促銷資訊載入中...
No Regrets When the Wind Passes
NovelShort
已完結
The night before the wedding, my fiancé and I were kissing like we couldn't bear to let go. Right in the middle of it, Preston suddenly stopped. He looked at me, dead serious. "Dora, Silvia and I are...
章節（4）
第1章
The night before the wedding, my fiancé and I were kissing like we couldn't bear to let go.
I was still lost in it when Preston suddenly stopped.
He looked at me, dead serious. "Dora, Silvia Summers and I are together now."
Silvia. My best friend.
"She's cold and proud. You're sharp-tongued and fiery. The two of you are ice and fire, each with your own charm."
"So here are your two choices. One, you marry me in secret and let Silvia be my wife in the eyes of the world. Two, you step aside, I marry Silvia, and you become my mistress."
I looked at Preston like he was a stranger.
The man who had once been humble and deferential toward me, who had treated me with such careful respect, and the very first thing he did after gaining that towering power was to humiliate me.
I said only two words. "I'm out."
Not out of your marriage. Out of your world, Preston Carver.
...
Preston was pleased with my answer.
He crossed his legs, the ember of his cigarette flaring and dimming between his fingers, and the corner of his mouth curved into a handsome line.
"Dora, don't worry. I won't shortchange you."
"The only thing I can't give you is a title. Anything else you want, it's yours."
"Does that include my freedom?"
Preston didn't catch it. "What?"
His phone rang. It was Silvia.
I took out my own phone and replied to the Milan headquarters.
【Mr. Powell, I accept. I'll develop my career over there. I leave in three days.】
Preston hung up and drove me to the villa we had once viewed together.
Back then, we were both running around looking for a house for the wedding.
The first time I saw that villa, something in me recoiled from it, but Silvia had loved it.
I never imagined that behind my back, Preston had bought it for her.
The front door stood open. Silvia was in a purple satin nightgown, water still beading down from her bath, sliding along the pale line of her collarbone.
She looked mildly puzzled. "Preston, what are you doing here?"
Then she rose on her toes and kissed his cheek.
Preston smiled and slid an arm around her slender waist, tipped up her chin, and kissed her.
Color rose on that cold, striking face of hers.
She quickly took control, climbing up around his waist, answering his kiss with her own heat.
I had never seen this side of her, so uninhibited, so alluring.
The contrast was extreme.
Bang! I slammed the car door. The two of them froze, their eyes turning toward me at the same time.
"Dora? What are you doing here?"
Silvia wasn't surprised. Her voice was calm enough to chill me to the bone.
Preston answered for her. "I've already laid it all out for her. I promised you a title, and I'll give you one."
"You once said your greatest wish in this life was to wear a wedding gown made by Dora Walter, to be sent off in it."
"Of course I can't let that wish go unfulfilled."
At last I understood why he had brought me here.
While I measured Silvia's figure, the vanity mirror caught the curve of her lips.
Her voice carried a hint of superiority. "You know, I never really meant to wreck the two of you. Back then I just made an offhand joke, said that if he had the nerve to lay it all on the table, I'd marry him."
She laughed softly, twice. "I didn't think he'd actually do it."
"Mm."
I answered lightly, like it was nothing.
But the hand measuring her waist stayed frozen in the air, and my tears fell, splashing onto the floor.
Seeing I had no real reaction, Silvia's mood soured.
"All right, you're done measuring. What style of gown do you want?"
She thought for a long moment, then looked at me with a sneer. "The one your mother made for you."
That was my late mother's proudest work.
It was also the thing she made me promise, on her deathbed, to keep safe.
I refused without a second thought.
"Not unless I'm dead. Don't even dream about it!"
"What Silvia wants isn't yours to decide."
Preston had appeared from somewhere, his voice gone cold.
第2章
In the car on the way home, Preston pulled me into his arms.
Carefully, he slid a diamond ring onto my ring finger.
It was the limited-edition wedding ring I'd told him last week that I wanted, the one the store had been out of.
"I went to their headquarters and paid twenty million more, so they'd release one extra limited piece."
The old me would have cried, moved to tears.
But now, nothing stirred in me at all.
"Be good. Once Silvia and I are done with the wedding, I'll take you to the Maldives to unwind. Call it our honeymoon."
I gave a cold laugh.
