Joshua wasn’t going to try to turn Danielle into a sophisticate overnight. He was also avoiding thinking about the way it had felt to kiss her soft lips. Was avoiding remembering the way her hands had felt sliding down his chest.
He needed to make sure the two of them looked like a couple, that much was true. But he wouldn’t allow himself to be distracted by her. There were a million reasons not to touch Danielle Kelly—unless they were playing a couple. Yes, there would have to be some touching, but he was not going to take advantage of her.
First of all, she was at his financial mercy. Second of all, she was the kind of woman who came with entanglements. And he didn’t want any entanglements.
He wasn’t the type to have trouble with self-control. If it wasn’t a good time to seek out a physical relationship, he didn’t. It wasn’t a good time now, which meant he would defer any kind of sexual gratification until the end of his association with Danielle.
That should be fine.
He should be able to consider any number of women who he had on-again, off-again associations with, choose one and get in touch with her after Danielle left. His mind and body should be set on that.
Sadly, all he could think of was last night’s kiss and the shocking heat that had come with it.
And then Danielle came down the stairs wearing the simple black dress he’d had delivered for her.
His thoughts about not transforming her into a sophisticated woman overnight held true. Her long, straight brown hair still hung limp down to her waist, and she had no makeup on to speak of except pale pink gloss on her lips.
But the simple cut of the dress suited her slender figure and displayed small, perky breasts that had been hidden beneath her baggy, threadbare sweaters.
She was holding on to the handle of the baby’s car seat with both hands, lugging it down the stairs. For one moment, he was afraid she might topple over. He moved forward quickly, grabbing the handle and taking the seat from her.
When he looked down at the sleeping child, a strange tightness invaded his chest. “It wouldn’t be good for you or for Riley if you fell and broke your neck trying to carry something that’s too heavy for you,” he said, his tone harder than he’d intended it to be.
Danielle scowled. “Well, offer assistance earlier next time. I had to get down the stairs somehow. Anyway, I’ve been navigating stairs like this with the baby since he was born. I lived in an apartment. On the third floor.”
“I imagine he’s heavier now than he used to be.”
“An expert on child development?” She arched one dark brow as she posed the question.
He gritted his teeth. “Hardly.”
She stepped away from the stairs, and the two of them walked toward the door. Just because he wanted to make it clear that he was in charge of the evening, he placed his hand low on her back, right at the dip where her spine curved, right above what the dress revealed to be a magnificent ass.
He had touched her there to get to her, but he had not anticipated the touch getting to him.
He ushered her out quickly, then handed the car seat to her, allowing her to snap it into the base—the one he’d had installed in his car when all of the nursery accoutrements had been delivered—then sat waiting for her to get in.
As they started to pull out of the driveway, she wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her hands over her bare skin. “Do you think you could turn the heater on?”
He frowned. “Why didn’t you bring a jacket?”
“I don’t have one? All I have are my sweaters. And I don’t think either of them would go with the dress. Would kind of ruin the effect.”
He put the brakes on, slipped out of his own jacket and handed it to her. She just looked at him like he was offering her a live gopher. “Take it,” he said.
She frowned but reached out, taking the jacket and slipping it on. “Thank you,” she said, her voice sounding hollow.
They drove to his parents’ house in silence, the only sounds coming from the baby sitting in the back seat. A sobering reminder of the evening that was about to unfold. He was going to present a surprise fiancée and a surprise baby to his parents, and suddenly, he didn’t look at this plan in quite the same way as he had before.
He was throwing Danielle into the deep end. Throwing Riley into the deep end.
Joshua gritted his teeth, tightening his hold on the steering wheel. Finally, the interminable drive through town was over. He turned left off a winding road and onto a dirt drive that led back to the familiar, humble farmhouse his parents still called home.
That some part of his heart still called home too.
He looked over at Danielle, who had gone pale. “It’s fine,” he said.
Danielle looked down at the ring on her finger, then back up at him. “I guess it’s showtime.”
Danielle felt warm all over, no longer in need of Joshua’s jacket, and conflicted down to the brand-new shoes Joshua had ordered for her.
But it wasn’t the dress, or the shoes, that had her feeling warm. It was the jacket. Well, obviously a jacket was supposed to make her warm, but this was different. Joshua had realized she was cold. And it had mattered to him.
