Chapter 15
LINCOLN
The car is silent on the drive to dinner. Jules seems to be in a weird mood—nerves, maybe. Meanwhile, I’m busy mentally going over my plan for the night.
So much is on the line. If Jules and I don’t go through with this marriage of convenience, I might not have a business in six months.
I’ll be back to eating microwavable noodles and peanut butter sandwiches, just like in my early twenties.
The only difference is, this time, my poor kid will be right there, struggling alongside me.
This plan has got to fucking work.
But as we enter the fancy restaurant, I’m having a hard time focusing on the burning issues at hand.
My eyes are glued to Jules’s tight ass as she struts ahead of me in those daring high heels.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her in anything but her big, clunky biker boots.
I’m completely distracted by her long, toned legs.
When she peels off her leather jacket to hand it over at the coat check booth, my mouth drops open.
Her body looks killer in that little red dress and black floral lace pantyhose.
I’m dying here.
I brought this on myself. I’m the one who suggested that she wear something sexy tonight.
But I didn’t think she’d actually listen to me.
Jules has a knack for giving me a hard time.
That’s just the game she likes to play. But tonight, she’s given me exactly what I asked for, and now I’m not sure I can handle it.
I’m doing the best I can at keeping my shit together on the outside. Internally, I’m wrestling with my self-control. My mind keeps broadcasting flashbacks of our sexy night in her bedroom.
I try to remind myself that despite the way we’re dressed or the nice venue we’re dining at, this isn’t really a date in the traditional sense. It’s all business.
Business. Business. Business.
I repeat that over and over inside my head as I pull out her chair, try to ignore the soft curve of her bare shoulders, and sit across from her.
Business. Business. Business.
The instant we put in our drink orders, I’m ready to skip the small talk and get straight down to strategizing.
Family dinner with Jules’s great-grandmother is coming up fast, and I need to know how to win the old woman over.
If we can successfully do that, then it’ll be a breeze to fool the married business men on the other side of my potential business merger.
I reach into my shirt pocket and pull out the folded sheet of paper with all my questions.
“Okay, let's start with the basics,” I say, taking a sip of my ginger ale when the server delivers our drinks. “What's your favorite color?”
Simple. Easy. Unproblematic. A safe place to start.
But in typical Jules fashion, she rolls her eyes at me. “Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be serious? What’s your favorite color?” I hold my pen, poised to write down her answer.
I’m prepared for her to say ‘black’. Like her heart.
Instead, she wrinkles her nose, obviously not a fan of my methodical approach. “I don’t have a favorite color,” she says, a note of annoyance in her voice.
“How do you not have a favorite color? Is something wrong with you?”
“I just don’t,” she says bluntly.
Great. My plan is already going up in smoke.
This is going to be a long night.
I throw my face up to the ceiling. “Jeez. Why are you so difficult? You remind me of that minor league baseball player I represented last year who turned down his shot at the big leagues because some psychic named Ziggy said the uniform colors were bad luck.”
Jules lets out a grunt. “Can we just get to the important stuff please? And put away the pen and paper. I feel like I’m in a police interrogation.”
It causes me physical pain to do so, but I put them away. “Okay. Fine. Happy?”
Jules finishes her drink in two big gulps. Then she tips the glass back, making sure to get the last drop.
She smirks. “Depends on whether you’re getting us a bottle of wine.”
I hadn’t been planning on it, but I flag down the server anyway.
The woman may be impossibly stubborn, but she’s right about this one thing. Maybe the alcohol will make this whole situation less painful. If a little liquid courage is what it’ll take to get her through this conversation, then so be it.
I hold off on the questions until after our wine is ordered and poured.
“Alright. The important stuff, you say?”
She nods, taking a gulp from her wine glass. “My Great-Grandma is the key to making this whole thing work.”
“Got it. Tell me about her. What does she value most?”
I watch Jules soften a bit on the topic of her great-grandmother. She may be afraid of the woman, but I can tell that she loves her. I make a mental note of that fun fact.