At the door of that room, the one only I knew the code to.
Preston tapped the armrest with his fingertip, his voice dropping low. "Stop dragging your feet. Thirty million still isn't enough to have her wear the gown your mother made?"
I didn't know when Preston had started measuring everything in money.
When money was the one thing I had never lacked.
He'd become the richest man in New York, and at the start he'd leaned on my family's resources and my father's connections.
Step by step, he'd climbed to where he stood today.
"My mother said that gown was mine and no one else's. It was her finest work. It can never fall into an outsider's hands!"
The tenderness drained from his face. He made a call.
Moments later the butler rang. "Miss, something terrible has happened! The officers are about to take Mr. Walter away!"
Preston lifted a brow. "Your father took plenty for himself. I'm the only one who can help him now. Think it through."
"Impossible! My father has lived his whole life honest and clean. How could he be anything like what you're describing?!"
The butler spoke again. "Miss! The Danforth family handed the officers proof that they bribed Mr. Walter. You have to do something!"
I lowered the phone, tears welling in my eyes.
"Preston, I'm begging you. Have you really forgotten how my father lifted you up to where you are now?"
Preston lowered his eyes. "You have five more minutes to think. Once your father's inside, there's nothing I'll be able to do."
"Miss! They're really taking Mr. Walter away!"
"Fine! I agree."
My whole body went limp, and I braced myself against the door handle as I sank down slowly.
Preston tipped my chin up with the pad of his thumb and smiled at me, satisfied.
"See? If you'd just agreed sooner, none of this would've happened."
Five minutes later, my father was released without charge.
The gown was delivered to Silvia's room.
She sent all the servants away. "Dora, I want you to put the gown on me yourself."
Preston allowed it.
Everyone but me left the room.
Silvia dropped the act, her slender hand stroking the gown my mother had made.
"Dora Walter, do you know how much I hate you?"
"Back then, if it hadn't been to save you, my parents would never have died!"
"You know why I'm so cold, so distant? Because I have no family anymore, and no one will ever stand up for me."
"I'm not like you. You get to show your feelings however you please, because your father's always there to catch you. I'm just an orphan."
"Every time I watched you demand this and that from the people around you, without a second thought, fate wrapped around me like vines, choking the breath out of me, reminding me that all of this should have been mine!"
"So the more you had, the more you cared about something, the more I fought for it, the more I took it."
"It isn't the way you think!"
I rushed to defend myself.
She lifted an eerie smile, and the candle lamp in her hand dropped onto the gown.
The next second, Silvia glanced past me, then her eyes went wide.
She stared at me in disbelief. "Dora? Why would you do this to me? I only borrowed Auntie's gown, and you want me dead!"
"Silvia!!"
Someone slammed into me hard, and I fell against the sharp corner of the table, blood spreading fast.
And Preston snatched up the watering bucket for the flowers and flung it over Silvia.
第3章
Silvia's fair skin had taken a light burn, leaving a faint red mark.
Preston swept her up into his arms, his voice thick with tenderness and a catch in his throat. "Sweetheart, I'm taking you to the hospital right now."
The butler standing nearby saw the blood running down my temple and spoke up. "Mr. Carver... Miss Walter is hurt too..."
Preston looked down at me.
"What's a scratch like that?"
"She threw that candle at Silvia on purpose. If she got hurt, she had it coming."
He didn't even turn his head, carrying Silvia toward the door.
I called after him, loud. "Preston! Silvia dropped that candle herself."
Even then, I still held on to a thread of hope in him.
His steps paused. He turned back slowly and looked at me with contempt.
"Silvia, I saw it with my own eyes. Are you still going to lie about it?"
My fingertips rested on the scorched scraps of the gown my mother had designed. The smell of burning mixed with wet stains, and the air between me and Preston went still.
"What reason would I have to burn my own mother's keepsake?"
I threw the question back at him.
He stalled for a beat, as if he were searching for the hole in his own judgment.
Silvia let out a soft, pained hiss and tightened her arms around his neck.
"Preston, Dora's upset. Put me down, I'll get to the hospital on my own. You should go comfort her..."
"After all, your mother's keepsake got burned because of me."
The moment she finished, Preston, who had wavered, said to her firmly, "Forget her. She had it coming."
And then they were gone, vanishing down the end of the hall.
