Buying Love (Marriage of Convenience With Twins Romance)

by Faye, Amy

  If they weren't going out very long, she either took the girls or she stayed in the room. There wasn't much reason to leave, except for a moment at a time, anyways.

  Sarah let out a long breath and forced her nerves to settle. It was going to be fine. She checked the baby monitor again to make sure that it was sending a signal, and then she looked in the mirror over the vanity and checked to make sure that she looked halfway decent. If there weren't any photos taken, she might be able to pass herself off as reasonable-looking, and that was the best she could hope for in the circumstances.

  Hopefully, if they decided they did want a photo, then she'd be allowed time to get herself done up.

  Then, unable to put it off any longer, she tucked the baby monitor in the pocket of her dress and started down the steps. A feminine-looking man, his hair long and brushed back and wearing a dark blue suit, rose to meet her with a toothy smile. "Sarah Bryant?"

  "How can I help you? Did you need to get in touch with my husband? He's at work, so..."

  "No, no. Don't be silly! We're here for you, silly." He smiled at her with a twinkle in his eye to let her know that he was only teasing. "I'm with the Detroit Free Press, and with the ground-breaking on your husband's new luxury high-rise, we thought that we'd do a little piece on his new bride."

  "Oh," she said. She wasn't looking forward to this, but it had always been a reality that she knew was possible. She wanted to be left out of it, but there was no real hope of that. Not forever. If only it could have been a little longer.

  "Is this a bad time? We can reschedule." His eyebrows shot up sympathetically, but he wasn't exactly reaching for his pocket-book, either.

  "Uh, I'm not done up or anything."

  "Oh, we'll get photos later. That's no big deal. Just a few questions, and then we'll be out of your hair. Deal?"

  "Uh, can I refuse to answer?"

  "Of course," the guy said. He settled back into the sofa and lounged, looking at her. Dave stood off to the side of the room and watched them. It gave Sarah a little bit of comfort. At the very least, she could hope that she wasn't going to be ambushed with some kind of crazy questions.

  The guy reached across. "Oh, I'm sorry. I should have introduced myself. Joseph Stein. Do you mind if I record the conversation for my notes?"

  "I guess that's fine," she said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a phone with a bright blue case around it, and tapped a few times. When he set it down on the coffee table, there was a big red button in the center of a white circle, and the word 'recording' across the top in big red letters.

  "Okay, so. Where do we start?" He laughed and fished into his pocket. "Just kidding, I've got a list."

  She didn't laugh. The truth was that she was downright terrified of the whole thing. If she thought that she could get away with refusing to answer any questions, she'd have done it. But it would have been news all on its own, she supposed. She'd married a man with ambition, and that meant that she was part of his life and part of his career, even if she wasn't happy about it.

  "So let's start at the beginning. You got any family? Anything interesting or juicy there?"

  "My parents were from Monroe."

  "County, or city?"

  "Both," she said. "But I guess it doesn't matter that much. My mother died when I was only a little girl, and my father died not that long after. I was mostly raised by my aunt and uncle."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "I don't think they'd want to be in the paper, though."

  "Okay," he said. He nodded at her like that was fine. "Whereabout, though? Nice neighborhood?"

  Sarah made a smile that was closer to a grimace. "Not really. Around the Brightmoor area, I guess?"

  He nodded. "Rough part of town."

  "I did my best," she told him. It was a rough part of town. That was absolutely true. She'd gotten by, the same way most people get by. There were plenty of people who thought that it was all an excuse to start committing crimes, tearing up the neighborhood.

  Most people, though, just kept their head down, didn't piss anyone off if they could help it, and let things go the way they seemed like they were going to go. There wasn't much else that anyone could do.

  "Anything interesting there?"

  "Not really," she said. "You'd probably know anything I could tell you. It's not a good part of town, but I didn't have anything to do with that. Just lived there."

  "So, I guess just for my own knowledge, as much as anything, how come you never, I dunno, tried to leave?"

  "I did," she said flatly. "But then again, I was six when I moved in, and when I was eighteen, I left to stay in a dormitory at University of Michigan, so..."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Graduated high school five years ago, now. Went to U of M a few months after, same as most people."

  "Finished?"

  "Finished in four years. Bachelors in Design."

  "So I guess that's where you and Daniel mesh together, then. You meet him there?"

  "No," she said. "I met him after that."

  "Short engagement, then," the guy asked.

  "Short engagement, yeah." He didn't know the half of it, and with a little luck, maybe she would be able to avoid letting him in on it.

  "Uh, let's see. Any regrets?"

  None that she could talk about. "I regret not buying stock in Apple," she said. "Buy three stocks as a ten year old, and with some smart investing I'd have a good little bit of money now."

  The guy laughed.

  "So then, I guess, that leaves one last question, then."

  "Okay."

  "Two parter: first, why were you suing Cole Greer for child support, and second, if he was the father, then why wasn't it awarded?"

  22

  There was a storm waiting at home for Dan Bryant, but when he was sitting at work, he was thinking how well things had gone. He wasn't a man prone to smiling, at best ill-tempered. But things were going swimmingly at the work-site, and things were looking up. He had three more, smaller contracts lined up that would essentially pay for the overtime that he was going to be racking up over the next six months.

