Page 20 of The Marriage Mistake

“While we’re doing this, Ember,” he said, voice dark and low, “the only man in your life is me.”

I couldn’t help the bitter laugh that burst out of me. “That won’t be a problem,” I said. “Hard as it may be to believe, I don’t have men beating down my door begging to sleep with me.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

He ground his teeth, and I thought he wanted to say more, but then the breath gusted out of him and he drove on.

What a disaster. This whole scheme was destined for failure. We had a relationship to fake, and one little interaction through a car window was enough to have us snarling at each other. We were never going to pull this off.

We headed into town. The burned building was about a block downhill from us as we parked. Across the street was a beauty salon with a big patch of fresh paint on its front wall. The median was overgrown with weeds and leaves gathered in big, crunchy drifts in every gutter and ledge.

I missed the city. I missed the anonymity of it, the simplicity of it. I’d felt off-balance since the moment I’d driven into Marswood Harbor, and the brooding, angry man beside me wasn’t helping.

He turned off the engine but made no move to get out. After a long pause, he said, “Why me?”

“Pardon?”

“I find it hard to believe you weren’t able to find a man to marry you, even without offering him a big chunk of change.”

I stared at him. “Hard to believe, how?”

“You’re beautiful, intelligent, and driven. I don’t understand how you had to resort to this to find a husband.” When he said “this,” he gestured to himself with a touch of something that might have been disgust.

I paused. His compliments sat heavy in my gut, and I immediately rejected them. I was far from beautiful. I was short, I had thin hair that didn’t know whether it wanted to be blond or brown, and my features were too angular. No one had ever described me as beautiful before, so I was pretty sure Jack was just saying that…why? To be polite? To throw me off?

Surely not because he believed it?

I was intelligent and somewhat driven, but in my experience, that seemed to be more of a turn-off for men than something that attracted them.

Still, he was waiting for an answer. So I shrugged and said, “No one’s ever wanted to put up with me, I guess,” and the words felt heavy on my tongue. I heard my father’s voice threaded through them. A favorite insult of his.

Shaking off the memory, I jerked my head at Jack. “What about you? You’re attractive. Why haven’t you found someone?”

Jack’s anger melted away, and he turned his body toward me a little more. His brow arched as his lips curved. “You find me attractive?”

I rolled my eyes. “Do you often use flirtation as a way to avoid difficult questions?”

There was a flash in his gaze. A slight narrowing right before his smile widened. “Is it working?”

“In your dreams, Jack.”

“Based on last night, that’s truer than you know.”

“What?” I said, startled, but Jack was already out the door and circling the car toward my side.

When he pulled it open, I tilted my head. “Playing the gentleman?”

“There are at least four people watching us right now,” he said. “They’ll report on everything they see.” He gave me a soft smile, sliding his palm against mine as he tugged me down the street beside him.

Despite the fact that it wasn’t the first time we’d held hands, it still felt like a shock. I could focus on nothing except the warmth of his palm against mine and the way his arm brushed mine as we walked. I knew it was all for show, so it should have been easy to ignore his closeness. Key word: should.

My heart sped up and I found myself focusing very hard on every step to stop myself from stumbling. It was probably a sign that I needed to get out more. Needed to obtain more experience with men, so the simple feel of his fingers curled around my palm didn’t make my thoughts scatter quite so thoroughly.

The bell above the antiques shop door jingled as Jack pulled it open and held it for me. I walked through, inhaling the musty scent of old things, my eye bouncing from item to item. The shop, like most antiques stores, was packed to the brim with bric-a-brac. Vases, figurines, sculptures, baskets, lamps, tables, chairs, urns, cutlery, dinnerware, serving ware, and more cluttered every surface, leaving only narrow aisles through which we could wind our way to the glass case that served as a counter.

An open doorway behind the counter revealed a small office, from which an old man tottered out. His wispy hair clung to his head the way Marswood Harbor clung to the last moments of life: with the inevitability of the coming end. He was a tall man with a potbelly and a deep scowl.