by Avery Flynn
“Morning,” Sawyer said, crossing to the kitchen island and setting everything down on it. “Please tell me your dad taught you how to make pancakes.”
Despite her black mood, she laughed. “He did.”
“Thank God.” Sawyer winked at her as he started measuring out pancake mix according to the directions on the box. “I was gonna feel really bad if I helped your mom burn down the house.”
Some of the tension ebbed out of her shoulders. Whatever else happened, Sawyer wasn’t going to let this be awkward—at least not at her parents’ house. Later they’d deal with it, but for now they were just two people pretending that everything was as it seemed. She plugged in the large griddle on the island and grabbed a spatula from a drawer. If he could do this, so could she. Together, they just might carry it off.
“Morning, pumpkin,” her dad said, ambling over for a hug and a surreptitious look at the ingredients Sawyer had gathered and how he was mixing them together.
She squeezed her dad as tight as she dared. “I thought we were picking you up in an hour?”
“Well I—”
“Bullied the doctor into letting him out first thing this morning,” Laura cut in. “The damn fool took a taxi home.”
“Don’t listen to a word she says,” her dad said, looking every bit like someone caught with his hand in the cookie jar but denying it anyway. “Dr. Thornson was totally on board with the plan.”
Leaning into his arms, she inhaled the familiar scent of his aftershave and offered up a silent prayer of thanks for some things that didn’t change. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Dad.”
“Me, too, pumpkin.” He gave her a kiss on the top of her head and then wandered out of the kitchen to the worn chair in the living room that he refused to let her mom take to the county landfill.
And so things settled into a comfortable silence with her dad reading the paper while her mom set the table and she and Sawyer made the pancakes. It was the kind of domestic scene that would normally make her feet itch, but today it didn’t—and she refused to question why.
Half an hour later, the syrup had barely been poured on top of her pancakes before her mom went into inquisition mode.
“So this all happened pretty fast,” her mom said, not touching the three pancakes, hash browns, Canadian bacon, regular bacon, and berry assortment on her plate. “I gotta tell you, Clover, your dad and I were very surprised when we heard secondhand about the engagement and then you’ve been avoiding my calls since then and it has us worried.”
Subtle, her mom was not.
“I know, Mom, and I’m sorry about not saying anything but…” She got to the end of her words before her brain had time to think up anything.
“It was my fault,” Sawyer picked up the slack. “I talked her into surprising you, but word snuck out before we had a chance.”
“Uh-huh,” her mom didn’t sound convinced.
“So why the big rush to an engagement? It’s not like you two have known each other for that long,” her dad asked, his mouth half full of pancakes.
Her gut clenched and, reflexively, she put a hand on her belly. “It just sort of happened.”
“It freaked me way out. You see, I’m a big-picture person and marriage has never figured into the plan.” Sawyer picked up the coffee pot and gestured toward her mom’s half-empty cup. “Refill?” After waiting for her mom to nod, he went on. “But my mom had it in her head that it was past time I got married.”
“That sounds familiar,” Bobby muttered, his eyes glued to the science journal laying by his plate. “The parental unit actually thought I was a better hope for grandkids than Jane.”
“You’re in the lab too much,” her mom said with a sigh.
Her dad nodded. “Yeah, we want to make sure you have kids early before one of your experiments turns you into a superhero.”
Clover perked up. This was news. Her family had given up on her doing the whole marriage and kids thing? Okay, maybe her dad had, but mom had never stopped with her little reminders. Sawyer must have sensed the tension stiffening her spine because he reached under the table and took her hand in his before continuing.
“Well, my mom was on a formal campaign and my brother thought it would be funny to put out an ad for someone to act as a buffer between my mom and me,” he said, obviously omitting the timing of that occurrence.
“What?” her mom gasped.
“No, not like that,” Sawyer said in a rush. “Like a personal assistant who could dissuade my mom from trying to twist my arm to go on dates with her wife candidates.”
“Please God, don’t ever let our parents meet,” Bobby said, shaking his head. “Can you two elope or something?”
