All Chapters of MARRIED TO MY ENEMY'S FATHER: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Chapter 22DamianThe question hung in the air between us.What if we had a real wedding?I stared at Harper. She stared back. Waiting.“We already had a wedding.”“A courthouse wedding,” she said. “With a scandal hanging over our heads and lawyers standing behind us like bodyguards.”She wasn’t wrong.“That still counts.”“It counts legally.” Harper set the brochure on her lap. “I want something else.”“Define something else.”Her eyes lit up immediately. Dangerous.“White flowers. Ocean view. My mother crying in the front row because she’s happy instead of terrified.”My chest tightened at that. Evelyn deserved to see her daughter happy for once. So did Harper.“You’ve been thinking about this.”“For a while.”“Since when?”She hesitated. Then smiled, small and shy in a way she rarely allowed herself. “Since the beach. Since the sand.”I laughed. “So the universe really is involved.”“Apparently.”I looked at the brochure again. At the photograph she’d pointed to earlier. White chai

Chapter 24HarperVictoria’s letter sat unopened on the study desk for four days.I passed it every morning on my way to breakfast, and every morning I told myself I’d deal with it later. Later became a word I used a lot when it came to my sister-in-law.“You’re stalling,” Damian said on the fifth day, catching me staring at the envelope again.“I’m strategizing.”“You’re stalling.”“Fine. I’m stalling.” I picked it up finally, turning it over in my hands. “What if it’s terrible?”“It’s Victoria. It’s always terrible.”“Comforting.”“I try.”I slid my thumb under the seal and pulled out a single cream-colored card. Elegant handwriting filled the front, precise and cold in a way that matched everything about the woman who’d written it.Harper,I trust the island was refreshing. I hear congratulations are in order regarding a second ceremony. How romantic.I would like to discuss the guest list personally. There are certain families whose absence would raise questions neither of us want

Chapter 26HarperThe seamstress arrived on a Tuesday morning, arms full of fabric samples and a tape measure draped around her neck like a badge of authority.“Mrs. Blackwood,” she said warmly, “I hear congratulations are in order.”“Twice, apparently,” I said, smiling.“The best kind of luck.” She unrolled a bolt of ivory silk across the table. “Now, tell me. What feeling are we going for?”I hesitated. Nobody had asked me that before. Not about clothes, not about weddings, not about anything that mattered this much.“Simple,” I said finally. “Something that doesn’t feel like it’s trying too hard.”“Elegant, not extravagant.”“Exactly.”She nodded, already sketching something in a small notebook. I watched her work, feeling strangely emotional over fabric swatches, of all things. Maybe it was the reality of it finally settling in. A wedding. A real one. Flowers Lily had personally approved, a dress being designed just for me, an ocean view I still thought about most nights before fa

over caution. “Show me.”Lily flipped to a dog-eared page. Elaborate ballroom setups, towering floral arrangements, the kind of extravagance that had nothing to do with anything Damian and I actually wanted.“That’s not really our style,” I said carefully.“I know. I already told her that.”“You did?”“I said you liked the beach better. She got a weird face.”I bit back a laugh, imagining Victoria’s expression upon receiving an eight-year-old’s critique of her taste. “What kind of weird face?”“The one she makes when Dad disagrees with her.”That, unfortunately, painted a very clear picture.Damian appeared a few minutes later, hair still damp from the shower, looking considerably more put together than the sleepy man I’d left upstairs. He kissed the top of Lily’s head before dropping into the seat beside me.“What did I miss?”“Aunt Victoria’s attempting a hostile takeover of the wedding,” I said. “Via magazine.”“Of course she is.”“Lily handled it.”“I told her the beach was better

Chapter 30HarperThe wedding was three weeks away, and the house had turned into a slow, controlled kind of chaos. Flower samples covered the dining table. Lily’s seating chart had expanded to include a second poster board. Somewhere in the mess, Damian and I kept finding small moments to breathe, stealing them between meetings and fittings and Victoria’s occasional, surprisingly gentler check-ins.I found him in the study late one night, sleeves rolled up, staring at nothing in particular.“You’re not working,” I said, leaning against the doorframe.“No.”“Thinking?”“Something like that.”I crossed the room and sat on the edge of his desk, the way I’d taken to doing lately, close enough that our knees brushed. “Want to share?”He looked up at me, something steady and unguarded in his expression that still occasionally stole my breath. “I keep thinking about what you asked me. In the car.”My pulse quickened slightly. “About soon.”“About soon.”I waited, giving him space to find th