White Knight Husband: Chapter 1

The plaque on the door taunted me. Dr. Annie Monroe, Therapist. My therapist.

Lifting my chin, I looked around the small waiting room that used to feel foreign to me when I first started coming to these appointments. Now, I had a favorite chair, which I was sitting in. It was the one by the snake plant. The only other chair was across the room beside a steaming diffuser. The frankincense and grapefruit scent was nice but not when you were getting a face full of it. Then it was no longer soothing, which I assumed was the point.

There was also a couch, but I wasn’t going to lounge around before my appointment like Cleopatra. No amount of grapefruit vapor would relax me that much.

Dr. Annie’s office door opened, and her gaze fell on me. She gave me one of those smiles people reserved for skittish animals they couldn’t trust. Then she stood back, held the door ajar, and invited me in with a wave of her hand.

I eased into my usual spot in the leather armchair waiting for me. On my right, a box of tissues sat at the ready. I wouldn’t need those.

In my family, poise was expected, even if being held at gunpoint, which was also why I sat primly, my legs crossed with one ankle neatly tucked behind the other, and prepared to lie my ass off. Because… poise.

“Jane,” Dr. Annie began, her tone placating and soft, almost insultingly so. “How have you been?”

Oh, just spectacular. That’s why I come here twice a month, because everything is just perfect.

I pasted my most responsible, eldest-daughter smile on my face. “I’m great. Yeah. All good.”

Her head cocked about ten degrees to the left. “How’s work?”

“Super.” Except that it still makes me infuriatingly, agonizingly, unbelievably full of rage to see my uncle Andrew at the office after he was voted in as CEO over me, a three-time Yale graduate with a PhD in business, just because I’m a woman. I fixed my smile that had fallen from my lips. “Just awesome, really.”

“Well, that’s good,” she said slowly, like she knew I was full of shit. “How is your relationship with the board of directors going?”

“It’s better.” I gripped the armrests of the chair in a practiced way no one would ever notice and smoothly fed her the answers she wanted. “We’re learning how to read each other better.”

They’re ninety percent overfed, over-suited fossils who think feminism is a brand of yogurt. I smiled with all thirty-two teeth. “Our falling out is all water under the bridge now.”

Not even an ounce of that was true, but I didn’t come here for honesty. I came for the structure. The accountability. Maintaining the illusion that by sitting in this room for fifty minutes every other week, I was doing something to improve my mental health.

Then again, I’ve been running on fumes and caffeine for so long, I’m not entirely convinced I have any mental health left to salvage.

“Are you dating anyone?” she asked then, like she was ticking off items on a mental list. “Maybe gone on a date since our last session?”

I curled my fingers tighter around the armrests, a move I’d perfected to center myself when I was asked questions I really didn’t want to answer. I’d had plenty of practice with that in the last few years, surviving press conferences and public scrutiny I never thought I’d have to face.

“No,” I admitted quietly. “No dates yet.”

She nodded and made a note. “Have you considered it?”

“Sure.”

She nodded along, my answer apparently satisfactory. Good. “And how are things with your mother and your brothers?”

Ah, yes. My favorite topic. The one that never fails to make me feel like I’m screwing up at life and parenting simultaneously—and I haven’t even had a baby of my own.

I rattled my answer off like I was reading from a script. “I still feel responsible for them. I know that probably contributes to my lack of a social life and it’s probably also why I barely have friends.”

It’s absolutely why it’s been at least a year since my last proper orgasm. I never have any time for myself anymore, but hey. At this point, who’s counting?

She smiled warmly, entirely unaffected by my dry recitation. “Good. Awareness is the first step.”

Awareness was the only step I ever seemed to take.

“Have you thought more about setting boundaries with your family?” she asked. “Like we talked about in our last few sessions?”

“Well, yeah.” I mean, I’ve thought about it. “We haven’t really gotten around to discussing it just yet.”

She leaned back in her chair, surveying me like an artist examining their work. “Let’s talk about that, shall we? What do you think is preventing you from sitting them down and discussing those things with them?”

I knew exactly what was preventing me from doing it, but I wasn’t about to tell her because she would never understand. There was no way she could. So instead, I answered all her questions with the necessary amount of reflexivity, and when the session ended, I was out of my chair before her pen had even stopped scribbling.

Back in the marble-floored lobby of her consulting rooms, I wrapped my scarf around my neck, braced myself for the extreme cold outside, and escaped her scrutiny by flinging myself into what felt like the afterlife’s punishment chamber.

Early January in Chicago was less winter wonderland and more ice bucket challenge, but only if the bucket was the entire sky. As soon as I set foot outside, the wind slapped me sideways and snow tried to blind me.

I slid at least three feet down the sidewalk even though I was trying to stand still, but the car I’d ordered twenty minutes ago like a responsible adult who planned ahead was nowhere to be seen. I checked my phone, my stomach plummeting at the notification waiting on my screen.