He had given her his own jacket so she could keep warm.
It was too big, the sleeves went well past the edges of her fingertips, and it smelled like him. From the moment she had slipped it on, she had been fighting the urge to bury her nose in the fabric and lose herself in the sharp, masculine smell that reminded her of his skin. Skin she had tasted last night.
Standing on the front step of this modest farmhouse that she could hardly believe Joshua had ever lived in, wearing his coat, with him holding Riley’s car seat, it was too easy to believe this actually was some kind of “meet the parents” date.
In effect, she supposed it was. She was even wearing his jacket. His jacket that was still warm from his body and smelled—
Danielle was still ruminating about the scent of Joshua’s jacket when the door opened. A blonde woman with graying hair and blue eyes that looked remarkably like her son’s gave them a warm smile.
“Joshua,” she said, glancing sideways at Danielle and clearly doing her best not to look completely shocked, “I didn’t expect you so early. And I didn’t know you were bringing a guest.” Her eyes fell to the carrier in Joshua’s hand. “Two guests.”
“I thought it would be a good surprise.”
“What would be?”
A man who could only be Joshua’s father came to the door behind the woman. He was tall, with dark hair and eyes. He looked nice too. They both did. There was a warmth to them, a kindness, that didn’t seem to be present in their son.
But then Danielle felt the warmth of the jacket again, and she had to revise that thought. Joshua might not exude kindness, but it was definitely there, buried. And for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why he hid it.
She was prickly and difficult, but at least she had an excuse. Her family was the worst. As far as she could tell, his family was guilty of caring too much. And she just couldn’t feel that sorry for a rich dude whose parents loved him and were involved in his life more than he wanted them to be.
“Who is this?” Joshua’s father asked.
“Danielle, this is my mom and dad, Todd and Nancy Grayson. Mom, Dad, this is Danielle Kelly,” Joshua said smoothly. “And I have you to thank for meeting her, Dad.”
His father’s eyebrows shot upward. “Do you?”
“Yes,” Joshua said. “She responded to your ad. Mom, Dad, Danielle is my fiancée.”
They were ushered into the house quickly after that announcement, and there were a lot of exclamations. The house was already full. A young woman sat in the corner holding hands with a large, tattooed man who was built like a brick house and was clearly related to Joshua somehow. There was another man, as tall as Joshua, with slightly darker hair and the same blue eyes but who didn’t carry himself quite as stiffly. His build was somewhere in between Joshua and the tattooed man, muscular but not a beast.
“My brother Devlin,” Joshua said, indicating the tattooed man before putting his arm around Danielle’s waist as they moved deeper into the room, “and his wife, Mia. And this is my brother Isaiah. I’m surprised his capable assistant, Poppy, isn’t somewhere nearby.”
“Isaiah, did you want a beer or whiskey?” A petite woman appeared from the kitchen area, her curly, dark hair swept back into a bun, a few stray pieces bouncing around her pretty face. She was impeccable. From that elegant updo down to the soles of her tiny, high-heeled feet. She was wearing a high-waisted skirt that flared out at the hips and fell down past her knees, along with a plain, fitted top.
“Is that his...girlfriend?” Danielle asked.
Poppy laughed. “Absolutely not,” she said, her tone clipped. “I’m his assistant.”
Danielle thought it strange that an assistant would be at a family gathering but didn’t say anything.
“She’s more than an assistant,” Nancy Grayson said. “She’s part of the family. She’s been with them since they started the business.”
Danielle had not been filled in on the details of his family’s relationships because she only needed to know how to alienate them, not how to endear herself to them.
The front door opened again and this time it was a younger blonde woman whose eyes also matched Joshua’s who walked in. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, “I got caught up working on a project.”
This had to be his sister, Faith. The architect he talked about with such pride and fondness. A woman who was Danielle’s age and yet so much more successful they might be completely different species.
“This is Joshua’s fiancée,” Todd Grayson said. “He’s engaged.”
“Shut the front door,” Faith said. “Are you really?”
“Yes,” Joshua said, the lie rolling easily off his tongue.
