Page 57 of Just My Fake Husband

I wake to the warm pressure and rhythmic breathing of River tucked into my side. She’s taken over my section of the bed, her hand resting on my chest. The barrier blanket must be on the floor somewhere. Or twisted around our legs in the chaos of the bedding. Because there is nothing between River and me—except for our pajamas.

Without thinking, I press a light kiss in her hair. My shirt is warm where her hand is. She’s got her knee up on my knee.

Miracles do happen, apparently, because that was the best night’s sleep I’ve had

since before Prague.

What time did she curl up next to me, I wonder. And can I not break the spell yet? I hold my body still as I rotate my head to look at the small clock on the nightstand.

It reads eight a.m.

We slept in! I don’t know what time River had intended to get up, but I know it was earlier than this. Everything in me pulses with the thought that she cannot be late for work or else my brothers might give her a hard time, or at the very least, give me a hard time later for keeping her up.

They think this is a real marriage and that we’re having a physical relationship.

A man can wish.

Was it the sheer exhaustion that whole debacle caused that made me have the best sleep, the deepest sleep in recent memory? Or the fact that River was by my side?

I feel well rested. I want nothing more than to get up and face the day and work on the idea for the non-profit I’ve had swirling in my head. After I stay here with River as long as I can, of course.

After a few more minutes, and agonizing whether or not to wake her, she stirs, licking her lips and sighing, pressing her body into my side.

Okay. If I’m going to stay in charge of my faculties, I need to get out of this situation. I start to rub her back with the arm that’s been cradling her and press another kiss on the top of her head.

That does the trick. “Gabriel!” There’s a sharp, hoarse whisper from her as her eyes spring open and she shoots up to a sitting position, the pads of her fingertips clawing at her sleep-worn face. Her head is classic bedhead, with bunny ears of hair all along the side.

“We slept in!” She clutches the sheet to her chest. “How did that . . .?” She blinks rapidly and hauls herself off the bed, still grasping the sheet.

“Looks like we did,” I say lazily.

She heaves the sheet back on the bed in a heap and throws open a drawer. “I need a ride to the office.” She tosses back a glance at me as she moves to riffle through the closet, scraping hangers along the bar. “Please,” she adds.

“Of course. Breakfast?”

“I’m fine.” Now she’s got a hairbrush and is trying to make sense of her bedhead.

“You sure? I could get you something fast.”

She hesitates. “Okay. Thank you.”

I’ll make the dish that a housekeeper we had growing up used to make: egg in the hole. I use the rim of a glass to cut a hole out of the bread, butter the remainder, and place it in a small sauté pan. I crack open an egg and let it drop into the hole, and by the time it’s finished and I’m dressed and ready to drive her, she’s out of the bathroom, wearing a white and grey pinstriped suit.

Sleepy, pared down River is fused in my memory, but this is nice, too.

I’m ready sooner than she is.

She wolfs down the food in between putting on her shoes and fluffing her hair in the bathroom mirror. I’m mesmerized by the way she takes a bite from her plate on the countertop and then runs to the bathroom, does who knows what with her appearance, and then runs back to get another bite, grabbing a purse from a hook in the mudroom in the process.

The way her curves look as she bends down to fasten a shoe. The planes of her collarbone as she throws a long, thin chain necklace over her head.

No. I can’t be this attracted to her. The success of this whole plan rests on the simple fact that feelings of any kind cannot be a part of this equation. My father has to think there are feelings . . . big, soaring ones. But there can’t actually be.

I let out a hot breath and try to focus on something else. Scrubbing the egg off the pan and drying and putting it away. Finding my own shoes and putting them on.

It’s not really working, especially when she squeezes past me again, a brief sensation of our bodies touching as she moves past, chewing her bite of food as she makes it to the bathroom.

“You could just bring your plate in there,” I suggest through the open door.

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