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“If you think this will make people take you more seriously, Jesse?—”
“Where did that come from?”
“Come on, son. People aren’t stupid. Rushing into a marriage with any woman for reasons other than love, is a bad idea. And rushing into it with Marci is worse. She’s practically a part of our family at this point. You fuck this up, it’ll fuck up more than just your life.”
“Even if we were rushing, it’s too late to go back,” I say.
Dad lifts his shoulders and lets them drop.
“Sure. Just telling you I care. If you say you got this figured out, I’ll trust you.”
And he enters the hall where that picture of my grandfather sits high on the wall, glaring down at those who pass underneath it. Dad turns back.
“Let’s get some lemonade.”
There isn’t any amount of lemonade that could clear my head.
Twenty-Four
MARCI
Jesse’s been acting differentlysince we got back from Ganny’s house. I don’t blame him. Pretending to be married is hard enough without a caring family who wants what’s best for you. That’s not even sarcasm. He’s so connected to the Taylors that their opinion is everything to him. I get it. Ilikethat.
Words I never thought I would think regarding Jesse Taylor:I like that.
Jesse’s in the kitchen again, preparing dinner. He insisted I settle in on the reclining chair with a good book and a glass of chilled water. He squeezed a dash of lemon into it and then tucked a blanket over my legs.
The smell of garlic and white wine drifts through his cottage. I shouldn’t be enjoying this. I should be fuming that I’m here. But I don’t have any fight left in me tonight.
It has been a long day of Jesse treating me right, and my God, I can’t be a bitch about it.
“What’s on the menu tonight?” I ask, marking my place in the book with a finger.
“Chicken with a white wine sauce, potato wedges, and braised green beans,” he says. “Simple.”
“Sure, simple.”
He doesn’t look up from the stove where he’s tending to the sauce. Jesse’s gorgeous in side profile too, a strong nose, his clean shaven broad jaw. He’s put on an apron over his black tee, and the way his forearm muscles tense as he stirs the sauce is borderline pornographic.
But he’s not talking to me tonight.
“You good?” I ask. “Usually, I can’t get you to shut up.”
“Hmm.”
“All right, Taylor, what’s up?”
“Just thinking about things,” he says. “Our agreement. What it means for the future.”
Ah. So Ganny and his father freaked him out. My hunch is that it’s got to do with the private conversation he had with his dad in the living room.
“Do you want to back out?”
“No. I don’t want to back out,” he says, and scoops up some sauce in a teaspoon.
He blows on it gently and brings it over, then feeds it to me.
“Oh my God, that’s delicious.”