Sawyer raised his coffee mug in a commiserating salute. “Clover turned out to be the perfect fit and not just for the job. We connected right away. A few pineapple shakes and trips to the flea market later, and I was hooked.”
Her dad’s fork fell with a clank onto his plate, his eyes wide. His face had lost what little color it had. Fear twisting her lungs tight, Clover was out of her seat in seconds rushing to his side. She and her mom got there at the same time.
“Stop your fussing,” he said, waving them off as an embarrassed flush filled his cheeks. “I’m fine.”
Clover’s pulse pounded in her ears as she took a hard look at her dad, but he looked annoyed, not like he was about to have a heart attack for real. She let out a deep breath and slid back into her chair.
“I’ve gotta get this straight. You voluntarily went to the flea market? With Jane? On one of her DIY hell trips?” her dad said, his tone a mix of awe and horror. “And you didn’t run screaming?”
Sawyer nodded, just the right amount of bemused wonder on his face.
“Laura, darling, call off the dogs,” her dad said with a chuckle, sneaking a sip of his wife’s coffee before she could swipe the cup from his grip. “This man’s a goner.”
…
Was he a goner? Almost two hours into the drive back to Harbor City and Sawyer couldn’t shake the question.
He wasn’t, of course. That would be ridiculous. It was an unusual situation, and add to that the fact that the condom broke last night and of course it could appear that way, even if someone didn’t know all of the relevant facts. Like that the whole farce of an engagement was just another fun adventure for her and an efficient way for him to submarine Operation Marry Off Sawyer. Well, not the condom breaking part. That was just the bit of reality to smack both of them upside the heads.
Could she be pregnant? Yeah. Was she? Highly doubtful. It was just the once.
Said every high school-aged parent ever.
Okay, he was not going there.
Back to something he could control: this fake engagement/very real and very hot no-strings affair. Had Clover become a distraction? He snuck a peek at her out of the corner of his eye. She was winding a strand of hair around her finger while she gnawed her bottom lip raw and stared out the window at the outer suburbs of Harbor City. Her sunglasses were on, which kept him from seeing the look in her brown eyes, but he didn’t need that to know. She’d been curled up in the passenger seat the entire trip as if she could make herself small enough to disappear. The urge to reach out to her, take her hand at the very least, made him grip the steering wheel tighter because with every mile closer they got to home, the slower he drove. It was beginning to get obvious—especially considering the number of cars whipping around him in their rush to get to the city. He had a deal to prep, a trip to Singapore to get ready for, and yet here he was cruising down the highway at a brisk fifty-five miles per hour.
Was he distracted? Hell yes.
Which is exactly why they’d decided to end the fake engagement early. It made sense, it fit with his big-picture plan for Carlyle Enterprises and for him—it was the only thing that mattered. And the only reason why he was driving five miles under the speed limit instead of his regular fifteen over was because he was in a shitty rental that shook anytime
he took it over sixty.
Really.
It sure as hell wasn’t because the conversation was so stellar. Neither of them had said much of anything since piling into the rental and waving good-bye to her parents. Scanning the highway for something to start a conversation, his gaze hit a minivan with more stick figure kids than he could imagine on the back window, a cop pulling over someone going the opposite direction, and a billboard for a discount bridal shop. Yeah, a whole lotta nothing there. Still, he had to try something. They couldn’t end things like this, so he opened his mouth and let go with the first words that popped into his head.
“We could get married.”
He almost swerved off the road, correcting right as the wheels went over the rumble strips on the side of the highway. Where in the hell had that statement come from?
Clover smacked a palm down on the dashboard to brace herself and snorted. “Yeah right.”
“Why not?” he asked, returning the middle finger salute from the driver in the next lane.
She didn’t even turn to look at him, just curled her knees tighter to her chest. “You’re you and I’m me.”
“What does that mean?” His frustration made the question louder than he meant.
Now she did look at him, twisting in her seat and revealing the hard set to her jaw and the swollen redness of her bottom lip. “Tell me what you envision for our married life together.”
