Page 54

“Good. I would feel weird about setting up my salon in your family room.” She smiled at the key. It felt like a statement. It felt like a hope. She ignored the voice that said it also felt like a lie.

He had her print out a picture of a successful businesswoman, a new car, and a beautiful house—because her salon was going to be successful. After that, he added a cruise ship in a tropical port—her salon was apparently going to be wildly successful. “What else do you want in your life?” he asked.

Oh, she knew, she definitely knew, but she couldn’t tell him the answer to that question. She wanted a photo of him on the board. She would have traded in the cruise, the house, and the car for that picture. She wanted an image that showed their engagement photo, one of them on their wedding day, and one of her holding their baby in her arms.

The thought of their baby, blond and cherubic, brought an unexpected ache to her chest. She swallowed against the tightness in her throat.

He was watching her and had seen the change in her countenance. That was the thing about Jace. He noticed people. His eyebrows drew together. “I can tell your board isn’t complete yet. What else do you want?”

She shrugged and wasn’t sure what to say.

“More vacations?” he asked. “Is there somewhere in particular you dream of going?”

To the maternity wing was probably not the answer he was looking for. Yep, that response could fall into the how-to-make-a-man-flee-from-you-in-one-sentence category.

When she still didn’t speak, he said, “We can add pictures later. Think about your definition of success.”

Her grandma appeared beside them, a deck of cards in her hand. “Marlowe, isn’t it about time for you to blow out of here?”

Marlowe glanced at the time on her computer and saw that yes, she needed to get her things together. “You just want me to leave so you can play cards with Jace again.”

In reply, Grandma shuffled the cards from one hand to another, a trick Marlowe had never mastered without flinging half of them onto the floor.

Jace wagged a finger at her grandma. “We’re not playing with your deck this time. I brought my own.”

Marlowe stood up, slipped her laptop into her purse, and grabbed the diet Dr Pepper from Jace’s gift bag. “Thanks for all of this, Jace. And thanks for staying with Grandma. You don’t have to play cards with her, you know. I never do.”

“The reason you never do,” Grandma said in a superior tone, “is that you’re not into high-stakes games.”

Untrue or Marlowe wouldn’t have agreed to be Jace’s fake girlfriend.

She didn’t have time to change clothes. She’d have to show up in her T-shirt. Somehow, this didn’t bother her as much as it might have. She was going to hold her head up in class and feel competent because Jace believed in her.

* * *

Marlowe would have liked to say that she sailed through the second class and understood everything the teacher said. Unfortunately, she’d forgotten the difference between fixed and variable costs, which definitely mattered in the cash flow worksheet. Then halfway through the class, the teacher began talking about market penetration strategies, and she felt like she was listening to a foreign language. Man, maybe she really should’ve taken Jace’s passive-aggressive dictionary to the class.

She would have to look up a lot of stuff when she got home. But that wasn’t a problem. She could do this. She sat up straight and thought of her vision board.

Her teacher, during one of the discussions, mentioned that when new business owners started out, it wasn’t unusual for them to work sixty hours a week.

“Sixty?” Marlowe sputtered out loud.

The teacher stopped speaking and turned his attention to her. Which meant everyone stared at her.

She slumped down in her seat a little. “Sorry for not raising my hand. I didn’t think that was necessary for spontaneous outbursts.”

Someone off to her side snickered. The teacher showed no amusement. “Quite often you’ve got to work seventy-hour weeks if you want your business to succeed. Eighty isn’t unheard of, especially if you can’t afford enough employees.”

Eighty was pretty much every waking moment. Marlowe shifted uncomfortably. “When you say at the start of a business, how long do you mean? Months? Years?”

He frowned and rocked back on his heels. “At least a year or two, sometimes longer. It depends on a lot of factors.” He turned his attention back to the broader class and spent several minutes discussing risk-reward analysis.

Marlowe thought of her vision board again. This time, instead of motivating her, she wondered if most single career women were actually happy. What was the point of having that million-dollar house if there was no one besides yourself to put in those four bedrooms?

Those weren’t the sorts of questions you could ask in a business class.

When Marlowe returned home, Jace and her grandmother were at the kitchen table playing a heated game of cribbage.