Chapter 5
Zinnia
If she were a different person, tears would be stinging her eyes right about now. Bitter indignation, nesting like cuckoo eggs, lived inside her chest instead.
“Wait, where are you going?” Jordan’s long legs had no trouble keeping pace with hers. She only wore heels for special occasions. If she power walked any faster, she’d trip, fall, and probably end up in the hospital.
“Home!”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Whatever you’re trying to do isn’t funny!”
“The only thing I’m trying to do is marry you.”
“You only want to marry me as a joke!”
A bystander gasped loudly, elbowed the person next to them, and pointed at Zinnia. She kept moving, speeding straight past their scandalized stares.
“When did I say that?” He sounded frantic.
“You didn’t have to! You’re just trying to make a storytime video about your ‘weird date’ so your store will go viral. You’re not even related to those people!”
Fiona had warned her that this could happen.
People with prank channels used dating apps to find unsuspecting hopefuls, solely to embarrass them.
There was even a restaurant that had done that—they set up fake dates, let the person believe they were stood up, and encouraged them to buy food with “sympathy” discounts.
The dating world was monstrously awful, and she was right for wanting nothing to do with it.
“I would never do something like that.” He spoke with so much conviction that she almost believed him. But she wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
“Well, it’s not like I can take your word for it since I don’t even know you! I’m not stupid, Jordan!”
“GET HIM, GIRL! YOU TELL HIM!”
They both turned to find a patio full of patrons trying to enjoy their Tex-Mex-inspired meals. More than half were glaring directly at Jordan in a come outside, we just wanna talk way. So many strangers having her back made her temper deflate a little…until she spotted a few people recording them.
“Excuse us. Sorry.” Jordan gently took her by the elbow and guided her to the corner.
She ripped her arm away and slapped the crosswalk button. The downtown cops on horses were all too happy to hand out jaywalking tickets. She wasn’t upset enough to risk losing two hundred dollars.
“What happened to meeting me halfway?” He kept his voice low and had the nerve to look offended. “I tell you the biggest secret of my life and you immediately shut me out because you think I’m lying?”
“Because you are!”
Presenting his phone screen to her, he swiped through picture after candid picture of him with the Zaffre family.
She defiantly crossed her arms. “Those could be photoshopped or generated.”
He sighed and swiped to a video: the entire family, him included, on a beach singing happy birthday to an older Black man wearing an aloha shirt and holding a coconut with one of those little umbrellas in it.
“That’s my mom in the yellow sun hat. Sadie is in the green bathing suit.
The twins, Wylie and Lulie, are next to each other.
And that’s me with my dad. I basically photocopied his face in the womb. ”
Seeing them side by side—the resemblance was shockingly unmistakable. “Except you’re so beige,” she whispered.
“My summer shade usually clears things up for people,” he said dryly.
“Sorry,” she said, meaning it. “I thought you didn’t get to spend time with them.”
“One week in January. Two weeks in May. One week in August. That’s all I get, every year.”
The missing twelfth month.
“Okay. I believe you. They’re your family, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve fundamentally misunderstood my proposal.
I’m not getting married as a stunt, Jordan.
I’m trying to find a life partner, not someone who wants to use me for nine months as a cover story. My life isn’t a distraction.”
“It won’t be,” he promised. “I assumed we’d discuss the specifics after I explained. The show would only be a fraction of our life. I’m on board with everything you want. This is just something we’d need to do first.”
Our life. Not my. Our. We.
That small detail was enough to make her hesitate when the crossing signal began chirping.
“Give me ten minutes.” He took a step forward, bowing his head to be closer to her, even though she refused to meet his gaze.
“My physician doesn’t even know some of the things I told you during our call.
I would’ve never exposed Sadie if I wasn’t serious about this.
Ten minutes—just give me ten more minutes of your time. Please?”
Zinnia exhaled through her nose, tapping her foot to help her think.
Her dad called her his “gullible girl.” Her mom constantly lectured her about being too trusting.
She wasn’t clueless—she knew most people were likely to lie.
Her brain just had a hard time filtering out dishonesty in real time.
Especially if the liar was someone she cared about. Or wanted to care about.