Danielle bit back a comment about his PR skills. She was supposed to be hard to deal with, but they weren’t supposed to call attention to the fact this was a ruse.
“That’s great?” Faith took a step forward and hugged her brother, then leaned in to grab hold of Danielle, as well.
“Is nobody going to ask about the baby?” Isaiah asked.
“Obviously you are,” Devlin said.
“Well, it’s kind of the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. Or the ten-pound infant.”
“It’s my baby,” Danielle said, feeling color mount in her cheeks.
She noticed a slight shift in Joshua’s father’s expression. Which was the general idea. To make him suspicious of her. To make him think he had gone and caught his son a gold digger.
“Well, that’s...” She could see Joshua’s mother searching for words. “It’s definitely unexpected.” She looked apologetically at Danielle the moment the words left her mouth. “It’s just that Joshua hasn’t shown much interest in marriage or family.”
Danielle had a feeling that was an understatement. If Joshua was willing to go to such lengths to get his father out of his business, then he must be about as anti-marriage as you could get.
“Well,” Joshua said, “Danielle and I met because of Dad.”
His mother’s blue gaze sharpened. “How?”
His father looked guilty. “Well, I thought he could use a little help,” he said finally.
“What kind of help?”
“It’s not good for a man to be alone, especially not our boys,” he said insistently.
“Some of us like to be alone,” Isaiah pointed out.
“You wouldn’t feel that way if you didn’t have a woman who cooked for you and ran your errands,” his father responded, looking pointedly at Poppy.
“She’s an employee,” Isaiah said.
Poppy looked more irritated and distressed by Isaiah’s comment than she did by the Grayson family patriarch’s statement. But she didn’t say anything.
“You were right,” Joshua said. “I just needed to find the right woman. You placed that ad, listing all of my assets, and the right woman responded.”
This was so ridiculous. Danielle felt her face heating. The assets Joshua’s father had listed were his bank account, and there was no way in the world that wasn’t exactly what everyone in his family was thinking.
She knew this was her chance to confirm her gold-digging motives. But right then, Riley started to cry.
“Oh,” she said, feeling flustered. “Just let me... I need to...”
She fumbled around with the new diaper bag, digging around for a bottle, and then went over to the car seat, taking the baby out of it.
“Let me help,” Joshua’s mother said.
She was being so kind. Danielle felt terrible.
But before Danielle could protest, the other woman was taking Riley from her arms. Riley wiggled and fussed, but then she efficiently plucked the bottle from Danielle’s hand and stuck it right in his mouth. He quieted immediately.
“What a good baby,” she said. “Does he usually go to strangers?”
Danielle honestly didn’t know. “Other than a neighbor whose known him since he was born, I’m the only one who takes care of him,” she said.
“Don’t you have any family?”
Danielle shook her head, feeling every inch the curiosity she undoubtedly was. Every single eye in the room was trained on her, and she knew they were all waiting for her to make a mistake. She was supposed to make a mistake, dammit. That was what Joshua was paying her to do.
“I don’t have any family,” she said decisively. “It’s just been me and Riley from the beginning.”
“It must be nice to have some help now,” Faith said, not unkindly, but definitely probing.
“It is,” Danielle said. “I mean, it’s really hard taking care of a baby by yourself. And I didn’t make enough money to...well, anything. So meeting Joshua has been great. Because he’s so...helpful.”
A timer went off in the other room and Joshua’s mother blinked. “Oh, I have to get dinner.” She turned to her son. “Since you’re so helpful, Joshua.” And before Danielle could protest, before Joshua could protest, Nancy dumped Riley right into his arms.
He looked like he’d been handed a bomb. And frankly, Danielle felt a little bit like a bomb might detonate at any moment. It had not escaped her notice that Joshua had never touched Riley. Yes, he had carried his car seat, but he had never voluntarily touched the baby. Which, now that she thought about it, must have been purposeful. But then, not everybody liked babies. She had never been particularly drawn to them before Riley. Maybe Joshua felt the same way.
She could tell by his awkward posture, and the way Riley’s small frame was engulfed by Joshua’s large, muscular one, that any contact with babies was not something he was used to.
She imagined Joshua’s reaction would go a long way in proving how unsuitable she was. Maybe not in the way he had hoped, but it definitely made his point.
