Accidental Knight: A Marriage Mistake Romance(45)

“First off, Jonah’s been planning this for a couple years. It wasn’t some harebrained scheme he cooked up at the last second. And no, he didn’t go senile, either.” I hand her the folder. “It wasn’t till his first heart attack that he knew his time was running out. Then he started implementing it.”

She looks down, cracks the folder open, and shakes her head. “I still don’t get it. Why do this? Why something so extreme?”

“Because he knew the moment he died, the vultures would come.” I try to say it in a way that doesn’t scare her, but damn if my voice doesn’t have an edge to it.

“My parents?” She looks up, blinking at me.

I fucking wish.

I turn the chair around and straddle it backward before I sit to face her. Still need a barrier after my thighs were singed the last time we got this close, having her leg draped across mine. “Honestly, Bella, your folks are only half the problem. Jonah knew there’d be others.”

“Like what? That Jupiter place?” She sounds so innocent.

Christ. I fight the urge to rub at my face. Whoever said ignorance is bliss wasn’t lying, and maybe I’m not ready to tell her every single dirty detail tonight after all.

Slowly, she sets the folder on the table and flips it open. “I guess I see the point, be on guard or whatever, but...marriage? Really? How’s that supposed to protect me from anything?”

I know what she’s staring at. The prenup, clipped to the will, just like when Sheridan gave me the papers.

I reach over the back of the chair, lift it out, unclip the pages, and hand her the prenup. “It’s temporary. Six months. Maybe sooner, if we’re lucky. Once we’ve got all this settled, then we’ll get a divorce. It’s right there in the prenup. A no-contest divorce. Easy. That’ll leave me with no more than what I brought into this and acquired up till the day Jonah died.”

She’s listening. Thank God for small favors.

“Look, darlin’, you’re a pretty lady, but believe me – I’ve got no intention of hanging around married to you or ferreting away anything that isn’t rightfully mine. I want the pay and the severance Jonah promised, and not a penny more. I wish you’d trust that.”

Bella doesn’t say anything, just quickly reads through it and nods as every line states exactly what I told her. “Hmm, well, maybe you’re telling me the truth. Maybe. But then, what about the will?”

“Wills. Plural.” I reach in and separate two stapled wills. “Yours and mine. If you die, everything goes to me and Sheriff Wallace, the rightful caretakers of Jonah’s foundation in that scenario. If we both die, it all goes to the town of Dallas, North Dakota, and Wallace alone gets to oversee the distribution. He’s a good man, and I know he’ll do right by this town.”

She frowns. “What if you die, and I don’t?”

“We’ll be divorced by then, so it’ll go to whoever you direct it to, other than your parents. I don’t plan on keeling over in the next six months.”

“Divorced,” she repeats dryly, grabbing at my will and scanning it over. “And if we aren’t yet divorced? If things aren’t settled and by some freak accident you just...you know?”

I can tell the moment she reads the answer to her question.

“Oh. Then it goes to the town, the Reed Foundation, with Sheriff Wallace overseeing it. Just like you said.” She sniffs, putting the paper down. “Jesus. Gramps really thought of everything, didn’t he?”

“Bingo.” I nod. “Jonah didn’t want any loose ends.”

She huffs out a breath. “Loose ends? You mean he didn’t want my parents to get anything? I knew there was no love lost, but this...” She sets down the will, running a hand through one side of her hair. “I never imagined he hated them quite this much.”

“He didn’t hate them. Not totally, I mean. But he knew damn well where their greatest love was, and still is. If there was any loophole where they could walk away with a good chunk of his fortune, he knew you and Dallas would be left out in the cold.” I don’t want to hurt her, but she needs the truth. “Their shallow love of money scared him. Jonah worried their desire to upgrade, to live it up like ultra-rich people instead of just pretty well-off ones, would be stronger than their love for you. And he told me they’d do anything, however nasty, to keep the cash flowing.”

The color drains from her face. “Wait. He thought they’d kill me?”

I don’t know if Jonah truly thought that or not.

“He never said that. Don’t think he thought it’d go that far, and neither did I.” I don’t have the heart to mention others perfectly willing to kill for that fortune. Not the hell tonight.

Not while she’s looking at me with her big green eyes gone bright and wide and receptive. She trusts me, at least to a point, and I can’t flush that away, scaring her half out of her wits.

So I lay a hand on the wills and lean in, catching her eyes with mine. “But if Jonah hadn’t put all this in place, and you did die, your parents would be your rightful heirs. Everything you’d inherited from him would go straight to them. That’s what Jonah couldn’t stand. And that’s why he had to give you cover by getting us hitched.”

“Damn. They really could sell everything, too, if they wanted...” The fingers she presses against her lips are trembling.