The name punched through me.
Michael Ashford?
My brother’s best-friend Michael Ashford?
Off-limits-since-the-beginning-of-time Michael Ashford.
No.
This wasn’t possible. It had to be some elaborate scheme that would make sense once someone explained it to me.
Except the certificate looked real. The signatures looked real. The ring on my finger felt very, very real.
I checked the date on the certificate.
My brain stuttered, trying to make the numbers make sense.
That couldn’t be right. The date said yesterday, but that didn’t match with?—
I grabbed my phone, hands shaking so badly I almost dropped it.
The date on my phone didn’t match the date in my memory.
I heard a sound behind me and spun around, nearly tripping in the process.
It wasn’t just any person.
Michael stepped out of what appeared to be a bathroom door, and every coherent thought I’d managed to gather evaporated instantly.
He was fresh from the shower. Water still dripping down his chest, tracing paths over muscle I’d never known existed under his usual clothes. A towel slung low around his hips, dangerously low, and absolutely nothing else. His hair was wet and messy, pushed back from his face. And there were tattoos—black ink curving across his ribs, disappearing beneath the towel in ways that made my brain completely malfunction.
I’d seen Michael at family dinners for years. Seen him in suits and in casual clothes at barbecues, even in swimming trunks once at a pool party when I was seventeen and had to physically restrain myself from staring.
But I’d never seen him like this.
He leaned against the bathroom doorframe, one hand gripping the towel, and smiled at me. Not his polite family-dinner smile. This was something else. A smile that suggested he knew exactly what he was doing.
“Morning,” he said, voice deeper than I remembered. “You sleep okay, Mrs. Ashford?”
The question sounded amused. Playful even.
My mouth opened but nothing came out. My brain was too busy cataloging the water droplets sliding down his chest, the way the towel sat on his hips, the tattoos I hadn’t known existed.
He waited, still smiling, water dripping from his hair onto his shoulders.
“What—” I finally managed, tearing my eyes away from his chest. “What happened?”
The amusement faded immediately. “You don’t remember.”
It wasn’t a question.
I shook my head, watching his expression change. Concern flickered across his face—sharp and intense.
“What do you remember?” He moved into the room, grabbed a shirt from a drawer. He pulled it on, which was both relieving and—annoyingly—disappointing.
“Work,” I said. “I remember being at work. I was pulling data for my dad’s board meeting.”
“When?” His voice had a more serious note now, his gaze still deep with that concern.
