18. Maggie
Chapter eighteen
Maggie
“ W hat do you mean we’re going to a party?
You couldn’t have given me any less notice, and none of my clothes fit me right.
I’m going to look like a whale,” I complained.
I had just gotten home from a long day of lessons and turning out the school ponies.
Then I helped Jack’s part-time helper, Ramón, finish up the barn behind our cozy cabin, and was finally relaxing with a glass of sparkling water in a wine glass when Jack dropped this bomb on me.
Being eighteen weeks pregnant on top of that had me desperate for a few quiet hours and a twelve-hour nap.
“Relax, we don’t have to stay long. Everyone is getting settled in for the season, and there are a lot of new people we have to meet.” He shrugged when I raised my eyebrows at him.
“And convince them we’re married,” I muttered.
Jack took a few steps toward me, but still held a safe distance between us.
At least our height difference was pronounced due to my low seat on the kitchen barstool.
His eyes met mine, and despite my desperate need to keep us at a distance, I let them lock me in.
“That shouldn’t be too hard, should it, wife?
” He brushed a hair behind my ear, and I resisted the urge to lean into his touch. “We can fake it like nobody can.”
His words shouldn’t have stung. I didn’t want them to. But I was beginning to hate that word.
Fake.
As if anything between us the last few months had felt that way.
Maybe it was because no one had taken me in and cared for me the way Jack had—and I still couldn’t let myself wonder if it was for me or our future baby—but the way he treated me like I was so precious…
it got to me. It made me feel things that weren’t safe to feel.
Weren’t safe to voice. Weren’t safe to believe.
“Yeah,” I cleared my throat. If I opened my mouth any more, I might have admitted the thoughts running through my head.
“And as for the clothing issue…” he trailed off, searching for words—and searching my body with his eyes. Maybe he was sliding down the same slope as me. He lifted two fingers to tip my chin up. “You look breathtaking in everything.”
My gaze shifted in an attempt to relieve the intensity of the moment.
Fuck. I wanted him to kiss me.
Jack must have noticed my brain running a mile a minute, because he lightened his meaning. “Even when you smell like you’ve been in a barn all day.”
I caught his smirk and gave it right back to him. “Hey. That’s my job.”
The hand on my chin lowered to my stomach. “You’re growing our baby, Maggie. That’s something you should be proud of, never ashamed.”
“I-I’m not…Or not ashamed of that at least. It’s everything. This whole thing is a lie,” I reminded myself, unable to trust whether or not it was true.
“To the public, yes, it is. Our marriage—our romantic relationship is a lie,” he grimaced. “But this,” his hand continued to stroke up and down the small bump that was now my belly. “How I feel about this baby? Our child? That’s as real as it gets.”
My insides twisted as I tried to make sense of everything.
Jack was lying to everyone but me…about me.
Did that not confuse everything for him like it did for me?
Could this ruin our parental relationship if it went too far?
What if the romantic feelings I was beginning to draw towards bubbled to the surface?
We had barely begun faking this marriage, and I was already lost to the lies and indiscretions. The simple touches. The way he ensured he always had a hand on me. The secret looks and smiles he shot me for show. The made-up anecdotes he recited about us.
Jack hadn’t kissed me in weeks. We had kept our relationship professional…mostly. Discounting a few longing stares and moments where it felt like it was only us, I could pat myself on the back for displaying this much control.
After showering and slipping into a black dress and a leather jacket to shield from the cool weather, I headed back downstairs, where Jack waited at the front door, his phone in hand. When he noticed me, his eyes traced my face. I said nothing and let him hold the front door open for me.
“You okay?” Jack glanced at me with concern as he pulled the truck out of the driveway. He reached for my hands, which I was nervously wringing in my lap.
I looked back at him and answered honestly. “No, I’m terrified. I don’t know how to do this. I’m a terrible liar.”
Jack chuckled. “You’re not. You lied your ass off at dinner with Mike that first night. And we’ve been pretty touchy when we’re out and about.”
Yeah, thanks to you .
His touches burned me in the best way. I had secretly begun to crave them whenever we put on our facade. In fact, going out like this was more enjoyable because it meant Jack gave extra affection.
“I know, but how should I know when I’m touching you too much? Or if I’m acting way overly into you when I’ve been your wife for, what, a year?”
“A few months, right?”
“Right.”
We don’t even have a timeline established.
I took a deep breath. “You’ll be perfect, Mags.
You always are. And like I said, we don’t have to stay too long.
You can always say you’re tired or that your ankles hurt.
Or that the baby is kicking.” He gasped softly.
“Wait, the baby hasn’t kicked yet, right?
You would tell me if they did? I’ve done my research on it, and it’s supposed to happen sometime between sixteen and twenty-five–” he paused and took a breath. “I just want to know.”
“Jack, I promise if anything happens, you’ll be the first to know.” He was my partner through this. I needed to remind him of that.
“Good.” I didn’t miss the hint of possessiveness in his voice.
It wasn’t long before we pulled into the polo club’s clubhouse parking lot. There were already about two dozen cars parked, and muffled voices and music flowed from inside the clubhouse. My chest tightened.
