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Daniel looks at me curiously, as though he’s trying to figure me out. “Is that the kind of woman you think I want?”
“Well, I don’t really know because you’re about as communicative as a pet rock.” I fold my arms across my chest, defensiveness tightening my muscles. “Seriously, for someone who’s willing to buy himself a fiancée, you sure seem to resist anything that might help me do my job properly.”
“If I’d wanted a ‘sit still, smile quietly’ woman, then I have failed miserably in choosing you, haven’t I?”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” I reply primly.
“You should.” He stares at me for a moment, dark eyes roaming my face and making my body slowly heat as though he’s cranking the dial to my internal thermostat.
“I want to know what I’m walking into tonight. They might not quiz me but if you want anyone toactuallybelieve we’re a couple, then some sense of family dynamics would be helpful,” I say. “If it wasn’t painfully obvious the night we met, I sometimes put my foot in my mouth.”
“Will you stop prodding if I give you something?”
“Yes.”Maybe.
“My father cheated on my mother for years until they divorced, which I’m sure you were able to gather when you looked me up. They would fight, but she ultimately turned a blind eye so long as nobody outside the family knew.” He snorts, making his stance on his mother’s actions very clear. “He brought women into our family home and she didn’t put a stop to it. Eventually they divorced. We didn’t hear from him for several years, because he wanted to have a ‘clean slate’ with his new wife and that didn’t involve Marc or me. Then he started trying to contact us again out of the blue when I was about eighteen.”
“That’s horrible.”
“I haven’t spoken to him in years.” His expression is so blank and so careful, I can only assume there’s something painful being masked inside him. “And I have no desire to.”
“Okay, duly noted. Don’t mention your father.”
“Needless to say, I have no desire to follow in my parents’ footsteps, so this engagement will be a shock to everyone.” He pauses, looking off like his mind is lost in the past. “I have no idea why my parents got married in the first place.”
“You don’t think they loved each other back then?” I ask.
“Possibly, in the early days. But that clearly didn’t last, did it?” His voice has a sharp, cynical edge. “That’s the thing about love, it’s not deserving of the pedestal people place it on.”
I bite back my instinct to disagree. Even with my mother’s negative experience and all the pressure she’s put on me to get married so a man can “save” me, I still believe in love. Real, passionate love. I used to spend hours looking at old photo albums of my grandparents when they were young. The way my grandfather looked at my grandmother—like she was the only thing in the world that mattered—I want that. And I want someone to give it to in return.
“I understand why you would have that opinion,” I say. And I do, even if I don’t agree.
“I expected you to jump to love’s defence,” he says, raising an eyebrow.
“Because I’m a woman?”
“Because you’re a romantic.”
“And what do you basethatassessment on?”
“Anyone else wouldn’t care about winning my family over, given this is a business arrangement. But you want them to like you. And you’re worried about lying.”
“Doesn’t that make me a good person rather than a romantic?”
“It means you have a rose-coloured glasses view of the world, which is inherently romantic.”
Daniel seems like the kind of man who once he’s made up his mind, nothing short of a gun to his head will change it. And really, why should I care what he thinks of me? As he said, this is a business arrangement.
“How on earth are you going to convince the world that a romantic like me fell in love with a cynic like you?” I ask with a teasing tone.
“I’ve got a PR manager to help with that.” He smooths his hands down the front of his jeans, and I track the movement with my eyes. Everything about him screams self-assurance—from his posture, to the firm grip he has on every conversation, to the way he looks at me with unwavering eye contact, no matter how I prod him. “All you have to do is look like you’re enamoured.”
I try to resist a smirk. “I might need some practise. You haven’t exactly given me much to be enamoured by.”
Liar.
“Fine. Let’s practise,” he says, his tone issuing a challenge. Clearly he’s not content to let me do all the prodding.
