5. Ember
FIVE
EMBER
The school drop-off was my first hint that I’d been right about Jack’s popularity with the opposite sex.
As soon as we parked in the long line of cars outside the school, heads turned toward us.
Darby called out a goodbye and got out, shouldering her backpack as she slammed the back door.
A woman who looked to be in her late thirties or early forties wiggled her fingers at Darby, then turned her gaze toward the car.
Jack tensed slightly, throwing me an undecipherable glance.
His jaw clenched and relaxed. The woman detached herself from the clump of moms to come knock on the driver’s side door.
Jack cleared his throat, hesitated, then rolled down the window and painted a smile on his face. “Kelly,” he greeted. “How’s Lucy?”
“Oh, she’s fabulous,” the woman replied, her sharp gaze sliding to me.
“You must be the new wife. You’re the talk of the town, you know.
Well done tying this one down.” She tittered, batting her lashes at Jack.
“Never thought I’d see the day,” she added.
Her eyes had a certain predatory quality as they raked over Jack’s shoulders and chest.
Not my circus, I told myself. If Jack was popular with the ladies, hooray for him. Wasn’t any of my business. I’d be gone within a couple of months; I wouldn’t engage in petty small-town feuds.
But Jack shrugged at the other woman, then reached over and placed a hand on my thigh, involving me in…whatever this was. “What can I say? When you know, you know.” He squeezed my leg, thumb coasting on the outside of my thigh, fingertips dangerously close to very intimate places.
A thrill went through me at the possessiveness of his touch, even though I knew—I knew—it was just for show. My brain needed to talk to my body about these physical reactions it was having to Jack. They were starting to get old.
Kelly’s head tilted slightly, then she let out an exaggerated oh sound and reached into her purse.
“You forgot this at my place last week,” she said, pulling out a phone charger.
She glanced at me and said, “Don’t worry, it’s not what you think.
We were just discussing carpooling arrangements for our girls this year. ”
The way she said, “Don’t worry,” would’ve made me worry a whole lot if this marriage were real. But it wasn’t. So I didn’t care. I didn’t think I cared. I was pretty sure I didn’t care. I just gave her a tight smile and nodded.
Jack took the charger. “I was wondering where that went,” he mused, not looking at me.
“Will we see you at the PTA meeting next week?”
“I’ll check my calendar,” Jack said. “We’ve got to run. Nice seeing you, Kelly.”
“Always a pleasure,” she replied, giving him a sensual smile. I kept my face carefully neutral as Jack said a goodbye, rolled up his window, and drove away.
Silence stretched between us. I watched the houses and clumps of trees roll by, wondering why the back of my throat felt so prickly.
“Kelly’s daughter is one of Darby’s friends,” Jack finally said. “Lucy. They play basketball together.”
“I see.”
“She’s really involved with school activities.”
“That must be nice for her daughter.”
Jack cleared his throat. “Look, it’s not… She was just…”
“It’s fine if you slept with her,” I said, wanting this painful interaction to be over.
We were coming to a four-way stop, and Jack pressed the brakes a little too hard. We both slammed forward into our seatbelts. He glared at me. “What?”
“I’m just saying. We met yesterday. What happened before is irrelevant.
I would just ask that you refrain from sleeping with anyone while we’re, um, doing this.
” I flicked my fingers between us. He opened his mouth, but I beat him to it.
“It would be pretty hard to convince anyone—let alone your grandmother—that you’re in love with me if you’re sleeping with half the PTA. ”
His eyes narrowed. “I am not sleeping with half the PTA.”
“Just a select few, then?”
Okay, wow, I was jealous. That was a new feeling. A new, extremely unpleasant feeling. But I’d seen the way the other woman had looked at me, assessing. Trying to figure out what had made me win Jack over when she couldn’t. Judging my appearance, my clothing, my body, my face—everything.
Finding me lacking in every way.
It made a sick feeling gurgle in my gut, because I hadn’t won him over. And I never would. The only way I was able to get Jack to marry me was to offer him three hundred and fifty thousand dollars and an exit plan. That was the only way I’d been able to get anyone to marry me!
It was insufferable being in my own head, so I forced myself to stop thinking about it.
We were still sitting at the stop sign, and Jack was still gripping the steering wheel, his head turned so he could glare at me. “I’m not going to sleep with anyone while I’m married to you, Ember,” he grated out.
