Chapter 6
She must not have heard him right through the numb, senseless noise rushing in her ears and churning under her ribcage.
She couldn’t have. Otherwise, she’d have to accept that Wes was laughing at her, that he was pulling a cruel prank, goading her for an emotional reaction just like the children in the government and private homes had done—when she only wanted to be left alone.
“Cold fish!” they’d taunted.
But. . . he wasn’t laughing, was he? The crinkles beside his bleached eyelashes had faded. The smile that perpetually tugged up the left side of his mouth was gone. His gaze—dark as drowning, flecked with gold—was somber.
She hadn’t misheard him.
“W-what?”
“Marry me, Isabel.”
Yes, she’d heard him right. She still didn’t understand, though. She shook her head, her bitten nails burrowing into her palms. With that pain, a little sensation returned to her. She wished it hadn’t.
Marry me.
“No? You’re turning me down? I mean, that’s fine, but I don’t—”
“You weren’t serious. When you said. . . that. You weren’t. You can’t have been.”
“I was,” he countered. How could Wes be so steady, when she was dissolving into quicksand inside her own body? “I am.”
No.
She lurched backward through the hole she’d kicked into the beach debris, down past rockweed groves to the shoreline, where the silt was packed firm with the pressure of its last high tide.
I was. I am.
No, because what was worse than pranking, worse than betrayal, was hope.
She couldn’t permit that glimmer to catch at her heart.
She couldn’t dare to believe that this stranger—a man with nothing to gain in return—would offer her grace—her life—with such open-handed generosity, so unexpectedly, so blithely, when they’d known each other for fewer than twenty-four hours, since—
Why would he?
Hope was too cruel.
She kept retreating into crusted sea foam tangled with kelp, until a gush of surf spat against her heels, engulfing her sandals, soaking the cuffs of her trousers. She gasped at the cold.
And she stopped.
As the breaker rippled up the beach to its zenith, before racing past her in its own retreat to the sea, so did the babble in her skull: the staticky noise reached a sudden fever pitch and just as abruptly faded to a simmer.
Small bubbles shimmering, clearing. Her knees locked against a second wave.
Anchored. She breathed again. A third wave hit and left her with another shiver. But with words, too.
“You don’t want to marry me. You can’t. You don’t know me.”
“Yeah, maybe I don’t know you.” Wes loped down the sand with easy grace, his hands shoved into his pockets while the wind tugged at his hair. “I want to help, though.”
She inched a few steps farther into the water. “No one is that altruistic.”
“Maybe not.” Two more strides brought him within reach of the waves.
He hissed at the icy froth hitting his skin and speckling his jeans, his mouth shaping a curse.
But he didn’t stop until he’d joined her in the ankle-deep ripples, pebbles raking over their feet with each tidal exhale.
He shrugged, or hopped against the surge of glacial water.
“Christ—but I’d be getting something from this, too. ”
“How?”
“Isabel, I’m a freelance photographer. Marriage has useful legal, consumer, and Social Security benefits.
Financial benefits. Plus—look: I’m crashing my menace of a sister’s romantic beach getaway because my hostel isn’t ready.
Monterey has dozens of touristy hotels for weekenders. I’m obviously strapped for cash.”
“Oh.”
So he wasn’t an altruist. His offer had a mercenary rationale. As sand shifted under her heels with the drag of an incoming wave, that admission kept Isabel steady. Altruism made no sense. A financial incentive, however?
Maybe. . .
She raised her gaze from the spume. Fixing her attention just past Wes’s left ear, she said, “I—I have money. I was a ward of the Canadian government. When people like. . . me. . . age out of care, we receive a one-time payment. A support fund.” Children exiting the system now received that fund anyhow.
The policy hadn’t existed when she’d left—though a grandfather clause stipulated that financial support was also due to individuals who’d aged out within the past decade.
By then, she’d already been managing alone for several years.
She hadn’t received the federal money until after she’d arrived in San Francisco.
“The fund is meant to help us establish ourselves as adults. It isn’t a very large amount.
Not considering everything. But it’s not nothing, either, and though I can’t officially work in California without a sponsor, I haven’t spent much of it.
