Dangerous Love: You Are My One and Only Bride novel Chapter 1534

Mark was halfway out of his clothes when Arianne asked, so he adjusted himself before considering her. “What sort of business could possibly command such secrecy that you can’t wait to tell me until after I finished my shower?”

Arianne leveled him a severe expression. “Mark, this is serious. Have you gone to your study as of today? Did you notice one of your photos missing? The one featuring your parents on their wedding day—it’s gone. Last night, I went downstairs for a glass of water, and I saw your aunt removing that photo from its frame before crumpling it into a ball of waste. And then today, when I went to check, both the picture and the frame were gone,” she explained. “To be clear, I’m not implicating something dark at work here. I’m just asking a question: did your aunt ever have, well, some unpleasant row with your parents before?”

Mark’s eyebrows furrowed. “That can’t be, can it? I know little about their affairs, but can’t we infer from the way she treats me that she probably doesn’t have any feud with them? Even if she does, could any grudge last this long?… Hmm, maybe I should ask her.”

Arianne glared at him. “Hold that thought. How do you plan to ‘ask,’ exactly? ‘Hi Aunt Shelly, Arianne said she saw you taking out your anger at a photo in the middle of the night. We wonder why!’ —Like that? Don’t be pig-headed and drag me into this,” she protested. “You should probably just ask a bit of this and that when you guys are alone. I mean, I’ve seen enough cases of friends undergoing a heel-face turning into foes—all cases related to you, by the way—that I’m scared your aunt is here for yet another nefarious purpose, too. I mean, why else would she dote on you like this despite having never seen you for so many years?

“You’re her sister’s son, not her own flesh and blood. And speaking of that, shouldn’t she have her own kids at this age? What kind of mother would toss her own kids aside to love someone else’s kid, huh? That’s just straight-up bizarre. And after seeing how she treated your parents’ photos, I’m terrified at the possibility of her coming back here and ingratiating on you for an unthinkable, ulterior motive,” Arianne explained. “I know, I sound like a tinfoil-wearing conspiracy theorist right now. But I can assure you, I’m projecting from the facts that I know. The affection she showered you is real, I can feel that—but it’s waaaaay too real. It doesn’t look a mite like the sort you get from long-lost relatives. No matter how close someone may be with another, going through so many years without even a single contact must, realistically, do a number to that feeling of intimacy, right?”

Mark had to admit that he was a little convinced by the merits in her argument. Sure, he held Aunt Shelly in very high regards, but that was because she looked like a carbon copy of his real mother. She was his mother’s sister and his biological aunt—Mark’s regards for her sprang from that blood connection. However, when he discounted his feelings of respect, Mark did feel a little overwhelmed by Shelly’s outpouring doting. She seemed to treat him a little too well…

Later that night, during dinner, Mark asked, “Aunt Shelly, I haven’t heard about your family since you came here. Are my cousins not going to pay us a visit?”