The Husband Game: An Arranged Marriage Romance

by Penny Wylder

  “Everything okay here?” A man in an honest-to-goodness suit strides toward us. I figure he must be one of the professors at the school. He’s all Midwestern crew-cut handsomeness—a strong jawline, blond crew cut, and the kind of gray-blue eyes that could pierce your soul.

  Right now, those eyes have fixated on my would-be assailant, narrowed to a dangerous point.

  “Actually, no,” I say, before the other guy can make up some bullshit about our interaction being just fine. “I was working on an art piece, when this boy stole my painting and insinuated I’d have to do something untoward to get it back.”

  Untoward? Who am I? Now I really do sound like I’ve been reading too many issues of Today’s Woman.

  But if my handsome rescuer notices the weird speech, he doesn’t comment. He just turns on the creepy guy, grimace intensifying. “Give it back to her. Now.”

  Creep scowls, but does as he’s told, thrusting the canvas in my direction, so I can move forward and snatch it from his grip. “I was lying about it being beautiful,” he tells me. “A third grader could have painted something nicer.”

  “Yeah, well, a third grader would know more about the proper way to treat a woman,” New Guy snaps before I can so much as open my mouth. “Apologize to her, or I swear to God, I’ll snap your neck right here, Tyler.”

  Creep—Tyler, I guess—grits his teeth. For a moment, it looks like he might argue. But his gaze drops to New Guy’s hands. Very large hands, currently balled into intimidating fists. And I guess Tyler must have seen New Guy go to town on some other misbehaving student before, because he relents.

  “I’m sorry,” Tyler says, more to the air somewhere above my head than to me, strictly speaking. But hey, it’s more than I expected to get out of something like that.

  “Do you want to report this?” New Guy asks me. “I’ll help if you’d like. I’m willing to witness.”

  I sigh. If I was still a student, I would. But since I’m here on false pretenses in the first place… “As long as he never comes near me again,” I say. Tyler’s already backing away, palms raised before himself in a gesture of surrender.

  New Guy watches him retreat with a scowl that could have burned down half the buildings around us, if you measured the intensity on a heat scale. “If you don’t mind,” he says softly, “I’d like to report it anyway. I don’t have to name you. I can just say an unnamed student.”

  “I’m not a student,” I say, relaxing just a little now that Tyler is vanishing from sight around the far corner of the engineering building. “But if you want to report it, please do. I think that would be good.” I manage my first smile since Tyler’s onslaught. “Thank you, by the way.”

  “For what?” New Guy turns back to me, looking incredulous. “I only did what any decent person ought to, when they see a situation like that unfolding.”

  And yet no one else out here stopped. No one even thought to help me, until he did.

  My heart skips a beat. Those gray, fathomless eyes fix on me, and I find I can’t look away. Not now. “Still. It was really cool of you. Nobody’s ever stood up for me like that before.” The words slip out before I can reconsider them.

  He frowns. “Now that is a damn shame.” After a moment, he brightens, and offers a hand. “Charlie Cross. Now, if you ever need stood up for again, you can track me down.”

  I laugh and offer my hand in return. He grips it, and his palm feels surprisingly rough against mine, covered in thick callouses along his strong fingers. This is not the hand of a man who works a white collar job. I wonder if he’s really a professor at all. But an electrician or blue collar worker wouldn’t be on campus in a suit in the middle of the day, would they? “Nice to meet you, Charlie. I’m Lila.”

  I hope he doesn’t notice the way I avoid my surname. After all, Google Lila Baker, and the first few pages you’ll find are filled with my articles. Some of which have headshots attached. The last thing I need to do in the middle of an assignment is get outed as a reporter.

  Well. If you can count this as reporting, anyway.

  Forcing the thought from my head, I flash a smile. “But, just so you know, I definitely could have taken that creep if need be.”

  Charlie grins back, and oh, damn. I did not anticipate sooner how dazzling that corn-fed, guy-next-door smile of his would turn out to be. “In that case, I apologize for interrupting. Tyler Messing’s had an ass-kicking coming to him for weeks. I should’ve left you to it.”

