Page 28 of The Marriage Mistake

“I’m more worried about the raccoons,” I muttered, and Jack laughed. I loved making him laugh. I loved that I was able to make him laugh.

Flushing, I accepted the flashlight and vest, put on my shoes, and went out into the fresh air. It wasn’t until the house was out of sight that I was able to gulp down enough breaths to steady my rioting heart. By the time I got back, I could hear the low murmur of Jack’s and Darby’s voices in the living room, and I crept past them to go up the stairs and back to my room.

JACK

I sat on the couch with Darby’s feet on my lap as we watched one of her shows. In the break between episodes, she looked at me and said, “Ember’s nice.”

For some reason, my daughter’s words made the back of my neck flush. “Yeah,” I said. “She is.”

“Why don’t you date her for real? She’s better than all your other ‘friends’,” she snarked, putting “friends” in the sassiest teenage finger quotes I’d ever seen.

“How about you leave my dating life out of this?” I replied, tickling the bottom of her foot.

She yelped and kicked at me, then curled up in a ball and covered herself with a throw blanket, glaring at me over her shoulder. The next episode started, and we left the conversation there.

I thought about it all evening. About what that would look like—me dating Ember. Me dating anyone. I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t take time away from my business or my duty as a father. It was one thing to have a date night or meet up with a woman for a quick romp. It was another to commit. To change the way my life with Darby was organized to allow another person in.

To replace the wife I’d lost a decade ago.

I stared at the ceiling, hearing the creak of Ember’s footsteps over my head.

She was a whole lot more than just “nice.” She was under my skin.

But she was off-limits in too many ways to count.

SEVEN

EMBER

On Saturday morning, Jack and I celebrated our sixth day of marriage by pretending to be infatuated with each other at the local diner. I sat in a plastic booth across from him, waiting for my egg white omelet to arrive while I sipped weak black tea that tasted like it had sat on a shelf in the kitchen and collected dust for ten years, feeling the curious gazes of all the elderly patrons turning our way. The back of my neck prickled.

The only customers—other than me and Jack—who were below the age of seventy were two mildly scary looking biker guys in leather jackets. The backs of their leather vests each had a flaming skull on them. The Reapers, the local biker gang. Apparently outlaw bikers also needed pancakes sometimes. They’d glanced at us when we walked in but didn’t seem interested in our fake romance.

Jack was better at pretending than I was. He grinned at me above the rim of his white ceramic coffee mug, wicked eyes sparkling in the midmorning light. “If you keep looking at me like I’m the kind of guy who enjoys kicking puppies, you’ll hurt my feelings,” Jack murmured.

“I know nothing of your puppy-kicking proclivities, so I can’t comment on that.”

The glimmer in his eyes intensified as his lips curled ever so slightly. He looked like he was having fun, which was great for our audience. He was really selling it. “Imagine I’m the guy who saved you from the guy kicking your puppy. That’ll help.”

“First of all, why is someone kicking my puppy? I don’t like that image.”

“Of course you don’t like it. Only a monster would kick a puppy.”

“And you came along and saved me.” I arched a brow. “How?”

“I punched him in the jaw. Knocked him out.”

“Solving violence with more violence. We all know that doesn’t work.”

“Would you rather I sit him down and ask him what went wrong in his childhood to make him the way he is?”

“That might be more interesting.”

“By then, your puppy has run away.”

“This puppy’s having a hard day,” I noted. “What kind of puppy is this? Where did I get it? Is it a rescue? Why would it run away from me instead of running to me?”

Jack’s smile widened. “Let’s get back to what’s important. Me saving you from the bad guy. You looking up at me with an expression that says you’ll do anything to thank me.”