Page 25 of The Marriage Mistake

Right on cue, my stomach growled. I’d skipped lunch.

His smile widened. “Come down and eat.”

Heart thundering, I got up from my chair and followed him out the door. The light from the wall sconces gilded his hair as we went down the steps, my eyes straying from the strands to his broad shoulders. I remembered how it had felt to have his hand on my thigh in the car and his thumb on my lip in the street. I remembered the brush of his lips across my knuckles when we’d faced his grandmother at the start of the week.

My body’s reaction was unfamiliar. I was a cerebral person. I analyzed. I logged. I assessed. I didn’t feel like this. I didn’t sense and react and overreact.

Jack bowled through that identity like it was made of tissue paper and set my body on fire. He was a big, glaring risk that I couldn’t quantify. I had no frame of reference. I didn’t know what he was capable of doing to me—to my heart, to my mind—other than the fact that it was big, and it was bad.

And yet.

And yet I padded down the steps behind him, and I sat in the chair he pulled out. I nodded at Darby, who set a plate full of roasted chicken, veggies, and potatoes in front of me. The scent of thyme and lemon rose with the steam from my food, and my stomach grumbled again.

“Thank you,” I said, and we sat down to eat. “This looks really good.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Jack mock grumbled.

“It’s the one thing Dad can cook.”

“Hey!”

“Okay, it’s one of three things Dad can cook,” Darby amended.

I speared a baby potato and threw her a questioning glance. “What are the other two?”

“Mac ’n cheese and steak,” she said, falling into her own chair across from me. “We have microwave veggies with the steak.”

“I also make stew,” Jack protested as he sat down to my right.

“Yeah, but half the time it turns out gross,” Darby shot back. “Last time the slow cooker exploded.”

Jack’s eyes slid to mine. “It was old,” he explained.

“I see,” I answered, lips twitching.

“You’re making me look bad in front of Ember,” Jack said, reaching over to ruffle Darby’s hair.

Darby yelped and ducked out of the way. “I’m only telling her the truth!”

I watched as Jack let out a full-throated laugh, still reaching over to mess with his wriggling daughter’s hair. She giggled and squealed, seeming so much younger than she usually did. Then Jack hooked his arm around her shoulders and tugged her closer so he could kiss her temple. She grumbled, pushing her hair back, but I could tell she was happy.

They were so beautiful together. I’d grown up with a single dad, but it was nothing like this. There was none of the warmth, closeness, and teasing that I saw between the two of them. I ached for the child that I’d been, but I couldn’t help being happy for Darby. And it made me look at Jack differently. Here, with Darby, he wasn’t the charmer. He wasn’t putting on an act so his daughter would like him. His laughter was genuine, and the way he looked at her was so full of tenderness it made my chest ache.

“Eat your dinner,” Jack said to his daughter with a fake scowl. She stuck her tongue out at him, and he laughed again. He turned to me, nodding to my plate. “So?”

“It’s good,” I said when I’d finished my bite of chicken. “Can’t wait to taste the mac and cheese.”

His eyes narrowed. “I feel like you’re making fun of me.”

My giggle surprised me. “I’m not, I promise.”

“It’s okay if you are,” Darby said. “I do it all the time.”

“Quiet, you,” Jack said, and I could tell he didn’t mean it. He lit up whenever his daughter spoke, or laughed, or existed in his vicinity.

Darby told us about the highlights of eighth grade, a time of my life that I’d mostly blocked out of my memory. Jack had spent the day in the field, trying to find footage of whoever was smashing up their cameras and security equipment around town. Another client had been hit—the hardware store was without its security feed for the whole night and half the day.

“And you haven’t been able to find any clues?”