset over your mistake.”

  Okay, he thinks it’s a mistake, and it is a mistake. I never want him to believe that I purpose knocked down one of the most expensive things on the Earth, and I do not want his mind to wander towards places from where he can get that revenue back.

  Human trafficking sounds more and more like a plausible outcome of this night. Young virgin college girls sell for high prices, especially those who are even younger.

  Katerina has told me I have too much baby fat on my face, and it is no longer a compliment. That is the description predators look for when they are on their hunt, and they won't have to scout for me when Mr. Hawkins presents me with a price tag around my throat like a collar for a dog.

  At that point, I’m not going to be a human anymore. I’m a thing to be possessed, and I’m one step above being an inanimate object because I can breathe.

  “I-I’m scared!”

  What started out as a whimper turned into a nasty high-pitched squeal, and the smile on his face becomes that of a predatory hunter that has finally nailed me down.