It was time to put on the show. I sidled close to Jared. His hard heat felt a little too nice. “That’s good. It means Aria doesn’t have to tell you. I can. Jared and I got married.”
Jared’s fingers flexed against mine as silence fell over the room like a heavy, suffocating blanket of doom.
Then …
“You did what?” Aria yelled.
Aria hardly ever raised her voice. At least not at me.
Panicked, I blurted out, “We’ve secretly been seeing each other for over a year and we’re in love and we decided to getmarried and we’re sorry for keeping it from you, but we only just realized how we were feeling and we didn’t want to wait any longer to do something about it.”
My sister scoffed in disbelief as she stepped toward us. “Or you found out you might not get back into the country, so you wrangled poor Jared into marrying you for a visa!”
Damn. She knew me too well.
“What’s this about a visa?” Jared frowned with surprising authenticity. If I didn’t know better, I’d believe his confusion.
“Oh, please.” My sister apparently did not.
“Aye, please do tell me this is a joke.” North glowered at Jared. “Because marrying someone so they can stay in the country is illegal.”
“We’re not doing that. God! We’re”—I gestured between us—“like, in love.”
Aria turned back to North. “And that is why she is a way better artist than actress.”
“It’sactor.” Yes, I know, a pathetic response. “And I’m not acting. This is real between Jared and me.”
“Really?” Aria crossed her arms over her chest. “So, what’s his favorite movie?”
“He doesn’t watch movies,” I lied.
“You don’t watch movies?” my sister asked incredulously.
Jared shrugged nonchalantly. He was very good at remaining calm. I was kind of envious of his cool attitude.
“Favorite color?”
“Green,” I guessed, probably incorrectly.
“Favorite meal?”
Wanting to put an end to this line of questioning, I threw her a wicked smile and replied, “Me.”
Jared made a small choking sound, and I glanced up. His lips twitched as he struggled against laughter.
The sight of him amused for the first time today filled me with unexpected pleasure.
“And it doesn’t matter to you that you aren’t the only meal he’s been partaking in?” North asked with a blandness that belied the anger in his eyes. “He’s fucking some woman from Inverness.”
I tried not to stiffen as Jared narrowed his eyes. “And what the hell do you know about it?”
“Her name is Sorcha, and you’ve been shagging her for six months.” He grinned, but it was all teeth and more menace than I’d ever seen on my brother-in-law’s face. “Theo likes to gossip more than social media.”
“Fucking Theo,” Jared muttered while I tried not to betray my surprise at this new information.
It wasn’t like I didn’t know Jared slept around, but I hadn’t known he was seeing someone monogamously for six months.
“Allegra and I agreed to see other people because we didn’t … we thought it was just going to remain casual between us. So I was seeing Sorcha too,” Jared explained. And even though he owed me nothing, I had to fight the urge to remove my hand from his. He hadn’t told me about Sorcha when we agreed to do this. “When Allegra told me how she felt about me, that was it. End of me and Sorcha.”
