Page 100 of The Rancher's Wedding Deception

“Fine! I’m fine. Just—one second.”

She scrambled off the bed and fled to the en-suite.

No.

It can’t be.

But indeed it was.

On her wedding night...she had her period.

Chapter Eleven

IF SOMEONE HAD TOLDhim he would spend his wedding night, much less his entire honeymoon weekend, without a single encounter of sex—

Whoever that was would’ve been incarcerated in an asylum.

For his own good, of course.

But as it was...

Paul gazed down at his wife of three days, sleeping next to him in bed, and his chest...it hadn’t stopped aching since the moment he slipped her wedding ring on her finger.

Early morning light filtered through the castle’s ancient windows, catching the dust motes that danced in the air like tiny golden spirits. Andie lay curled on her side, one hand tucked beneath her cheek, her dark hair fanned across the pillow in waves he wanted to bury his fingers in.

She looked peaceful.

She looked like she belonged here, in his bed, in his life.

She looked like everything he’d never known he wanted.

His jaw clenched as he thought about the last seventy-two hours, of how not a single second of it had been anything less than unforgettable.

Because of her.

Talking to her. Listening to her. Laughing with her. And more often than not, laughing at her as well—every time she would struggle to smile even when he kept beating her at every game.

Scrabble. Crazy Eights. EvenSnakes and Ladders.

Who knew someone could be so damn bad at games?

Vocabulary-wise, they were a pretty even match when they playedScrabble. But it was the tiles that did her in, with Andromeda either getting mostly vowels or consonants, and rarely ever a good mix of both. Crazy Eights, they had played seven rounds, and she won...not once. By the time she asked which boardgame they should play next, his wife’s expression had been adorably grouchy. But when he had suggested they give it a rest, she had snarled at him for not giving her a chance to get even.

‘You choose then,’he had offered.

And that was how they had ended up playingSnakesandLadders,and although she was the one who by this time had prayed out loud for God to help her win—

He was the one who ended up rolling mostly sixes and landing on ladders while his wife, well...the snakes seemed to find her as adorable as he did, and when she had realized he had won by a wide,widemargin—

Paul pressed his lips together, but it was no use. The mere memory of how Andromeda had actuallygrowledin frustrated defeat had him smiling, and when his mind then insisted on recalling other and much,muchcuter memories, such as all the times they had enjoyed a meal together—

Too, too cute, dammit.

She would close her eyes to savor her first bite if she was trying something new, and most times, she would do this wriggly little dance in her seat, sometimes with her fork up, other times with her head also bobbing left and right like she was one of those battery-powered toys.

She was so damn easy to please.

So damn different from everyone else.