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Alicia glared at me when she twisted to buckle up, blue-green-gold eyes burning with poorly restrained irritation. I rolled my own in response, not saying a word as I turned over the engine and pulled out of the driveway.

While I would never admit this out loud, she looked and smelled divine, the faintest hint of vanilla and something earthier wafting through the air as she settled back in her seat. Wearing a deep emerald dress that made her eyes look like the inside of a forest during a storm, she was surprisingly beautiful, her golden hair pulled up into an elegant twist type thing at the nape of her neck.

That silence we’d fallen into stretched almost all the way to my mother’s house, but she finally broke it while we idled at a red light a few blocks away. “We should put on a united front for your family tonight.”

She said it so softly that I could barely hear her, her tone utterly without inflection. The first words she’d spoken to me in days and they were nothing more than painfully practical. She even turned a little in her seat to face me, obviously willing to bury the hatchet, even if it was just out of sight.

“I’m sure they’d notice any strife immediately, so I think it would be wise to let on that what we’re experiencing is only the typical growing pains of an arranged marriage. Nothing more serious. I’m not sure exactly what that entails, but I imagine there would be some discomfort in the early stages of any arrangement like ours.”

I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel, surprised by her pragmatism. The light turned green. “I actually agree with you on that front. So fine. As long as you can pretend to like me a little bit, I’ll play the doting husband. Whatever the hell that looks like.”

“Just… act like your own father when he was alive,” she suggested casually.

I barked out a harsh, bitter laugh and Alicia started, her eyes suddenly wide. “What? Why are you laughing? I thought you agreed.”

“I do, but my father isn’t dead,” I said, my voice flat. While I was perfectly happy to act like he was six feet under, if she was going to survive an evening with my family, she needed the truth. I gave it to her point blank. “Court Thayer is very much alive, unfortunately. He’s just serving a federal sentence in a minimum-security facility upstate.”

Alicia shrank back in her seat and made a tiny, mouse-like sound. “Oh.”

“Oh,” I parroted sarcastically, glancing over at her. “Yeah, oh.”

She swallowed hard, looking out the window for a brief second before she finally sighed. “Well, maybe don’t act like him, then.”

I frowned, wondering if she was pretending not to know who he was. If she’d grown up in this city, she was absolutely sure to have heard about the scandal, but I supposed she would’ve been a teenager when the news had broken. Like me.

Maybe normal high-school kids hadn’t been as caught up in the news cycle as those who’d traveled in our circles. She’d probably been too busy practicing a cheer for a football game or studying for a quiz to care about some rich guy going to prison.

Even so, I found it hard to believe she hadn’t known, but as I held her gaze, I realized she didn’t look guilty or even defensive. Maybe she was just good at masking her emotions, but it really didn’t look like she was trying to hide anything.

Instead, there was a faint, unmistakable hint of mischief dancing in her eyes and it gave me pause. Clearly, she was amused by her own blunder and the sight sent an unexpected spike of adrenaline racing through me.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure why I was suddenly so desperate to get under her skin, to rile her up and see how far I could push until that stubborn spark of defiance flickered out, but the urge was almost overwhelming. I wanted to see her snap again. I wanted to push her buttons the same way she was unwittingly pushing mine and find out what it would take to snuff out that amusement.

But before I could say anything to provoke her, I pulled the car to a stop in front of my family home, a massive, sprawling house that had felt like a mausoleum for a long time after the scandal had broken. My mother had spent years slinking around the empty rooms, wailing over her ruined reputation and mourning the social circles that had rejected her.

Jane, our brothers, and I had done our best to stay strong for her and to carry on like normal at first, but eventually, the house had grown quiet. Lively family dinners had turned into muttered conversations over sandwiches or leftovers in our bedrooms.

Overnight, Wyatt and I had become pariahs at school, only attending our classes because Jane had insisted and then holing up here again. For months, we hadn’t even seen the inside of a grocery store, let alone a restaurant or a social gathering.

Jane and Colin had all but disappeared, thrust into a world we’d been woefully unprepared for. Their days had consisted of meeting with lawyers we suddenly couldn’t afford, cooperating with the authorities, and fielding endless questions none of us had answers to.

They’d turn up late at night or in the early morning hours, restock the kitchen with groceries they’d bought using Jane’s trust fund—the only account a Thayer had ever even looked at that hadn’t been seized—and then be gone again by the time we woke up for school in the morning.

Things were finally bouncing back for the Thayers now, but it wouldn’t last long. We were back, the city pretending they’d never hated us. Soon enough, the fleet of luxury cars in the driveway tonight would disappear all over again, but for now, the time for bickering with my wife was over.

“This is it,” I said, doing my best to keep my lips from curling into a sneer. In theory, there was nothing wrong with this house, but God, for the longest time, it had felt like a prison in its own right. Like we’d been locked up right along with our father. “Try not to talk too much with anyone who isn’t family. Trust me, it doesn’t matter how well you think a conversation has gone. They won’t have anything nice to say about you after.”

Alicia’s light eyebrows swept up, but she nodded, seeming a little apprehensive as she stared at the house. Taking some comfort in the fact that she would obviously heed my warning, I climbed out of the car, and true to my word, the doting husband made his appearance the moment the valet opened her door.

I strode around to her side, extending a hand to help her out. Our eyes met for just a moment as she took it, but neither of us said a word. A strange buzz of awareness raced up my spine, though. I ignored it, but it had definitely been there.

As soon as she was on her feet, standing next to the car, I dropped her hand, only touching her again to press my palm against the small of her back as we walked up the grand steps to the front door. The warmth of her skin radiated through the thin fabric of her dress, a slight tremor running through her before she squared her shoulders, obviously trying to remain calm as we strode through the open doors and into the lion’s den.

Part of me expected her to be intimidated by the soaring ceilings and glittering crystal chandeliers in the foyer, but she just drank it all in, quietly observant before she straightened up a little more and glanced at me. “This is where you used to live?”

I shrugged. “Sure, if you want to call it that.”

Personally, I would call it the place where I’d been incarcerated, but hey. Before all that, I supposed I had lived here.