Page 81 of Heart Breaker

I love the fire in her.

Outside, sunlight glints off a lake nestled between the mountains. Inside, Lottie tucks one leg beneath her and keeps looking out the window like she’s trying to memorize every detail. I keep watching her instead—the excitement on her face, the way her eyes light up, the smile she doesn’t seem to realize she’s wearing.

My gaze travels from her white linen blouse to her white linen shorts, down to the gold sandals that lace around her ankles. Her hair falls in loose waves around her shoulders, and a pair of designer sunglasses hang from the neckline of her shirt. She looks like she stepped straight out of one of those vacation ads designed to make people jealous of strangers on the internet. The kind of woman men walk into walls over.

My eyes return to her face to find Lottie smirking at me. Caught.

“What?” she asks, eyebrows raised.

I don’t bother denying it. “I was just thinking that my wife is a ten out of ten.”

Lottie blushes. “You make it awfully hard not to like you, Wes Winters.” She sighs, looking back out the window. “I’m the luckiest fake wife in the world.”

Fake wife or not, that sentence does something to me. Unfortunately, so does she, and we’ve still got forty-five minutes left before we land.

She settles deeper into her seat. “Three whole days with no work. Nobody asking me about centrepieces, seating charts, floral budgets, or whether ivory is different than off-white.” A smile spreads across her face. “I’m excited.”

“Yeah?”

She nods. “I haven’t done anything like this in years.”

“Taken a vacation?”

She sighs. “Not a real one. I’m always so busy with work.”

Lottie blames it on her job, but I know that between her clients and spending every free moment with her mom and dad, she’s been taking care of everyone but herself.

“You deserve one, Peach.”

Her smile softens. “I don’t know about that, but I’m definitely not going to argue.” She looks at the horizon. “Pretend or not, you’re getting pretty good at the husband thing.”

I’m not sure how to respond to that. If Lottie only knew how often I’ve been having to remind myself that this marriage isn’t real.

Lottie spends the rest of the flight asking questions—about the mountains below, the town we’ll be landing in, the place we’ll be staying. Somewhere along the way she discovers the binoculars I keep on board, which gets her even more excited. By the time Pine Ridge finally comes into view, she’s practically bouncing in her seat.

“Is that it?”

I smile despite myself. “That’s it.”

Lottie’s nose practically presses against the glass as the town comes into focus, the lake below sparkling in the afternoon sun. “Oh, wow.”

A strange sense of satisfaction settles in my chest, like I personally built the place just for her. I direct the plane for the runway and a few minutes later, the wheels touch down.

And just like that, our honeymoon begins.

THIRTY-ONE

Lottie

The life of a millionaire’s fake wife is actually pretty fabulous. One minute, I’m stepping off Wes’s plane, and the next I’m sinking into the buttery-soft leather seat of a sports car. When Wes puts the car in gear, I roll down my window and close my eyes, tipping my face toward the sky as the fresh mountain air rushes in.

“This is incredible.”

Beside me, Wes laughs.

“You’ve said that at least six times today.”

“Because everything today has been incredible.”