Ruthless: Contemporary Military Romance Read Online Free Page A

between them.
     
    “Mom, I’d rather not see anyone right now.”
     
    “Come on, Holly. Let me talk to you.”
     
    Holly hesitated. There really would be no point in sending her mother away; she would just come back later. Besides, if anyone could calm Holly down, it was her mother.
     
    “Fine,” she said, reluctantly. “Come on in.”
     
    Eleanor Springford was a petite but impressive woman. She had reached her fifties, but she didn’t look it. Her skin was smooth and pale as alabaster. She was tall and elegant, almost elf-like in the grace of her every move. She had long, almost-white blond hair that cascaded straight and breathtaking down her back and chocolate brown eyes that were said to be able to take a man’s soul away if one stared into them too long. She was just too beautiful to be real.
     
    Holly had taken a few features from her—the blond hair, the petite figure. Her skin was tanned like her father’s, and her eyes were as gray as Harry’s. Holly herself, while not as outlandishly beautiful as her mother, was quite a sight, and she had lost count of her suitors since she had come of age. Of course, she wasn’t interested in any of them. She wasn’t interested in anything that had to do with her parents’ world—except horseback riding. But that one passion of hers wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to prompt her to stay and do her father’s bidding.
     
    Holly watched warily as her mother walked up and sat next to her on the bench by the windowsill.
     
    “Your father told me what happened,” Eleanor began carefully.
     
    “Did he tell you he plans to marry me off to Tim Sutherland?”
     
    “He did.”
     
    Holly stared at her mother. She didn’t think she could handle another betrayal for the day, but she had to ask. “Did you know?”
     
    Eleanor sighed. “I did.”
     
    “And you didn’t think it might be worth mentioning it to me?” Holly cried in disbelief.
     
    “Not yet,” Eleanor said. “Not until everything was sorted out. We would’ve told you then.”
     
    “You sound just like Dad,” Holly said, appalled. “Don’t either of you care what I want?”
     
    “Holly, Timothy is a good man. He could make you very happy.”
     
    “No, Mom, he could not,” Holly said forcefully. “I don’t want to marry him.”
     
    Eleanor sighed. “Yes, your father has mentioned that. I’m afraid you don’t have much choice.”
     
    Holly stared at her mother in open dismay. She could hardly believe her ears. “What are you talking about? You can’t possibly agree with Dad on this. You can’t want me to marry somebody I don’t love.”
     
    Eleanor smiled bitterly. “Honey, surely you don’t think your father and I married for love?”
     
    Holly blinked. It had never occurred to her to ask herself whether or not her parents had an arranged marriage. She had somehow always assumed that it was not, that they had met within those sterile elite circles and fallen in love. How naïve she had been.
     
    “I thought you loved Dad…” she murmured, trying to wrap her mind around the revelation.
     
    “I do,” her mother said quickly. “ Now . Not so much when we got married. He was always kind to me, of course, but I didn’t love him. I learned to.”
     
    “Mom, that’s crazy,” Holly said after a moment where she let her mother’s words sink in. “Come on, you can’t possibly believe this is the way things should be done.”
     
    “What do you mean?”
     
    There was genuine puzzlement on Eleanor’s face, and that drove Holly mad. “It’s 2015, mother!” She cried, feeling the anger come back in a rush. “We can’t possibly be really talking about arranged marriages!”
     
    “Why not? It works.”
     
    “Well, it doesn’t work for me!” Holly snapped. She took a few steadying breaths. She didn’t want another dead-end fight. She wanted her mother to see her point, to understand. She wanted her mother to be on her side. “Mom, I want to be an