Chapter Five

Emma’s POV

One month down, one more month to go.

It's a month until my arranged wedding, and I’m anything but calm.

Considering Liam’s parents are doing this for the public eye, a lot has been going on concerning the preparations. According to his father, ‘nothing must go wrong’.

Honestly, I’m surprised his parents are involving me in the planning at all. Considering the circumstances surrounding this wedding, I thought I was just expected to show up to the venue in my white dress and repeat ‘I do’ after the priest then move into Liam’s place.

To be fair, it’s Liam’s mum that has been carrying me along in everything. She’s a sweet person and, for some reason, she treats me like her own daughter. I guess it’s because she doesn’t have a daughter of her own.

Her face literally lights up when discussing the wedding plans with me, and it does make me smile, even though I’m not in the least bit excited about getting married to her son.

It’s been three weeks since Liam last spoke to me. Every other day since the day at his office, whatever information he wants to get across to me, he relays it through his personal assistant. It’s crazy.

This is a man I’m supposed to get married to in a month and I don’t even have his personal phone number. How in the hell am I supposed to keep up with this for three years?

“Emma, darling, what do you think of these flowers for the center placement on the tables?” Liam’s mum asked, snapping me out of my thoughts.

I was at Liam’s parent’s house, sitting on the couch in the living room with his mum going over more wedding plans.

“I personally think they’re gorgeous, don’t you think?” she continued, lifting her head up from the catalog in her arms to look at me.

“They’re beautiful,” I say, offering her a fake smile.

That’s something I’ve been doing a lot of recently. Faking my smiles.

At this point, I believe I’ve been able to perfect it because she smiles back in response and circles the flowers to show the florist later.

“Alright, that aside, what’s the update on your dress?” she asks, setting the catalog down on the gold-plated coffee table in the center of the room. “Who are you thinking of wearing?” she turns her body to give me her full attention and face me completely.

In all this planning, I had not once thought of my dress. I don’t know how or why, but it skipped my mind.

“Honestly, I have no idea. I haven’t really put much thought into it yet,” I responded, looking down at my hands while fiddling with my fingers.

“Honey, what do you mean you haven’t put much thought into it? It’s your wedding dress. If anything, it should’ve been the first thing you put in place,” she says with her face displaying an emotion I couldn't quite pinpoint.

“The thing is-,” my speech gets cut off by the sound of someone shutting the front door and yelling out “mum”.

It was Liam.

“In here, Liam,” she shouts back in response.

In two seconds, he’s at the door of the living room, looking between his mum and I. I can tell he’s quite taken aback by my presence, but he quickly recovers and maintains his stoic demeanor in an attempt to hide his shock.

“Hi, son,” his mum says to him, and she approaches him and pulls him in for a hug.

"Hey, mum,” he says back to her and he hugs her.

“Emma,” he acknowledges my presence with a head nod as he unwraps his arms from around his mother.

“Hello, Liam,” I said back quietly.

Today’s the first day I have seen him in three weeks and I don’t know how, but he looks even better than he did the last time I saw him. His beard had grown out a bit, so it covered the outline of his chiseled jaw, but the beard gave it a whole new outline that made him look ten times better.

I noticed his eyes were still on me, so I quickly looked away to avoid him catching me drooling over him again like I did in his office.

He averts his gaze from me and shifts it back to his mother. “Is dad home?” he asks her.

She points her finger up. “He’s in the study”.

He nods and disappears up the stairs without giving me a second look.

“Are you two okay?” Mrs. Henderson asks me as she joins me back on the couch. “I sensed some tension there”.

Tension? From two people who’ve had only one conversation with each other in their entire lives? I wanted to laugh in her face at that, but I refrained myself from doing that, so she wouldn’t think I was crazy.

“There’s no tension between us. At least I don’t think there is,” I said in response.

“Okay then,” she says, not convinced.

We spent the next twenty minutes or so going over more wedding plans before she had to leave me to have a meeting with someone upstairs.

She asked me to wait for her, so I tried to wile away time by giving myself a tour of the house. Their house had to be the most beautifully designed house I had ever been to in my life. All the tables were lined with gold plates, the chairs were clearly made of Italian leather, and the most beautiful paintings adorned the walls.

One particular wall was adorned with pictures of the family only, basically documenting their growth as a family and it was the cutest thing. Judging by the number of photos of Liam and how he looked in them, I could tell each one was taken a year apart.

In the middle of my tour, I got a text from Sammy and texted her back.

I text her back and keep walking with my face pressed to my phone. Huge mistake.

As I’m walking, I bump into this hard wall, or at least what felt like a hard wall.

It wasn’t a wall, though. It was a person.

I looked up from my phone to see him already staring down at me, his face filled with displeasure and irritation as I had caused his drink to pour all over him.

“I am so, so sorry,” I said, horrified.