Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
T hey were two slices into their arugula and prosciutto pizza when Lucy set down her wineglass, looked him dead in the eye and asked, “So, moneybags, what’s your condition?”
Joel had been preparing for her to ask him this since he’d told her yesterday that he had a condition to her terms. But now that they were here, enjoying good food and wine, chatting comfortably for the last hour, he didn’t want it to end. Even though they’d kept to safe topics like business, family, the differences between San Francisco and Portland, there was a hint of what had been between them, the effortless ease that he savored like the wine he was drinking.
But alas, he’d learned that all good things came to an end. Unless you threw millions of dollars at them. Or negotiated yourself into a position that provided a second chance, which he’d done almost by accident with Lucy.
“My condition is…I want us to see this engagement through to a public wedding.” He took a breath before he delivered the kill shot. “And then I want us to stay married for at least a year. ”
Watching Lucy absorb the information with a montage of minute facial expressions would have been amusing if he weren’t so nervous. At first, her brows knit together, then her eyes narrowed, followed by her lips tipping down at the corners. Then it all briefly smoothed out before her eyebrow raised, and she glanced around the restaurant as if a candid camera might jump out at her. Finally, her lips pursed and her gaze snapped back to his. This was why she was a terrible liar. Every thought and emotion lived on her face at any given moment.
“Those are two conditions,” she informed him.
“Correct.” He did his best to match her businesslike tone, already missing their previous interaction. “But the second one follows naturally from the first, so I categorized them as one. We can’t get married only to divorce twenty-four hours later.”
“Well, it would be four years later, theoretically,” she volleyed.
“True, but as you said, nobody knows that.”
Lucy exhaled loudly through her nose, stared at her wineglass with great concentration before lifting it to take a long sip.
“Why?” she asked as she set her drink back down.
“Because I thought a lot about what you said regarding protecting good relations between our families, and this needs to be a priority. It might not take long for your father to see reason and for your useless cousin to be removed from the equation.” He was already in the process of eliminating Nico, but no one needed to know that.
“Second cousin.”
“Whatever. He’s irrelevant.” And he truly was. Joel couldn’t wait until Nico was back on a plane to Italy. “And a brief engagement followed by a breakup shortly after your father sees reason won’t only be obvious, it will be disrespectful to our families.”
Lucy’s lips pursed again, relieving some of the pressure in his chest because he saw her concede to his point.
“If we have a wedding, stay together for a while, and then separate, it will make everything smoother and more believable. Besides, a quick, half-hearted engagement and marriage doesn’t suit either of our personalities and would be bad for our reputations. Drawing everything out just makes more sense.”
Lucy seemed to consider this as she lifted another slice of pizza off the tray and took a bite, dragging her tongue along her full bottom lip to catch the crumbs. He could watch her for hours and never get bored. There was never a dull moment in her expressive eyes, and her long silky hair glided over her shoulder like melted chocolate as she moved. Stunning, all around. And being this close to her was torture on his restraint. She’d lived in his bed for sixteen weeks, then in his fantasies for years. He knew every detail of what he was missing, and his body and soul longed for no one else.
Even watching her chew turned him on, so he distracted himself by reflecting on what he didn’t tell her, that his timeline had an ulterior motive. A year would buy them time to work out the things between them that had been the cause of their demise, one painful tragedy at a time.
She’d said she wasn’t ready to talk about certain things yet, and he couldn’t entirely blame her. But a short fake engagement and marriage made time his enemy and, as a practice, he crushed his enemies.
“A year is a long time, Joel,” she whispered, and he barely heard her over the hum of the busy restaurant. “But I guess you’ll be in Portland a lot of the time, and I’ll be in San Francisco. So we won’t necessarily see each other frequently.”
He fully planned on seeing her as much as he possibly could.
“In fact, it might even work in our favor. People will see how hard the long distance is, and it will help excuse our inevitable break up.” She was rationalizing, working it out so that what he was presenting made sense, because deep down she wanted that time too. He knew it.
“Okay. We’ll have a wedding. A small one,” she emphasized. “And we’ll stay married a year. But then we divorce. For real this time.”
Nodding, Joel kept a neutral face, always essential in huge, life-changing business deals, but his heart pumped at his victory. She’d given him a second chance. And he’d just bought himself some time to convince Lucy they deserved a forever.