When she opened her eyes, they were filled with accusation. “So why did you marry someone else?”
Sawyer dropped his hand. The hurt in her eyes knocked the breath from his lungs, as if it were a physical blow. He took several steps back, his hands falling to his sides.
“Why?” she repeated. “If that night was more than just a pity fuck, if it was this magical experience we shared, why did you marry someone else just a few months later?” She sucked in a deep breath before she asked in a pained whisper, “Were the two of you engaged when we slept together?”
“No.” Sawyer shook his head. He ran his palm down his face, suddenly hating everything about this conversation. “Angelique and I were…” He paused, unsure how to explain his marriage without sounding like a cold, indifferent jerk.
The problem was that his marriagehadbeen cold and indifferent. It had been a mistake from the start, a complete mockery of that sacred institution.
If he explained it to her, would Paxton understand just why he did it, or would it make him look even worse in her eyes? Sawyer realized that he didn’t have a choice. At the very least, he owed her this explanation.
“Angelique and I didn’t have much of an engagement,” he started. He shoved his hands into his pockets and backed up against the beam he’d rested on earlier, knocking a couple of dead leaves from the arbor’s vines. “We didn’t have much of a marriage at all, if you want to know the full truth.”
He looked up at Paxton and found her watching him with a rapt, curious gaze.
“I married Angelique because it’s what was expected of me,” he said. “It’s what my dad wanted. It’s what her dad had wanted.”
“You make it sound like an arranged marriage.”
He shrugged. “In a way, that’s exactly what it was. Our families have been friends for years. Our dads grew up in the same neighborhood in New Orleans, one of the roughest in the city. They both beat the odds and made better lives for themselves, and they remained best friends through it all. Angelique and I attended Tulane together. We dated for about a year back in college, and although we knew we weren’t compatible, our dads both thought it was a foregone conclusion that we would eventually marry.
“Her dad was killed in a private plane crash about ten years ago. He never got to see us married. When my dad got sick, we decided to just do it because we knew it would make him happy.”
“You married someone you didn’t love to make your father happy?”
“It worked,” Sawyer said. “At least for the last month or so that he was alive to see it.”
“But you stayed married for three years.”
His brow rose. “You were keeping tabs on me?”
“This is a frighteningly small town, Sawyer. You can’t help but learn other people’s business.”
“Very true,” he said with a humorless laugh.
“So?” she asked. “Why did you stay married if you didn’t love her?”
He hunched his shoulders. “It was convenient. I know that makes us sound like the most unromantic couple in the world, but it’s the truth. Angelique accepted a job with the public defender’s office in Chicago at the same time that the army corps transferred me to Illinois. We were more like roommates than husband and wife. In the first year or so we were both too busy in our new jobs to recognize what was missing from our lives, but then Angelique met someone who she actually cared for.”
“That sounds…horrible for you,” she said.
“Not really. The day she took me out to dinner to tell me, all I felt was relief. I was happy for her. She’s a good person. She deserved to find someone to make her happy.”
“So do you.”
“That’s why I came back to Gauthier instead of returning to my house in New Orleans,” he said. “But then I discovered that the one person I wanted—the woman I believed could make me happy—had moved away.”
Several moments passed between them. Sawyer pushed away from the beam and walked over to her again.
“You felt something for me that night, Paxton. It may have started out of pity, but that’s not the way it ended. You left because you were as shocked by what we both experienced as I was.” He cupped her chin again. “All I’m asking for is a chance.”
A shuddery breath escaped her lips. She glided her fingers along the nape of his neck, then cradled the back of his head, pulling him closer to her.
“It scares the hell out of me,” she admitted. “But maybe…maybe we can see how it goes. How’s that for taking a chance?”
A subtle smile drew across Sawyer’s lips. “That’s a good start.” His lips drifted across hers. “But this is an even better one.”
“Exactly why am I helping you make apple butter during my lunch break?” Paxton asked as she plucked another Red Delicious from the bag Shayla had bought at the new farmers’ market in St. Pierre.
