I sit back and relax, really settling into the leather seat. “Fine, if you don’t miss New York, don’t mind living in your Gran’s old house, working at Mellman’s during the day and painting walls and hammering and whatnot every night, for years and years…” I can see her resolve weakening. “Don’t want to take advantage of my obscene wealth for a few months—”
“Five years,” she cuts me off.
“Only a year of that really counts. Plus, with your job at Mellman’s we can really sell it between now and the deadline, January first.”
“What…what do you mean, sell it?”
“Think about it, we have to convince the world we’re madly in love.”
“Wow,verybold of you to make us a ‘we’ already.”
I go on, “Which would take work at any other time of year but now? In Juniper Falls? Your famous little holiday town? I looked up the photos online after you described it. It’ll be easy with all the little things they do.”
“Little things?”
“Right? Isn’t there a festival? Hayrides? Baking contests and such?”
She seems to be in a daze as she grumbles, “Weekly.”
“See? We won’t even have to try. We just show up at all the things you were going to have to do anyway, except now you’ll have your smitten, rich and unbearably handsome husband by your side.”
Then I realize she probably doesn’t want to continue her job. “Unless you’d like to quit your job. No wife of mine has to work if she doesn’t want to.”
She grits her teeth, “Must be nice but a: not your wife and b: I am contractually obligated to stay a year.”
“I can buy you out of that.”
“Is everything just throwing money around with you people?”
“Yes.”
“Well, no. I’m not going to ditch my team.”
“What if I pay them off just enough to let you and your team work remotely.”
Her eyes lock with mine.
Gotchya.
“Pass… Because nope…I mean? Maybe—No. But?…No…” She seems to be having a conversation with herself. After more muttering she looks at me. “They’ll never buy it.”
“The press loves a holiday romance, love, we—”
“Forget the press, I’m talking about your brother and his wife who happens to be Skye’s sister. Skye who is very perceptive and observant and who was my best friendfor years.”
I pause and ask, “Was?”
“Um,is. The point is they know me and they know you and they will never buy this,” She gestures between us and then sits back in her seat. It appears she’s done.
So I lean forward, “Sure they will. We say the sparks were always there under the surface and we reconnected in Vegas, had a week of mind-blowing sex at the expo,” she inhales, exasperated but I go on, “andmind-blowing conversation, and laughs and fun and decided to tie the knot because, screw it, it’s Vegas.”
“But I wouldn’t do that. I would never just say, ‘it’s Vegas!’ like a lunatic.”
I lift a shoulder, “I changed you.”
“Not to mention, uh, ‘sparks were always there’?” she scoffs, “You know they’ve been with us, at all the past weddings and parties and stuff, like, they were present.”
I ask, genuinely, “And?”