I met his gaze, glad that my expression was cool and unruffled. “Good,” I said. “That makes things easier.”
His jaw worked. “And you?”
I wasn’t following. “What about me?”
“While we’re doing this, Ember,” he said, voice dark and low, “the only man in your life is me.”
I couldn’t help the bitter laugh that burst out of me. “That won’t be a problem,” I said. “Hard as it may be to believe, I don’t have men beating down my door begging to sleep with me.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
He ground his teeth, and I thought he wanted to say more, but then the breath gusted out of him and he drove on.
What a disaster. This whole scheme was destined for failure. We had a relationship to fake, and one little interaction through a car window was enough to have us snarling at each other. We were never going to pull this off.
We headed into town. The burned building was about a block downhill from us as we parked. Across the street was a beauty salon with a big patch of fresh paint on its front wall. The median was overgrown with weeds and leaves gathered in big, crunchy drifts in every gutter and ledge.
I missed the city. I missed the anonymity of it, the simplicity of it. I’d felt off-balance since the moment I’d driven into Marswood Harbor, and the brooding, angry man beside me wasn’t helping.
He turned off the engine but made no move to get out. After a long pause, he said, “Why me?”
“Pardon?”
“I find it hard to believe you weren’t able to find a man to marry you, even without offering him a big chunk of change.”
I stared at him. “Hard to believe, how?”
“You’re beautiful, intelligent, and driven. I don’t understand how you had to resort to this to find a husband.” When he said “this,” he gestured to himself with a touch of something that might have been disgust.
I paused. His compliments sat heavy in my gut, and I immediately rejected them.
I was far from beautiful. I was short, I had thin hair that didn’t know whether it wanted to be blond or brown, and my features were too angular.
No one had ever described me as beautiful before, so I was pretty sure Jack was just saying that… why? To be polite? To throw me off?
Surely not because he believed it?
I was intelligent and somewhat driven, but in my experience, that seemed to be more of a turn-off for men than something that attracted them.
Still, he was waiting for an answer. So I shrugged and said, “No one’s ever wanted to put up with me, I guess,” and the words felt heavy on my tongue. I heard my father’s voice threaded through them. A favorite insult of his.
Shaking off the memory, I jerked my head at Jack. “What about you? You’re attractive. Why haven’t you found someone?”
Jack’s anger melted away, and he turned his body toward me a little more. His brow arched as his lips curved. “You find me attractive?”
I rolled my eyes. “Do you often use flirtation as a way to avoid difficult questions?”
There was a flash in his gaze. A slight narrowing right before his smile widened. “Is it working?”
“In your dreams, Jack.”
“Based on last night, that’s truer than you know.”
“What?” I said, startled, but Jack was already out the door and circling the car toward my side.
When he pulled it open, I tilted my head. “Playing the gentleman?”
“There are at least four people watching us right now,” he said. “They’ll report on everything they see.” He gave me a soft smile, sliding his palm against mine as he tugged me down the street beside him.
Despite the fact that it wasn’t the first time we’d held hands, it still felt like a shock.
I could focus on nothing except the warmth of his palm against mine and the way his arm brushed mine as we walked.
I knew it was all for show, so it should have been easy to ignore his closeness. Key word: should.
My heart sped up and I found myself focusing very hard on every step to stop myself from stumbling.
It was probably a sign that I needed to get out more.
Needed to obtain more experience with men, so the simple feel of his fingers curled around my palm didn’t make my thoughts scatter quite so thoroughly.
The bell above the antiques shop door jingled as Jack pulled it open and held it for me.
I walked through, inhaling the musty scent of old things, my eye bouncing from item to item.
The shop, like most antiques stores, was packed to the brim with bric-a-brac.
Vases, figurines, sculptures, baskets, lamps, tables, chairs, urns, cutlery, dinnerware, serving ware, and more cluttered every surface, leaving only narrow aisles through which we could wind our way to the glass case that served as a counter.
An open doorway behind the counter revealed a small office, from which an old man tottered out. His wispy hair clung to his head the way Marswood Harbor clung to the last moments of life: with the inevitability of the coming end. He was a tall man with a potbelly and a deep scowl.
“What do you want?”
“Ivan,” Jack answered with a polite nod. “How are you?”