Chapter 24
When Erna woke up, her whole body ached, and her head throbbed from the hangover. She blinked groggily, but the moment she took in her surroundings, her mind snapped back to clarity
She hurriedly shoved off the man in front of her. Caught off guard, Gabriel tumbled right off the bed.
He was jolted awake and saw her sitting there looking bewildered. When their eyes met, his expression darkened.
He arched a brow, grabbed his black dress pants off the floor, and slipped them on before flashing her an innocent look. “You’re awake?”
Emma struggled to find her voice. “Did we…”
The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t bring herself to say them. Weren’t the rumpled sheets and her sore body proof enough of what they did last night?
Emma looked at Gabriel and hesitated. “Last night… Let’s just-”
“Pretend it never happened?” He cut her off before she could finish.
But she caught a hint of hurt and dejection on his face as if she were the one treating him like a one–night stand and walking away.
Emma had been drunk last night, but she hadn’t blacked out. She vaguely remembered running into an insanely handsome man. She had wrapped her arms around his toned waist and declared that she was going to keep him and sleep with him. Somehow, it had all happened so naturally.
Her eye twitched involuntarily. “It was just… too sudden, and we don’t even know each other.”
Gabriel looked dejected but nodded obediently. “I know. My family was pressuring me to get married last night, so I went out to drink. I never expected… my first time to be with you.”
First time?
She stared at him in disbelief. The man before her was a ridiculously handsome man, with sharp features and deep–set eyes. Last night, she had even thought he was a top male escort in the establishment.
Emma never expected Gabriel to still be a virgin and this was his first time with a woman.
Her gaze drifted to the red stain on the sheets, and she bit her lip. “Then, why didn’t you stop me last night? How could you follow a drunk woman to a… hotel room?”
He pursed his lips. “I was drunk too. You came at me first and kissed me, so I didn’t…”
He continued, “And besides, you were too drunk. If I hadn’t taken you with me, someone else might have taken advantage of you, and I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.
Emma thought to herself, “Well, isn’t he a responsible man?”
But she couldn’t deny that the experience last night wasn’t as bad as she had expected. In fact, by the second half, she found herself starting to enjoy it.
Gabriel’s deep eyes locked on hers. “You said if you slept with me, you’d take responsibility.”
“And how exactly am I supposed to do that?” she asked.
He looked at her, and his smile deepened as he thought to himself just how innocent she appeared.
After a moment of feigned contemplation, Gabriel spoke again. “My family won’t stop pushing me to get married, and I can’t keep turning them down. How about this? Let’s take a marriage. You could help me keep my family off my back.”
“Fake a marriage?”
Emma took a deep breath as she tried to process his words. One night together, and now this? Wasn’t that a bit much?
He nodded. “We could sign an agreement. Once my family believes it and stops pressuring me, I’ll look over what happened between us.” Emma thought about Velma’s constant matchmaking attempts and how the people she was set up with felt like an annoying swarm of flies. But looking at Gabriel, she couldn’t deny that he was… really handsome. It didn’t seem like such a bad deal, after all. After some internal struggle, she was embarrassed to realize she actually felt tempted. In the end, she nodded in agreement. “Fine. I agree,”
