“What’s happening right now?” he asked, moving to the side.
His body loomed over her, the clean, crisp scent of his sweatshirt competing with the oily aroma of—the room came into focus—what she was now realizing was shelves upon shelves of cast-iron pans.
“What’s with the decor?” she inquired.
His yawn was comically wide and fully disarming. “It’s Lodge themed. Like the cookware.”
“Really?” Her eyes widened. “I did not expect that.”
“Why are you in my room at”—he checked the clock—“nearly one a.m.?” he repeated, more impatient this time. The room was so quiet and glowing faintly in the nighttime hush. She hadn’t imagined that this interaction would feel so intimate. That he’d be staring at her with such curious intensity, like she were a wild creature who’d wandered up to his bed. Or that he’d be standing so close, or that his sleepy warmth would radiate off him in waves. He looked so undone. His face. His hair. She was overcome with the impulse to put him back together.
She sidestepped out of his eyeline into the safety of a bookcase filled with black dutch ovens.
“I’ve given more thought to your proposal.”
“Oh?” He moved to sit at the edge of the bed, leaning back with folded arms and legs outstretched, forcing her backward a step. The lamplight cast his features in stark relief, sharpening his jaw, his cheekbones, that damn chin.
She blinked her eyes shut, willing the chin out of her mind. “So we’d be married. Legally,” she reasoned out.
He nodded, his eyes never leaving her. As though she might bite. “I’ve come to understand that’s how marriage works.”
“What would you get out of this arrangement?” she asked, ready for the other, more burdensome shoe to drop. Not that marrying him wasn’t the most burdensome thing possible, but if she was going to enter into a transactional marriage, she wanted to know what his side of the bargain looked like.
“You’d let me rent out Forest’s Bridge for my resort.”
She laughed. “Now, why would I do that when I don’t even want Larry’s architecture nerds peeping through my windows?”
“I could stop that. I own the property, remember? I could put up a privacy fence. The only people around your house would be our paying customers.”
“Don’t you meanyourcustomers?”
“Ours. You and I would split the revenue for the whole summer. I’ll save my share to fix up the rest of the resort, and with your half, you could afford to pull back on a couple of side hustles and focus on your…tree sculptures? I’m still not sure what it is you do exactly.”
Lainey could barely contain her eye roll. “Okay, so the summer ends and then what?”
“We’ll get divorced, you’ll get your house back, and I’ll have a mostly operational resort that won’t have the cachet of a Groff property, but at least I’ll have a way out of this financial hole.”
“But you don’t trust me,” Lainey said, slightly baffled. It was the one thing she knew about this man. So why would he, of all people, suggest that they join forces to commit health-care fraud? “You think I’m a con woman who can’t remember names.”
He stood up from the bed, looking down at her through his eyelashes behind his wire frames. “I know you know my name, Lainey.” He leaned down closer, crowding every pot and pan in the room out of her vision. Her eyes blurred at the edges, even her own body a traitor to the conspiracy.
“Okay…What about the con-woman part?” she reminded him. And herself.
“Look.” He let out a long breath. “It’s business. You have something I want, and I have something you need. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that. And you’re clearly committed to living in Forest’s Bridge forever, so—”
“I don’t want to live there forever,” she interjected, her mouth gaping.
He reared back. This clearly wasn’t something he’d expected her to say. “Then why won’t you leave?”
“You haven’t exactly made an offer to buy the place from me.”
“I can’t buy real estate right now. Do you understand how deep in debt my uncle left me?”
She poked his chest. “Yes, you’ve suggested something to that effect.”
He swiped his glasses off his face with one hand and massaged his forehead with the other, considering their dilemma. Lainey looked around—suitcase bursting with folded shirts, jackets hanging neatly on hooks—waiting patiently until he appeared to come to some conclusion.
He put his glasses back on. “Okay. You can’t sell the house to anyone else, right?”
