Page 152 of One Wealthy Wedding

Miles’s brows go up. “I’m all ears.”

Jonah gives me a nod. “Good.”

I lean forward, looking at my business partners in turn. My friends. “What if we ran a mentorship program?”

45

Cat

We’ve only been back from Monaco for a week, but Brenda Archer is here. If she knows we’re faking this marriage, she hasn’t said anything, but I can’t shake the feeling that she’s checking up on us. I’m sure as hell not bringing it up, though. And after the trip, I think Theo and I might be selling this marriage better than ever. We don’t just spend time in public together. The Monday after our return, he came home and made dinner. Same with the next night, and the next night. The first night we were back, he carried me upstairs, and I slept in his bed. Now that we’ve opened that box, I don’t think we can close it. I don’t want to close it.

I might have thought sharing a bed was awkward, but that was before Theo. Before he held me close to his chest and woke me with his face between my legs. He’s insatiable. Hot and dirty and better than I ever imagined.

Nineteen-year-old Cat would have laughed at the sheer joy of calling this man mine.

Twenty-eight-year-old me realizes it’ll break me when this ends. And yet I can’t stop. Every time he kisses me, I kiss him back. Every time he slides his hand over my skin, I go up in flames.

And now his mom is here, and I’m just waiting for her to confront me about the marriage.

“I need to clean,” Brenda announces when she walks into the kitchen.

I can’t look his mother in the eye as I make my coffee. She knows, and I hate lying to her.

“What do you mean, you need to clean? It’s warm out today. We should go to the park or something.” I have to study later, but it might be nice to take a day off and see some of NYC. Now that I’m not scrambling to make money for groceries, I’d like to explore more. Check some things off my list, maybe.

“You live here. You know he doesn’t have staff. Have you been inside the dining room? It’s never been used. It feels like a morgue. And that awful living room with all the white couches.” She shakes her head, and I hide a smile. “There’s a beer stain on one. He just tossed a throw over it.”

“All right.” I sit down at the island with her. “I’ll help you clean, but no more than a few hours.”

“I don’t understand why he won’t just hire people. This place is massive.” She waves a hand in the air.

“You know why,” I say quietly. “He doesn’t want anyone to go through what you went through with my family.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” She levels me a look. “Worse for you than it was for me.”

I look down, my shoulders tense. I don’t want to talk about this with her. She’s too kind and too knowing, and Theo and I are lying to her. “It was bad for both of us.”

“I made my peace with it. Your father didn’t hit me or anything. It was a job. A job that provided a place to live for my family and a steady income for years. Besides, I haven’t worked since I turned forty-seven, when your husband made me quit.”

The way she says your husband makes me want to throw up, or maybe cry on her shoulder and tell her that we’re lying to her. “He gave you all his money, didn’t he?” I look up at her. Her eyes are green, like both her son’s, and always too knowing.

“He did. Foolish boy. I told him to save it. He told me he’d make more. I guess he did.” She smiles, and I laugh softly.

“Yeah. I guess he did.”

“Have you told him about your parents?” she asks.

“A little. Not all.” I get up to put my coffee cup in the sink. A wife would have told him. If we really were together, I would have bared my soul completely to Theo.

“Why not?”

I start cleaning the dishes from this morning so I don’t have to look at her. I guess Theo did the ones from last night, because the sink is mostly empty.

“I don’t think he’s ready to hear it. And I don’t like talking about it. It’s not just their fault, you know.”

“Ah,” she says knowingly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

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