Five Million Reasons
LILA
“Slade,” I whisper. “Did you fall off a horse earlier today? Did someone slip something into your coffee? Are you feeling dizzy? What year is it? Who’s the president? How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Trick question,” he teases. “You’re not holding up any.”
“Slade.”
His gaze sobers. “It’d be a marriage just on paper. We wouldn’t have to…” He stops. Clears his throat. “That is to say, this is so you can do some good with that money. When you need to, you can walk away clean.”
We wouldn’t have to what, exactly?
I search his face for any sign that he’s messing with me. Those mysterious deep green eyes give me nothing. That unsmiling, serious mouth gives me nothing.
I wear my heart on my sleeve and he keeps his locked in a safe.
“You’re joking,” I say.
“Nope. Let’s talk through it. You got five million reasons to say yes. Give me some reasons you’re thinking no.”
I take the flask from him and have another sip of bourbon because I need it.
“For one thing, we hardly know each other.”
He shrugs. “Never stopped anyone from getting married before.”
He says it like it’s nothing. Like marrying a woman you met three weeks ago on the side of a road is a perfectly normal thing that people do all the time.
I don’t know if the fact that this marriage would just be on paper makes it more or less crazy.
“It just sounds insane,” I tell him.
“Most good ideas do at first. Best things in life happen when you step outside your comfort zone.”
“Marriage fraud is definitely out of my comfort zone.”
A glimmer in his gaze. “Ain’t fraud. We’d get the license, have the ceremony, sign the papers. Nothing fraudulent about it.”
“My family will never believe it. They’ll think I manufactured a husband out of thin air thirty days before the deadline.”
“Let them think it. It’ll all be legal and legit. That’s what the trust requires, right?”
“They’ll contest it.”
“On what grounds? Anyone who tries to object, we tell them it was love at first sight. Let them try to contest that.”
Love at first sight. I turn that phrase over in my head. It would sound romantic, if it weren’t all for pretend. If it weren’t a business arrangement with a man who is, technically, currently paying me by the hour.
The fact that my heart is racing at the idea of being this man’s wife is completely beside the point.
Just like the fact that the sun is setting on this windswept bluff and it happens to makes an incredibly romantic backdrop for a proposal is also beside the point.
“So this is like… a marriage of convenience?” I say.
“Sure.”
“I think you’re supposed to get something out the deal too, in that case.”
There’s a hint of color high on his cheekbones. “I get to help a friend. Besides, we’re already sharing a dog. The dog would vote yes. You’ve seen how happy she is at the boutique with you. Being around you full time?” The corner of his mouth moves. “That’s her dream come true.”
I don’t have an answer for that. So I take the flask instead.
“Slade, honey, you’re a little crazier than I first thought.”
“Anyone who’s good at hockey has to be at least a little crazy.”
I can’t help but laugh, feeling giddy and disbelieving. “No way. What about your family? You told me you all are close. Pulling the wool over my family’s eyes is one thing, but you can’t fake a marriage to yours.”
“We’d tell my family the truth of the situation. They’ll come around to it, or they won’t. I don’t ask for their approval to live my life.”
I know exactly what that feels like. I’ve been living it since I was eighteen. But from what Slade has told me, he loves his family and they love him. And yet he’s willing to go out on a limb and do this crazy thing whether they approve of it or not.
He’s not afraid to be his own man.
That’s rare in the world I grew up in. The boys I grew up around, all those prep school boys with their father’s and grandfather’s name, they needed their family’s approval the way they needed oxygen. They would rather suffocate their individuality than be cast out from the herd.
I always thought they were pathetic. Men who grew up having everything handed to them on a silver platter and were still terrified of their daddies.
Slade’s a whole different breed. Rugged and self-possessed and completely unbothered by what anyone thinks of him.
The men I grew up around were house cats. Slade is something altogether wilder.
I’d be lying if I said that didn’t thrill me.
“What about logistics?” I say. “Living arrangements, all of that?”
“You’d move in,” he says. “Guest room’s yours. So’s the rest of the house. You’re designing it anyway.”
“You want me to move in with you.”
“A husband and wife usually live together.”
Those words send another thrill through me. My cheeks heat. “And so we wouldn’t… I mean, this is on paper, so…”
I’m fumbling over my words hopelessly here. I need to just come out and say it.
I blurt, “No sex?”
He goes very still. A muscle works in his jaw. His eyes stay on the horizon. “No. Of course not. I’m not trying to… exploit the situation.” He swallows. “Besides, it’s best not to complicate this, don’t you think?”
It’s honestly the answer I was expecting, even if it wasn’t the one I was hoping for. Not that I wanted him to demand sex in exchange for something. But if he’d left the door open to the possibility of something between us, I wouldn’t mind one bit.
But then again, to what end?
I’m not looking to get my heart broken. Especially not by someone who could probably shatter it as thoroughly as Slade Rhodes could, without even meaning to. Without even knowing he was doing it.
“Sex complicates things,” I agree. “Especially for me. I’m not good at… casual.” I look at the valley. “So it’s good. That we’re on the same page.”
“We’re just being practical here,” he adds. “You have a lot to gain. It’s not a big ask from me. And it could benefit a lot of people who could use that money when you donate it.”
I look at his profile. That incredible jaw. The dark stubble catching the last of the light. The studied way he’s keeping his eyes anywhere but on me.
He reaches over and his hand closes around the flask, and around my fingers, and holds. The leather is warm between our palms. The wind whips between us and neither of us moves.
He takes a slow pull of bourbon and extends it back and our fingers find each other again around the leather.
“Right,” I say. “Practical.”
I drop my hand.
“Speaking of practicalities, we should get a prenup,” I say. “For your sake. To protect your assets. I don’t want there to be any ambiguity about—”
“No.”
I blink. “Slade.”
“No prenup.”
“That’s crazy. You have a lot of money. You barely know me.”
“I know you already walked away from millions of dollars before.” He takes the flask back. “No prenup. It’ll look suspicious, for one thing, and for another, I trust you.”
I eye him dubiously. “You sure you didn’t fall off a horse today? No concussion?”
He doesn’t look remotely concerned. “Next thing you’re worried about.”
“You’re a public figure,” I say. “This will end up in the press.”
“Probably.”
“Your teammates will talk. Your coaches. Not to mention everyone you’ve ever known in this town. It’s not going to be something we can keep under wraps. People will be curious.”
“They’re all adults who can mind their own business. I’ve been a public figure for a long time now. I know how to protect my privacy. I’ll protect my wife’s privacy too.”
My wife.
The words come to his lips without hesitation.
My belly swoops at the idea of being Slade Rhodes’s wife.
“Next season you’ll be gone,” I say, searching for new objections. “New city. New team.”
“Yup.”
“And then what?”
He looks out at the valley. “Then we make a clean break of it.”