  Every single day wasn't a dream, but this once, he was more than willing to believe that things might just about work out. So when he pulled into the driveway, tossed Dave the keys to have him bring it around to the garage, and set inside, there wasn't any sign that anything was wrong.

  Hell, they could probably justify calling it a special occasion and go hog-wild, someplace real nice. It would be good to get Sarah and the girls out of the house, at least.

  He opened the door and called to the house. "I'm home!"

  No response. Calling out wasn't his usual pattern; whether or not someone would call back was far from certain. But it gave him an odd feeling, regardless. He wrote it off.

  Then he stripped his jacket off, checked the kitchen to see if anything was cooking, which it wasn't, and started up the stairs.

  "Babe?" No answer again. A thousand nightmare scenarios flashed through his head, one after the other. He took the stairs two at a time. "Sarah?"

  She still didn't answer. The bedroom door was at the far end of the hall. It was the first place to check, if there were trouble. The nightmare scenarios flashed through his mind again. Some distant part of him thought that a tragedy would play well with the press, and that part of him was squashed out in an instant, horrified.

  He wrenched the door open, hard, and then let out a long, low breath. She sat on the bed, same as she always had. There was a book in her lap most of the time, a book that she read aloud from when she thought that Dan couldn't hear. He let her continue to think he didn't hear.

  This time, though, she was just sitting. Just sitting and scowling and staring at the wall.

  "Are you okay?"

  She didn't look at him, as still as a statue, staring at the wall. Then, slowly, she drew in a deep breath, raised her eyebrows, and then huffed it all out at once.

  "Sarah? What's wrong?"

  "I don'
t want to talk about it," she said, finally. "It's been a long day."

  "Are you okay? Are the girls..."

  "The girls are fine. They're down."

  "Oh." He could feel his heart thumping in his chest, hard. He hadn't noticed it before, with the surge of adrenaline, but as he started to relax he could feel the remaining effects of his panic that continued to build up.

  He leaned against the wall, pressed a palm into his forehead and closed his eyes.

  "God, you had me worried."

  "Well, that's something, at least," she said. Like she was mad at him. But why? What could he possibly have done? He wasn't even at home the whole day. He was working. Not least of all for her, for that matter, so it didn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

  "If you're mad at me, can you at least tell me what I did?"

  "Nope." He opened his eyes and watched her for a long moment.

  It occurred to him suddenly that he'd seen her in a wide variety of situations, but she'd never been angry with him. Not really. There hadn't been a lot of time for her to get angry with him; by the time they were married, they might have been called 'acquaintances.'

  A month later and apparently, they were getting ready for their first real fight. He swallowed. Fights were to be expected. Nobody was going to live in the same house, sleep in the same bed, for months and months without a fight. He repeated it over and over again in his head, until it sounded halfway true.

  The fight itself wasn't a problem. Absolutely expected. The problem was that he had no idea what the fight was supposed to be about.

  "I'm sorry if I did something wrong," he said. It sounded like a good start.

  "Maybe it's not all about you, did you ever think of that?"

  "You seem pretty upset with me."

  "Just go away, okay? Leave me alone, will you?"

  "I'm not going to do that," he said, his voice low. "I can't. Not until I know what happened. I can't fix it if you don't tell me."

  "You don't say?" She gave him an acidic look, like he was saying something he should have realized a long time ago, and clearly hadn't.

  "What's the problem? At least tell me that much."

  "Dave knows. Just go talk to him. It's easier that way, anyways, don't you think? You can go out and talk to your people, and they'll tell you everything you want to hear. Then you can just leave me alone with the girls, like usual, and go do whatever it is that you're doing all night. Go, I don't know, fuck some bimbos or something."

  His jaw tightened and cocked off to one side. His teeth made an uncomfortable scraping against each other.

  "You don't like my hours, is that it?"

  "No, Dan, it's not about your hours. You're right, I don't like them, but that's your own business and I don't really care enough to try to stop you. You do what you have to do, right? So that's fine. I just wish I could reach you, maybe, if something were to come up."

  "I don't have any missed calls," he said; he reached for his phone even as he said the words, a vaguely sick feeling in his gut at the idea that he probably could have missed a call without noticing it. Zero missed calls, though. Nothing to worry about from the beginning.

  She let out a long breath, slid down in the bed and covered up her face. "I didn't call."

  Dan let out an uncertain laugh. "If you don't call, of course I'm not going to answer. I feel like that's pretty obvious."

  "Thanks," she said. There was that acidic tone again. "I didn't realize."

  "I let Dave off for the night," Dan said. "So you're going to have to tell me what happened today yourself."

  "Someone came to talk to me today."

  "Someone? Here?" Dan pinched his lips together and gave that some thought. Who would have come here?

  "Someone from the Free Press. I guess they're doing a big story on the high-rise."

  "Yeah, but I don't see why they'd come around here."

  "They wanted to know about Cole. About the, ah, 'dust-up' at the party the other night."

  "What did you tell them?"

