The Greeks Contract Marriage

CHAPTER THREE: MOVE OUTTA WAY

Bailey froze on the same spot, she could not move in with Demetrius. Her entire life she had a rule and that rule was, to never-ever-live-with-a-man—before-she-got-married to him.

“Why are your eyes all of a sudden in shock? I don’t bite” Demetrius remarked, placing his hands into his pocket, a simple move but it was just enough to turn Bailey on.

“Why can’t I stay at my place?”

“Bailey I’m a billionaire, if we’re going to fool the entire world then you have to live somewhere decent and not in this— this—” Demetrius looked around, struggling to find a befitting word to describe the dump they were in.

“You can go ahead and say it; it’s a dumb, squalor, filled with people who are only worried about today and not tomorrow. Unlike a lot of people I don’t walk around deceiving myself” Another thing Demetrius was thankful for was that she was realistic.

He like Bailey, a woman like her would know when to leave when he asked her and she would not cling onto the hopes of marriage. Women like Bailey understood that this was no emotions attached, it was all for money.

“You said it. Can we step into my car and get to your house, it is late and I need my sleep. I have an important meeting it investors tomorrow morning” Demetrius walked over to the passenger’s seat and unlocked the door.

“Get in, I don’ have time to waste” Demetrius told her and like an obedient mouse, she obeyed his every word.

Being in a car like this was different, the leather seats actually smelt of real leather and not the cheap kind that Donna’s boyfriend had brought for his own car. The thermostat in the car was perfect and the driving was smooth, well except for the potholes in the road.

“Please tell me we’re close by because if we’re not, I’ll have no wheels left” Demetrius told her, his voice laced with irritation.

“We’re here!” She yelled, without even realizing it. “I’ll be back right now” Bailey tried to leave and Demetrius placed his hand over hers to stop her. A wild dessert heat travelled through Bailey’s body, the need for him was strong as she looked into his eyes.

“Yes, what is it?” She managed to ask.

“Are you sure you don’t need my help?” Demetrius asked her.

“No, I don’t have that much stuff anyways” she said and ran into her apartment complex. She ran up the steps of the old and battered building. She was not one to be ashamed of what she had but the thought of Demetrius seeing where she lived embarrassed her.

She could not let him see that her door handle was broken and how she put a chain to keep the thieves away or how there was a hole in her ceiling, the size of Russia. She walked over to her wardrobe and pulled out her belongings at the end she cried, because her whole life fit into a small luggage that was falling apart. Bailey took one more look at her apartment and she switched off the lights.

Demetrius was beginning to worry, never had he been to such a place where everyone looked as if they were about to rob him. He could not phantom how Bailey could live in such a building. The complex was far from what one would call a complex, the fences around it was almost nonexistent; the paint was falling off, graffiti surrounding the building and worse some windows covered with cardboards.

He had never been poor in his entire life and he had never tried or would ever try to imagine what poor people lived like, but here he was seeing it live.

He looked at his watch and he realized that Bailey had been gone for close to twenty minutes and just before he could exit his car; he saw Bailey walked out of the building with her suitcase in hand. Demetrius breathe a sigh of relief. He got out of his car and unlocked the trunk, Bailey placed her bag in it and he shut the booth.

Demetrius said nothing as they drove to his house, he had expected her to have more cloths… well the women he dated surely had enough to fill his entire walk in closet but here Bailey was, with a suitcase that could barely fill his office draw.

Throughout the two hour drive Demetrius had not uttered a single word to Bailey, why would he? She was a stranger who he offered a job to; in return, he would satisfy his mother until the charade was over. 

Demetrius’s grip tightened on the wheel, he wanted to stop at the side of the road and ask Bailey all the questions that he could possibly ask her.

Damn it! He thought to himself, his job would have been much easier if he had simply hired a detective to find out all he needed to know about Bailey, unfortunately his pride would not allow another person to do his job for him. He knew that he could not keep quiet any longer; he had to say something… anything.

“The lawyer will be at my house tomorrow morning for you to sign those papers that we agreed on” he uttered; at the corner of his eye he could see Bailey chewing her nails. None of the women he dated ever did that, they had no time chewing their nails when they had spent a fortune of his money getting them done.

Demetrius had read somewhere that biting nails was a sign of stress, nervousness or simply a coping mechanism. The women he dated were from nervous; they had themselves put together and confidence oozing out of every pore in their bodies.

“I said the lawyer would—“

“I heard you the first time” Bailey interrupted Demetrius, something that Demetrius was not fond of but he let it slide. He knew that there was no use in arguing. In a months’ time she would be gone and out of his life for good.