It doesn’t cost anything to walk along the wharves and Ocean Beach. ”
“Beach babe,” Chase had called her.
With him, her expenses had been minimal.
He’d never let her pay for the dinners or the clothes—his choices—that she needed for his networking events.
How could she protest, when the meals were hot and the clothes were so nice?
Besides, if she made no choices at all, she couldn’t make the wrong ones.
And because the BioPulse clinical trial was running at UCSF Medical Center, her medication had cost nothing.
“We could make an—exchange,” she continued, still avoiding Wes’s gaze.
Pity would have undone her. This was logic.
“A percentage of my fund for a Green Card. Thirty-five percent? Ten thousand United States dollars. It could be a fair trade.” Almost. “You’d receive a tangible and immediate asset.
Something less nebulous than Social Security benefits? ”
Silence.
But then Wes snorted a laugh. No pity; she breathed.
“Jesus, you really are Canadian! Social Security benefits are gold to people like me. You’d be doing me another favor, too, getting my mother off my back before the holidays.
Her gentle hinting’s getting relentless on our Monday calls.
“What are your plans for Christmas, sweetheart? Will you be coming back to Michigan? Alone? Or should I set another plate, just in case?” My dad actually noticed it last year and—um.
. . No, sorry. You’re right. This is serious. ”
“It is.” If she was grateful for his ease, his levity, his lack of questions, she couldn’t laugh with him. “So?”
“Right,” clearing his throat. Then, with another shrug, almost as if he’d extend a hand to shake—which he didn’t—he said, “So. Yes, I agree to your terms. We’ll get married, but instead of trading empty promises at the altar, we’ll trade a Green Card for—a down payment on a boat. Deal?”
Deal.
Her agreement was perfectly rational. However, a dim ship’s bell of anxiety swung deep in her mind when she paused to balance the situational calculus, double-checking for outs and doubts and dangers. There was something he’d said about. . .
Benefits.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“You said. . . legal benefits. If we. . . this. . . it’ll be fraud. If we marry for money and a visa, you’ll be committing a crime.”
Telling a lie.
As would she, of course. Though supposing the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services caught her, she’d only be fined and deported. For privileged cases like hers (female, white, Canadian), imprisonment was rare.
“A crime?” Wes’s eyebrow twitched. Spots of color struck his cheekbones through the bronzing of countless sunburns. “In theory, yeah. But since the law’s put you in a position where you have to swap spit with someone like Chase, just so you’re not suffering? It’s wrong.”
“It’s still—”
“—the law?”
“Yes.”
“Laws get changed all the time. Even if they don’t, that still doesn’t mean they’re always right. If a law’s wrong, how’s it wrong to break it?”
“Because—”
“Morally.”
“Morality won’t hold up in court.”
“True. But a court needs proof to charge us. Erin’s better at logic puzzles than I am, but I think that means we’ll only have committed fraud if the immigration authorities can establish our real reasons for getting married.
I don’t plan on telling on myself to the government,” he said, serious in the surf, but with that persistent smile dancing again at his mouth.
Maybe from the kelp tickling his feet? “Those tax benefits, my boat, and appeasing my mother—remember?”
Of course she did.
“Are you going to tell anyone?”
Who would she tell?
“No,” she whispered to the wind.
“Good.” His smile broadened. “Then let’s try this a second time: Isabel Wright, will you marry me?”
He asked her with a crooked grin, asked her lightly with his hands in his pockets and his feet planted in the waves. Almost laughing. Casual. As he watched her sideways, the harsh thud of his heartbeat in his ears was anything but.
She was evaluating his proposition.
Proposal.
She was also considering it—considering him—with more care than he’d given to his question.
When he’d first posed the idea, at least. Five minutes ago he’d spoken recklessly, thoughtlessly like he always did, his tongue moving faster than his brain.
Unlike silent, studious Isabel. That hadn’t mattered.
He’d just wanted to prove that Chase wasn’t her sole option. That she had choices.
One other choice.
But now?
Legal benefits, the Nauti Lass, and his mother’s happy surprise over firecrackers and eggnog were good reasons for Wes to take his proposition earnestly.