He took a seat on the couch, still holding on to Riley, still clearly committed to the farce.
“So you met through an ad,” Isaiah said, his voice full of disbelief. “An ad that Dad put in the paper.”
Everyone’s head swiveled, and they looked at Todd. “I did what any concerned father would do for his son.”
Devlin snorted. “Thank God I found a wife on my own.”
“You found a wife by pilfering from my friendship pool,” Faith said, her tone disapproving. “Isaiah and Joshua have too much class to go picking out women that young.”
“Actually,” Danielle said, deciding this was the perfect opportunity to highlight another of the many ways in which she was unsuitable, “I’m only twenty-two.”
Joshua’s father looked at him, his gaze sharp. “Really?”
“Really,” Danielle said.
“That’s unexpected,” Todd said to his son.
“That’s what’s so great about how we met,” Joshua said. “Had I looked for a life partner on my own, I probably would have chosen somebody with a completely different set of circumstances. Had you asked me only a few short weeks ago, I would have said I didn’t want children. And now look at me.”
Everybody was looking at him, and it was clear he was extremely uncomfortable. Danielle wasn’t entirely sure he was making the point he hoped to make, but he did make a pretty amusing picture. “I also would have chosen somebody closer to my age. But the great thing about Danielle is that she is so mature. I think it’s because she’s a mother. And yes, it happened for her in non-ideal circumstances, but her ability to rise above her situation and solve her problems—namely by responding to the ad—is one of the many things I find attractive about her.”
She wanted to kick him in the shin. He was being an asshole, and he was making her sound like a total flake... But that was the whole idea. And, honestly, given the information Joshua had about her life...he undoubtedly thought she was a flake. It was stupid, and it wasn’t fair. One of the many things she had learned about people since becoming the sole caregiver for Riley was that even though everyone had sex, a woman was an immediate pariah the minute she bore the evidence of that sex.
All that mattered to the hypocrites was that Danielle appeared to be a scarlet woman, therefore she was one.
Never mind that in reality she was a virgin.
Which was not a word she needed to be thinking while sitting in the Grayson family living room.
Her cheeks felt hot, like they were being stung by bees.
“Fate is a funny thing,” Danielle said, edging closer to Joshua. She took Riley out of his arms, and from the way Joshua surrendered the baby, she could tell he was more than ready to hand him over.
The rest of the evening passed in a blur of awkward moments and stilted conversation. It was clear to her that his family was wonderful and warm, but that they were also seriously questioning Joshua’s decision making. Todd Grayson looked as if he was going to be physically assaulted by his wife.
Basically, everything was going according to Joshua’s plan.
But Danielle couldn’t feel happy about it. She couldn’t feel triumphant. It just felt awful.
Finally, it was time to go, and Danielle was ready to scurry out the door and keep on scurrying away from the entire Grayson family—Joshua included.
She was gathering her things, and Joshua was talking to one of his brothers, when Faith approached.
“We haven’t gotten a chance to talk yet,” she said.
“I guess not,” Danielle said, feeling instantly wary. She had a feeling that being approached by Joshua’s younger sister like this wouldn’t end well.
“I’m sure he’s told you all about me,” Faith said, and Danielle had a feeling that statement was a test.
“Of course he has.” She sounded defensive, even though there was no reason for her to feel defensive, except that she kind of did anyway.
“Great. So here’s the thing. I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but my brother is not a ‘marriage and babies’ kind of guy. My brother dates a seemingly endless stream of models, all of whom are about half a foot taller than you without their ridiculous high heels on. Also, he likes blondes.”
Danielle felt her face heating again as the other woman appraised her and found her lacking. “Right. Well. Maybe I’m a really great conversationalist. Although, it could be the fact that I don’t have a gag reflex.”
She watched the other woman’s cheeks turn bright pink and felt somewhat satisfied. Unsophisticated, virginal Danielle had made the clearly much more sophisticated Faith Grayson blush.
“Right. Well, if you’re leading him around by his...you know...so you can get into his wallet, I’m not going to allow that. There’s a reason he’s avoided commitment all this time. And I’m not going to let you hurt him. He’s been hurt enough,” she said.
Danielle could only wonder what that meant, because Joshua seemed bulletproof.
