“That sounds ominous.”
“I … uh … well … I hope not.”
For a minute that felt like an hour, we shared an awkward silence, only interrupted by the pings and buzz of Murray’s phone. He muttered under his breath as his fingers flew over the screen again. “I’ll just pop it on silent or we’ll never get peace.”
“Is it like that all the time?”
He shrugged. “Comes with running a business.” He pointed to a canister. “Sugar?”
“One, please.”
Finally, he placed a mug in front of me and then sat at the island, leaving an empty stool between us.
Huh.
I stared at the empty stool that was clearly acting as a physical barrier between us, at once extremely uncertain about my proposal.
“London?”
Looking up, I found Murray peering at me over the mug in his hand.
He was so much bigger than Nick. His shoulders seemed massive, his legs so long he made the high perched stool look like it wasn’t tall enough for the island. What I was about to suggest would put me in this man’s proximity, and it could givehim a certain amount of power over me if I wasn’t smart in how I handled the situation.
Yet looking into his beautiful eyes, eyes that were filled with concern and bemusement, I couldn’t imagine Murray Shaw ever holding within him the jealous, possessive malice Nick seethed with. But I’d been blind to Nick’s at first. Or in denial.
It didn’t matter.
Murray was a risk I had to take.
“Here’s the thing … I can’t go back to the States because my ex … my ex …” I blew out a breath. “He’s unstable and he was abusive, and he has a certain amount of financial and political power that makes him extremely dangerous to me.”
A scowl etched between Murray’s brows. “London?—”
“I don’t want to go into the details. But it means I am desperate to stay in Scotland. And you are desperate to get Jill’s paws off the company’s money. Moreover, having a two-parent household would look good for you in a custody battle.”
Murray’s eyes rounded comically.
I swallowed hard, my palms starting to sweat. “You get where I’m going with this, right?”
Yup, he looked paralyzed with shock.
“Murray? I’m proposing you and I get married.”
The Scotsman blinked slowly, his mouth parting almost cartoonishly with his surprise.
Realizing he might think I meant we marry “for real,” I hurried to explain, “I mean, we’d be married in name only. Like legally. We wouldn’t be like,married, married. I mean, I think we’d probably have to live together for a while to sell the lie, but this is a big place, so I don’t think that would be an issue. And I know what you’re going to say: You have Kelly to think of, but it would only be for, like, I dunno, a year or two to sell it to whatever authorities we need to sell it to. And then we could separate but not divorce. Obviously, if you wanted to marrysomeone else at some point in the future, we would figure that out but?—”
“London, take a breath.”
Though his tone was gentle, it was filled with authority, and I immediately stopped talking.
Murray’s lips twitched beneath his bushy beard. “Now breathe.”
It took me a second to understand why he was asking me to breathe until I realized my breathing had grown stacked and shallow with my anxiety.
I exhaled and a trickle of laughter escaped with the air.
“I didn’t realize how nervous I was.” I groan-laughed, covering my face with my hands, my elbows propped on the cold, stone countertop of the island.
