I grin. “I did, and I’m more than happy to do that right now if it’ll help.”
“It won’t. It would just tempt me to kick you, and we don’t need that.”
I laugh.
We stand in the middle of the kitchen and watch one another, feeling each other out. The longer it goes with neither of us speaking, the more it feels like we’re waiting on the other to break the ice.
Finally, after a couple of minutes, she sighs. “You aren’t really serious, are you?” she asks.
Am I?
I do a quick evaluation of the situation. She can help me get the job, and I can help her find some relief. Neither of us would take it seriously, so there’s no harm there. And she’s pretty great to look at, which doesn’t hurt either.
“Yes,” I say with conviction, my mind made up. “I am.”
She looks at the ceiling. “I don’t even want to get married right now—especially to you.”
“And why not me?”
Her brows furrow, but she releases them. The gesture seems like she’s letting go of more than that.
“Why not you?” she asks. “Because if I get married again, I want the fairy tale. I want the real knight in shining armor. I want . . . I want a man that wants to live the life I live and be happy in it. And that might be stupid—it probably is. But I want it.”
There’s not a lot I can say to that. She’s right to want those things, and she’s also right that I’m not any of them.
But that isn’t what this is.
“Please be reminded that you needed a two-part solution. You wanted a knight and five grand. They don’t necessarily come together. So if I can provide half the equation, it will free you up to focus on the other half.”
She puts a hand on her hip. “That does help your case.” She holds my gaze for a long moment before beginning to pace through the kitchen.
I don’t know whether to give her a few minutes to let this sink in or to keep showing her how perfect this whole thing can be. Because the more I think about it, the more I’m sold that this is the answer to everything.
This is the reason for me coming to Honey Creek.
The universe put me here.
It all makes sense now.
Sophie stops midpace and spins around to face me. “Why can’t you just find a girl somewhere and have her pretend to be your fiancée? Don’t you have a friend or an ex that you’re on good terms with that will do this for you? It seems so much easier.”
“You are my friend.”
“Eh . . .”
I sigh. “Fine. Montgomery is coming next week, and I don’t have that kind of time to find a woman here and ask her to pretend to be my fiancée. That’s not something you can just go into the Lemon Aid and throw out there.”
“Oh, but you can ask me to be your pretend fiancée?”
“No. I asked you to be my wife.”
She glares at me. It’s softened with a hidden smile, and that’s encouraging enough to continue with my proposition.
“And pretending to be engaged won’t work here. Montgomery is coming here. Everyone will know that we just got engaged. All it takes is for someone to say something about it, and he won’t trust me. He’ll know something is up. He thinks I’m on the verge of actually getting married.”
Her shoulders fall as she watches me with what I think—hope—is possibility.
“I can’t believe I’m asking you this,” I tell her. “If someone had told me a few days ago that I’d be asking a woman to marry me, I’d have laughed in their face.”
“So why are you, then?”
I ponder that for a moment.
“Because we both have problems, and we can solve them if we work together. We’ve always been good teammates. Remember when we convinced the pool in town to stay open late on the Fourth of July so we could host a pool party?”
She grins. “I forgot about that.”
“And when we got that old guy to pay us, like, twenty-five bucks to mow his grass—”
“So we could buy snow cones,” she says, finishing my story with a laugh.
“Exactly. This is like that. Just a more . . . adult version of working together to get what we want.”
She paces a slow circle, rubbing her temples with her fingers. I hold my breath and watch her totally overthink this whole thing. Finally, she stops moving.
“What do we tell people around here if I agree to this ridiculousness?” She blows out a breath and then quickly takes in another to power her through her thought. “Everyone knows that I’ve been here and you’ve been there and those two places are separated by hundreds or thousands of miles. I don’t know. A long damn way.”
I scratch my head. I hadn’t thought of that.
Shit.
“Besides the fact that Debbie emailed me, asking if we were a thing,” she almost growls.
I jab a finger in her direction. “And Joe, the floor mat guy, had heard we were cozy.” I look at her stone-faced. “He actually said we were cozy.”
Sophie makes a face. On a normal day, in a normal conversation, I’d pause and ask what that’s all about. Is it out of the realm of possibility she’d get cozy with me? But this is not a normal day, so I stay focused on the task at hand.
“How does everyone know we weren’t keeping in contact all these years?” I ask. “As far as they know, we’ve been talking and emailing and our love rekindled when I came to town—assuming we were in love. Maybe we even saw each other while you were in Florida. Right? I mean, is it completely illogical that we had a fling when you were in college?”
“With you? Kind of.”
Something about the way she says it prickles me in the wrong way.
“Don’t lie,” I say. “You know something would’ve happened between us if I lived here.”
“I don’t know that.”
“Yes, you do. How many times did we almost kiss?”
“Well, it never happened,” she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she looks away.
I clear my throat to refocus. “But it could’ve. And it’s completely plausible that I came to visit you, or vice versa, at some point, and we had something. Felt it wasn’t right and let it go. Think about it.”
She grabs a towel and begins to wipe off the counter. Her motions are rougher than necessary. I have half a notion to take it out of her hands so she’ll focus on what I’m saying, but I don’t because I think that will incense her.
Instead, I watch her work this out. She bites her bottom lip and polishes the counter until the rag squeaks as it crosses the laminate. The longer she takes to say something, the more my stomach begins to twist.
“This is insane,” she says finally. “Do you know that?”
“Yes. I’m very aware.”
Her head falls to the side. “What would I get out of pretending to be your wife again?”
“You’d actually be my wife,” I point out carefully.
She tosses the towel down. “Why? Remind me.”
“I can’t risk any weaknesses in this plan. It has to be rock solid and real. I’m trying to prove to Montgomery that I’m the best, sturdiest, most committed guy for the job, and I can’t do that if anything looks suspicious. And,” I add, “if he finds out that I’m now unemployed, this could be my saving grace.”