“I’m not going to break up with him,” Danielle said. “Why would I do that? I’d rather stay in his house than in a homeless shelter.”
She wanted to punch her own face. And she was warring with the fact that Faith had rightly guessed that she was using Joshua for his money—though not in the way his sister assumed. And Danielle needed Faith to think the worst. But it also hurt to have her assume something so negative based on Danielle’s circumstances. Based on her appearance.
People had been looking at Danielle and judging her as low-class white trash for so long—not exactly incorrectly—that it was a sore spot.
“We’re a close family,” Faith said. “And we look out for each other. Just remember that.”
“Well, your brother loves me.”
“If that’s true,” Faith said, “then I hope you’re very happy together. I actually do hope it’s true. But the problem is, I’m not sure I believe it.”
“Why?” Danielle was bristling, and there was no reason on earth why she should be. She shouldn’t be upset about this. She shouldn’t be taking it personally. But she was.
Faith Grayson had taken one look at Danielle and judged her. Pegged her for exactly the kind of person she was, really—a low-class nobody who needed the kind of money and security a man like Joshua could provide. Danielle had burned her pride to the ground to take part in this charade. Poking at the embers of that pride was stupid. But she felt compelled to do it anyway.
“Is it because I’m some kind of skank he would never normally sully himself with?”
“Mostly, it’s because I know my brother. And I know he never intended to be in any kind of serious relationship again.”
Again.
That word rattled around inside of Danielle. It implied he had been in a serious relationship before. He hadn’t mentioned that. He’d just said he didn’t want his father meddling. Didn’t want marriage. He hadn’t said it was because he’d tried before.
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 devotion to your mother, the fact that he raised all of you, that he supported you well enough that you could live in that house all your life and then go off to become more successful than he was.”
She set the car seat down on the couch and unbuckled it, lifting Riley into her arms and heading toward the stairs.
“We didn’t have anything when I was growing up,” he said, his tone flat and strange.
Danielle swallowed hard, lifting her hand to cradle Riley’s soft head. “I’m sorry. But unless you were homeless or were left alone while one of your parents went to work all day—and I mean alone, not with siblings—then we might have different definitions of nothing.”
“Fine,” he said. “We weren’t that poor. But we didn’t have anything extra, and there was definitely nothing to do around here but get into trouble when you didn’t have money.”
She blinked. “What kind of trouble?”
“The usual kind. Go out to the woods, get messed up, have sex.”
“Last I checked, condoms and drugs cost money.” She held on to Riley a little bit tighter. “Pretty sure you could have bought a movie ticket.”
He lifted his shoulder. “Look, we pooled our money. We did what we did. Didn’t worry about the future, didn’t worry about anything.”
“What changed?” Because obviously something had. He hadn’t stayed here. He hadn’t stayed aimless.
“One day I looked up and realized this was all I would ever have unless I changed something. Let me tell you, that’s pretty sobering. A future of farming, barely making it, barely scraping by? That’s what my dad had. And I hated it. I drank in the woods every night with my friends to avoid that reality. I didn’t want to have my dad’s life. So I made some changes. Not really soon enough to improve my grades or get myself a full scholarship, but I ended up moving to Seattle and getting myself an entry-level job with a PR firm.”
“You just moved? You didn’t know anybody?”
“No. I didn’t know anyone. But I met people. And, it turned out, I was good at meeting people. Which was interesting because you don’t meet very many new people in a small town that you’ve lived in your entire life. But in Seattle, no one knew me. No one knew who my father was, and no one had expectations for me. I was judged entirely on my own merit, and I could completely rewrite who I was. Not just some small-town deadbeat, but a young, bright kid who had a future in front of him.”
The way he told that story, the very idea of it, was tantalizing to Danielle. The idea of starting over. Having a clean slate. Of course, with a baby in tow, a change like that would be much more difficult. But her association with Joshua would allow her to make it happen.
It was...shocking to realize he’d had to start over once. Incredibly encouraging, even though she was feeling annoyed with him at the moment.
She leaned forward and absently pressed a kiss to Riley’s head. “That must’ve been incredible. And scary.”
“The only scary thing was the idea of going back to where I came from without changing anything. So I didn’t allow that to happen. I worked harder than everybody else. I set goals and I met them. And then I met Shannon.”
