Midas Touch #2
“Make things beautiful.” I nod toward the window. “Everything you touch. Like a Midas touch, but better. Because it’s not just turning to gold, it’s turning to something soft and cozy and warm too.”
Her cheeks flush beneath the shimmery powder she likes to dust on them. “That’s what you’re paying me for, right?”
Right. That’s what I’m paying her for.
It hits me, the irony of it all. My whole life I’ve hated games, except the one I play for a living. I always felt deeply uncomfortable with women wanting for my money or my name or my jersey number, wanting me for everything except the person I am beneath it all.
Now I’m paying the one woman I actually want to spend time with, and I’m about to walk her into a whole-ass fake marriage.
No wonder my family looked at me like I’d lost my mind last night.
“Your family was the fun part,” she says. “Next we tell mine.”
“Looking forward to it.”
“You haven’t met my mother. A barrel full of scorpions would be more fun.”
She looks truly anxious now, so I figure it’s a reasonable course of action to pull her into my arms and hug her.
“Hey,” I say gently. “You won’t be doing it alone. That’s the whole point of having a husband.”
She tucks into me and she fits perfectly, which I already knew she would. Her head just reaches my shoulder. Her arms come around me too.
I bring my hand up her back in a slow circle and she softens against me even further. Her hair is warm from the sun. I think about that pink strand escaping her barrette, what her hair would look like unclipped and spread across my pillow.
Her body underneath me, flushed and panting. My hands in all that rose-gold hair as I kiss her and thrust deep inside—
“Thank you,” she mumbles. “You’re a good fake fiancé. And an even better real friend.”
Funny how it’s just what I want to hear, yet somehow the exact opposite.
Because I don’t think she’d be calling me such a good friend if she knew all the things I’m thinking about while I give her what’s supposed to be a platonic, comforting hug.
I force myself to step back.
My hand finds the box in my pocket. The velvet is warm from being against my body all morning. The box is small, looks downright tiny in my palm. I’ve opened it probably a dozen times in five days, just looking at it, trying to see it the way she might.
I hope she likes it. I hope I got it right.
I went to three different jewelers before I found this one and I still don’t know if it’s enough.
I wanted something she’d truly like. Nothing generic.
Something that looked like it had a history, a story.
Something she would pause over in an antique shop window.
My heart rate is picking up. I’m an elite athlete with a resting heart rate as slow and steady as a metronome, but right now I’m standing still and my heart is galloping like a runaway horse.
I pull out the little square box and put it in her hands.
A long pause. Her eyes lift to mine. “Is this…”
“Go on,” I tell her, more gruffly than I mean to. “You can open it.”
She does. Winking out of a velvet bed is an enormous old mine cut diamond set in an ornate platinum filigree ring.
“Slade,” she whispers. “Please tell me that’s fake.”
I frown. She thinks I’d give her some cheap knock-off?
I tell her, “I know this might not be a real marriage, but no way in hell am I giving my wife a fake ring.”
She just stares at it.
Shit. Maybe she doesn’t like it. I start talking way more than I normally do, feeling like I’m running my mouth nervously. “The jeweler said it was an antique,” I explain. “And since you like antiques, I figured that was the way to go for your engagement ring.”
She continues to stare at it. Then me. Then the ring.
“Do you like it?” I ask. I can’t stand not knowing. I don’t want her to have to pretend. “If you don’t, I can get something different. I just want you to enjoy wearing it, and—”
She puts a hand on my chest, and just like that the words stop tumbling out of my mouth.
“It’s stunning,” she says softly. “I couldn’t have picked a better one myself.” Her eyes hold on mine. “Just please tell me there’s a generous return policy.”
I don’t respond to that. I just take her hand where it’s resting against my heart and run my thumb across her knuckles.
I slide the ring onto her finger and find myself unable to let go of her hand.
Her fingers are smooth and elegant, skin soft, nails painted deep red today.
Mine are twice the size, knuckles thickened and scarred, one finger on my right hand sitting slightly crooked where it healed wrong after some asshole cross-checked it into the boards a decade ago and I didn’t get it looked at until the offseason.
Her hand looks like it belongs in a painting. Mine looks like it belongs in an orthopedic surgeon’s textbook.
She’s way too beautiful for a beat-up cowboy held together by pins and stitches.
Way too delicate and aristocratic and soft for me.
I was pretty much born with dirt under my boots and I’ve had my teeth cracked by hockey pucks.
I feel like a brute towering over her. Like some fucking orc handing a fairy princess a jewel and hoping she’ll fall in love with me for it.
“Still want to get married?” I ask.
She’s looking up at me. Rose-gold hair blowing around her, her brown eyes almost amber in the sunlight. My thumb is pressed to the inside of her wrist and her pulse is going fast.
I want to press my lips against that flutter.
I want to hear her breath hitch when I put my mouth on her skin.
I want to kiss her slowly, everywhere, take my time with her until her pulse is going fast for a whole different reason.
Sink into her heat and softness and make her mine in truth, fuck whatever complications come after.
Dangerous thoughts.
“Yes,” she whispers. “Do you? It’s not too late to change your mind.”
My thumb skims over the glittering stone. It feels like a victory, that she likes it. It’s the way I feel after a hard-won game, except warmer. Deeper.
“Not a chance,” I tell her. “My mind is made up.”