Page 28 of Buck This
“If I had a drink, I would make a toast.”
“What would your toast be?”
“To playing house.”
She cracked a grin. “You’ve probably been trouble since the day you were born.”
“No shit. I’ve literally given you every indication of that. Come on.”
“Where are we going?” she asked, following behind him as he led her toward the outdoor seating area.
“To see the reason I was asking if you have ever been here before. I want to show you something.” He turned and offered his hand and then messed with her head just to see her reaction. “Come on, Pretend Wife.”
“Wife?” she blurted out.
“Yeah. If we’re playing house for two days, I’m going all in. We’re cursed to stay together every second we can, and by cursed, I mean you are cursed with me, and I’m going to call you whatever I want.”
“You don’t seem like the marrying kind,” she observed, slipping her hand into his.
He hid a private smile as he felt a little zing of victory wash through him. He’d called her the scariest word in existence, and she’d still put her hand in his. She was fun.
“I’m not,” he assured her. “Never will be.”
“That makes two of us.”
He snorted. “Except for you were already married. You’re absolutely the marrying kind.”
“That was another lifetime ago. I learned a lot from that.”
“Like what?” he asked, leading her down a path lined with huge potted plants.
“Like I never want to give my heart to someone like that again. I was young and had stars in my eyes and I was naive. I thought if I gave a man my heart, he would take care of it.”
“Most men wouldn’t know what to do with a woman’s heart,” he said.
“I learned that the hard way.” He heard her drag in a big breath. “He messaged me yesterday.”
A rumble emanated from his chest, and her hand flinched in his. “What was that?”
“It’s fine,” he gritted out. “Why did he message you? Are you still messing around with each other?”
“No. That’s long over. He’s got something of mine and sometimes he likes to flaunt it. Usually, he does it between girlfriends. I’m the only one who tells him no nowadays, and he likes a challenge.”
“What does he have of yours?”
She pulled her hand from his. “Can we talk about anything else?”
He pulled to a stop at the edge of the clearing he’d wanted to show her. He was confused. She had shut down on him, he could tell. Even her eyes stayed downcast and wouldn’t meet his.
“Hey,” he rumbled, but his voice didn’t sound right. The animal was getting riled up. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Are you good?”
“I will be if we could stop talking about wife stuff and my past. You’re not playing the game right.”
“The game,” he repeated.
“The playing house game. This is the honeymoon phase, don’t you know? Nothing serious. We keep it light. We don’t share anything real. That way, when we leave in a couple of days, it will be shallow enough to not hurt.”
He didn’t like any of this. Sure, he knew she was right, but he didn’t like it. Nothing real with her? How did he tell her he wanted to know everything about her? How did he explain that without her shutting down on him harder and bolting?
