“This is your book coming to life. Come on, let’s pack your things.” She jumps up.
“Now? It’s nearly nine!”
“Even Cinderella had until midnight. Plus, there’s no time like the present.” She starts up the stairs and then chuckles. “Present. Like a gift. Get it?”
Regrettably, I do.
An hour later, we’re standing on Fletch’s porch, me with a suitcase and laptop bag and Nina holding a box of pastries from her bakery.
Fletch opens the door, wearing eyeglasses.
My pulse jingles. “Hi. So it turns out there’s a cohabitation clause in the contract.” I awkwardly fumble my words about how I could’ve waited until the morning to come over.
“Yeah, I just read that.”
Nina thrusts the pastry box at him. “Wedding gift. It was all I had on short notice. Congratulations, you two love birds, or should I say partridges in a pear tree. Never mind, that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, but you know what I mean.”
“Thanks ... I think?” He accepts the box, then steps aside to let me in.
Fletch’s townhome is neat but sparsely decorated. No Christmas tree and no stockings, but there is a nutcracker on the mantel and a few other random pieces of holiday décor, including blinking LED lights haphazardly hanging around the window frame.
Following my gaze, he says, “Sorry about the lack of holidayspirit. I’ve been meaning to get a tree, but with the injury and trying to keep in form ...”
Nina peers around as if glimpsing the interior of a top-secret lair. “Bree has been a bit of a bah humbug this year, too. Maybe you can cheer each other up.”
I shoot her a glare.
“Well, I’ll leave you newlyweds to get settled. Call me tomorrow, Bree!”
I glance over my shoulder at my so-called best friend. My puppy dog gaze begs her to take me back, but she’s already skipping down the path back toward her house. And just like that, Nina is gone, leaving me standing in Fletch’s living room with a suitcase and a thirty-day marriage contract.
Clearing his throat, he says, “I’d carry you over the threshold, bridal style, but you’re already inside. How about welcome home?”
Breezing past that offer—no, thank you—I say, “I do my best work in the morning. If you don’t mind showing me to my room so I can get some rest …”
He seems to do some calculations in his head and points his finger in several different directions. “I’m not exactly equipped for houseguests …”
“Or a mail-order bride,” I mutter.
Twenty minutes later, I’m balanced on the edge of his bed with a wall of pillows between us, wishing I’d put my foot down and stayed at Nina’s. But as I drift off to sleep, Fletch’s smile follows me into my dreams. Figuring out how to get out of this terrible situation will have to be a problem for tomorrow.
CHAPTER 7
FLETCH
I lie awake,staring at the ceiling, all too aware of Bree’s presence on the other side of the fortress of pillows between us. She insisted on building the barrier, and I couldn’t argue—this situation is bizarre enough already.
My spare bedroom is filled with workout equipment, and I never got around to buying a pull-out couch. Who knew I’d end up with a temporary wife needing somewhere to sleep?
Married. I’m married to Bree Darling, a woman I barely know but feel connected to already, given our brief yet storied encounter in college.
But this isn’t what I imagined when I pictured settling down. This is a business transaction, not a love story. An arrangement as practical as the mail-order brides in those historical novels she writes, because I didn’t score one more goal at the charity game. Technically two, but had Neal and I tied, we would’ve had a shootout. I would’ve won. Bar none.
My thoughts turn darkly inward about how I’ve lost a step in hockey. I should’ve dominated the retired Knight and beaten him.
When will Coach Badaszek let me play again? My jaw is fine. So why am I still sidelined? The man places committed relationships above almost everything else. Sometimes I think he values stable home lives even more than hockey performance. He once said that a man with a rightly ordered heart plays with greater purpose.
We’ll see about that.
