Prologue #2
“You don’t want this either,” I say quietly. “Do you?”
His jaw tightens. “Does it matter?”
“It might.” I don’t know why I’m pushing. Maybe because he’s the first person in this room who’s acted like this whole thing is anything other than a pleasant business transaction. “They’re selling us both. We could at least be honest about it.”
Those light brown eyes finally meet mine. Hold. And for a second, I see something in them that makes my stomach flip, something raw and angry and barely contained.
“Two years,” he says, low enough that only I can hear. “That’s what they’re asking for. After that, we go our separate ways.”
“That’s the plan, is it?” I keep my voice low to match his, hyperaware of our parents pretending not to watch us from across the room. “Two years of - what, exactly? Living in the same house? Attending the same functions? Pretending we chose this?”
“Something like that.” His jaw is tight, his gaze fixed somewhere over my shoulder. “The paperwork’s already started. My father had lawyers draw up documents, and apparently they can get a license processed in three days if everyone cooperates.”
“Three days.” I let out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “You move fast.”
“My father moves fast. I just sign where he points.” Something bitter creeps into his voice, there and gone. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Will I?” I tilt my head, studying him, this stranger I’m about to marry, this beautiful disaster of a man who won’t even look at me. “What happens in between? For those two years. Do we have rules? Expectations?”
His eyes finally meet mine, and I’m struck again by how light they are, amber and gold and something almost warm underneath all that ice. “We live our lives. I run the furniture business. You run your flowers. We show up together when it matters and stay out of each other’s way when it doesn’t.”
“Sounds lonely,” I say before I can stop myself.
He flinches. Actually flinches, like I’ve hit something tender. “It’s practical.”
“Right. Practical.” I glance toward our parents, who are shaking hands now, the deal sealed over our heads. “And what about my farm? Do I get to keep working it, or am I expected to sit in your house and look decorative?”
“Work your farm.” He says it like it’s obvious, like the question offends him. “I’m not - I don’t need a decoration. I need a wife on paper for two years. What you do with your days is your business.”
Something in my chest loosens slightly. Not much, but enough. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay, I can work with that.” I extend my hand, formal and absurd given that we’re apparently getting married in seventy-two hours. “Partners, then. For two years.”
He looks at my hand like it might bite him. Then, slowly, he takes it, and his grip is warm and callused and sends a jolt through me that I absolutely refuse to acknowledge.
“Partners,” he agrees.
We shake on it, two strangers sealing a deal neither of us wanted, and I tell myself the flutter in my stomach is just nerves.
It’s definitely just nerves.
***
Three days later, I’m standing in a courthouse wearing a dress my mother picked out and holding a bouquet my father paid for and trying not to hyperventilate.
The marriage license was standard, nothing unusual.
The legal marriage itself had no expiration, no two-year clause on the license.
That part was just between us and our families: a private agreement that we’d stay married two years, then quietly end things.
The county clerk didn’t know. The license didn’t care.
The ceremony itself takes eleven minutes. I know because I count, because it gives me something to focus on other than the surreal nightmare of marrying a stranger while both sets of parents beam like this is a thing to celebrate.
Logan’s voice is steady when he says the vows.
Mine only shakes a little. When the officiant pronounces us husband and wife, he leans down and presses a kiss to the corner of my mouth, something between a real kiss and nothing at all, just a brush of lips that feels like a handshake in wedding form.
Bree finds me afterward, while Logan is shaking hands with his father and my mother is dabbing at her eyes like she didn’t orchestrate this whole thing.
“Hey.” My cousin grabs my hand and squeezes. Her own wedding was to a man she actually loves, and I can see the worry in her eyes even as she tries to smile. “You okay?”
“Fantastic,” I say. “Just got married to a man who’s spoken maybe twenty words to me total. Living the dream.”
“Fran-”
“It’s fine.” I squeeze back, harder than I mean to. “Two years. I can do anything for two years.”
Bree’s smile goes soft and sad. “Watch the quiet ones,” she murmurs. “They’re the ones who wreck you.”
I laugh, because what else can I do? “He’d have to notice I exist first.”
But even as I say it, I glance across the room at my new husband, this silent, massive, impossible man, and catch him looking at me with something unreadable in his eyes.
He looks away the second our gazes meet.
Two years, I tell myself. That was the deal.
I have no idea what I’m agreeing to.