“Protecting our family is most important to her. Although she tends to go about it in the most controlling way possible.” Jules harrumphs into her drink.
“What’s the deal with the moral kick?” I ask her. “Why a marriage clause of all things?”
Jules gets a wistful look on her face. “My great-grandparents had this fairytale marriage. Married young. Proved their families wrong at every step. Had kids of their own. Great-Grandma doesn’t really talk about her husband now.
Probably too painful. But I know that the two of them loved each other.
Like a real, true soul mate kind of love.
” She chuckles. “I think that’s why she feels so disappointed in all of her own kids and grandkids. ”
I lift an eyebrow. “What do you mean? Your great-grandmother expects all of her family to find the kind of relationship she had? That seems…”
“Absurd? I’m not sure she’s naive enough to think we’ll all find true love, but she’s tired of all the scandals and cheating and out-of-wedlock shenanigans.” Jules shrugs her narrow shoulders.
“Hmm.” I nod. “So your dad is her grandson?”
“Yeah,” she mutters. “And, let’s just say, if the morality clause was around back in the day, my father would be a very poor man.”
“Cheater?”
“Ding-ding-ding. I’m an affair baby.” Imitating a game show host, she makes a sweeping gesture with her free hand.
I flinch. “Fuck. Sorry.”
She shrugs, but I can see the hurt swirling deep in those magical brown eyes.
“I’ve never had much faith in that man anyway.
I guess I’m kind of mad at my mom for being a gullible mistress.
It’s hard because I love her so much, and it wasn’t her fault he was a lying scumbag.
But still…” She fiddles with the stem of her glass.
I mentally fill in the blanks, piecing together the things she’s not saying. Clearly, Jules has suffered a lot because of her family dynamic. “That couldn’t have been easy on you.”
“I got used to it.” Her lips twist to the side. “You can’t exactly choose your family. Remember my sweet half-sister who you met during your walk of shame?”
“That was your half-sister?” I get a full-body shiver just thinking about the woman who was sitting on Jules’s couch the morning after our little tryst.
“Yep.”
I snort. “She seems lovely.”
“Oh, she is.” Jules rolls her eyes, her voice full of sarcasm.
“My dad is a jackass, too,” I volunteer. “He had a whole other family on the side that my mother had no idea about. He left us to struggle financially, all while he was funding a whole other household at the same time.”
“Yikes…” Jules offers.
“I know my mom’s not to blame. She deserved so much better.” I exhale heavily. “I wish she wouldn’t have let the asshole in and out of our lives the way she did over the years. She should have cut him off the first time he bailed on us.”
“Damn. Who knew we both had daddy issues?”Jules lifts her wine glass toward my ginger ale, clinking it softly. “Here’s to having shitty sperm donors, I guess.”
I find myself nodding again. “To shitty sperm donors,” I agree.
A weirdly comfortable silence fills our table in the moments after connecting over our shared pain. We’ve found common ground within our complicated family situations. This new emotionally vulnerable side of Jules truly makes a mark on me.
From the beginning, I made up my mind that Jules is not my cup of tea. But now, each time we talk—like really fucking talk—I peel back a new layer of this prickly woman. I’m starting to wonder if, maybe she’s not so prickly after all.
After ordering our food, we people-watch until our meal arrives. Right before we start eating, I pull out my phone to text my mom.
“Sorry, just need to check on Cameron,” I say to Jules.
She smiles at the mention of my son’s name. “You’re a good dad. Especially without ever having a role model of your own.”
“I’m probably a better dad because of it. It’s important for me to have a good relationship with Cameron. To make sure I don’t repeat history. I want to make sure he knows he’s loved, even if his parents aren’t together anymore.”
Jules leans forward, resting her chin on her hands and staring across the table at me in the candlelight. “Cameron seems like a great kid. Super smart. Funny. Well-adjusted, even in a new town. And cute as hell.”
“Thank you.” I doubt that Jules realizes how much her compliment means to me. I’m constantly second-guessing myself, worried about whether I’m doing a good job with my son. It keeps me up at night.