For the next two days, Preston kept me locked inside the villa he shared with Silvia.
I sewed Silvia's gown day and night, while the two of them carried on flirting in the room next to mine.
"Baby, come and catch me~"
The sound reached my ears, wave after wave.
It was torture.
At first it turned my stomach, and I couldn't even hold the needle steady. After a while I stopped hearing it at all.
When they finished, Preston would always push open my door, slide an arm around my waist, the clean scent of body wash still on his skin.
His warm breath brushed against my ear. "Dora, something's off with you."
I used to be sharp-tongued and fierce, but ever since he confessed his affair with Silvia, I had grown especially calm.
His hold on me tightened, his eyes fixed on mine. "I keep getting this feeling you're going to leave me."
The corner of my mouth curved up. I turned and cupped his face, all smiles.
"How could I? I love you so much. For you, I nearly fell out with my own father."
"If I let you go, wouldn't all these years of my heart's work be for nothing?"
Preston's kiss landed on my collarbone, and I shoved him off like I'd been shocked.
"My period started."
His eyes darkened. "It's fine. There's plenty of time. Get some rest."
Preston let go of me, the diamond ring on his middle finger glaring.
I stopped him. "You should take that ring off. You're getting married soon."
Preston gave a small laugh and closed the door.
His voice drifted back. "No need to be jealous. It's the limited-edition matching pair I gave you. I gave Silvia one too."
......
第4章
The night before the wedding, Silvia and I were kidnapped at the same time.
"Which one of you is tomorrow's bride?"
Silvia pointed at me without a second's hesitation. "Her! She's Dora Walter!"
The kidnapper dragged the flat of his blade across my cheek and smiled, a dark thing. "So you're the Walter heiress. The woman our Mr. Carver keeps closest to his heart."
He dialed Preston's number.
"Mr. Carver, I've got Dora Walter. You want her alive, bring me five hundred million in cash to buy her back."
Preston's voice came through level, as if none of this touched him.
"Five hundred million is too much. There's no way to pull that in cash on this kind of notice."
"Here's what we'll do. I'll send five million first, you let one of them go, and I'll scrape the rest together for you as fast as I can."
I understood at once what he was doing.
I shouted at the kidnapper, "That other woman is the one Preston Carver keeps closest to his heart! If you let her go, you'll have nothing left! He'll never pay five hundred million for me!"
Preston's laughter burst out of the phone, half-crazed. "Dora, what nonsense are you spouting? Everyone in Charleston knows you're the woman Preston Carver holds closest to his heart."
"That twenty-million wedding ring I gave you is still on your finger, isn't it?"
The kidnapper yanked my hand up. In that moment the bright diamond looked utterly out of place.
"Little tramp, you almost had me fooled."
His palm cracked across my face. My ears rang, my head spun, the room tilting.
A short distance off, Silvia had gone rigid with terror, clapping both hands over her ears and screaming.
Not long after, they took Silvia away.
The next day, the kidnappers were still waiting on Preston's transfer.
He called Preston. "Still owe me five hundred million. How long until it lands?"
Preston's voice was cold now. "Ten thousand. That's the most you'll get."
"Ten thousand? You think I'm some beggar you can wave off?"
"Then kill her, if you have to. My wedding's about to start. I don't have time to sit here chatting with you."
The kidnapper drew a knife and drove it into the table in front of me.
"Mr. Carver, don't make this harder than it has to be. One cut from me and this woman is finished."
Terror closed over me. Sweat broke out across my forehead in a fine, crowding film, and the tears came down like a dam giving way.
I was afraid.
I begged him again and again. "Preston, for the sake of everything we've shared all these years, help me! I swear I'll pay you back every cent when I get home!"
He gave a cold laugh. "Dora, how much longer are you going to keep up the act?"
"Silvia already told me. This whole thing is a show you staged yourself, all so we can't go through with the wedding."
"Five hundred million? Your father could crook a finger and have it. Why come bothering me?"
He hung up without a shred of pity.
The kidnapper forced me to call my father. The butler answered. "Miss, I've been looking everywhere for you! Miss Summers and Mr. Carver had the master put away after all!"
Everything in me went to ash.
Humiliated into a rage, the kidnapper wrenched the knife out of the table and lunged, driving it toward me.