But like he felt it, Jack tightened his grip on my hand the moment he noticed a change.
How could he know me so well after just a few months?
I brushed the feeling aside as Jack gave me a reassuring glance and another tight squeeze to my hand.
Before I knew it, he opened his door and moved to the passenger side to open mine.
I quickly smoothed out the skirt of my black, knee-length dress to keep from biting my nails.
Jack reached me and took my hand to help me out of the truck.
“You’ve got this, baby.”
My already racing heart jolted. We didn’t call each other that in private. This was meant to be a careful, co-parenting relationship. Not a romantic one.
He didn’t mean to say it like that. He couldn’t have.
He was just getting into character.
Right. I just needed to believe that for the rest of the night.
***
I couldn’t lie. The night was going much better than I thought it would. As soon as we walked into the party and started mingling with people, I relaxed.
This was my element—socializing with polo people, discussing games and future tournaments, making fantasy teams with strangers I just met.
The only difference this time around was calling Jack my husband.
I hadn’t realized how comfortable I’d gotten around him until the first time his touch moved from my arm to my lower back.
But I didn’t spook like I thought I would. Instead of scaring me, it heated me. The light touches of his fingertips on my bare skin sent tingles up my back. The way he traced the rough calluses of his fingertips on the open back of my dress made my heart race. My core slick.
And shutting that down when it felt like we were the only two people in the room felt impossible.
A few familiar faces approached me, and I recited my love story with Jack, time after time.
It left a bad taste in my mouth. It felt like a script.
It felt like Jack and I were preventing a chance at something real happening for our baby.
Maybe it couldn’t be a real marriage, but at least it could be an honest one.
“Wow, so you two were basically lovers from childhood,” Kyra Blake, another new face who played low-goal polo at the club, swooned. “And that Jack is a cu-tie!” She separated the syllables to enhance her meaning and lifted her drink to her lips.
“Sort of,” I offered. “We didn’t really start seeing each other until we were older.”
Not technically a lie.
“Well, that is just too cute! And I hear you’re pregnant too.
” She reached out to touch my bump, and I instinctively moved backward.
No one had tried to touch it before, and I wasn’t keen on changing that.
Before the woman could say anything, Jack returned to my side after leaving to get me a glass of sparkling water.
“Another new face.” He smiled with that damn charm of his and held a hand out. “Jack. Pleasure to meet you.”
Kyra blushed—and briefly glanced at her wedding band—as she took Jack’s hand and shook it.
I didn’t miss the way he instinctively placed his hand on that bare divot in my lower back right after handing me my drink.
“Oh, the pleasure is all mine,” her voice turned sultry.
I tucked my forehead behind Jack’s shoulder.
She was flirting with him in front of me.
I couldn’t handle watching whatever smooth line he might have given her.
His hand pressed harder into my back, fingers scraping against the bare skin.
Leaning his head down so only I could hear, he whispered, “You look fucking perfect, right now. Who does this lady think she is, touching our baby?”
Red covered my face as I let out a short breath. My eyes locked with his. They looked hungry. And I was starving. I couldn’t even recover before Jack cleared his throat and looked back at Kyra.
“I see you’ve met my beautiful wife.” He shot me a burning look, making me feel like the luckiest girl in the room. The dirtiest, too.
He knew exactly what he was doing, because Kyra’s face turned red as she glanced between us.
It’s fake, it’s fake, it’s fake .
“Oh.” Her expression said it all.
At this level of money, marriages could be purely for financial and societal benefits.
But who was I to talk? Just because someone was married—and especially if they lived by the fifty-mile rule—it didn’t mean they were unavailable.
And hungry prowlers wouldn’t hesitate to take a bite of what wasn’t theirs.
Scandals and disloyalty were nothing new.
In fact, they were nearly expected of traveling players like Jack and me.
Working in different places throughout the year provided the opportunity of finding a new lover in each place—or multiple.
It was rare that someone shut down flirting in front of anyone, because it was classic banter.
So, Jack's use of the words “beautiful wife” in the first few seconds he met Kyra gave me a sense of comfort—well, that and a little smugness. I eyed her carefully before glancing at Jack, who offered a small grin. He felt the same smugness.
I liked pretending.
Jack never left my side after that conversation with Kyra. I didn’t know if it was because he wanted to be near me or if he didn’t want the temptation of other women flirting with him, but I convinced myself it was the latter.
We mingled throughout the rest of the night, introducing ourselves to dozens of people.
Nearly everyone we met was so kind, so cordial, that this could feel just as much like home as being back in Pennsylvania with Dad and our ranch.
A western charm resided here. People called us “honey” and “darling.” They brushed my arm by accident and apologized as if they had hit my car.
They offered to go out for dinner and drinks just to get to know each other better.
It felt like Jack and I were different here, too. We weren’t two messes trying to find our way. We weren’t faking a marriage. We weren’t sea-sawing about our current relationship status. We were real . We belonged, and it didn’t take much to feel that sense of comfort. This place was special.
I think I loved Golden Meadow.