Chapter 16
“This makes me feel like we’re really married,” Kat said as she shaped a crab cake with her hands. She glanced over at the gorgeous creature beside her, reminding herself that he was, in fact, her husband.
“The whole cooking together thing?” His hair might be shorter than it was when he could fit it into a man bun, but it was still long enough to fall into his eye-line while he worked.
She grinned as she watched him flick his head back to get the dark strand out of his way.
His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and his fingers were caked with the mixture as he shaped a cake of his own.
“Yeah.” Gently, Kat placed the small patty into the pan. The shallow layer of grease sizzled and popped. The tempting aroma wafted through the air.
Duke stepped over, holding one in each hand. “You ready for these?”
“Yep.”
Side by side then, the two hovered over their creations, flipping each over as they browned. She could get used to nights like these. Distant music floating over the home, a bottle of bubbly chilling as they made dinner together.
“I can’t believe they stocked the pantry for you like this,” she said as they brought the food to the dining table.
As predicted, the clouds rolled in just as the two finished up their time outside.
They discovered an old chest by the fireplace for such occasions, stocked with card games, board games, even craft kits.
“It was either request some menu items or have a private chef join us for the night,” he said. “But I assumed that might have taken away from the whole island-to-ourselves thing.”
“Definitely.” Kat searched the neatly set table. A bowl of fresh tarter sauce rested beside a basket of homemade sweet potato fries, locally prepared coleslaw, and—of course—the crab cakes. “I think we’re ready.”
Duke pulled out a chair and motioned to it. “Here you go, babe. For the Princess of the Pillows.”
A tiny but potent thrill rushed through her. She loved how easily that had slipped off his tongue. She stepped in front of the chair, ready to sit down, when suddenly he grabbed her by the hip.
“Wait,” he said from behind. His warmth at her back told Kat just how close he was. “Want me to help you take off this apron?”
She glanced down at the colorful piece and grinned. “Yes, thank you.”
He fiddled with the knot at her lower back before moving to the one behind her neck.
Kat knew—since she’d looped that part over her head—that untying it there wasn’t necessary, but the feel of his warm fingers on her skin felt nice.
And so did the sensation of his heated breath after he’d unfastened it.
Kat held very still as his lips grazed the delicate center of her back. Once, twice. A trail of chills rushed up her arms.
He groaned low in his throat. “Maybe you should be my dinner tonight.” He allowed his teeth to skim over her flesh before planting a playful kiss to the same spot.
He cleared his throat, stepped back, and motioned to the chair once more. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll leave you alone. For now.”
Kat took a seat and watched as he did the same.
She was well aware of the sight behind her—a kitchen counter cluttered with squeezed lemon halves, measuring cups of all sizes, and an array of spices to satisfy chefs within miles, but the view across from her was perfect.
The flawless face of the man she was falling in love with, accented by an ocean that magnified the blue in his eyes.
“We have a lot of catching up to do,” he said while plopping a scoop of tarter sauce onto his plate.
Kat reached for the coleslaw. “We do?”
He nodded. “Yes. There are probably about three hundred basic things we should already know about each other, being married and all.”
“Three hundred?”
“Give or take,” he said with a shrug. “So here’s how it’s going to go. One shouts out a question, the other one answers. We move onto the next.”
Kat nodded. “Okay. But whoever asks the question has to answer it too.”
“Right,” he agreed. “Favorite color.”
“Wow, you really did mean the basics, didn’t you?”
He smiled. “Mine’s black.”
“You’re kidding.” Her fork hovered halfway between her plate and her mouth. “I’ve never heard anyone say their favorite color, out of all the colors of the universe, is black.”
“It’s the best one.” But then he lifted a finger. “I am actually growing partial to another color as well,” he admitted, eyes fixed on hers. “It’s kind of a golden brown color,” he said.
He wasn’t the first person to call her eyes golden brown. He was, however, the first to say he favored the color because of it. She couldn’t stop the grin that pulled at her lips. “Mine’s red,” she admitted. “Has been since my grandma took me and Jeanie to a salon to get our nails done.”
“Cute,” Duke said. “Nickname. Have you got one?”
She shook her head, but thought better of it. “My dad calls me Aponi sometimes, but that’s actually my middle name. It means butterfly.”