  I laugh. “Well, next time you’ll owe me.”

  “Do you one better,” Charlie says, glancing from me to the half-unpacked easel behind me, and the painting in my hand. “Why don’t we get out of the cold, and I’ll buy you a coffee. To make up for stealing your fighting title.”

  This is a bad idea. I know it is. I’m here for work. I need to get back to my assignment. My assignment of trying to flirt with some poor haphazard undergrad in the name of proving that the 1950s are well and truly over. But after my encounter with Tyler, I’m pretty sure I’m done for the day.

  So, before I can talk myself out of it, my smile widens. “Deal,” I say. Then I nod to the easel and stool. “But only if you’re volunteering to do the heavy lifting.”

  And right on cue, Charlie sweeps a little bow and picks up the easel and stool for me, both at once, lifting the metal set like it’s made of air. I suppress a grimace. It took me half an hour to struggle across campus with that earlier. Who is this guy? I wonder, not for the first time.

  Then again, I suppose I’m about to find out.

  2

  As we settle into an off-campus coffee shop—which Charlie insisted on lugging my easel all the way over to, because, as he put it, “it’s miles better than that swill they serve the students back there”—I tense up, expecting a grilling. Or at least for him to ask what I was doing on campus today, what my job is or why I was painting in the middle of a frigid fall day. Something.

  Instead, after we order our drinks—a latte for me and a black coffee for him—Charlie settles into a small table near the fireplace and gazes into my eyes, his face the very picture of sincerity. “Favorite rom com trope?” he asks.

  “What?” I burst into laughter, totally thrown by the topic.

  He shrugs one shoulder. It isn’t at all the type of thing I expect a muscular jock like him to bring up. But he seems at ease with himself, comfortable enough in his—admittedly very obvious—masculinity to ask a cheesy question like that. “You can tell a lot about a person by the types of media they consume,” he says.

  I wonder yet again if he’s a professor. But I resist the urge to ask, because that would prompt questions about me and my background in return, I’m sure. “Okay, let me think…” I tug my lower lip under my teeth as I say that. And unless I’m much mistaking things, Charlie’s gaze drops right on cue to follow the motion. The whole walk over here, I couldn’t get a read on him. Was he flirting or just being polite? He carried my stuff and cracked jokes. But he never drifted closer to me, didn’t try to accidentally brush his arm against mine or anything.

  I can’t figure him out. From a distance, I’d peg him as the athletic type, a hotheaded alpha. But once I started talking to him, I no longer felt so sure.

  Either way, now that we’re seated across from one another, I can tell he’s definitely checking me out. His gaze practically leaves singe marks along my body, at every point where it drops. Mostly, though, he just stares straight into my eyes, waiting for my response.

  I know the answer, of course. But it’s embarrassing. Still, he asked. And he bought my coffee, too. The least I can offer him is some modicum of honesty. “Um… I really like enemies-to-lovers stories, actually.”

  He laughs. “So you like a bit of fighting?”

  “I prefer to call it passion,” I reply.

  “Are they actually enemies in those stories, or just people who don’t like each other and get forced to work together?” he muses. “I mean, you don’t have like, two spies trying to kill one
another often.”

  “Speak for yourself; Mr. and Mrs. Smith is one of my favorite rom coms,” I reply, which makes us both laugh this time. His knee nudges against mine, and I know that was on purpose. I shift my chair a little, inching it closer to his, at least as far as I can without being too obvious about it. “So what about you, Charlie?”

  “What about me, Lila?” His eyes spark where they catch mine, and my breath hitches. His leg returns, presses harder against mine now, so neither of us can mistake the pressure. Even through our jeans, his skin feels hot enough to burn.

  And I want more of that.

  I lean toward him, almost without thinking about it, and he mirrors me, reaching over to set his cup of coffee down. “What are your favorite tropes?” I ask, my voice only slightly catching on the words, a fact of which I’m proud.

