Page 64 of Play the Game

“What do you mean?” I finally ask.

Scottie seems so unaware of how outlandish her response is. She just shrugs and repeats herself.

“You slept on the floor?”

She nods slowly this time. A pinkish tint creeps onto her cheeks, and I kind of hate that I feel sorry for her. I’d usually choose this time to poke at her so I can watch her nose scrunch with annoyance, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I finish cleaning my plate and the rest of the kitchen when she slips outside onto the porch, knowing she’s done plenty over the last several hours while I was asleep.

After Scottie comes back inside, having had a full conversation with the damn stoop cat that hisses at me every single time I leave the house, she places her hands on her hips and gives me a look. I’m not sure if Shutter had a pep talk with her, but the pink tinge of embarrassment on her cheeks has left the party, and my sassy wife is back in action. “Are you ready to take me to get my car?”

I narrow my gaze. “You think it’s safe to drive when you’ve been up for twenty-four hours?”

Her angry huff sends something exciting into my bloodstream. I dip my eyes down to her mouth again before I berate myself and pull my attention back to her jutted lip.

“I’m fine,” she argues with a little stomp of her foot. “Plus, I just made you breakfast.”

“Oh, so it was a bribe?”

She shrugs casually and leans her hip against the island. “It can be.”

I laugh under my breath at her ability to seem so sweet one second but clever the next. I swear, she’s tempting me. Tempting me to do what? I have no idea. But my new wife is stirring something up inside of me that I have never felt in my life.

We stare at each other from across the island. The entire time we’re at an impasse, I don’t allow myself to look at hermouth. My jaw tightens when I place my hands face down on the counter. I try to press into the stone to give me some sort of stability so I don’t become complacent to the way she’s looking at me.

“Let’s make a deal.”

Fuck, what?

“We already have a deal,” she counters. “I play the role of your wife, and you pay me, remember?”

“Right. Except, I know nothing about you, and you know everything about me.”

Scottie eyes me suspiciously, but she doesn’t put up a fight yet, so I keep going.

“I’ll take you to get your car?—”

“And you won’t buy me a new one,” she interrupts me.

For fuck’s sake.

I reword my statement. “I’ll take you to get your car…and I won’t buy you a new one…as long as you start answering questions.”

Scottie’s face is made of stone, but her eyes tell a completely different story. The fear inside of them, over me asking her some questions, is all the more reason to ask them.

“What’ll it be?”

“I can just call an Uber to get my car.”

Ever so slowly, I glance at her purse sitting on the end of the counter. Knowing her better than she thinks, I race her to it, which isn’t hard to do because three of my steps are five of hers. At the last second, I lift her keys up in the air and watch with amusement as she tries to reach them by jumping.

I lean down to her level. “Too slow, baby.”

She pouts, and her warm, angry, pancake-scented breath hits me in the face.

God damn, that smells sweet.

“You’re a dick.”

I slip her keys into my pocket and throw her words from the night before right back at her. “You married me.”

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