“I like that,” he said. “Aponi?”
She liked how it sounded on his lips. “Yes. What about you?”
“Arrow,” he said. “I was a master archer back in school. Could hit that center target nine out of ten times.”
She lifted a brow. “Like Robin Hood?”
He grinned. “Exactly.”
“That’s hot,” she said. “And my father would be impressed.”
“Then we definitely have to tell him,” he said.
“Yeah, and while I think Arrow is a great nickname, I’m kind of digging Robin Hood for you now.”
His eyes lit up. “The nerd boy in me is very happy about that.”
“Good.”
The questions kept on throughout dinner, and dessert too—he’d requested a chocolate mousse among the menu items. Something they enjoyed while sitting up to the fireplace.
She’d taken a turn firing off the questions as well, once they’d started coming to her. She’d discovered that his favorite deli meat was prosciutto, his favorite music was classic rock, and his bookshelf mainly consisted of biographies about men he admired.
“I always tell my Grandma Lo she should write an autobiography,” he said while tracing lines over Kat’s palm. “She’s a fascinating woman,” he continued. “Intelligent, strong. And savvy too—that woman knows the business world, I’ll tell you that.”
“This is the one who owns the wedding boutique?” Kat asked, enjoying the feel of his touch. And the way he’d asked for her hand in the first place, only to trace circles on her palm with his fingertips, kiss it occasionally, then return to drawing lines over her skin.
“Yes,” he said, adding, “who do you admire most?”
That one was easy. “Marie Curie, for sure.”
“Ah.” He tipped his head back. “That’s a good one. Now tell me about your ex.”
Kat’s lips were poised to ask another question, but his unexpected inquiry stopped her short. Her shoulders drooped.
“I know,” he said. “It’s not a romantic topic, but it’s one of the basics, so let’s hurry and get it out of the way so we can make out the rest of the night.”
That didn’t sound too bad. But talking about Bradley, admitting how terribly deceived she’d been…
“It’s pretty awful,” she started. “He was the first man I fell in love with, and it ended so badly that I haven’t let myself fall in love since.
” He held her gaze for a moment as she considered that last part.
It was still true enough, she guessed, but if Kat were being honest, she’d say she was well on her way to falling in love with her groom.
“His name is Bradley. He was charming, handsome, and he told me everything I wanted to hear—he wanted to get married one day, have a family. I never suspected he was lying to me about who he was. Why would I?”
Her mind drifted back to the day she found out. Duke stopped rubbing her hand, seeming to be frozen in anticipation of her next words. Kat turned the tables, brought one of his muscular hands to her lap, and began tracing along the inside of his fingers.
“We hadn’t been to his place yet, which didn’t worry me since he lived an hour away. He worked near me, so we mainly just spent our date nights out or hung out at my place.
“He was a private contractor, ran a modest but growing business and…I don’t know, I thought I’d found Mr. Right.” She paused to look up at his face. The stage was set, and now it was time to tell him how it all went awry. Would he think she was stupid for not detecting the truth?
When she glanced up at him, Duke gave her an encouraging nod. Kat set her focus back on his hand, began tracing small circles along his wrist.
“I’d seen a few advertisements for his company, usually just a logo with his number and name, but then one day I got a text from Jeanie.
She’d snapped a picture of one of those mailer advertisements.
At first I didn’t even recognize him. Because he was surrounded by what looked like a wife and two small kids. ”
She shook her head absently. “If I had any talent for art, I could sketch out that photo to perfection I stared at it so long. His wife was brunette, beautiful. His kids were too. Jeanie told me the ad was an old one she found while cleaning out her junk drawer. It had a coupon that expired nearly two years prior.”
Kat moved her gaze back to Duke. His brow was furrowed, his face tense, like he was waiting to hear the worst of it.
“Jeanie asked if I could believe it, but the ridiculous thing is, I didn’t even know what it was.
I just couldn’t comprehend a world where he wasn’t who he said he was.
So I said, ‘Believe what? He must have gotten the pictures taken for advertising purposes.’ You know, for appearances to look more…
family friendly or something. But Jeanie already knew.
She’d done a bit of digging and found his address.
Said that if I wanted, she would drive out there with me to watch the house. ”
“To see if he really was married?” he asked.