She pressed the crosswalk signal again. “You have until I get to my car.”
“At a normal pace? No speed-walking?”
“Take it or leave it.” She glared at him and regretted it. The sun, low in the sky at his back, created a luminescent glow around him. His eyes and skin were tinted by shadow, and his hair was gloriously more dark red than brown.
Jordan was truly so handsome it almost hurt to look at him.
Actually, the pain might’ve been from the indirect sunbeams burning her eyes. She couldn’t really tell the difference.
He gave her a tentative smile and they crossed the street together. “I wish there was a way to explain this without you jumping to conclusions again, but I feel like that’s not possible.” He paused. “Don’t jump.”
“I’m already airborne.”
“Thought so.” He laughed softly. “I love my family. I know they think they know what’s best for me, but not this time.
I will do anything to get out of marrying that actress.
My plan was to find someone, anyone, and convince them to help me.
That’s why I signed up for the app—I was ‘searching for a stranger to marry.’ Imagine my shock when I found you, hoping for the same exact thing using the same exact phrase. ”
She ground her teeth. “It’s not the same.”
“It is.” He smiled at her, warm and excited. “I accepted that my marriage would be temporary. We’d get divorced and go our separate ways, no harm no foul. But then I talked to you and answered all your invasive questions.”
“Reasonable questions. Wrap it up. I can see my car from here.” She’d parked in the small lot behind his store. They rounded the final corner and were almost there.
But Jordan didn’t say anything else until they stood beside her driver’s side door. She jingled her keys at him as a joke—he gently caught her wrist in midair, gaze completely locked on hers.
“Zinnia.” He said her name with such earnest, rumbling emotion, it launched a tsunami of fluttering feelings in her belly.
“I took everything you told me to heart because I wanted to understand what you wanted, and before I knew it, you convinced me. Starting as strangers with an agreement won’t make our marriage any less real.
Separating when our time on the show ends doesn’t have to be a foregone conclusion.
We can choose to stay together. We can choose to make it work.
I want to marry you because you’re my choice and I want to be yours. Let’s build a life together.”
His words felt like a sincere plea straight to her soul.
Sayings like Fool me once…were truly made for people like her. If she were wrong, she’d take full responsibility for making a bad choice.
Because Jordan was the one—her second best.
“How would this work?” she asked. “You really have to leave next week?”
“Each season always starts with filming at my family’s estate for a few months. Then we’ll come back home with a sporadic shooting schedule for the rest of the year.”
“I can put my shop on temporary hiatus, but I don’t have enough time off at my other job for this.”
“Everyone earns a flat fee for agreeing to appear on camera, plus a prorated amount per episode that airs, depending on how much screen time you’re given. I can email the specifics tonight.”
She nodded. Grace would know if the contract was fair or not.
“And if that’s not enough,” he continued, “you could always come work mornings at my store to keep the same hours when we get back.”
“I’m not interested in retail. I have the personality but not the patience for customer service. I’m hanging on by a thread at the call center as it is.”
“You could work the back end. My recordkeeping is…not great. I have two accountants but definitely still need help. I rent a two-room office in a business complex where I keep files, finance reports, company server, that kind of thing. You’d be there by yourself, but I could join you for daily lunch dates. ”
That was a diabolical offer. Completely below the quality-time belt because she’d told him lunch was her favorite meal.
“What would my salary be?”
“How much do you currently make?” She told him and he said, “I can double that. We also have a generous benefits package.”
“Wow, I had no idea coffee and books were so profitable.”
“They can be. Personally, I don’t see the point in making ten times more than my employees just because I own the business. I’d have nothing without their labor and so I pay them accordingly. They deserve it.”
Screw promise rings.
As far as she was concerned, they were engaged. It took everything she had to not disintegrate him with a million-watt smile.
“I’m tentatively saying yes, but I still have to talk to Grace and Fiona,” she said calmly, cool and collected. Cucumbers all around. “They’re really not gonna like this, though.”
Famous last words. Understatement of the year.
“Zaffre!” Grace was pacing the kitchen like a tiger trapped in a cage.
Fiona groaned, clutching her stomach. “I think my ulcer just ruptured.”
“I swear to god, this could only happen to you.”