by Ali Parker
She threw her hands in the air and glared at me, the first time she had looked me in the eye since she had climbed out of that car.
“What do you want?” she demanded. “Seriously, what can I do for you?”
“I want you to finish out the rest of the contract,” I replied smoothly, carefully, playing professional. As long as I kept feelings out of this, I might be able to convince her this was the best choice for the two of us. She rolled her eyes.
“I never signed it, remember?” she shot back, and I closed my eyes for a second, ignoring the attitude in her voice.
“Yeah, I remember,” I replied, crossing my arms across my chest. “But remember why you got into this in the first place? Because you needed the money?”
She pressed her lips together and glared at me.
“Plus, Toby misses you,” I cocked an eyebrow, and I saw something in her soften.
“That’s pretty fucking low,” she snapped. “Using my own pet against me.”
“Well, it was pretty low of you to just walk out after what you told me last night,” I countered. “You know how much of a mess you’ve made of my life?”
“Not my problem,” she muttered, and she tried to brush by me again. She had her key in the lock by the time I spoke again.
“Just the contract,” I promised her. “That’s it.”
She paused.
“We’re still married, after all,” I reminded her. “And we’ll just get tied up in court as it is. Given that we already consummated.”
She closed her eyes, shook her head, and let out a groan of annoyance. She turned back to me.
“Can’t you see this is a bad idea?” she implored me. “You’re a smart guy. You have to get that.”
“Yeah, and I’m not asking you to be anything other than what we agreed on at first,” I assured her. “My stand-in. I’ve already introduced you around. You know what kind of trouble I would be in if I tried to call things off now? If I told them you were out of the picture already?”
“That’s not my problem,” she repeated but with less certainty than before. I could tell she was seriously wavering. She needed the money. She looked up at her condo as though reminding herself of what her life had been like before I had come into it.
“Come on, my nonna’s already asking after you,” I chided her. It was true. She’d called while I was at work that day, demanding to know what I was doing working on a Sunday and insisting I brought Amaya up to see the family again. If I hadn’t just had to deal with her walking out on me, I would have taken it as a good sign that my nonna wanted more of her. As it was, I was having to push hard and fast to get her back on board before any of my family noticed she was missing.
“I already had to spend the afternoon with your sister,” she shot back. “What makes you think I’m going to spend the rest of my day with your family?”
“What do you mean? You were with Cleo?” I furrowed my brow, and she nodded.
“Yeah, I was,” she shot back. “She found me, and she dragged me out for lunch with her friends. I had to make up all this shit about you and me and the relationship and … ugh, it was horrible. I just want to get in and get some rest, and I don’t want to be having this conversation right now.”
“Fucking Cleo,” I muttered. Typical. She could well have tanked my chances of getting something to work with Amaya, no doubt tracking her down to make sure she was an appropriate addition to the family. Oh, the irony. If she only knew the state Amaya and I were in right now.
“I’ll keep my sister away from you, don’t worry.” I waved my hand. “Now that she’s sated her curiosity, she’ll probably lose interest anyway.”
“Oh, so she won’t want to keep me around for my sparkling personality?” Amaya arched an eyebrow, this close to playful, and I chuckled.
“That’s not what I meant,” I replied, and the barest hint of a smile passed across her face. “I just meant it won’t be like that in the future. I’ll keep her away from you, for good this time.”
“Yeah, she seems pretty strong-willed,” she pointed out. “I don’t think you’re going to get much of a say in it.”
“We’ll see about that,” I replied, and I saw that flicker of a smile pass across her face once more. It wasn’t much, but I would take what I could get with both hands.
“You should come back to my apartment,” I coaxed her. “I know it seems like a lot but think about this. You don’t want to turn this down. Think of everything you could do with the money, for Jolene, for your career.”
I should have gotten her to sign a contract with all the money I’d already put out, but I couldn’t do it. Fuck my life if it blew up in my face again, but I couldn’t.