  "I didn't tell them anything, Dan, but I'm not an idiot! If they're asking me to my face, then everyone knows, it's just a matter of time until my whole story shakes loose, and then I'll be..." She bit off the rest and shook her head.

  "You'll be what?"

  "You know exactly what I'll be, so don't pretend you don't."

  "Tell me what's got you worried."

  "I'm going to be useless for you, I'll tell you that much. You're going to drop me the minute that a scandal touches me, and like." Sarah huffed again. "I don't even blame you for it, but I can't have that. I don't have any options here."

  Dan frowned. He'd drop her? She thought that? And then it occurred to him that he'd never given any indication that he wouldn't. She was perfectly reasonable for thinking that he would. If anything, she were more reasonable for thinking he would than he was for thinking that she would still be a useful social tool when she was tainted by scandal.

  But the thought hadn't even crossed his mind. Even now, it sounded strange and alien to think that he'd get rid of her. Even though it was, without a doubt, the 'smart' play. He frowned.

  "I'm not going to dump you. You said so yourself, I'm not allowed out just because it's convenient for me, right?"

  She looked up at that. He'd hoped that she'd have eyes full of sorrowful tears and she'd need a big hug, and then he could get back onto the path of having an almost-uninterrupted good day.

  "Oh, so now it's about what you're 'allowed' to do?" Her eyes were sharp and angrier than they'd been.

  "Sarah, I didn't mean it like that."

  "Sure you didn't. You wouldn't be allowed to mean it like that, would you? Your bitch wife wouldn't let you, because she's too tied up in making sure that you're tied down. That you follow all the rules. Is that what you mean?"

  Dan took a deep breath. "I don't have any answers for you, Sarah. When you're ready for supper, I'll be downstairs. Think about what you'd like to eat, okay?"

  He let out a long breath, gave her one last look in the hopes that he would find her calming down and acting like a rational human being, and then started down the stairs.

  23

  Sarah was acting crazy. She'd never been particularly nuts-o before, but this was a bold and exciting step forward for her, into the world of acting like a crazy bitch, and she wasn't exactly sure that she was enjoying how it tasted so far.

  Then again, she wasn't sure about how she felt about any of this. From top to bottom, it had almost certainly been a bad idea from the beginning. A bad idea that she'd signed on to for all the wrong reasons, and only now was she starting to see the downsides.

  There were other things, of course. Other concerns that she wasn't ready to voice. Wasn't ready to think about voicing. Sarah's eyes shut tight and she tried to think it all through rationally. It wasn't his fault that she'd been ambushed with a bunch of questions that she wasn't remotely ready answer.

  Hell, Mr. Nice Teeth wasn't even that aggressive about it. She'd refused to answer, and he'd backed right off. Just like he had promised that he would, if she became uncomfortable with any part of the interview.

  That was what made the whole thing feel worst of all. The way that he'd just pushed past it all.

  She let out a long breath, rubbed at her face. She'd lashed out, so she could check that off the list. She wasn't going to have to keep going through her day thinking that nobody knew how she felt.

  Hell, she'd made it abundantly clear exactly how she felt, exactly what her problems were, and there was no mistaking that Dan knew them. If there was something to be done, and it was entirely possible that there was, then he would be able to do it.

  The only question now was how she was supposed to make it all go away, and that wasn't a question that she had an easy answer to. Sarah let out a long breath. Then she took another deep breath in, held it for a minute, and let it out again. Slow, steady, even. Calm.

  She forced herself out of bed. Her body hurt. She'
d been in that position for hours, and every time that she tried to move for anything that wasn't related to the girls, her mind had started screaming that moving was off-limits.

  Hell, she'd built her own prison and then insisted to herself that she stay in it. The idea that it might have made her feel even worse wasn't exactly a foreign concept. It wasn't just likely, it was certain. And yet, she'd still picked a fight.

  She padded barefoot down the stairs, still in her pajamas. The sound of the television from the den drew her attention over that way. The room was dark except for the television, which illuminated the silhouette of a husband-shaped man. Sarah knocked on the door-frame.

  "Dan?"

  "You feeling better, babe?"

  "Yeah, I guess I was just a little upset."

  He didn't turn away from the television; it had a commercial of a no-nonsense looking woman announcing that she'd just finished cleaning the house and she wasn't going to have any back-talk about keeping it clean.

  He rose and turned, clicking the remote to turn the screen off almost as an afterthought.

  "You hungry?"

  "I could eat." She hadn't been hungry since breakfast, and that was almost twelve hours ago. She felt like she was never going to be hungry again, because that was an emotion that came from a totally different place than the fear that was eating at her gut. But she needed to eat.

  "You want to take the girls, or you want me to call someone?"

  She closed her eyes and tried not to think too hard about the answer. The truth was that she hated going out without them. But there was also the fact that they weren't Dan's children, and that had to be a topic worth discussing for someone, another way that they could get at her husband through her.

  "I want you to tell me what you want."

  "I don't want to wake them up, if it'll be a problem."

  "If they don't get up soon, they're not going to sleep at all tonight, so it's probably better that we give them a problem now, than they give us a problem later."