Something ugly twisted inside of Danielle’s stomach the moment he said the other woman’s name. For the life of her she couldn’t figure out why. She felt...curious. But in a desperate way. Like she needed to know everything about this other person. This person who had once shared Joshua’s life. This person who had undoubtedly made him the man standing in front of her. If she didn’t know about this woman, then she would never understand him.
“What, then? Who was Shannon?” Her desperation was evident in her words, and she didn’t bother hiding it.
“She was my girlfriend. For four years, while I was getting established in Seattle. We lived together. I was going to ask her to marry me.”
He looked away from her then, something in his blue eyes turning distant. “Then she found out she was pregnant, and I figured I could skip the elaborate proposal and move straight to the wedding.”
She knew him well enough to know this story wasn’t headed toward a happy ending. He didn’t have a wife. He didn’t have a child. In fact, she was willing to bet he’d never had a child. Based on the way he interacted with Riley. Or rather, the very practiced way he avoided interacting with Riley.
“That didn’t happen,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say, and part of her wanted to spare him having to tell the rest of the story. But, also, part of her needed to know.
“She wanted to plan the wedding. She wanted to wait until after the baby was born. You know, wedding dress sizes and stuff like that. So I agreed. She miscarried late, Danielle. Almost five months. It was...the most physically harrowing thing I’ve ever watched anyone go through. But the recovery was worse. And I didn’t know what to do. So I went back to work. We had a nice apartment, we had a view of the city, and if I worked, she didn’t have to. I could support her, I could buy her things. I could do my best to make her happy, keep her focused on the wedding.”
He had moved so quickly through the devastating, painful revelation of his lost baby that she barely had time to process it. But she also realized he had to tell the story this way. There was no point lingering on the details. It was simple fact. He had been with a woman he loved very much. He had intended to marry her, had been expecting a child with her. And they had lost the baby.
She held on a little bit more tightly to Riley.
“She kept getting worse. Emotionally. She moved into a different bedroom, then she didn’t get out of bed. She had a lot of pain. At first, I didn’t question it, because it seemed reasonable that she’d need pain medication after what she went through. But then she kept taking it. And I wondered if that was okay. We had a fight about it. She said it wasn’t right for me to question her pain—physical or otherwise—when all I did was work. And you know...I thought she was probably right. So I let it go. For a year, I let it go. And then I found out the situation with the prescription drugs was worse than I realized. But when I confronted Shannon, she just got angry.”
It was so strange for Danielle to imagine what he was telling her. This whole other life he’d had. In a city where he had lived with a woman and loved her. Where he had dreamed of having a family. Of having a child. Where he had buried himself in work to avoid dealing with the pain of loss, while the woman he loved lost herself in a different way.
The tale seemed so far removed from the man he was now. From this place, from that hard set to his jaw, that sharp glitter in his eye, the way he held his shoulders straight. She couldn’t imagine this man feeling at a loss. Feeling helpless.
“She got involved with another man, someone I worked with. Maybe it started before she left me, but I’m not entirely sure. All I know is she wasn’t sleeping with me at the time, so even if she was with him before she moved out, it hardly felt like cheating. And anyway, the affair wasn’t really the important part. That guy was into recreational drug use. It’s how he functioned. And he made it all available to her.”
“That’s...that’s awful, Joshua. I know how bad that stuff can be. I’ve seen it.”
He shook his head. “Do you have any idea what it’s like? To have somebody come into your life who’s beautiful, happy, and to watch her leave your life as something else entirely. Broken, an addict. I ruined her.”
Danielle took a step back, feeling as though she had been struck by the impact of his words. “No, you didn’t. It was drugs. It was...”
“I wasn’t there for her. I didn’t know how to be. I didn’t like hard things, Danielle. I never did. I didn’t want to stay in Copper Ridge and work the land—I didn’t want to deal with a lifetime of scraping by, because it was too hard.”
“Right. You’re so lazy that you moved to Seattle and started from scratch and worked your way to the highest ranks of the company? I don’t buy that.”