She looked over her shoulder at the condo and winced as though remembering how tiny it was in there, remembering all the space she had in my apartment. I wanted her back there, filling the space. I still wasn’t sure exactly what it was that made me want to keep her around, but it was there and undeniable, and I never found myself lacking what I wanted.
“I need you to be the buffer between me and my dad’s new wife,” I went on, pushing hard, knowing I was close to getting what I wanted so badly. “I need someone there to make sure I can actually remember her name. She likes you better than me, remember?”
“You’re a total asshole, you know that?” She rounded on me again, but there was defeat in her voice. She knew how this was going to go, just the same way I did. I grinned.
“Sure, I do,” I replied. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to walk away from you just like that. We’re married, remember?”
“Yeah, how could I forget?” She sighed heavily. She was wavering hard. It would only take a tiny push to get her over the edge and back to my place where we could figure things out more definitively once and for all.
“Come home,” I implored her, and I reached out to take her hand. It was a soft touch, nothing sexual, but I still felt this wave of—was it relief? Desire? Attraction? Affection? Some mix of all the above? Whatever it was, it washed over me suddenly and unarguably, and I knew she felt it too. I could see it written on her face, the reflection of my feelings in her. She sighed again and then whipped her hand away from mine and took a step toward me.
“All right,” she finally agreed. “I’ll come back with you, but we need to lay down a few ground rules.”
“Anything.” I held my hands up, a punch of triumph in my head. I had done it. I had just landed the hardest deal I’d ever had to work for, and the sense of achievement was impossible to deny.
“No more sex,” she started, and she poked her finger into my chest. “No nothing. No flirting, no touching, no being cute, not when it’s just the two of us. I can put on a show around your family, but that’s it, all right?”
“I get it.” I nodded at once. “Anything else?”
She stepped back and regarded me for a moment, putting the pieces together in her head, figuring out the best way to approach this.
“This is strictly a business deal,” she went on at last. “Nothing more than that. I’ll stay at your place, but I want that bedroom all to myself, and I don’t want you thinking for a second that what happened that night is going to happen again any time soon. Do you get it?”
“Sure.” I cocked my head at her. “I mean, can I just remind you that you were the one who took your clothes off that evening?”
She flushed bright red, and her eyes flashed with annoyance. She glanced away.
“Yeah, I’m very aware of that,” she muttered. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“I’m just trying to say I’m not going to put the moves on you,” I assured her. “And that you were the one who started things last time. Like I said, sex is up to you. Always.”
“And I’m saying I don’t want it anymore,” she replied haughtily, but her neck was still flushed red from my comment. She had to be just playing at being above it all.
“Sure.” I nodded, playing along for now. I had a feeling she might
change her mind on that, just like she had done the last time, but I wasn’t going to even think about pushing my luck. “Come on. Let’s get your shit into the car and head up to my nonna’s place.”
“Do we have to go so soon?” She frowned. “I wanted to stop by and see Toby first.”
“You can do that as soon as we’re finished with my family,” I promised. “But we don’t have time to waste. Not a word about anything that’s happened, all right? Just play it cool.”
“Yeah, I get it,” she shot back as she went to her car to start grabbing her stuff from it. “Come on, help me with these groceries. I need to get them out of the back before they go everywhere.”
“Sure thing.” I went to help her, and I felt as calm as I had in what felt like weeks. It had only been a few hours since she’d walked out on me, since she’d changed everything by telling me she loved me. Now, she was coming home, and I couldn’t be happier. I paused for a moment, watching her as she hurriedly shifted her stuff from her car to mine, and grinned. There wasn’t a deal around that I couldn’t pin down. Not even if that deal was Amaya.
27
I pretended to be asleep in the car as we pulled away from the house. I just didn’t want to talk any more, not about what I’d just agreed to, not about what I’d said when I’d walked out the night before, not any of it. Even though I was exhausted and could probably have used the rest, I found my mind racing at a mile a minute as I tried to make sense of what the fuck I had just done.
