Page 55 of The Marriage Mistake

The way I wanted.

JACK

I paced my room like a caged lion. She was so close. Only a set of stairs and a couple of doors separated us, but she might as well have been on another planet. My fists clenched and released. My skin itched. My cock hadn’t stopped throbbing since she’d blinked up at me with wide, green eyes and said the word “practice.”

It was only lust. It had to be. I’d always wanted what I couldn’t have, and Ember had made it very clear that she wasn’t into me in that way.

But then there was that little desperate whimper that had slipped through her lips when I’d kissed her. The way her fingers had curled into my shirt. The trembling, visceral need I’d glimpsed in her as her hips jerked toward me, rolling against my clothed cock.

Right before she’d told me to get out.

Then there was the kindness that had shone in her eyes when she’d crossed the room to hug me. The understanding. The quiet—she hadn’t felt the need to tell me any useless platitudes about the grief I’d endured over a decade ago.

Every moment in her presence revealed something more that I liked about her. Another facet of her I wanted to study.

I was far beyond fighting against the inevitable.

This wasn’t just lust. It was a hell of a lot more than that.

FOURTEEN

EMBER

I gaped at Jack in horror, my spoonful of oatmeal dangling halfway to my mouth. “Say again?”

It was Thursday. Yesterday, we’d done our usual walk down Main Street while sipping hot drinks and nodding to all the people staring at us like we were a freak show. We hadn’t kissed. Not that I was keeping track, or anything.

Today, Jack had a different plan for our daily public appearance.

“A run,” he repeated, turning back to the blender where he was preparing a smoothie. “We can do it along the water on the hard sand.”

The blender screamed. I stared at his broad back, waiting for the noise to die down. “I don’t run,” I told him when it was quiet again, barely suppressing my shudder.

He frowned over his shoulder at me. “Really? I could have sworn you were a runner. I’m sure my grandmother told me we had that in common.”

Uh-oh.

He was right. We did have that in common…in the pack of fiction I’d crafted on my matchmaking application.

My face must have betrayed me, because Jack’s gaze sharpened. He turned to face me fully, the big blender jug forgotten on the counter. “You’re hiding something,” he noted, curious, casual. He tilted his head, watching me.

I wasn’t fooled by his friendly demeanor. This man was on the hunt for all my secrets. I could see it in his eyes, in the way he studied my face like he could read every microexpression that crossed it.

“I’m not hiding anything,” I said, spooning oatmeal into my mouth. I chewed and swallowed, then added, “I’m an open book.”

“Ha,” Jack replied. He grabbed a glass and poured some smoothie into it, then turned back to watch me while he took his first sip. He leaned against the counter, one broad hand curled around the edge, the other wrapped around his glass. His long legs were crossed at the ankle. Nothing to see here, his pose announced, just a casual man having a smoothie in his kitchen, looking at the oatmeal-eating intruder like she’s just a simple curiosity.

I studiously ignored him as the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. The space between my shoulder blades itched, and I had to fight not to fidget. Mm, oatmeal. So fascinating. Scoop, chew, swallow, repeat.

“Another thing I find interesting,” he mused, waving the glass of pink, frothy liquid around, “is how you claim you’re not motherly. My grandmother told me we were a ninety-eight-percent match. How could we be such a high match if you’re not motherly and being a parent is a huge part of who I am?”

I swallowed the bite of oatmeal that was quickly turning to glue in my mouth. He’d found me out. Of course he had! I’d revealed myself to him. I’d wanted him to like me. I’d shown him the parts of myself that I usually kept hidden. I was meant to be an uninteresting actuary who liked numbers more than she liked people. Numbers liked me back more than people did too.

But Jack saw through that, and now I was in trouble.

My eyes slid to the door. I had to get out of here.

My brain provided me with logic to try to quell my panic: Even if Jack found out I’d carefully planned and crafted a fat stack of lies for my application, it didn’t change the fact that we had a deal. He could find out I was the literal devil, and we would still have a contract. I would still pay him. We would still go our separate ways.