9
When she’d told me the truth about her sister and her parents, I couldn’t help feeling a deep pang down in my soul. I wasn’t sure what it was at first. Maybe it was sadness, sympathy, something deep and dark and gloomy stirred up by her story. Maybe it was the fact that I didn’t even think to doubt or second-guess her. As she spoke, I knew the story was true, that she would never try to deceive or lie to me. She didn’t look me in the eye, but all I wanted to do was pull her into my arms, to console her and let her know that no matter how bad and how difficult things got, I would be here. At least for this year.
I promised her the contract and gave her some privacy, but my mind was racing as I stepped out of the room. What if I was being taken for a ride? I barely knew this woman. For all I knew, she could be trying to con me out of a huge pile of cash. Maybe that story was well-rehearsed and completely fake. But then I thought back to the way the tears had shone in her eyes as she spoke, the way her body tensed and her words stuttered as she tried her hardest to think of the best way to say it. If she was lying to me, then she was the best damn liar I’d ever come across in my life. I had a feeling it was simply more likely she was being honest. I could see how hard it was for her. She wouldn’t have told me if she could have avoided it, and she wasn’t just telling me what she thought I needed to hear to get the next stage of this locked down.
I made my way through to find her once I’d had a minute to get my head together. She was sitting on the bed, staring off into space, her face still tense as though she was trying to keep something in. She blinked and glanced over at me, managing a smile.
“Hey,” she greeted me and got to her feet, taking a long, deep breath and letting it go. “Sorry about … all of that. I just didn’t know what else to tell you.”
“I’m glad you told me.” I lifted a hand up to quiet her. “And I want to offer you a deal right now.”
“Yeah?” She raised her eyebrows expectantly.
“I’ll get the contracts in motion today.” I nodded. “Make sure we have all of this locked down on paper for when the time comes. But I’m also going to write you a check, right here and now, for the full amount.”
“You’re serious?” Her eyes bugged out of her head. “Can you even write me a check for that much?”
“I can do what I want.” I shrugged. “It’s my money. I’ll just tell the family I spent it on a ring for you if they come asking about it.”
“Holy shit.” She shook her head and sat back down on the bed, eyes wide. “All of it? Now?”
“I want you and your sister to be comfortable.” I continued firmly. “And I understand now why you want the money locked down.”
“Right,” she replied, and I could see the tears welling up in the corner of her eyes again. She brushed them away quickly with the back of her hand.
“But I need something from you in exchange,” I warned her. She wrapped her arms around herself, a defense mechanism.
“What?” she asked fearfully.
“I need you to come along and see my family today,” I replied. “That’s it. And if you do that, I’ll write you the check right here and now.”
“Oh, okay.” She visibly relaxed. “Yeah, sure, of course. I’ll do that.”
I eyed her for a moment longer and remembered that morning when I’d considered making a move on her, sliding into bed next to her. I felt like an ass now for even considering taking advantage of our arrangement.
“I’ll go get dressed.” She nodded. “I’ll be out in a minute. We can go see my sister and then visit your family, does that work?”
“Sure does,” I replied and headed out of the room to finish getting ready. I grabbed my checkbook as I went and prepared to cut the biggest check I ever had in my life. It was a lot of money, but it was for a good cause. Not only would I be supporting the two of them, but I would also get my own family off my back and be able to focus on my job for the next year.
I waited in the kitchen for her to get ready, listening to the sound of her moving around the bedroom. I had to admit, it was majorly weird to have someone else in the house this early in the day. Normally, I might run into my housekeeper a couple of times a week as I was leaving for the office but nothing more than that. Knowing there would be a whole other human being taking up my space for the next year was both exciting and kind of terrifying. She would get to know me, to really know me, in ways I hadn’t allowed anyone to in a long time. What would that be like?
Eventually, she emerged from the bedroom again. She had told me she was just about to start work as a librarian, and she looked quite the part that day. She was wearing a deep red wrap dress that showed just a hint of cleavage, her hair piled haphazardly on the back of her head in a bun. It was far removed from the pure glamour and sex appeal of the outfit she’d been wearing to the gala, but I didn’t mind. She looked sort of like a teacher, one I wouldn’t have minded rolling in the hay with.
“Hey.” She smiled at me, touching her dress nervously. “Do I look all right?”
“You look great,” I promised her, and I pushed the dirty thoughts firmly out of my mind. She had a hell of a lot going on, and I didn’t need to add my libido to her problems, that was for sure. I would keep my attraction to her under wraps and keep this firmly a business transaction. It was the right choice for both of us, no matter how hot I thought she looked in that dress. At least I would get the pride of having a woman who looked this good on my arm when I went out on the town, and nobody else had to know there was nothing going on between the sheets. Didn’t they say sex dropped off when you got married anyway?
“Ready to go?” I asked, and she nodded and took my arm.
“I’ll give you the address of the home,” she replied nervously. “It’s not too far from here.”
“Sure thing,” I agreed, and we headed down to the car where she gave me directions to the place her sister was staying in. In all honesty, I hadn’t given much thought to meeting her sister at that point. It was her meeting my family that I was more concerned with, given that I knew they were going to go crazy when they found out about her. But I supposed over the course of this year, there weren’t going to be many sides to our lives we didn’t involve each other in. An odd thought, even an unsettling one—I was still getting my head around everything this would mean for us, and it was hard to remind myself this wasn’t just the start of a relationship. That’s how it felt, the entire year spreading out before us, filled with opportunity and potential and that spinning, unnerving feeling of newness and possibility.
We drove and talked about nothing in particular. She told me a little about her studies and why she had gone into the field she had, and we talked about our favorite books and adaptations. She was smart and well-spoken, two traits my family would go crazy for. She had a gentle way about her, a kindness, and I wondered if that had come from stepping up to look after her sister when she had barely reached adulthood. Her parents had passed a decade previously, from what I could gather, and that meant she couldn’t have been much older than her late teens when it happened. She’d had to switch her entire life around to take care of her little sister, who wasn’t even in double-digits at the time.
“This is the place.” She pointed to a sign we were just pulling up on, and I could have sworn there was even more nervousness in her voice than there had been when she accepted meeting my family for the first time. She had fallen silent for the last ten minutes, and I had begun to wonder if this was just how she was, quiet by nature. She had certainly seemed that way on the trip across in the plane the day before. Or maybe she just feared she had already told me too much and wanted to pull back on some of that power, given that we still barely knew each other at all.
We were a good half-hour outside the city, and the sun that poured through the leaves of the tall trees around us dappled on the ground as I took the turn up to the facility. She reached into the bag she’d grabbed as we’d left and pulled out a small, laminated piece of paper, gripping it tight in her hand, so hard, I was worried it might cut into her skin.