They had left her aunt’s suburb and were flying down the highway when she asked, “So, where are we going?”
“There’s this pizza place across the bridge that I discovered a while back. Best thin crust I’ve ever had. I thought we could go there.” He glanced over at her. “You okay with that?”
Her stomach grumbled at the thought. “If I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life, it would be pizza.”
“Because you could change the topping every day, so you’d never get sick of it.” This time he stared straight ahead before he murmured, “I remember.”
That had been a Vegas conversation. They’d been on their third round of shots, halfway to get-married-on-a-whim drunk and had been talking about what they would choose if they could only eat one thing for the rest of their lives. She’d said pizza. He’d gone with his mother’s Christmas dinner, complete with prime rib and Yorkshire puddings. Lucy had commented that she’d never had Yorkshire puddings, and weeks later, she’d come home to Joel in his penthouse kitchen with an apron on making her some, his mother’s recipe handwritten on a notepad beside him. She remembered that.
Deciding it was safest if she spent the rest of the drive insilence, Lucy dedicated the next fifteen minutes to watching the scenery out the tinted window.
The city flew past her, then slowed when they entered downtown, passing a stadium, then weaving through Portland State University, before driving over one of the many bridges. The town was beautiful, and she saw the appeal. There was enough big city flare to feel exciting, but it stopped short of having the overpopulated and busy vibe that San Francisco gave off.
Portland had the perfect small town, big city balance.
They pulled into a parking lot, and Joel climbed out, rounding the Porsche to open her door. Lucy took the hand he offered, but once she got out of the car, he didn’t let go. Instead, he held fast as they walked to the front of the restaurant.
When he caught her looking at their joined hands, he lifted them, brushing his lips across the back of her palm. “Win gold and wear it,” he murmured, before he opened the restaurant door for her.
CHAPTER NINE
They were two slices into their arugula and prosciutto pizza when Lucy set down her wineglass, looked him dead in the eye and asked, “So, moneybags, what’s your condition?”
Joel had been preparing for her to ask him this since he’d told her yesterday that he had a condition to her terms. But now that they were here, enjoying good food and wine, chatting comfortably for the last hour, he didn’t want it to end. Even though they’d kept to safe topics like business, family, the differences between San Francisco and Portland, there was a hint of what had been between them, the effortless ease that he savored like the wine he was drinking.
But alas, he’d learned that all good things came to an end. Unless you threw millions of dollars at them. Or negotiated yourself into a position that provided a second chance, which he’d done almost by accident with Lucy.
“My condition is…I want us to see this engagement through to a public wedding.” He took a breath before he delivered the kill shot. “And then I want us to stay married for at least a year.”
Watching Lucy absorb the information with a montage of minute facial expressions would have been amusing if he weren’t so nervous. At first, her brows knit together, then her eyes narrowed, followed by her lips tipping down at the corners. Then it all briefly smoothed out before her eyebrow raised, and she glanced around the restaurant as if a candid camera might jump out at her. Finally, her lips pursed and her gaze snapped back to his. This was why she was a terrible liar. Every thought and emotion lived on her face at any given moment.
“Those are two conditions,” she informed him.
“Correct.” He did his best to match her businesslike tone, already missing their previous interaction. “But the second one follows naturally from the first, so I categorized them as one. We can’t get married only to divorce twenty-four hours later.”
“Well, it would be four years later, theoretically,” she volleyed.
“True, but as you said, nobody knows that.”
Lucy exhaled loudly through her nose, stared at her wineglass with great concentration before lifting it to take a long sip.
“Why?” she asked as she set her drink back down.
“Because I thought a lot about what you said regarding protecting good relations between our families, and this needs to be a priority. It might not take long for your father to see reason and for your useless cousin to be removed from the equation.” He was already in the process of eliminating Nico, but no one needed to know that.
“Second cousin.”
“Whatever. He’s irrelevant.” And he truly was. Joel couldn’t wait until Nico was back on a plane to Italy. “And a brief engagement followed by a breakup shortly after yourfather sees reason won’t only be obvious, it will be disrespectful to our families.”
Lucy’s lips pursed again, relieving some of the pressure in his chest because he saw her concede to his point.
“If we have a wedding, stay together for a while, and then separate, it will make everything smoother and more believable. Besides, a quick, half-hearted engagement and marriage doesn’t suit either of our personalities and would be bad for our reputations. Drawing everything out just makes more sense.”
Lucy seemed to consider this as she lifted another slice of pizza off the tray and took a bite, dragging her tongue along her full bottom lip to catch the crumbs. He could watch her for hours and never get bored. There was never a dull moment in her expressive eyes, and her long silky hair glided over her shoulder like melted chocolate as she moved. Stunning, all around. And being this close to her was torture on his restraint. She’d lived in his bed for sixteen weeks, then in his fantasies for years. He knew every detail of what he was missing, and his body and soul longed for no one else.
Even watching her chew turned him on, so he distracted himself by reflecting on what he didn’t tell her, that his timeline had an ulterior motive. A year would buy them time to work out the things between them that had been the cause of their demise, one painful tragedy at a time.
She’d said she wasn’t ready to talk about certain things yet, and he couldn’t entirely blame her. But a short fake engagement and marriage made time his enemy and, as a practice, he crushed his enemies.
