It was dark when they left the main house and took a gravel road to Knox’s small log cabin located on the Ambling A ranch. Genevieve held the puppy tightly in her arms, her stomach twisting into an uncomfortable knot. The excitement of putting on a great show for the Crawford family had been an adventure—a challenge—and she had thrived under the spotlight. But now, on this pitch-black road with only the headlights to light their way, it was starting to sink in that she had just, at least for the short term, completely changed her life. She was now Knox Crawford’s wife, and as such, would be living under the same roof with him.
“Here she is.” Knox pulled up in front of his cabin, which had been built back in the woods with a small stream nearby. It was a mini version of the main house, fashioned out of rustic logs with rocking chairs on the front porch. If this had been a real marriage, Genevieve would have been pleased to call this her first home with her husband.
“Nice.” The word came out of her mouth and it sounded hollow to her own ears. How could she swing so quickly from feeling triumphant to feeling horrified?
Genevieve opened the truck door and then repositioned the puppy in her arms. Dried leaves crunched beneath her feet as she slid out of the passenger seat onto the ground. The air was crisp and the familiar sound of field crickets singing all around them worked to settle her nerves. She followed her husband up the porch stairs, the wood creaking beneath their feet. Silver began to wiggle in her arms and whine, licking at her face to get her attention.
“I think he needs to go to the bathroom.”
“I’ve got a fenced-in area out back.”
Knox opened the door, flipped on a switch just inside the doorway and held the door open so she could walk through. In that moment, Genevieve realized that she had just walked into Knox’s world—a world she had never thought to experience. The cabin, like Knox, was masculine and neatly appointed. From her experience, the cowboy was always well put together, even when he was working. In contrast, her garage apartment looked like a bomb had exploded inside. She was always just about to get around to cleaning it up but never quite got there.
“Make yourself at home,” he said.
Silver finally wiggled free, ran over to Knox, stood up on his hind legs and began to paw at the rancher’s leg.
“Hey, buddy. Let’s go out.”
Knox dropped her backpack on the couch in the small living room before he walked through the tiny kitchen to the back door. Silver bounded out the door, down the back porch steps and into a dimly lighted fenced-in area.
Genevieve followed them outside and stood on the back porch next to her husband. Her arms crossed in front of her body, she said, “This is just plain weird.”
Knox looked over at her, his features in shadow. “You’re right. It is.”
They both laughed when Silver came galloping back toward them, his fat legs churning as he worked his way up the stairs.
“I didn’t even know you had a dog. Wren caught me on that one.”
“She’s smart as a whip.”
Genevieve nodded.
Back inside, she stood awkwardly in the living room, taking in the sparse decor. Knox, it seemed, was a no-frills kind of guy, which fit the picture she had always had of him. The cowboy shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it on the butcher-block counter top in the kitchen.
“What now?” she asked him.
He unbuttoned his white shirt exposing his tanned, corded neck and part of his chest. Knox then unbuttoned his cuffs.
“Now?” he asked. “I’m going to get some shut-eye. I get up before dawn. How ’bout you?”
She was exhausted and wired and disoriented.
“I meant, what’s next?” she clarified. “For us.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean?” she snapped, the exhaustion beginning to make it difficult to keep her tone friendly. “Are you prepared to face my family tomorrow?”
“Yes. I’m prepared. We’ve got to tell them before they hear it from someone else. Will they worry if you don’t show up tonight?”
She shook her head. “No. I come and go as I please. Sometimes I don’t get home until they’ve gone to bed and I can be gone before they awaken.”
He joined her on the couch, lifting Silver up and putting him on the cushion between them. “Then we’re covered for tonight.”
She yawned with a nod. “A short reprieve.”
When she opened her eyes, Knox was staring at her quietly.
“We actually did it.”
She took a deep breath in through her nose and let it out. “Yes, we actually did.”
“We haven’t really discussed sleeping arrangements.”
“We haven’t discussed much of anything really,” she interjected.
“I’ll take the couch. You can have my bed.”
“Thank you. Can I have your puppy too?”
She liked the way that the sides of Knox’s eyes crinkled when he laughed. “I suppose, technically, he’s your puppy now too.”
“I may just ask for him in the divorce,” she teased.
“Along with puppy support?”
“Absolutely.”
Knox gave her the top to his pajamas and showed her where the toothpaste was kept in the medicine cabinet above the sink. The bathroom was cramped but clean and there was a claw-foot bathtub that would have been calling her name if she wasn’t so weary. She quickly brushed her teeth and her hair, slipped on Knox’s pajama top, which looked like a minidress on her, and then opened the door slowly.
“I’m coming out,” she warned him.
“The coast is clear,” he promised.
