I didn’t want to figure it out. I wanted to run from it.
Instead, I’d bloody married her.
So, aye, it was best I kept my distance, in whatever way I could.
“Ready to do this?” Allegra asked, following me into the kitchen where my laptop sat on the table. I pulled out a chair for her and gestured for her to sit.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I replied gruffly, sliding into the seat next to her to open the laptop to call Sarah.
Allegra rested her hand on my arm and I stiffened.
She immediately withdrew it.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“It’s fine.” She wouldn’t meet my eyes. I was such a prick. “I just wanted to say that I know how crappy it is lying to someone you love. But we’re doing it for their sake, so they don’t get in trouble.”
“I know.” I nodded at her in thanks. “Let’s do this.”
“Right.” I stood up not long later, grabbing my car keys off the hook on the wall leading into the mudroom. “I’m off.”
I had no time to process the conversation with Sarah, her reaction, or the fact that she’d announced she was now coming to Ardnoch earlier than planned. She didn’t believe us and she wanted to talk to me alone. That meant I had to double down on my lie. Something I was not looking forward to. For now, I had one more person I needed to speak with before I could allow myself to think about the magnitude of my and Allegra’s actions.
“Oh. You’re heading out onto the farm again? I wanted to talk to you about … well … the financial situation.”
I glanced at Allegra as I stuffed my wallet into the back pocket of my jeans. Yesterday, she’d looked stunning in a simple dress and sexy fucking shoes. Today her dark hair flopped around the top of her head in a messy bun. She wore a faded Kaleo T-shirt that slipped off one shoulder. Tight jeans and barefeet completed the outfit, proving the woman not only had great taste in music but that she looked gorgeous no matter what she wore.
It was surreal seeing her in my kitchen, barefoot, like she lived here.
Well, she did live here.
Heat coursed toward my dick, but I doused it with willpower. Like I had done since the first night she slept here.
I brushed past her. “We’ll talk about it when I get back. I’ve got some investment ideas to run by you that would make me more comfortable with the whole money side of this bargain. But I have something to do first.”
“Oh?” At my sharp look, she flushed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like a nosy wife.”
Wife.
I shoved the way that word made me feel to the back of my mind. Deep, deep to the very back where it might hopefully one day disappear. Still, we were supposed to be in this together. “I, uh, have one more person I need to tell face-to-face.” At her curious silence, I continued, “Sorcha.”
Allegra’s expression didn’t change at Sorcha’s name, and her tone was calm, neutral as she inquired, “Why didn’t you tell me about her? I didn’t mean to mess things up there.”
“Do you really think if I was serious about a woman, I’d have married you?”
She studied me thoughtfully and then replied in that quiet, soft voice I liked too much, “Fair.”
I sighed. “But she deserves to hear it from me directly. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. We can talk then.”
“Great.” She looked around the kitchen. “I might go grocery shopping, if that’s cool? Buy some things I like to eat.”
“Of course,” I answered gruffly. “This is your home for the next eighteen months. You should buy whatever you need to be comfortable. I’ll see you.”
“See you.”
Fifteen minutes later, I was out of Ardnoch and on my way to Inverness. On the drive, I focused on plans for the farm and for the holiday rental business so I didn’t have to think about my impromptu marriage, Allegra, or how fucking shit it felt to lie to people I cared about.
All to keep my scumbag father’s hands off the farm.