Your trip was canceled due to inclement weather conditions.

“You don’t say,” I muttered, shoving the phone back in my coat pocket. “This is only what hell frozen over probably looks like.”

A yellow cab approached like a lighthouse in a storm and I fought my way closer to the curb, waving with the desperation of a person who would be snowed under by the time the next available cab appeared. As if he was a knight on a white horse riding to my rescue, the driver slowed and I practically dove for the door, slipping into the backseat with all the grace of a newborn giraffe.

But screw grace. I’d made it in one piece, only halfway frozen.

I’d just exhaled when the opposite door opened without any warning. A blast of cold air hit me first. Then a blur of dark wool, snowflakes, and masculine energy filled the other side of the seat. A sleek, black leather briefcase dropped between us and the man it all belonged to followed, his shoulders broad enough to make the cab’s interior feel like a shoebox.

He glanced at me, then back at the storm, and then shut the door firmly behind him, sealing us in together as if cab-hijacking was a normal part of his Friday routine. “I’ll pay if we share it.”

I blinked at him. Snow clung to his dark brown hair, and his long eyelashes were frosted. He stared at me through eyes that were a startling, deep mossy green, but they cut toward me for only a second before they flicked away.

Strangely, he looked familiar. That kind of overtly masculine face wasn’t something I was likely to forget. On the other hand, given the definitely expensive scent of his cologne and the quality of his clothing, it was possible I knew him from the insufferable social circles my family orbited. Or from some charity gala I’d escaped early. He certainly seemed the type to own several tuxedos and spend his nights judging other men’s bow ties.

“No,” I finally started, fully prepared to tell him to get out, but he leaned forward abruptly, forcing me to pin myself against the door to avoid any accidental brushes of knees, arms, or existence, and he gave the driver an address on Chicago’s Gold Coast, naturally, then sat back.

“That’s on the way to my place,” I muttered, annoyed that the universe had aligned even that much, but the man with the extremely handsome, chiseled facial features didn’t even respond.

Obviously. He probably didn’t speak to people he perceived as mere mortals, considering that he seemed to have been handcrafted by the gods and blessed with the money of a prince.

Shaking off the errant thought, I pulled out my phone, pretending to be very busy and scrolling through emails I absolutely wasn’t in the right emotional state to deal with. It was Friday evening, the only time I allowed myself a few hours off from the office.

This was my time for laundry. Bills. Grocery shopping. Life maintenance. Whatever required my attention outside of work. Then I would head back to the office tomorrow because the quarterly forecast was behind and Uncle Andrew was an incompetent buffoon. I’d probably be there all of Sunday, too.

The cab lurched to a sudden, rough stop and I looked up to see a snaking line of red brake lights. We were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. Lots of accidents happened in weather like this.

I felt it then—now that I’d been yanked out of my thoughts—the weight of someone’s gaze on me.

His.

When I glanced up, he was staring, and not subtly or politely, but his expression was as stoic as if it’d been carved from stone, all masculine, sharp-edged, and utterly unreadable.

Outside of the faint spark in those green eyes, that was. I just couldn’t pinpoint if it was interest, amusement, or annoyance, but even caught with his hand directly in the cookie jar, he didn’t flinch or look away.

It took me all of two seconds to decide that two could play this game and I stared right back, matching intensity for intensity and refusing to be the first to look away. If this man thought he could hijack my cab, invade my only peaceful sliver of time in the week, and then stare at me like I was an unexpected math problem, he’d underestimated me.

Our eyes locked in a silent, electric standoff, and for one impossible moment, I forgot about everything else, but thankfully, the moment didn’t stretch much longer than that. I crashed back to my senses and sighed.

“Can I help you?” I snapped. “Staring contests only entertain me for so long and I have precisely zero patience for men who think prolonged eye contact is a personality trait.”

The bastard smirked, a slow, knowing curve of his mouth that made something deep in my stomach tighten. That incredibly green gaze searched my face with a sharp sort of curiosity, as if he found me familiar too, but he didn’t bother to offer a name.

Instead, he just motioned vaguely toward the window. “The weather’s getting worse.”

Brilliant observation, Captain Obvious. “Yeah. Thanks for that.”

“They’re saying it’s going to get even windier by nightfall,” he added, watching a gust of snow slam against the window.

Despite myself, I found my eyes skimming the elegant, strong column of his throat.

Out of sheer desperation not to keep looking at him, I suddenly had the kind of brainwave I’d last had at sixteen, and pulled my phone out of my pocket, pretending to take a call.

“Hi, yes. Hello,” I announced loudly to my lock screen, turning my back to him and staring out at the whiteout. “No, I’m in a cab. Yeah, I know. It’s unbelievable.”