His mind went blank. He hadn’t been telling her parents a story at brunch. He’d never planned on getting married. Hudson was the ladies’ man. He was the boring Carlyle brother. The one who went to work. The one who focused on growing Carlyle Enterprises. The one who had absolutely no identity outside of the company—nor had he ever wanted one.
Her lips curled into a tight smile and she returned to her original position, staring out the passenger window. “That’s what I thought.”
Gripping the steering wheel tight enough that his knuckles turned white, he counted to twenty. Another set of cars passed them as his lungs tightened and his pulse began to race. “You might be pregnant.”
“And you think that is the proper foundation for building a life together?” she asked, her voice barely loud enough to be heard over the lawn mower engine making the car go. “A broken condom?”
Fuck. That was the core of it, wasn’t it? He could lie and say yes, but she’d see through him in an instant. And in that moment, he hated himself for it. This wasn’t how his world worked. It wasn’t how this was supposed to go. But the thing was, for the first time in his life since his dad died, he had no fucking clue what happened next and it ate away at him right down to the bone.
“If you are pregnant,” he said, pressing the gas pedal down because he needed to do something—anything—at that moment. “I won’t be a missing part of my child’s life.”
Clover let out a weary sigh and rested her temple against the passenger window. “I’d never want you to be. If I’m pregnant—and that’s a big if—we’ll figure it out from there.”
“Fine,” he ground out as he passed a minivan. “But until we know one way or another we go ahead with the engagement as if it was real.”
“Why?”
He grabbed ahold of the first reason that came to mind. “Because I have you under contract for another two weeks, and I’m not agreeing to early separation. That’s not up for negotiation.”
“The contract, of course.” Maybe she was just tired, but her voice sounded thicker than before. “So we go on pretending to be engaged until we know one way or another in a week or two. But no matter how it turns out, remember that I’m not a white picket fence kind of girl and you sure aren’t the kind of guy to clock out of the office at five every day to go home to your wife and kids.”
Was she wrong? No. They were who they were. Those differences were no big deal when it was all about hot sex and fun, but twenty years down the line? He had no plan for that. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from pushing.
“Look, I’m not saying it would be a perfect marriage, but…” The words died out as some emotion he couldn’t—didn’t want—to identify jacked up his thinking. “Just consider it.”
God knew he would. As Harbor City’s skyline, dotted with Carlyle Enterprises buildings, took shape in the near distance, the idea was already taking root in his head in ways that all of his mother’s schemes to find him the perfect Harbor City socialite wife never had.
Chapter Twenty-One
Two awkward, silence-filled days later, Clover shuffled through the front door of the apartment she shared with Daphne, her shoulders aching and her body weary. The setting sun streamed through the living room windows, landing on the bowl of popcorn, open bottle of wine, and two plastic glasses sitting in the middle of the reclaimed steamer trunk they’d converted into a coffee table. Judging from the amount of noise coming from the kitchen, though, Daphne was in there singing and putting the finishing touches on the double plate of cookies they always had on movie night.
Standing in the open doorway, she hesitated, not sure whether to move forward or slink back and text her that something had come up. Being around people—especially someone who knew her well—didn’t seem like a great plan right now. The dense emotional fog that had been swirling around her since that night by the lake thickened, making it hard to breathe, to think, to do just about anything. She never should have said yes to movie night this week.
“Lupakan ia,” she said and turned toward the door.
But before she could make tracks, Daphne walked out of the kitchen carrying a plate of cookies.
“Clover!” she hollered in a singsong voice. “When you didn’t answer my text, I was afraid you were ditching me to keep no-strings-attached banging your fake fiancé before time ran out and you had to leave for Australia.”
That one teasing statement cut through the haze around Clover. No strings. Banging. Sawyer. Maybe baby. Australia. Too late. All of it came at her in a rush like a cold, stinging burst of wind that cut right through her, bone deep and breath stealing. Her throat tightened, her lungs pinched, and the hot tears that had been lurking behind that numbing fog spilled down her cheeks.