“There’s reward in that kind of work, though. And you don’t have to deal with your life when it gets bad. You just go work more. And you can tell yourself it’s fine because you’re making more money. Because you’re making your life easier, life for the other person easier, even while you let them sit on the couch slowly dying, waiting for you to help them. I convinced myself that what I was doing was important. It was the worst kind of narcissism, Danielle, and I’m not going to excuse it.”
“But that was... It was a unique circumstance. And you’re different. And...it’s not like every future relationship...”
“And here’s the problem. You don’t know me. You don’t even like me and yet you’re trying to fix this. You’re trying to convince me I should give relationships another try. It’s your first instinct, and you don’t even actually care. My father can’t stop any more than you could stop yourself just now. So I did this.” He gestured between the two of them. “I did this because he escalated it all the way to putting an ad in the paper. Because he won’t listen to me. Because he knows my ex is a junkie somewhere living on the damned street, and that I feel responsible for that, and still he wants me to live his life. This life here, where he’s never made a single mistake or let anyone down.”
Danielle had no idea what to say to that. She imagined that his dad had made mistakes. But what did she know? She only knew about absentee fathers and mothers who treated their children like afterthoughts.
Her arms were starting to ache. Her chest ached too. All of her ached.
“I’m going to take Riley up to bed,” she said, turning and heading up the stairs.
She didn’t look back, but she could hear the heavy footfalls behind her, and she knew he was following her. Even if she didn’t quite understand why.
She walked into her bedroom, and she left the door open. She crossed the space and set Riley down in the crib. He shifted for a moment, stretching his arms up above his head and kicking his feet out. But he didn’t wake up. She was sweaty from having his warm little body pressed against her chest, but she was grateful for that feeling now. Thinking about Joshua and his loss made her feel especially grateful.
Joshua was standing in the doorway, looking at her. “Did you still want to argue with me?”
She shook her head. “I never wanted to argue with you.”
She went to walk past him, but his big body blocked her path. She took a step toward him, and he refused to move, his blue eyes looking straight into hers.
“You seemed like you wanted to argue,” he responded.
“No,” she said, reaching up to press her hand against him, to push him out of the way. “I just wanted an explanation.”
The moment her hand made contact with his shoulder, something raced through her. Something electric. Thrilling. Something that reached back to that feeling, that tightening low in her stomach when he’d first mentioned Shannon.
The two feelings were connected.
Jealousy. That was what she felt. Attraction. That was what this was.
She looked up, his chin in her line of sight. She saw a dusting of golden whiskers, and they looked prickly. His chin looked strong. The two things in combination—the strength and the prickliness—made her want to reach out and touch him, to test both of those hypotheses and see if either was true.
Touching him was craziness. She knew it was. So she curled her fingers into a fist and lowered her hand back down to her side.
“Tell me,” he said, his voice rough. “After going through what you did, being pregnant. Being abandoned... You don’t want to jump right back into relationships, do you?”
He didn’t know the situation. And he didn’t know it because she had purposefully kept it from him. Still, because of the circumstances surrounding Riley’s birth, because of the way her mother had always conducted relationships with men, because of the way they had always ended, Danielle wanted to avoid romantic entanglements.
So she could find an honest answer in there somewhere.
“I don’t want to jump into anything,” she said, keeping her voice even. “But there’s a difference between being cautious and saying never.”
“Is there?”
He had dipped his head slightly, and he seemed to loom over her, to fill her vision, to fill her senses. When she breathed in, the air was scented with him. When she felt warm, the warmth was from his body.
Her lips suddenly felt dry, and she licked them. Then became more aware of them than she’d ever been in her entire life. They felt...obvious. Needy.
She was afraid she knew exactly what they were needy for.
His mouth. His kiss.
The taste of him. The feel of him.
She wondered if he was thinking of their kiss too. Of course, for him, a kiss was probably a commonplace event.
For her, it had been singular.
“You can’t honestly say you want to spend the rest of your life alone?”
“I’m only alone when I want to be,” he said, his voice husky. “There’s a big difference between wanting to share your life with somebody and wanting to share your bed sometimes.” He tilted his head to the side. “Tell me. Have you shared your bed with anyone since you were with him?”
She shook her head, words, explanations, getting stuck in her throat. But before she knew it, she couldn’t speak anyway, because he had closed the distance between them and claimed her mouth with his.