Bailey hated being in such a comfortable car with Demetrius, although the Rolls-Royce was big, it  felt as though Demetrius’ muscular body was filing the car, leaving almost no room for her to move around. Bailey looked ahead of her as Demetrius drove, the bright lights coming into the view. She knew that she did not know much about Demetrius but she knew that he was filthy rich and he would help her with her financial needs.

She had it all figured out or so she thought, because as Bailey was thinking of ways to better her life, something caught her attention, she was biting her nails again, her weakness. As a child every single time her father would come from a night out from drinking, she would hide in the pantry hoping that her father would not see her and yell at her, so she found solace in biting her fingernails, that way she could calm herself.

As much as Bailey wanted to cry, she knew it was best not to cry in front of a total stranger. Tears filled her eyes but she held them back. Her vision began to get a bit blurry until she slept.

“We’re here!” Bailey came to wake by the sound of Demetrius’s voice, as voice that she was slowly beginning to like or already liked from the first time that she had heard it.

“Welcome to my home” Demetrius said, as he looked ahead of himself, causing Bailey to do the same.

Bailey’s eyes widened, as she saw what stood before her, for what she saw was far from being called a house, this was a mansion. Like the one’s she had seen in movies. Bailey remembered the days when she would watch people like these living their best lives and living in mansions whilst she lived in some rundown trailer park.

“If you keep staring at my house like this then, I’m afraid you’d burn a hole through it” Demetrius joked, a smile appearing on his face. Bailey liked this side of him, the side of Demetrius that smiled and not the side that looked robotic, the calculating Demetrius that had to plan everything before he did anything.

Before Bailey could unlock the passenger door, Demetrius was already their doing it for her.

“Thank you” Bailey managed to utter. She had never had a man unlock the door for her before, not even Fredrick, her high school crush who thought nothing of her. Bailey remembered him all too well, using her just so that she could do his assignments and homework for him.

Bailey stepped out of the car, her fingers still in her mouth, chewing at every nail on her fingers. Her feet were weak, this should all be a dream and that any moment she would awake from it but the longer she starred at the mansion she knew that it was all real.

“Can we please step in” Demetrius’ stern voice broke the trance. Her attention now turned to Demetrius, who seemed as though he was running out of patience with her.

“Shall we enter then?” Bailey asked, trying to sound like those confident women that she watched in the movies.

Without waiting for her, Demetrius walked away from her. Leaving Bailey to run after him. Demetrius was taller than she was and he also had longer legs than Bailey did, every step he took was more than one-step for Bailey.

They got to the entrance of his house; a black painted door with the initials K.D.E, written in what Bailey assumed was gold.

“What does K.D.E stand for?”  Bailey asked Demetrius without even thinking about it. She hated when she did that, speaking when she was not asked to speak.

Her father walked closer to her, a beer bottle in his right hand and poor Bailey stepped back as her father stepped toward her. She could feel the sweat dripping down her face and her hands shaking. The worst was the urge to place her fingers in her mouth and bite her nails was getting stronger.

“Don’t you ever speak unless you have been spoken to!” her father had told her or rather yelled at her as he always did.

“It stands for Kástro Tou Dimitri Evan” Bailey heard Demetrius say, he was proud of whatever it was that he was saying, then she remembered that she had asked him a question.

“What does that mean?” Bailey asked, again forgetting the one rule her father had drilled into her from a young age.

Demetrius shifted his entire body not he was facing Bailey, the lights from the pillars of his mansion shorn onto his eyes, black eyes like marble. He took both his hands and placed it the pockets of his denim jeans.

“It means Castle of Demetrius Evan” He answered, pride flowing through those words. Bailey hated prideful men but she was happy that she managed to get some info out of Demetrius, now Bailey knew that his surname is Evan and this was his castle more than it was his mansion.

“But it’s a mansion” Bailey added, causing Demetrius to roll his eyes at her.

“I know that, now enough talking, lets enter” Demetrius said. Bailey’s eyes grew wider, Demetrius did not have to unlock the door, and he simply pressed a button on his car keys and the door to the main house unlocked, open sesame. 

If Bailey had thought that the outside was impressive, the inside was far from what she would have ever imagined, because inside the house was nothing more than a castle or a palace. Whatever one thought of it, Bailey knew that this lifestyle was far than she would have ever dreamed of even if it meant for a month.

“Bailey Madison welcome to my Castle and my refuge” Demetrius boasted. Bailey did not know what to think of all this, because she did not know where to start looking. The chandelier hanging from the ceiling of the very entrance of the house or was it the white tiles polished so well that she could see her reflection through it.

“I think I need to sit down” Bailey told Demetrius as she began feeling dizzy and her legs weak at the thought of looking further into the mansion.