She nodded. “Jeanie even offered to drive. He wouldn’t recognize her car, for one, but she must have known that I’d be a wreck if I discovered that he was.”
“She sounds like a good sister,” he said.
“She is. Anyway, once I started to admit that it was possible the wife and kids were actually his, I’d also convinced myself that it could only be true if he were divorced and he was working his way up to telling me.
But that wasn’t the case. We parked down the street—it was a Tuesday night—and watched the house from a distance.
Forty-five minutes went by, and then a minivan pulled up.
“The woman from the photo popped out of the passenger side and started helping a toddler out of his seat behind her. And that’s when I saw the driver’s side fling open.
One sight of his shoe hitting the driveway and I knew it was him.
” The memory was like a thousand tiny knives stabbing at her insides.
“He looked like…I mean, if someone was trying to catch footage of the perfect, happy little family—a dad hoisting a small child out of the mini van, hurrying inside the home while some dog barked in the distance—that’s what it was.
“It was a total face slap, you know? I couldn’t come up with a proper excuse, but I was still trying to.
Like, maybe he was terribly unhappy. Maybe they were on the verge of divorce.
I didn’t think either of those were true, but even if they had been, it wouldn’t have made what he’d done alright.
He pretended he was someone that he wasn’t, made me fall in love with someone who didn’t even exist.”
Kat took in the horrified expression on Duke’s face. “Kat, that’s…terrible. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I mean, I’m sorry that his wife had to go through it, but it made me wiser. I knew that—no matter what I did, no matter who I married—I would never fall for a man who wasn’t who he said he was.”
She reached up, slid a hand along his jaw, and gave him a soft smile. “It’s the reason I was drawn to this experiment. And so far, I’m very happy with the guy they picked.”
Just when Zander thought he was safe…
While Kat explained the details of her unfaithful ex, Zander’s anger level spiked sky-high. The guy sounded like an absolute lowlife. There he was, gifted with a beautiful wife and kids, and the loser was out there preying on a trusting woman like Kat.
Yet just as Zander’s indignation began to bloom, Kat dropped a bomb. Of course, in his eyes, he and Bradley had nothing in common. Except then she’d narrowed the betrayal down in different terms: He lied about who he was.
This situation was nothing like that one though. Kat couldn’t possibly be as angry about what he’d done, which was simply step in for his brother to spare Kat and her family humiliation. And, of course, to spare the Benton family from a massive lawsuit and public disgrace.
Zander leaned over the bathroom sink, flicked on the cold water, and used his hands to splash his face. Don’t lose your cool, man. It’s fine. It’s fine.
Only the sharp knot of guilt in his gut said otherwise.
Water dripped from his face as he reached blindly for a hand towel.
He dabbed his skin, wishing he could only sop up the guilt with as much ease.
Instead, it was growing, each inhale seeming to pump new life into the awakening of what he’d done.
Not only had Zander pretended to be someone he wasn’t—for the whole world to see, no less—he’d kept up the charade in the privacy of their honeymoon getaway.
A rash of heat broke over his face, defying all effects of his cold-water splash.
It felt as if everything they’d eaten that night was gathering forces, ready to push its way up his throat in a scorching revolt.
Every sense in him screamed a common demand—he had to tell her.
Right now.
Ready or not.
Forget what Duke had said about making sure she was in love with him first. Duke had no idea what it was like to be on this end of things.
No one did. Zander wanted a pass. Some get-out-of-the-doghouse-free card for not coming up with the plan in the first place.
For refusing to do it even, until… well until he caved and did it anyway.
He could blame Duke all he wanted, but the fact was, Zander could have said no.
If he’d have done the right thing, he’d have…what, told the network at the last minute that Duke wasn’t coming? Leave them scrambling on live TV, with no choice but to villainize the billion dollar family who thought they could buy their way out of anything?
“Well, this is stupid,” he muttered, squaring a look at his reflection.
He was going in circles. And no matter who was to blame for all of this, one fact remained—Zander needed to come clean.
He’d walk out there, explain the whole thing, and apologize for carrying it out so long.
He’d take the blame, he’d beg for forgiveness even, but what he wouldn’t do, despite the outcome of the moments to follow, was regret what he’d done; it’s what led him to Kat.