Why had I taken him back so easily? He had pretty much just had to turn up on my doorstep, pull those sad eyes, and remind me of how little money I had and how much I needed this and I was crawling back to him. Maybe not crawling exactly. I had laid down some ground rules at least, something to keep him at bay, but even as I sat there right afterward, I was doubting my ability to keep my attraction and my feelings for him at a decent low. I just wanted him, wanted this, wanted everything that came with being with a man with his kind of status and attitude and, fuck, all of it.
It was for Jolene. That was what I kept telling myself. It was for her, first and foremost, and nothing else mattered but her. We had struggled so much over the years, just trying to keep ourselves above water, and now that this man had come along into my life and offered to make it all better, I had to take him up on his offer, no matter how weird it made me feel. He was right. The kind of life I could live when I had the money in my hand after the year was up would be so different than the one I had before. I just needed to sign the contract and accept my fate. What was a year, after all? In twenty, thirty years’ time, I would barely even remember any of this. Kristo would be a blip on my memory, a funny story I told my friends when I was drunk. He was just a guy I would be able to move on from soon enough, a guy I wasn’t going to get emotionally or physically involved with beyond the very bare minimum.
It would have been so much easier if I hated him. If I’d detested him or even just found him bland or unattractive, all of this would have been so much easier to handle. I could have gone through the motions of this, even built up a mild fondness for him, and then we could have parted ways as friends by the time this was all over and done with. But as it was, I couldn’t stop thinking about the chemistry we shared, about the way he’d fucked me on that counter, the way he’d held me so close, the way he’d kissed me like he owned me and never wanted me to forget it. But then, on the other hand, there was the way he treated Jolene with such kindness, how thoughtful and sweet he could be to me when he wanted to. He was the whole package, and yet he didn’t want anything like what we were pretending to share. And that hurt more than I cared to admit. I was paying penance for my sins, but I didn’t remember what I’d done wrong in the first place.
I kept my eyes firmly shut the entire drive over, despite that I could feel him shooting looks in my direction every now and then. A couple of times, he murmured my name, checking if I was awake, but I kept my eyes firmly shut and ignored him. I didn’t want to talk, not about any of it, and he was going to just have to deal with that for the time being.
We arrived at his grandmother’s place, and I opened my eyes to find myself looking at the familiar columns and over-the-top architecture of the enormous house once again.
“Is Cleo going to be here?” I asked as I stretched. I didn’t want to have to face her again so soon. Kristo shook his head.
“No, you’re safe for now,” he assured me. “She’s down in the city tonight, probably getting drunk with all her friends.”
I thought back to the invite that had been extended to me and wondered if I should have taken it. I wouldn’t have been at home to find Kristo waiting for me, to agree to what he wanted from me. But I had a feeling he would have waited all the time it took for me to come back down there. Resistance was futile. He was a master of the craft, a champion at getting anyone to do anything he wanted. I should have given up as soon as I saw him there and accepted that I was going back to him.
He took my hand in his as we went to the door, and I felt that jolt that I’d had back at my condo when he’d done the same thing. It had been different then. Hell, it had felt something like a genuine expression of affection, but I knew that this time around, it was nothing more than a way for him to keep up the game in front of his family. I didn’t blame him. This was what I’d signed up for, after all, but it still stung, knowing that he could slide into a place of pretending to love me and value me and need me so quickly.
“Just act normal,” he murmured to me, his breath warm on my skin as he leaned in close. He knocked on the door and waited for someone to answer. One of his cousins pulled it open and gestured for us to come inside. Just like that, it had begun all over again.