They really were. Maybe it didn’t matter that these very good, very solid reasons hadn’t occurred to him until after he’d asked Isabel to marry him for the second time.
Only in this moment, in her mute review of his offer, did those reasons bubble to the surface of his uncooperative gray matter.
Were the benefits enough for her?
Yes.
But was he?
No, it’s not about that—
“Yes.”
A tidal surge yanked silt from beneath his chilled feet. He stumbled, splashed. “Uh—what?”
“Yes.” Her chin lifted through the snarls of her hair, rising even while her gaze remained on the barnacles and foam. “I’ll marry you.”
Oh.
“. . . r-right,” he stuttered eventually, after coughing against an awkward breath that caught in his throat. Choking—as if his body had braced for a different response. Which was stupid. Her agreement was transactional.
Her visa and my boat.
Why the hell did he ask, “Really?”
“Yes.” Her lips pursed. When her focus rose from the water, her eyes were lightning-bright, searing and determined. Scared, brave, meeting his stare—
And an ache squeezed not in his spasming throat, but in his heart.
He rushed to fill his own silence with assurances. Because the Monaghans didn’t do silences. Not because of a sudden, impossible desire to stroke his thumb beside her mouth until her lips softened and her brittle brightness faded, until she sighed against his palm. Not because of that.
“Great, that’s—that’s great. Obviously.”
Another nod.
He didn’t touch her. He forced himself to slow down, to exhale.
“But also. . . and I hope this is obvious, too—we’ll live our own lives.
We’ll only have to see each other for holidays with my family.
To file taxes. Maybe for a few other legal reasons, I don’t know.
It won’t be too bad. I’ll be off at sea on assignments with my new boat most of the time—did I thank you for that?
—and I’m guessing you’ll need to stay in the States for a while after you get your residency card.
I’ll co-sign a lease with you, anywhere you want to be in California.
When I have to visit, I’ll sleep on the couch. I’ll load the dishwasher your way.”
“. . . my way?” A tiny, inquisitive dimple appeared now in her cheek. “Really?”
Wes shook off the fierceness of his relief with another smile. He crossed his arms and nodded. “You have opinions on the correct way to load plates, right? You look like you do.”
Had Isabel ever gotten to do life her way before?
Probably not with Chase.
In a Canadian government home?
Shit, definitely not.
“Yes.” This time, her answering nod swept her hair back behind her ears. She told him, “Bowls upside down. Utensils facing up. Except for knives.”
“It’ll be your house, whatever the lease says.
Your way. I’ll just be couch-crashing, like I am now.
I won’t ever get in the middle of you doing.
. . whatever you want to do, with anyone that you—either, because.
. . I mean, screw it, we can get divorced, once things stabilize.
If that’s what you want,” and he immediately cursed his stupid stipulations and his even stupider tongue.
“But before we get to dishwashers or divorce papers or whatever, we have to get married. And if we’re going to make this work without the authorities getting suspicious about visa fraud, we’ll need to prove we know each other.
We’ll have to prove that we’re in a relationship. A legitimate one.”
“We don’t. We. . . aren’t.” It wasn’t a statement, however. It was a question.
She was asking him.
“We’ll need to manufacture evidence,” he told them both. “Evidence of a relationship. Our relationship.”
“How?”
“By documenting it.” He reached for his camera, and came up empty-handed.
He’d left it at the bungalow. Wes mimed raising a viewfinder anyhow, twisting his palms into a square with his thumbs against his index fingers, centering Isabel within the space.
He squinted against the afternoon light to check its levels on a reflex (no golden hour, just deep lavender smudges under her eyes), even while he grinned at her. “Flash.”
She didn’t return his smile. She froze.
Damn it.
He’d meant to make her laugh. Instead, he’d scared her. “Shit, sorry. But if this isn’t. . . we don’t have to—”
“I’m fine.” Her lips barely moved. No more dimple.
“There are other ways we can—”
“No, I said I. . . I’m fine. I will be. Because applying for a spousal visa means we’ll need to pass an interview with the immigration authorities. Our evidence of a valid relationship has to be convincing.”