  His grin widens, like he knows exactly what’s throwing me off. And damn him, he probably does. I’m sure he has this effect on girls all the time. Those searing gray eyes of his bore into mine, and it’s all I can do not to picture the way they’d look as he kissed his way down my body. Or how those warm, strong, calloused hands of his would feel running over my skin, so rough on my soft body.

  My breath hitches again, and Charlie chuckles softly. “That’s not how this game works,” he says, his voice so low and gruff that it makes me practically vibrate out of my chair.

  Christ. I can’t even imagine what he sounds like dirty talking in the bedroom.

  Actually, I can. That’s the problem. I suck in a deep breath of air and pray to the gods of flirting that I don’t start sweating bullets right here and now. “What game?”

  “The question game,” he replies, as if that should be obvious. “I asked you one. Now you have to ask me your own question. Something you think will tell you a lot about me.”

  “Who says I don’t ask guys that same question all the time?” I fire back, arching an eyebrow.

  “You, about a minute ago,” he responds with a smirk. “Come on. You must have something you like to know about other people when you first meet them. Something you’re too scared to ask, maybe.”

  My face flares. The first thing that leaps to mind is not appropriate to ask in a public coffee shop. Because I want to know what he’s like in the bedroom—alpha, dom, bossy and assertive? Or communicative, slow and sweet… Or some mix?

  I refuse to ask that though. I’m way too sober to go there. So I just clear my throat and rack my brain for something real. Something on the level of what he just asked me. What would tell me more about who this guy really is? “Okay. What’s your scariest childhood memory?”

  “Ooh.” He leans back in his chair—although he keeps his leg still pressed against mine, for which I’m grateful. The warmth seeps through my body, makes me feel hotter than even the fire burning just feet from our table. “That’s a good one.” He flashes me a grin, and that, too, warms me all the way down to my toes. “Probably the time at my family’s winter cabin up in Canada, when my younger brother and I went skating.”

  “Ice skating?” I ask, then immediately feel like a dolt. Winter cabin? Canada? Duh, Lila.

  But to his credit, he doesn’t laugh or make fun of me. He just nods. “It was the first winter my dad decided to teach us. He’d learned how to skate when he was only three years old—my grandparents are Canadian. Runs in the family, I guess you could say.”

  I smile, and tilt closer to him to catch his words better.

  He leans in, too, and my breath catches all over again at his nearness. At the scent I catch this time, like spearmint and pine woods, all undercut by a hint of heat and spice. God, he smells amazing. “Dad always worried that he’d waited too long to teach us. When we finally learned that winter, on the frozen lake out behind our cabin, I was terrible. I kept tripping over my own feet.” He laughs at the memory.

  I try but struggle to associate the confident, muscular man before me with a clumsy boyhood.

  “So I was determined to get better. I spent every day of our vacation out there, with my little brother trailing after me, practicing. But we’d gone up late in the season that year, and I didn’t think about how warm the days were starting to get…”

  My eyes widened. “Oh no.”

  He catches my gaze and bows his head. “I think you can see where this is going. I was warming up one morning, and the ice broke underneath me. I fell straight through the hole, into the lake.”

  My eyes go wide. “That’s terrifying!”

  “It was.” He smiles, though, making reliving such a scary memory look easy. “I couldn’t breathe—I’m a pretty decent swimmer, but my skates and all my winter clothes weighed me down. And the cold…” He shakes his head. “It’s hard to describe it unless you’ve experience it yourself. It’s more than just cold, at that point. It’s a weight, crushing your whole body, your lungs… Everything wants to contract. So it makes holding your breath against it even harder.”

  “What happened?” I ask, bending close, forgetting all about keeping a respectable distance now. My wide eyes hover just inches from his, unable to pull away. All I can think about is the young boy this handsome man used to be, trapped under the weight of all that ice and cold water. How terrified he must have been.

