“We’re not engaged.”
“We’re not.”
“You kissed me.”
“I did.”
“In front of a government official.”
“She seemed to enjoy it.”
“Saylor.” My voice is shaking and I hate it. I hate that it’s shaking because I’m not sure if it’s shaking from anger or fear or the fact that I can still feel his mouth on mine, still feel the exact pressure of his lips, the roughness of his jaw, the way his hand tightened on my shoulder when I kissed him back. Because I did. I kissed him back. In front of another person, an important person and her leather portfolio and her efficient little notes. I kissed him back, and I would do it again, which is the most terrifying realization I’ve had since the phone rang this morning.
“Saylor, this isn’t a game. If she finds out we lied?—”
“Then we don’t let her find out.” He says it simply. Not flippantly. There’s no mischief in his voice, no smirk on his face. He looks serious. More serious than I’ve ever seen him. “She’s coming back unannounced. Which means someone needs to be here. Living here. Making it look like a home and not a stage. I can move in. If you don’t mind, Mum can come with me—the ground floor has everything she needs, no stairs necessary. We can keep the house warm and alive. We can be here around-the-clock, prepared for Janet’s next visit. And once you get awarded custody, and when the baby comes, we’ll be on our way.”
My brain is doing the logistics. Everything makes sense…except the emotional math. How can I play house with Saylor without letting my mind wander from fantasy to real-life infatuation? He’s twenty-six, hotter than hell, and keeps making his intentions abundantly clear. How long can I resist this?
“Okay, that’s a start,” I say slowly until another thought dawns on me. “Wait, what do you mean your mom has to stay on the ground floor? You guys are doing me a huge favor. Give her the master for God’s sake.”
Saylor’s gaze drops to his boots. “My mom was in a really bad car accident. Her spine is so twisted up, it’s basically braided. She has intense chronic pain, and major difficulties walking. We live on the fourth floor—stairs are the enemy.”
“Oh my gosh, Saylor. I’m so sorry to hear that.” I ignore the boundaries I just told myself need to go back in place. I grab his wrist, move my gentle squeezes up his forearm until I’m caressing his elbow. “And you take care of her?”
He shrugs. “I’m kind of her problem and her solution, I guess.”
I stare at him. He stands in my parents’ foyer—this boy, this man, this impossible person who broke into my office and rebuilt my childhood home and just kissed me on a sofa and called it strategy—and I want to scream at him. I want to shake him. I want to tell him that he has no idea what he’s gotten us into, that this is fraud, that this is reckless, that this is the most irresponsible, impulsive, potentially catastrophic thing anyone has ever done on my behalf.
But the look in his eyes when he talks about his mom… All my sensible rage dissipates. There is a warmth spreading through my chest that I cannot name and cannot stop and most definitely don’t want to.
“Celeste,” he says, and his voice is quiet now. The performance is over. Janet is gone. It’s just us and the house andthe silence and whatever is building between us like pressure behind a closed door. “I know this is crazy. I know you didn’t ask for this. But I’m not going to let Eleanor take this baby from you. And if that means moving into your parents’ house and pretending to be your fiancé for a few weeks, then that’s what I’ll do. No hesitation.”
“Why?” It comes out as barely more than a whisper.
He holds my gaze the way he held it in the office. The way he held it at Riptide. The way he held it on the couch at Tidewater House, when I fell asleep on his shoulder and he pulled a blanket over both of us and didn’t ask for anything in return.
“You know why,” he says, which I’m learning is his catchphrase.
And I do. That’s the problem. I know exactly why, and I’m not ready for it, and it’s here anyway—standing in my foyer, smelling like paint, looking at me like I’m the answer to a question he’s been asking his whole life.
I press my fingers to my lips. They’re still warm.
“Move in,” I say. “You can move in as soon as you’d like. Bring your mother. I’m going to give you my black card. Buy any and everything you guys need to be comfortable.”
He shakes his head but I glare at him and he reluctantly shrugs. We just had our first, silent, power struggle. Adorable. I won.
“And Saylor?”
“Yeah?”
“This is still professional. If you ever kiss me in front of a government official again without warning—” I search for the appropriate threat. My brain, still vibrating from the kiss and the lie and the enormity of what we just set in motion, offers nothing useful. “—I’ll think of a consequence later. But it will be severe.”
He grins. That grin. The one that started all of this.
“Noted.”
He walks past me toward the kitchen, presumably to resume whatever work he was doing before my life careened off a cliff. And I stand in the foyer of my childhood home, in my wrinkled cream blouse and my Louboutins and my carefully constructed bun, and I press my fingers to my mouth and feel the ghost of a kiss that was supposed to be fake and wasn’t, that was supposed to be strategy and was something else entirely, that changed everything and left me standing in the wreckage of my own composure wondering how, exactly, a woman who designs things for a living ended up in a situation she didn’t see coming.
