“Vic?” Sienna asks, oblivious to the other woman’s discomfort. “What’s she talking about?”

Heat inexplicably floods my cheeks at the thought of Caleb Murray. It all happened so fast I’m still not convinced that I didn’t imagine the whole thing.

“His lawyer has drawn up a prenup. He’s going to pay for Abigail to attend the Lutheran Academy. He’s going to give me more money than I could make in a lifetime of waiting tables, Si. So, I told him that I want to help you start up your own gallery.”

I wince. I think I know exactly how this is going to go. There’s no way that Sienna will accept that kind of money from me even if it is Caleb Murray’s money really.

“It’s pocket money to a man like him, Si. He won’t even miss it. He’ll write it off against his tax return or whatever people like him do. I bet he’ll even find a way to make money out of it.” I’m running out of steam at Sienna’s lowered eyebrows and open-mouthed expression of suspicion.

“Prenup?” she says eventually. “You’re actually going through with this?”

I shuffle closer to the café window to make way for the other pedestrians before we cause a traffic jam. “Can we go inside and talk about this?”

“Okay.” Sienna holds my gaze. “But I want to know everything.”

I smile. I don’t even know what everything is yet, but I’ve never kept a secret from Sienna, and I don’t know what I’ll do if she tries to talk me out of it.

I mean, my head is telling me how crazy this whole situation is—billionaire bachelors like Caleb Murray don’t marry ordinary women like me. They marry supermodels and actresses and daughters of billionaire businessmen like Mr. Dragonetti. But fake-marrying Caleb Murray will change all our lives. Literally. Abigail will have a chance at a decent future. Sienna will get her gallery. And I’ll be able to clear Mason’s debts and start over in a decent apartment, maybe even start up my own interior design business that I’ve always dreamed of.

How can I turn it down now that I’ve had a glimpse of a better life for us all?

Then there’s what my heart is telling me… Only one other person has ever made my knees tremble the way Caleb Murray does, and Danny doesn’t exist in the real world. He was a magical one-night stand. An apparition. A figment of my imagination.

We find a table in a quiet corner of the café and order hot chocolates all round with extra cream and marshmallows for Abigail.

While Abigail is spooning whipped cream into her mouth, I tell Sienna about the marriage contract and prenup. “He wants to help us, Si.”

“Why?” She hasn’t touched her drink. “What’s so wrong with him that he has to arrange a fake marriage?”

I hadn’t thought of it this way, and I find myself instantly on the defensive. “There’s nothing wrong with him. He just needs to get his psycho ex off his back.”

Sienna twists her mouth to one side. “So, he’s going to use you to do that, and then what? What’s in this for you?”

“We all get out of this rut. I won’t have to wait tables anymore. You won’t have to struggle to work three jobs in between painting, and Mason and Abigail will have a fresh start.”

“What does Mason think about this?”

“Daddy is AWOL,” Abigail chimes in, popping a soggy marshmallow into her mouth.

Sienna grins at her, the smile fading when she turns her attention back to me. “AWOL?”

“Caleb has people looking for him. His phone is switched off, and he didn’t come home last night. I’m worried about him, Si.”

Her eyebrows disappear beneath her bangs. She doesn’t need to remind me that I’m always worried about Mason. “You know that he’ll try to squeeze this situation for every cent that he can get.”

I shake my head. “He won’t be able to. That’s the whole point of the contract.”

“What about when he sells your story to the press?”

“Caleb won’t let him do that either.”

“Won’t let him?”

I know that Sienna is simply being practical and looking out for me, but I feel guilty for ruining her good news with my own. Shedoesn’t like it, and I wonder if I would react the same way if our roles were reversed.

“He’ll probably pay him to keep quiet.” I peer around the café at all the people going about their regular day. My life is never going to be regular again thanks to Caleb Murray. Everything about this situation is so surreal, I keep thinking that at any moment now, I’ll wake up and realize that I’m late for work at the diner.

“Where will you live?” Sienna raises her hot chocolate to her lips and inhales the sweet aroma. “You know, while you’re fake married. Are you moving in with him, or will he give you a room at the Wraith? He wants this to look real, right, so the psycho ex leaves him alone. Will you go and run errands together? Will you split the chores and the cooking or, let me guess, he has staff to do all this stuff for him?”