“Was he thrilled to find out he had a new cousin his age?” Jules asks.
I laugh. “Oh, you have no idea. You’d think the boy had won the lottery when he found out about Jagger.”
Easton and Jagger’s mother had supposedly hooked up back in high school, right before our family moved away from Fairy Bush. Imagine our shock when we returned last summer and learned of Jagger’s existence.
Finding out that I have a nephew was the best kind of surprise, and although the truth about Jagger’s paternity ended up being a lot more complicated than it initially seemed, we can’t imagine our family without the little boy now.
Jules speaks fondly about Jagger as we eat.
I always forget that my “new” nephew practically grew up with Jules, since she’s Alba’s best friend.
She’s like an aunt to Jagger, and he truly seems to adore her.
They say that kids are great judges of character.
I guess that means Jules might not be such a bad person at the end of the day.
“So…elephant in the room…,” she says later as we’re browsing through the dessert menu. “I hate to ask, but I guess I should probably know a little about your ex. Any wild stories there? Anything I should watch out for? Like an angry woman slashing my moped tires while I’m sleeping?”
My walls instantly come up, and annoyance seeps in. “No, not at all.”
Jules raises an eyebrow. “Come on. No red flags I should know about?”
“No,” I repeat firmly.
I’m not stupid. I know that Jules probably needs to know the basics of my former relationship if we’re supposedly getting married. Still, it doesn’t feel right gossiping about my son’s mother.
“Cynthia is a good person,” I say. “We just weren’t right for each other. But we were young and she helped me build myself into the man I am today. That’s all there is to it.”
Jules is quiet while she digests the tiny bit of information I just revealed to her. I didn’t mean to snap, but it just spilled out in my attempt to defend Cynthia.
“Did you love her?” my soon-to-be wife dares to ask me.
Whatever door that was open on this conversation suddenly slams closed when Jules pushes too far. I’m not in the mood for a painful reminder of my failed marriage.
“That’s personal,” I answer through clenched teeth.
“Well, we are getting married, so that’s pretty personal.” She smiles awkwardly. “What’s yours is mine, no?”
I shake my head, already rising out of my seat, the legs of my chair grating loudly across the floor.
“It’s a fake marriage, Jules. A fake marriage,” I remind her before tossing down a couple hundred dollar bills on the table.
“I’ll be waiting in the car,” I say as I’m stomping out of the restaurant, not giving a fuck that people are watching.
But by the time I get to the sidewalk, I realize what an ass I’m being. I overreacted, and I know it. I also know that I’m about to suffer my sassy fiancée’s wrath.
Great.
She’s probably not very happy about how I treated her, which is fair. But we have a business deal to close, so she’ll just have to get over it.
Parked across the street from the restaurant, I sit there behind the wheel, hyping myself up for the showdown I know is headed my way. Long moments tick by, and there’s no sign of Jules. I wait and wait and wait, debating what I should do.
Great. Looks like I’m going to have to go back into that restaurant, and deal with this situation in front of all those people. And I just know that Jules will make a scene. I don’t really have a choice, though, do I?
Right as my hand is reaching for the door handle, Jules pops out of the restaurant, hips swinging in that hot little red dress. I breathe a sigh of relief. Crisis averted.
But right then, a car pulls up to the curb in front of the restaurant.
My jaw drops open when my fiancée climbs into the back seat without sparing a glance in my direction. The taxi zooms off into the night before I even know what’s happening.
Oh, dammit. Looks like I fucked up. Big time.
Digging my phone out of my pocket, I call Jules’s number. Straight to voicemail.
I call her back. Off to voicemail I go again.
After my fifth attempt, I give up.
I grunt in frustration. How did things even get here?
Just minutes ago, we were getting along fine and I was trying to decide on cheesecake versus creme br?lée. Now, I’m realizing that humble pie is the only option on my dessert menu tonight, and Jules is serving it hot.
I spend the next two hours fuming and cruising the back roads of Fairy Bush. It does little to fix my mood.
Julissa Mei Lannister will be the death of me.