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“That I want a real marriage. A family. I want more than just cupcakes.”
* * *
Jonas let the phrase soak through him. Everything inside shifted, rolling over. In six words, Viv had reshaped the entire dynamic between them, and the effects might be more destructive than a nuclear bomb.
His chest certainly felt like one had gone off inside. While he’d been fighting to keep from treating Viv to a repeat of the dress-ripping incident, she’d been quietly planning to cut him off at the knees. Apparently he’d been creating distance for no reason.
Viv’s gorgeous face froze when he didn’t immediately respond. But what was he supposed to say?
Oh, that’s right. What the hell?
“Viv, I’ve known you for over a year. We’ve been married for almost five weeks. For pretty much the entire length of our acquaintance, you’ve told me how important your career is to you. I have never once heard you mention that you wanted a family. Can you possibly expand on that statement?”
The weird vibe went even more haywire and he had the impression she regretted what she’d said. Then, she dropped her head into her hands, covering her eyes for a long beat. The longer she hid from him, the more alarmed he got. What was she afraid he’d see?
“Not much to expand on,” she mumbled to her palms. “I like cupcakes, but I want a husband and a family, too.”
Which was pretty much what she’d just said, only rephrased in such a way as to still not make any sense. “Let me ask this a different way. Why have you never told me this? I thought we were friends.”
Yeah, that was a little bitterness fighting to get free.
How well did he really know the woman he’d married if this was just now coming out after all this time? After all the intimacies that they’d shared?
The lick of temper uncurling inside was completely foreign. He’d asked her to marry him strictly because he’d been sure—positive even—that she wasn’t the slightest bi
t interested in having a long-term relationship.
Otherwise, he never would have asked her to do this favor. Never would have let himself start to care more than he should have.
His anger fizzled. He could have been more forthcoming with his own truths but hadn’t for reasons that he didn’t feel that self-righteous about all at once.
“I never told you because it...never came up.” Guilt flickered in her tone and when she lifted her face from her hands, it was there in her expression, too. “I’m only telling you now because you asked.”
Actually, he hadn’t. He’d been sorting through her comments about the marketing consultant he’d hired, desperately trying to figure out if Viv and Franca just didn’t get along or if the references he’d received regarding the consultant’s brilliance had been embellished. Instead, she’d dropped a whole different issue in his lap. One that was knifing through his chest like a dull machete.
Viv wanted a real husband. A family. This fake marriage was in her way. Jonas was in her way. It was shattering. Far more than he would have said.
He didn’t want to lose her. But neither could he keep her, not at the expense of giving her what she really wanted. Obviously he should have given more weight to the conversation they’d had at his parents’ house about love being a good basis for marriage. Clearly that was what she wanted from a husband.
And he couldn’t give her that, nor was she asking him to. He’d made a promise that he’d never let a woman have enough sway to affect his emotions. Judging by the swirl of confusion beneath his breastbone, it was already too late for that.
If she just hadn’t said anything. He could have kept pretending that the solution to all his problems was to keep her busy until he figured out how to make all his inappropriate feelings go away.
But this...he couldn’t ignore what he knew was the right thing to do.
“Viv.” Vising his forehead between his fingers, he tried like hell to figure out how they’d gotten so off track. “You’ve been telling me for over a year that your career sucked up all your time and that’s why you didn’t date. How were you planning to meet said husband?”
“I don’t know,” she shot back defensively. “And cupcakes are important to me. It’s just not the only thing, and this marathon of business-plan goals kind of solidified that fact for me. I love the idea of sharing my recipes with a bigger block of customers. But not at the expense of the kind of marriage I think would make me happy. I want—need—to back off.”
Back off. From him, she meant. Jonas blinked as something wrenched loose in his chest, and it felt an awful lot like she’d gripped his heart in her fingers, then twisted until it fell out. “I understand. You deserve to have the kind of marriage you want and I can’t give that to you.”
Her face froze, going so glacial all at once he scarcely recognized her.
“You’ve never thought about having a real marriage?” she asked in a whisper.
Not once. Until now. And now it was all he could think about. What was a real marriage to her? Love, honor and cherish for the rest of her days? He could do two out of three. Would she accept that? Then he could keep her friendship, keep this marriage and...how crappy was that, to even contemplate how far he could take this without breaking his word to anyone? It was ridiculous. They should have hashed out this stuff long ago. Like before they got married. And he would have if she’d told him that she harbored secret dreams of hearts and googly eyes. Too bad that kind of stuff led to emotional evisceration when everything went south.
Like now.