Genevieve quickly crossed the narrow hallway to the bedroom and closed the door partway so she could call Silver. Silver came bounding down the hall, squeezed his roly-poly body through the crack in the door and greeted her with unconditional love. The bed was made, of course, with dark blue–and-green-plaid linens. She got under the sheets and flopped back onto the pillows. The mattress was much softer than the one she slept on in the garage apartment, and surprisingly comfortable.
With the puppy curled up beside her, Genevieve switched off the lamp next to the bed and stared up at the ceiling. She had never really imagined herself married—but alone in a strange bed with a puppy wouldn’t have made the short list of scenarios for a wedding night if she were to ever have one, that was for sure.
“Please,” she said into the dark. “Let sleep come quickly.”
Knox tried to sleep but he couldn’t. Everything was going according to his plan, yet he couldn’t have known what it would actually feel like to have a wife in his cabin. For the last hour, his mind had been fixated on the image of Genevieve wearing the top part of his pajamas. The fact that he hadn’t seen her in the garment hadn’t stopped his mind from imagining it. She was in his bed, in his pajamas, and he had promised not to touch her. He had given his word. What was he thinking? Now he had a beautiful, sexy wife with whom he had to maintain a hands-off policy. Living with Genevieve in such close quarters, it seemed like a monumental challenge he would have to fight to overcome every day.
“Wake up, lovebirds! It’s time for your shivaree!”
Knox sat up at the sound of his brothers’ voices. They were banging on what sounded like pots and pans, hooting and hollering at the top of their lungs. Knox threw off the blanket, stood up, switched on the light and stomped over to the front door. He yanked open the door and was greeted by Finn and Wilder.
“What are you doing?” he yelled at them, holding his hands over his ears.
“The shivaree, bro! From the movie Oklahoma.” Finn laughed, banging his pot with enthusiasm.
“We’re welcoming your bride to the family!” Wilder tipped his head back and hollered.
“Knock. It. Off!” Knox grabbed for the pots and pans but missed.
Wilder and Finn pushed their way into the cabin and it seemed that they all looked at the blanket on the couch at the same time. Knox turned back to his brothers, who now had a perplexed, wondering expression on their faces. At that moment, Genevieve came out of the bedroom in his pajama top. All three of them stared at her. Her long blond hair was mussed, her blue eyes blinking against the light and her tanned, muscular legs were exposed.
Instinctively, Knox stepped to her side and put his arm around her body. “My wife and I would like to spend our wedding night alone. Now take your shivaree and get the heck out of here.”
Wilder lifted his eyebrows, his eyes shifting to the blanket on the couch. “It doesn’t look like we were interrupting anything, bro.”
If Finn and Wilder walked away thinking that they were having a platonic wedding night, the entire plan would be ruined. Knox couldn’t let that happen. He took Genevieve’s face in his hands and kissed her. He kissed her the way he had always thought about kissing her—slow, sweet and full of promise for good things to come. For a split second, she stiffened in his arms, but then she put her arms around his neck and kissed him back like a woman in love. By the time the kiss ended, his brothers were slamming the door behind them.
Knox let his arms fall away from Genevieve’s body and took a step backward. “I’m sorry. I had to do something.”
His wife looked a bit dazed, as dazed as he felt. That kiss—so unexpected and unplanned—had got his juices flowing and made his body stand at attention.
Genevieve touched her lips as if she were still feeling the kiss before she said, “You had to.”
Knox tried not to notice the shape of her legs or the outline of her breasts beneath the thin material of his pajama top, but he couldn’t avoid it. His wife was a beauty. How could he not notice?
“Were you able to sleep?” she asked him.
He shook his head.
“Do you think they’ll come back?”
Knox took a glass out of the cupboard and got some water out of the tap. “Knowing them? It’s possible.”
“We can’t let anyone see us sleeping apart,” Genevieve said. “We can’t risk it.”
He brought her a glass of water, which she accepted with a thank you.
“What do you suggest?”
“We share the bedroom.”
Knox’s mind immediately went to the thought of sharing a bed with Genevieve and not being able to act on any desire that was surely to arise. Could he handle it? Would he ever be able to get any sleep with her just an arm’s length away?
“Are you sure about that?” he asked.
Genevieve finished the water and put the glass in the sink. “I’m not sure about anything we’ve done, Knox. But we’re here now, so we have to just find a way to make it work.”
“Do you really think that you can share a bed with me and keep your hands to yourself?”
His wife laughed—a natural, sweet-sounding laugh that he enjoyed. “I will certainly give it my best shot.”
“See that you do.”
“Are you a right or a left?” Genevieve followed Knox back to the bedroom.
“Middle.”
“Not tonight, you aren’t,” she said. “Silver is the middle.”
The puppy’s head popped up and he wagged his tail.
“Silver is our chaperone?”
“Yep. We’ll keep the puppy between us like an adorable chastity belt.”