I was pretty sure I did a solid job keeping up the front that the two of us had built together. But this time, I was building up a front of my own, as well. The last time I had been here, those lines between reality and unreality had been so blurred, too blurred, as I’d found myself seduced by his sweetness, by the way his family treated me and the way they seemed to embrace me. But now I just sat there and quietly ate the food and let Kristo do the talking, ignoring his hand where it came to rest on my upper back, ignoring the way his fingers traced casual shapes on my neck the whole time. Did he know how torturous this was for me? Did he know how much it hurt, to have him play the loving husband but know we were returning to separate beds and separate lives as soon as this was over? I was going to keep my heart locked up tight because if I let a man like him near it, it was going to shatter.
“You should call me when you get a chance.” Karen swooped in and planted a kiss on my cheek as we headed for the door. “I’d love to spend some time with you. Maybe a shopping trip?”
“Maybe.” I managed to smile back. These people were being so welcoming to me, so kind. They didn’t know there was a ticking clock on this whole mess. I would be out of their lives soon enough, yet I had to sit here and smile and nod and pretend for a fucking second like it didn’t tear me up to play these kinds of lies, to make like I was anything other than a prop Kristo could use to pretend to be the person his family wanted him to be.
I let out a sigh of relief as soon as it was over and the door was shut behind us, and I hurried down to the car. He unlocked it as I reached it, and I scrambled inside and wrapped my arms around myself, feeling dirty.
“Are you all right?” Kristo asked, reaching out and touching my shoulder gently. His touch soothed me, even though I hated to admit that.
“I’m fine,” I replied tautly. “I just want to get back to the apartment, that’s all.”
“Me too,” he agreed, and we pulled away and started the long drive back to the city. I could feel myself beginning to unwind, but at the same time, my brain was still tense as hell, rushing over everything I’d done that day, wondering if it had been enough to convince them.
“You did well today,” Kristo assured me. I looked out the window, at the trees whipping by outside, my mouth turned downward. I felt
like a fraud. I didn’t like feeling that way. Even as I tried to focus on Jolene, on the memory of her and how much better her life had become since she had moved into that home, I struggled to hone in on anything but how guilty I felt for giving in like this. I knew I was making a bad choice, knew I was letting myself fall even further for a man who didn’t love me back, but he was right. I didn’t have any other way to support myself or Jolene in any significant way. And he had agreed to my rules, so maybe I could actually control it this time, keep my feelings in check.
“I’m not sure it’s the kind of thing I want to do well at,” I muttered, and he fell silent for the rest of the journey back to the apartment. No doubt, he could feel the conflict coming off me in waves and didn’t want to stir it up.
As soon as we arrived back, I went to find Toby. He had barely even noticed that I was gone. But there was something different. Somehow Kristo had replaced his cage with one that was much bigger than the one he’d had before, plenty more room for him to roam around in. It was full of twigs and logs for him to scramble on, and he seemed happier than ever. I lifted him carefully out of the cage, and he scurried his way up my arm and onto my shoulder, his whiskers tickling my skin. I closed my eyes. At least he was something familiar, something I could hook into, a reminder that I could take care of something without compromising my morals.
“You like his new cage?” Kristo asked, leaning up against the door and watching us. I turned to him and nodded.
“Yeah, but you don’t have to get anything for him,” I told him firmly. “You don’t have to do anything for me now. You know that, right? And besides, when the hell did you get this done?”
“I just wanted to make sure both of you were comfortable.” He grinned. “That’s all, and it was late.” He shrugged and smiled.
“We are comfortable. Thanks,” I replied. “Can you give me a minute? I want to unpack my stuff again.”
“Sure.” He paused in the doorway a moment longer, as though there was something he wanted to say, but then he turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. I carefully lifted Toby back into his cage and went to take my stuff out of the bag I’d pulled from my car. I couldn’t believe I was back here. When I’d walked out the night before, I had been dead certain this was the end of it, that I couldn’t find a way to mesh my morals with what the hell I was doing with Kristo. But here I was, back again, and now I had to find some way to get through the next ten months unscathed in both my heart and my head.