Beside me, the man shifted, and then, in the most mortifying moment of my life, he took a call too. He slid his phone out of the inside pocket of his coat and brought it to his ear without even trying to make it look real.

“Oh, hello. Yes, I’m in a cab as well,” he said blandly. “You wouldn’t believe this, but the woman I’m with thinks she’s subtle.”

“Excuse me?” I whipped around, once again finding myself staring to the point of feeling lost in those exceptionally piercing eyes.

God, that really can’t be safe for the people who actually have to do things like work, and think, and live around him.

“Uh-huh.” He pretended to cover his mouthpiece, then said, “Your turn.”

My jaw slackened, but I managed to catch it before it flat out dropped. “You’re really rude.”

“Mm. Frequently.” Those green eyes glinted with something, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Smugness, probably. “I’m Alex.”

He extended a gloved hand to me after lowering his phone, but for a moment, I just stared at it like it might bite me. Then I shook with him anyway because manners were tattooed on my bloodstream. We weren’t really touching since we were both wearing gloves, but his grip was firm and strong, the heat of him radiating through the fabric between us.

“Are you in the habit of stealing cabs?” I asked, snatching my hand back before I begged him to let me feel if he was that strong everywhere.

“Hardly,” he said. “I usually drive myself or I use a hired driver, but cabbies are the only ones brave enough to be out on roads right now and I totally get why.”

Before I could respond, our driver erupted in a string of frustrated yelling, shouting at someone beside us. Another cabbie gestured wildly back at him, and judging by the hand motions, they weren’t discussing the weather. It looked more like a mutual desire to shove each other into a snowbank.

I closed my eyes, counted to three, and then snapped. Enough really was enough, and I’d had enough today.

“Hold this,” I said, thrusting my purse into Alex’s chest.

“What? Where are you going? No, wait⁠—”

I slammed the door on his protests, my boots hitting the slush with a cold splash. Marching straight to the competing cab’s window, I tapped on it until the driver reluctantly cracked it open.

“You do not cut off my cab,” I said in the same tone I used when my brothers tried to kill each other with lacrosse sticks. “We’ve been stuck here twenty minutes and you’re not getting ahead by risking a three-car pileup. I suggest you stay in your lane, literally, and stop driving like you bribed the DMV for your license.”

The man blinked at me but nodded slowly and rolled up his window. Storming back to our cab, I felt my coat flaring out behind me like a cape, but I didn’t care that I probably looked unhinged. I slid into my seat to find both Alex and the driver staring at me as if I’d just bench-pressed a Volkswagen.

I smoothed my coat and shrugged. “What?”

“Who are you?” Alex asked, his voice quieter now with something almost wistful in it.

I frowned. “I’m the oldest of six,” I said, pulling my purse out of his stunned grip. “I’ve been breaking up fights worse than that before breakfast since I was five, and right now, all I want is to get home, pour myself a glass of wine, and watch the episode of Real Housewives I’ve been waiting for all week.”

He was suddenly looking at me like I was a puzzle he was dying to figure out. “There’s a wine bar down the street. How about I buy you a glass instead? I have no idea what or who the Real Housewives are, but I’m sure you can catch me up.”

My first instinct was to tell him to pound sand. My second was the same, but somewhere deep inside my mind, my therapist’s annoyingly calm voice was urging me to fight those instincts.

Let someone in, Jane. Let someone give you a fraction of what you give everyone else. Ugh.

I was still deciding how to formulate a diplomatic refusal when the cab finally jerked forward and the moment passed. Alex turned toward the window and I resigned myself to my phone as we inched through the traffic.

Scrolling through the inbox that should have belonged to the CEO but somehow belonged to me instead, I shook my head and gritted my teeth to bite back a growl. Just in the time since I’d walked into Dr. Annie’s office, I’d received forty-seven messages marked urgent.

Twenty-three were marked please advise, Jane, which was hilarious because the board never took my advice unless Andrew repeated it and pretended it was his idea. But this was my life, being everything to everyone and getting credit for not a single drop of it.

Finally, what felt like hours later, the cab stopped under the shadow of a large mansion buried in snow. It wasn’t mine. Alex’s architecture was more tasteful, but it was close to my family’s place.

“Well, it was nice meeting you, whoever you are,” Alex said, handing the driver several hundred-dollar bills—plural—and nodded toward me. “Take the boss home, Rudy. Keep the change. Thanks for getting us here safely.”

Rudy? When did he get the driver’s name?

Without any ceremony about it, he opened the door and vanished into the storm, instantly swallowed up by wind, snow, and the mysterious castle he lived in, and I stared at the space where he’d been.

I felt a strange longing for him to return, or at least to have gotten his number, but the cab rolled forward and I sighed. It was probably better this way. I didn’t even have time for a battery-operated boyfriend these days.

Getting a real one would be an absolute disaster.

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