I jumped up, raced over to the trash and pulled out Megan’s stack of papers. Seeing them covered in coffee grounds, I brushed frantically at their surface, one word repeating over and over like a sputtering car engine that didn’t want to start.
“No, no, no, no, no…”
I would have added a “hell no” in there, but my poor engine was down to a single cylinder of denial.
“I’m trying to solve both our problems and you’re being a brat.” Cayce stood and prowled toward me, every inch of him looking like a Texas wildcat.
There was definitely a glint of murder in the sparkling gray eyes.
“You put this house up for sale,” he growled, “and I guarantee it won’t sell.”
His voice went up another pitch. Apparently Dr. Love was pissed at my reaction to his…what? Proposal? If that’s what it was, even for a marriage of inconvenience, he was worse at this shit than Howard.
“I’ll make sure it doesn’t sell even if I have to sit outside all day and all night with a sign that says it’s a former compound of the Church of Satan and is possessed by half the demons of hell.”
He finished with a righteous finger wag before his meaty hands found his hips.
“Do that and I will sue your ass!” I shouted, the coffee stained papers bouncing an inch in front of his face.
That earned a deep laugh, not a breath of it faked.
“Sadly, baby girl, I think we already established we’re both about as penniless as two souls can be and still have a roof over their heads.”
The truth of his reply hit me. I stumbled to the desk chair and landed with a whoosh and a thump.
“You don’t get it,” I whispered. “If the house doesn’t sell, I have to walk away from it. All you’d be doing is hurting me even more than you already have.”
I looked up as I finished speaking to find that Cayce’s face was sagging once more. Somehow, I had managed to take the wind out of his sails.
“You were fine up until you realized we have to get married. That’s your objection?”
“Yeah,” I snapped. “One of many.”
My tongue knotted around the names of the women I had seen on those slips of paper, especially the two that he had rated, one beautiful, the other “gordita.” But I swallowed that line of protest down where it lodged in my chest. Cayce and I were never going to have that conversation.
I just needed to get him out of a house that wouldn’t be mine for much longer and then he and I never had to talk to one another again.
“Explain it to me, princess.”
I snarled when the insult left his perfectly formed lips.
“We don’t have to get married for this to work. Utility companies don’t care, there’s no ordinance against my renting you space…it’s just the health insurance savings, and we don’t need to worry about that with the stable money.”
“The car insurance, too. Can’t get the discount otherwise. And I’ll have to keep renter’s insurance if I’m just renting.” He sat down at the kitchen table and drew a line through all the insurance items. “And saving money doesn’t help if people stop visiting my practice because we’re living in sin. They won’t stable horses here for the same reason.”
He paused to draw a line through the five hundred in net stable income.
“You know I’m right, Ash. We’re half an hour away from one of the most liberal cities in Texas, but we’re not doing business with Austinites.”
I buried my face in my hands, Megan’s paperwork falling to the ground. Since daddy had died, I was either alone at home, or I was at work in Austin. I had forgotten how the rest of Travis County worked. Marble Falls, over in Burnet County was even more…provincial. I doubted the makeup of Cayce’s practice had changed much in the last year. A lot of the clients came from just over the county line. The same would be true of people wanting to board their horses with us.
“So, what then?” I asked, lifting my head to stare at him. “We get a divorce once the numbers start looking good?”
I laughed, my pitch quickly climbing toward hysterical. I was fast turning into an all around loser. Howard’s commitment proposal, getting conned into Cayce’s bed and now planning a fake marriage with a man who still didn’t know how badly he had wounded me.
“That would make my first real marriage my second marriage,” I added.
An obstinate mask settled over his face, a little tic at the corner of his jaw telling me I was skating on thin ice.
“Well, if the marriage isn’t consummated—”
“You’re damn right we aren’t consummating it!” I shouted.
His mouth twitched, but the tic went away. When he spoke, it was like we were discussing the weather or the price of hay futures.
“Then we could get an annulment and your first legal marriage will be to whichever unmarried bozo you settle on.”
I looked at the coffee pot and contemplated pouring the rest of its hot contents on his lap. But I could see I had already bruised his ego with my outburst. Imagine fat Ashley Sharpe, his spare “gordita” telling the local heart throb she didn’t want to marry him or crawl back into his bed.
Yeah, devastating—for all of two seconds, then he was back to dollars and cents.
“We’ll need a prenup if that’s what you’re thinking. Some way of making sure our individual efforts are measured in a businesslike way.”
I shook my head. He’d been in the house less than an hour and my stomach was twisted up in knots. How was I supposed to deal with living with him seven days a week? Hell, even if the backwater town I grew up in wouldn’t shun both of us for living in sin—I doubted I could survive being around him as my tenant. I’d been stupid to listen to his plan.
Even the loss of false hope hurt like hell.
“It’s not happening,” I whispered then raised my voice to a more convincing level. “We need to let go. I can’t keep this house and you may not be able to keep the practice.”
The expression on his face told me at least part of what I’d said was unacceptable. I figured it was the clinic’s future that had him turning red.
“Look…don’t interfere with my selling the place and I’ll sign over my rights to payments from the practice. Maybe that will keep you afloat long enough to turn everything around.”
“That’s what you want to do?”
His voice sounded like tires grinding up rocks on a gravel drive.
I stared at the curtains again and tried not to cry as I answered.
“That’s what I have to do.”