  “I saw this glove appear. Bright red. It was my brother’s hand. And I knew…” He sucks in a slow breath. “I knew if I didn’t reach for it, I was a goner. And in that moment, it would have been so easy. To give up, to just let the cold win. But that was the moment when I learned I’m a fighter. Because everything in me just shouted, No.” For a moment, he goes quiet. I study his gaze, the deep, gray pools of his eyes, almost like ice floes themselves. His mouth quirks at the corner, a wry little smile. “It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, just swimming that eight or nine feet back to where my brother was holding out his hand. But I made it, weights and all. He pulled me back through the hole, just as my dad came running from the house. Together they managed to haul me out of the ice.”

  “God.” A shudder runs through me. “I can’t even imagine. How long did it take you to recover from that?” My whole body tenses, trying to imagine it.

  Charlie’s hand comes to rest on my knee, as if in sympathy. Funny, how he’s the one comforting me. “I spent the whole day and night alternating between warm baths and a heap of blankets beside a roaring fire. There was a bad storm, too, so the roads into town were unpassable to take me to the hospital until the next day…” He laughs again, and I reach down to rest my hand over his.

  He turns his palm up, lacing his fingers through mine easily, as if he’s done it a thousand times before. His palm fits exactly around mine, engulfing my hand. I swallow, liking the sensation a little too much.

  “So… did you like, give up ice skating for life after that?” I ask with a small smile.

  “Actually, I became a hockey player,” he replies, that wry little grin widening.

  Now I really do laugh, and he squeezes my hand, and fuck. I could stare into this man’s eyes forever. Get lost in him, in this moment. “You’re right,” I murmur, the words feeling tight in my throat. “That does tell me a lot about you.”

  He arches a brow. “Such as what?”

  “Such as the fact that you’re stubborn.” I grin. “Most people would never want to go near ice again after something that traumatizing. But you faced your fears and went back over and over.”

  “I don’t like to let anything get the better of me,” he replies. His gaze jumps back and forth as he searches mine. “I’m in charge of any situation I’m in. I make sure of it.”

  A curl of desire unravels in my belly. Fuck. Well, that answers my other, unasked question. He’s definitely an alpha in the sheets. If I had any doubts about it before, they’re gone now.

  It’s funny, that normally isn’t my type. Like I said, I love a good enemies-to-lovers story, but usually with guys who seem mean and turn out to be sweethearts underneath. Charlie strikes me as the opposite—not that he’s mea
n. But he comes across so good-natured and sweet. Yet I can tell there’s a dark side under there, a dangerous bad boy who would love to control me…

  And I can’t lie. Some part of me is curious about how that would feel. Getting bossed around in the bedroom…

  “Any situation, huh?” I ask, before my brain can tell my lips to think better of it.

  Charlie’s grin widens. “Any and every.” His gaze drops to my mouth, before it jumps back to mine. “For example, this one.” With that, he pushes back from me and rises to his feet. He puts space between us so fast and unexpectedly that it makes me gasp, my head reeling. All I want is to be that close to him again, inches from kissing.

  Dammit.

  And he knows exactly the effect he’s having, smirking down at me like that. “Come on,” he says, with a nod around us. “We ought to get out of their way.”

  Only then do I realize that the coffee shop is closing—the baristas have started placing chairs on top of tables, and someone flips a closed sign in the window. One of the cashiers eyes us with the patented “I hope these people leave soon” stare that I’ve come to recognize and sympathize with in retail workers.

  My cheeks flush. I’d been so caught up in that story—in Charlie—that I didn’t even notice the shop closing up. I swallow hard. “Right. Yeah, we should go.” I reach for my gear, but Charlie’s already picking it up for me once more.

  “Don’t worry,” he calls over his shoulder. “As long as you aren’t ready to leave just yet, I have another destination in mind.”

  I know I should say no. I should tell him I need to run. I should head home and try to figure out what parts of this day I might be able to salvage to write an article about, something approximating the assignment that I failed to really get off the ground today. Somewhere out there, I can practically sense Fiona waiting for me to do just that, to get my work done, the way I promised her.

  But instead, I rise to my feet, snatch up my bag, and nod at Charlie. “You lead,” I tell him. “I’ll follow.”