Daphne squawked in concern, put down the plate she was holding, and rushed over to her, wrapping her arms around her in a hug and squeezing tight. It didn’t stop the tears, but it relieved the pressure of the ache that had built up over the last few days. She wasn’t alone in this whatever it was. It took several deep breaths, but she finally managed to stop crying and Daphne let her go.
Daphne took Clover by the shoulders and gave her a long, hard look. “Oh, honey, what happened?” Then she handed Clover a double chocolate cookie and a glass of red wine that was twice the size of a normal pour.
The wine was tempting—so fucking tempting—but she set it down on the entry table and took a bite of the cookie instead. It didn’t taste like much but if she couldn’t have wine, the magical and medicinal properties of chocolate were going to have to do all the work.
Daphne herded her into the living room. “I can call my cousin to kick his ass.”
Looking at her best friend so ready to go to bat for her without even knowing why, she almost started crying again. Chin trembling, she sat down on the couch and took in a long breath through her nose and braced herself for saying the words that had been screaming inside her head out loud.
“The condom broke.”
Daphne stilled, her brown eyes wide.
“What did he say?”
“He asked me to marry him.” There, that sounded almost neutral and not at all like she was about to start bawling again.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. What could I say?” The memory of the resigned look in Sawyer’s eyes when he’d asked her to think about it was like picking at a scab right over her heart. “Oh yeah, so I may or may not be pregnant but we have phenomenal sex. Let’s see how the whole tying yourself to one person forever works out because you know the one thing I’ve dreamed about since I
was a little girl was being barefoot, pregnant, and handcuffed to a vacuum cleaner.”
Daphne rolled her eyes. “I don’t think that’s really how marriages work these days.” Then she draped an arm around Clover’s shoulders and gave her a solid squeeze. “What can I do?”
Was doing some sort of spell to make her period come asking too much? “Not make me watch a horrible movie and let me eat all the chocolate chip cookies I can stuff in my face.”
“Done.” Daphne picked up the chocolate chip cookie plate and handed it over. “So what are you going to do? Do you want kids?”
“I didn’t think so but…” She rubbed her palm in a circle on her belly, the motion calming her even if it didn’t lessen any of the uncertainty in her life right now. Sawyer didn’t want to marry her, not really. He just wanted to force the unexpected event to fit into the plan he already had worked out for his life. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Try,” Daphne said.
Clover took in a deep breath and tried to organize the thoughts whirling around in her head. The truth of it was she hadn’t tried to put everything into words before. All she knew was that everything hurt and she couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. So she started with the point she was most certain of and started talking.
“I love my mom, but that’s not the life I ever wanted for myself,” she said. “She eats apple pie every Sunday even though she hates it and that’s just one example of how she stuffs away what she wants for someone else. Plus, she never gets to go anywhere. Sparksville and my dad are her whole world—along with Bobby and me, of course. I didn’t want that. I wanted to live. I wanted to experience every new thing out there. I didn’t want to miss out on a single experience when she missed out on a million because she was tied down by her family. I never questioned it.” Her heart hammered against her ribs and she took a second to swallow past the emotion blocking her throat. “But now I look around and realize that I’m twenty-six years old, have never held a job for longer than a few months, have been all over the globe, and I’m not any closer to feeling like I have it all than I was when I was in my old bedroom in high school writing in my diary that I’d never end up like my mother.” This was it, that thing looming in the dark shadows of her head, the ones she never bothered to shine a light on—not until she answered that ad for a personal buffer. “Then I met Sawyer and I started to like being in one place. Being with him wasn’t boring or stifling or a chore. It was…thrilling and fun and a little bit scary, but in a good way.” Her pulse sped up as all sorts of things she’d been afraid to consider started clicking into place. “I was still trying new things and new experiences—it was just a pineapple shake at a diner instead of a drink most people couldn’t pronounce in a country I’d never been to before. And when the condom broke, I freaked out but not all the way. Part of me was…hopeful and excited about the possibility of a baby and of having a life with Sawyer.” The realization was freeing even as she acknowledged the bittersweet futility of it all. “But when he asked me to marry him out of obligation it was like watching all the things I didn’t even realize I was starting to want get blown out of the water.”