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“He is.”
After a long beat, where I honestly think Kane is working to control the beast he houses under his own flesh, he asks, “If you go home, what do you figure will happen?”
My cheeks flush with shame. The whispered confession drips with shame as it rattles into the space between us. “I’ll marry him.”
He jolts, but he doesn’t pull away. In fact, his hands tighten on my thighs. “Say again.”
I shiver at the darkness in his tone. “I don’t have a choice. He’ll send that man back to teach me another lesson. The man said as much before he left me there, bleeding on my bed.” Ice daggers in his eyes threaten to spear anyone who dares to come close. I press on. “The public won’t believe me if I even try to tell the truth about what happened—about what he did. I have no other way to get out of this. I can’t hide here forever, and I have no other escape, Kane.”
“Marry me.”
I jolt in shock, whispering, “Sorry?”
“If you marry me, youcan’tmarry him.”
My laugh sounds unhinged. “You’re joking. You can’t be serious. You don’t know me. I could be—I could be crazy.”
His eyes never leave my face, but the corner of his lip twitches. “It’s the perfect plan. If you’re married to me, you can’t marry someone else—so his plan to force you into marrying him won’t work. Besides, my mother’s been harassing me to find a wife, anyway. Looks to me like this will kill two birds with one stone.”
“But—marriage—” I stutter, breathless. “Marriage is serious, Kane.”
He dips his chin. “It is.”
“We don’t know each other. We don’t love each other.” I’m starting to panic now. I’m pretty sure he can see it like paint splattered across my face. I sputter, “W—we don’t know if we’re even compatible.”
He smirks. “You talkin’ sexually?” My mouth drops and that smirk travels to his eyes. “I’m sexually compatible with everyone.”
I think my jaw unhinges. I work to close it before I cough to clear my throat. “If we did this—if we were to get married—it wouldn’t be real.”
“Why not?”
I blink. He’s nuts. Loony-toons nuts. A freaking Tasmanian Devil kind of nuts.
“Because you’re marrying me to appease your mother, and I’d be marrying you to keep my crazy ex from forcing me into marrying him!” I’m losing it.Who proposes something like this?
And why am I considering it?
What does that say about me?
“Alright, so say we did this thing and got married, we’d have to make it appear real.” He peers at me, studying me. “You know that, yeah?”
“Of course. We’d have boundaries, though. Things only we’d know.” I don’t know how, but I’m starting to really come around to this.Maybe I’m crazy, too.“It’d be like those crazy movies where the couple fake dates.”
“But we’d really be married.”
“Right.” I frown. “But we’d need an expiration date. A day we agree to divorce.”
A brow rises. “You want the divorce on the calendar before we even schedule the wedding?”
Chewing on my lips, I think. “A year should be enough, right? You’ll get some peace from the pressure your mom has on you to marry, and a year should be enough time for Antonio to forget about me. It’s a win-win.”
He leans back just a bit. If I’m not mistaken, that’s amusement I see on his face. “Tell me more about these boundaries.”
“Well, we’ll just be really good friends who aremarried on paper. I’ll live with you, of course.” His eyes track my frown as I glance around his house. “I won’t be able to split things fifty-fifty. I don’t make nearly what you do, but I’ll do what I can to pull my weight.”
He lifts a hand. “I’ll provide for my wife.”
My shrug is a little on the uncomfortable side. “I won’t really be your wife.”
