She blinked.
Faith took that momentary hesitation and ran with it. “So you don’t know that much about him. You don’t actually know anything about him, do you? You just know he’s rich.”
“And he’s hot,” Danielle said.
She wasn’t going to back down. Not now. But she would have a few very grumpy words with Joshua once they left.
He hadn’t prepared her for this. She looked like an idiot. As she gathered her things, she realized looking like an idiot was his objective. She could look bad in a great many ways, after all. The fact that they might be an unsuitable couple because she didn’t know anything about him would be one way to accomplish that.
When she and Joshua finally stepped outside, heading back to the car amid a thunderous farewell from the family, Danielle felt like she could breathe for the first time in at least two hours. She hadn’t realized it, but being inside that house—all warm and cozy and filled with the kind of love she had only ever seen in movies—had made her throat and lungs and chest, and even her fingers, feel tight.
They got into the car, and Danielle folded her arms tightly, leaning her head against the cold passenger-side window, her breath fanning out across the glass, leaving mist behind. She didn’t bother fighting the urge to trace a heart in it.
“Feeling that in character?” Joshua asked, his tone dry, as he put the car in Reverse and began to pull out of the driveway.
She stuck her tongue out and scribbled over the heart. “Not particularly. I don’t understand. Now that I’ve met them, I understand even less. Your sister grilled me the minute she got a chance to talk to me alone. Your father is worried about the situation. Your mother is trying to be supportive in spite of the fact that we are clearly the worst couple of all time. And you’re doing this why, Joshua? I don’t understand.”
She hadn’t meant to call him out in quite that way. After all, what did she care about his motivations? He was paying her. The fact that he was a rich, eccentric idiot kind of worked in her favor. But tonight had felt wrong. And while she was more into survival than into the nuances of right and wrong, the ruse was getting to her.
“I explained to you already,” he said, his tone so hard it elicited a small, plaintive cry from Riley in the back.
“Don’t wake up the baby,” she snapped.
“We really are a convincing couple,” he responded.
“Not to your sister. Who told me we didn’t make any sense together because you had never shown any interest in falling in love again.”
It was dark in the car, so she felt rather than saw the tension creep up his spine. It was in the way he shifted in his seat, how his fists rolled forward as he twisted his hands on the steering wheel.
“Well,” he said, “that’s the thing. They all know. Because family like mine doesn’t leave well enough alone. They want to know about all your injuries, all your scars, and then they obsess over the idea that they might be able to heal them. And they don’t listen when you tell them healing is not necessary.”
“Right,” she said, blowing out an exasperated breath. “Here’s the thing. I’m just a dumb bimbo you picked up through a newspaper ad who needed your money. So I don’t understand all this coded nonsense. Just tell me what’s going on. Especially if I’m going to spend more nights trying to alienate your family—who are basically a childhood sitcom fantasy of what a family should be.”
“I’ve done it before, Danielle. Love. It’s not worth it. Not considering how badly it hurts when it ends. But even more, it’s not worth it when you consider how badly you can hurt the other person.”
His words fell flat in the car, and she didn’t know how to respond to them. “I don’t...”
“Details aren’t important. You’ve been hurt before, haven’t you?”
He turned the car off the main road and headed up the long drive to his house. She took a deep breath. “Yes.”
“By Riley’s father?”
She shifted uncomfortably. “Not exactly.”
“You didn’t love him?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t love him. But my mother kind of did a number on me. I do understand that love hurts. I also understand that a supportive family is not necessarily guaranteed.”
“Yeah,” Joshua said, “supportive family is great.” He put the car in Park and killed the engine before getting out and stalking toward the house.
Danielle frowned, then unbuckled quickly, getting out of the car and pushing the sleeves of Joshua’s jacket back so she could get Riley’s car seat out of the base. Then she headed up the stairs and into the house after him.
“And yet you are trying to hurt yours. So excuse me if I’m not making all the connections.”
“I’m not trying to hurt my family,” he said, turning around, pushing his hand through his blond hair. His blue eyes glittered, his jaw suddenly looking sharper, his cheekbones more hollow. “What I want is for them to leave well enough alone. My father doesn’t understand. He thinks all I need is to find somebody to love again and I’m going to be fixed. But there is no fixing this. There’s no fixing me. I don’t want it. And yeah, maybe this scheme is over the top, but don’t you think putting an ad in the paper looking for a wife for your son is over the top too? I’m not giving him back anything he didn’t dish out.”
“Maybe you could talk to him.”
“You think I haven’t talked to him? You think this was my first resort? You’re wrong about that. I tried reasonable discourse, but you can’t reason with an unreasonable man.”
“Yeah,” Danielle said, picking at the edge of her thumbnail. “He seemed like a real monster. What with the clear