Genevieve ended up getting the right side of the bed. She hurriedly slipped under the covers and pulled them up to her chin. Right before Finn and Wilder had barged in on their wedding night, Genevieve had just drifted to sleep surrounded by Knox’s scent. The pillows and sheets and blanket all had the faint scent of Knox’s body. Now that he was in bed next to her, the scent of his warm skin made it difficult for her to remember that this was a marriage in name only. The man was built for a woman’s appreciative eyes and the sight of him naked from the waist up, the feel of his hard body and his soft lips on hers, awakened feelings in her that she had worked to push aside.
“Gen?” Knox said her name in the dark.
“Hmm?”
“If I had asked you out—you know—before we got married, would you have said yes?”
Genevieve hesitated to answer. “No.”
The bed moved beneath him as he shifted his body toward her. “No?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Are we really having this conversation now?”
“Why not?”
“Because, Knox,” she said. “You’re too young for me.”
The bed wiggled because he sat upright. “Too young? You’re thirty-two.”
“Which you just learned today...”
“And I’m twenty-eight.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m only four years younger than you!”
“Which means that you’re really ten years younger than me because men are about six years behind women as far as maturity. Hence why I don’t date younger men.”
“You just marry them.”
Genevieve curled her body around Silver, rubbing his soft warm belly. “Touché, husband. Now go to sleep. Being your fake bride is exhausting.”
Genevieve awakened to the smell of rich coffee and the feel of a wet puppy tongue licking her face. Giggling, she grabbed Silver and wrapped him up into her arms.
“How are you this morning, puppy breath?”
Silver barked and thumped his tail back and forth. Then he shimmied out of her arms, leaped off the bed and went racing out of the room. She pushed herself upright in the bed and checked her phone for the time.
“Oh, my goodness.” She squinted at the screen, shocked. It was after eight! She never slept in like this.
“Good morning.” Knox appeared in the door, freshly showered and shaved. He was wearing dark jeans and a button-down shirt tucked in neatly. “Coffee?”
“God, yes.”
“If you want to jump in the shower, I put a fresh towel out for you and there’s shampoo.”
Knox had seen her in his pajama top the night before, but in the light of day, she suddenly felt self-conscious.
“Can I borrow your deodorant? Didn’t think of that when I packed.”
“What’s mine is yours,” he said. “Help yourself.”
Genevieve quickly took a shower and changed into the jeans and T-shirt she had worn the day before. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had been waiting for Knox at the diner. The simple gold band around her finger felt foreign but she knew that, at least for the time being, she would have to get accustomed to wearing it.
“You cook?” she asked as she walked barefoot out to the kitchen.
“Enough to survive.” Knox handed her a cup of coffee. “Cream? Sugar?”
She shook her head and blew on the piping hot coffee.
“I can do scrambled or fried. Pick your poison.”
“Scrambled.”
Knox cracked an egg. With his back to her, she admired the way his jeans hugged his hips and his legs. He turned his head to look at her and caught her checking him out. He smiled at her with a wink.
“Enjoying the view?” he teased her.
“No. I was trying to read the label, that’s all.”
“If you say so,” Knox said. “But I think this platonic marriage may just prove too difficult for you, Gen.”
He brought two plates of scrambled eggs to the table and joined her.
“I can’t believe how late I slept.” She took a forkful of eggs. “How long have you been up?”
“A couple of hours.”
“Did you sleep?”
“Like a rock once my two knucklehead brothers left.”
“Do you think they bought the kiss?”
Knox caught her eye and held it. “It felt real to me.”
Genevieve looked down at her plate and pretended to be preoccupied with moving the eggs from one spot to another. That kiss had felt real to her as well. It wasn’t the kind of kiss that two platonic friends would share; it was a lover’s kiss. Knox had felt it and so had she.
“How do you think your family’s going to react?” Knox asked, bringing her eyes back to his handsome face.
Genevieve looked out the window for a moment, thinking. Then she gave a little shake of her head. “My mom will think it’s typical. I’ve been impulsive since I was a kid. But my dad? I think he’s going to freak out.”
“Good to know. Looking forward to it.” Knox stood up and took both of their plates to the sink. “I suppose we should go and face the freak-out then.”
She had to agree. Putting off telling her parents was only making her stomach churn. And the thought of them finding out from anyone else was a serious concern. Rust Creek Falls was a small town with a big mouth. They had to get to the folks before the news of their elopement reached them by a gossip or a well-wisher.
Genevieve looked down at Silver who was on his back on the couch with his fat paws up in the air. “Let’s take Silver. I mean, seriously. Who can stay mad when there’s a puppy in the room?”
“Only a monster,” Knox said.
“Exactly!” She nodded. “It’s not the least bit cowardly to hide behind a puppy shield.”