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The line between pretend and real was becoming more and more blurred the longer Mackenzie was around. We never spoke about the wedding arrangement. It never came up in our interactions; not since the first night we’d slept together, at least.
It was easy to forget this was a business arrangement, a sham marriage with a singular purpose—to meet the insane demands of my father’s will.
But our marriage wasn’t like my mother and my father’s. My mother had tended our home while my father ran our business; but ultimately, all decisions were made by him. My father wasn’t a tyrant to my mother, but he was certainly traditional. His word was the word, and my mother had almost always deferred to him. She’d loved him—I was sure she had. The dynamics of their relationship were just a reflection of the world they were raised in and how they’d come up.
Macks? She was nothing like my mother.
Mackenzie wasn’t a homemaker. She didn’t cook or clean for me, she didn’t defer to my wishes automatically, and she certainly wasn’t afraid to let me know when I was being an ass.
But the longer I had her in my life, the more I realized I could never be happy with a marriage like my parents had had. My dad had loved my mom, but he’d barely ever showed it. He’d been too busy working, always working, and it was only after her death that I’d seen the true depths of his feelings for her.
Macks would never let me get away with that kind of shit. And she made my life… fun.
She’d bonded completely with Bruno, her infectious excitement making him seem like a puppy again—although even as a puppy, he hadn’t been that rambunctious. She’d brought music and color and laughter to my home. She’d brought out a side of me I’d honestly thought was gone forever, a man I almost didn’t recognize. One who didn’t need everything to be immaculate, who didn’t have to control every aspect of his life.
She had brought me back.
I sighed, wrapping my arms tighter around her sleeping form, as if I was afraid fate would snatch her away from me if I let go for a second.
My happiness was a strange, double-edged sword.
It was only a predicament when I remembered th
is wasn’t supposed to be permanent. That eventually, there would be no Mackenzie in my home. Eventually, once our grace period ended and my inheritance was secured, it would be over. We’d be cut loose. Mackenzie would be off to pursue her dreams—and there was a hell of a foundation laid out bare for her to do that.
And I… I would have the family business.
Something about that felt more hollow than it should have. I couldn’t put my finger on it, so before going into the office that day, I called Grant.
“Dude, you know, you have the worst timing. I’m with—”
“I need to talk to you about Mackenzie.”
He was quiet for a moment, something that was far from par for the course when it came to Grant.
“Okay. What about? Lay it on me. Trouble in paradise?”
“More like I feel out of my depth and I’m not sure what to do about it.”
I laid it all out there for Grant. I let him know about the sex, about the conflicting feelings. About how right it felt for Mackenzie to be with me and how wrong it felt to think about the impending date of our divorce, the red X on the calendar after which our marriage would be no more.
Grant listened to all of it. Every ounce of baggage I unloaded, every groaned word about how utterly confused I was. When Grant was prompted, he could be quiet. He could listen. It was why I appreciated him as a friend; when I needed him most, he always put aside his attention-grabbing, self-centered persona and came through for me. He would drop everything to help me if I needed it, and truthfully, I’d do the same for him.
There was only one other person in the world I could say that about, and she was sleeping in the rumpled bed upstairs.
Fuck, Walker. This is exactly your problem. You have to get your head on straight.
When I was done spilling my damn guts to Grant, I sighed.
“That’s it,” I said. “What do you make of all of that?”
He hummed, then laughed.
“I think you need to consider the fact that you might want this to be a permanent thing and not just a ‘business arrangement’ that gets you controlling interest in your business.”
I pinched my brows together as I walked out the front door and hopped into my town car. “What do you mean?”
“You know, for all the ways that you say I’m a playboy, you’re really obtuse when it comes to women.”
