“Yep.” The rest of her fingers tangled through mine, and she seemed to nestle a little deeper into my lap.
“And am I to infer that you have a night job as well?” Dad’s silver brow peaked.
“You are.” Nina nodded.
Dad’s hand circled. “Doing?”
“I work at a coffee stand. An all-night one.”
I swore to god, if my parents exchanged one more look, I was putting a wall between them.
“A coffee stand,” Dad stated.
Nina and I nodded.
“A coffee stand.” Mom smiled, this one the contrived kind I was used to. “How nice.”
“It’s not what I plan on doing forever—I’d like to go to school eventually—but it pays the bills for now,” Nina added.
An awkward moment of silence passed, and if it hadn’t been for Nina on my lap, I would have been gone. They might have been my parents and raised me, but I hadn’t invited them here and they were basically insulting my fiancée in front of both of us.
“Have you set a date for the wedding yet?” Mom folded her hands in her lap, that smile still perfectly in place.
“Not really,” Nina said, glancing back at me like she wasn’t sure how much to say.
“Soon,” I added. We already had a date, but they didn’t need to know that.
“How soon?” Dad’s forehead creased.
“Soon, soon.”
Nina twisted on my lap to face me, picking up where I was going with this. “Really?”
I shrugged. “Why wait. I want to marry you. You want to marry me. I don’t see the point in waiting just so we can take our time picking out the ‘perfect’ party favors.”
Dad sounded like he was choking on something, but I was too busy staring at Nina. Her smile had stretched into a beam.
“Really?” she repeated.
“I want you to be my wife, Nina Burton. Now.”
“Now?” Dad was really choking on something now. Probably the imaginary dollar signs he felt slipping away.
“Well, yeah. We might have a few things to sort out, but I don’t want to wait. I want to marry this woman. The sooner, the better.”
I’d barely finished my sentence before Nina’s lips landed on mine again. Pressing deep into me, she held her mouth against mine, one of her hands dropping to my cheek. Just like the last time she’d touched me there, I felt myself melting into her.
When she pulled back, her green eyes were swimming in some emotion I didn’t have a name for. “I want to marry you now too.”
When she shifted on my lap so she was almost facing me, her face flattened because yeah . . . pretty sure she’d just felt my predicament behind my zipper. She shifted back to her original spot.
“No need to rush into things.” Dad’s voice was loud enough it echoed into the next room over. “You’re both riding the engagement high. Give it a few days to settle in, then decide on a date. Make sure this is what you want.”
Nina met Dad’s stare. “He is,” she stated matter-of-factly. “Max is who I want.”
I knew she was just playing a role, giving the performance of her life trying to convince my suspicious parents that we were the real deal, but my chest seized when I heard her say that.
“We had dinner with Elena last week,” Mom said, changing the subject. This subject made every muscle in my body tense. “Just as beautiful as always. Sweet girl.”
My parents exchanged a nod of agreement while my jaw locked.
“The sweetest,” I growled.
Nina blinked back at me. “Who’s Elena?”
I waited a second too long to give Nina my explanation.
Dad gave his. “Max’s old fiancée. Hasn’t he mentioned anything about her?”
Nina stiffened in my lap, but I was probably the only one who noticed. A slow breath escaped her lips, then she hid her surprise behind a smile. “Well, yeah, I just forgot her name.”
“Elena and Max grew up together.” Mom crossed her ankles and turned, so she was facing us. “We thought they were going to grow old together too, but then Max went and let her get away.”
Anger was pumping in my veins from them bringing her up. Something that went beyond anger started to surge when I thought about what had happened between Elena and me. My parents didn’t know the real story, and that was fine. If they wanted to believe I was the one who’d broken her heart, fine, I didn’t give a shit. So long as they just stopped talking about her.
“To find you, my dear,” Mom suddenly added when she noticed Nina’s face. “He let her go to find you.”
Nina managed a smile, but I could tell she was jarred. I’d brought up that I’d been burned, but never that I’d been engaged. I guessed I didn’t think it was that big of a deal since Nina wasn’t really in love with me the way a fiancée should be. I didn’t think she’d care who I’d fucked or got on bended knee for.
With that shell-shocked look on her face though . . . damn, she almost had me convinced she was in love with me.
“She’s got a great family. We go way back,” Dad added.
Mom nodded. “And she’s a fashion designer. One of the top ones in Germany.”
I shifted on the chair, knowing what they were doing. They were trying to intimidate Nina. They were hoping to scare her away. Too bad they didn’t know the kind of woman Nina was, and she was not one who’d be intimidated by another woman, one of Elena’s brand especially.
“Wow. She sounds great.” This smile of Nina’s looked almost real.
“She isn’t,” I added.
“Max,” Mom half-snapped. “How can you say that with you two’s history?”
I exhaled. It was this very policy of believing what they wanted to that had been behind them wasting the Sturm family fortune. “Believe me, Mom, if you knew our history, you’d know why.”
Nina glanced back at me, concern on her face.
What in the hell was happening? Yesterday, everything had been good and going according to plan, and tonight, someone had tossed a damn grenade into my life. I loved my parents in the most conventional of ways and I knew they loved me in their own way, but I couldn’t deal with them right now. I wouldn’t tolerate them hurting Nina the way they were planning to, driving her away the way I knew they were determined to.
“What are you two doing here?”
My mom shifted on the couch, but Dad stayed solid in his chair, unflinching. “What do you think we’re doing here, Max? We wanted to meet our future daughter-in-law. See our son.”
Nina managed another one of those smiles that would convince a Supreme Court Justice, while my face went with something of the opposite variety.
“Why are you really here?” I looked between the both of them. “I want to hear you say it. I want to hear you admit it.”
Mom’s hands were fidgeting in her lap when she looked to Dad for an answer.
“What are you talking about, son? We’re here for you,” he said.
“No, you’re not. You’re here for you.” My head whipped as it shook. “You’ve always been about you, and that hasn’t changed.”
Mom looked close to tears, but Dad’s face stayed as stoic as ever. I was trembling in my seat from the anger surging through me. It was unlike any other I’d experienced, and I guessed that had to do with Nina. I was used to my parents’ backhanded compliments, their veiled insults, their personal agenda. But I was not used to them bringing those I cared about into that sick web of malcontent.
It was something I wouldn’t tolerate either.
“Would you excuse us for a minute?” Nina leapt off my lap, grabbing my hand. “I need to talk to Max alone.”
She didn’t wait for my parents’ response; she just tugged me out of the chair and pulled me down the hallway until we were rounding into her room.
When she closed the door and turned on me, I was bracing for a fight. Nina and I’d had no shortage of those over the past couple months, and I knew I deserved this one. They were my parents and I was the one t
otally failing to play the right part. Nina had given a flawless performance that could have convinced the most skeptical, and I’d let emotions get in the way.
Fuck. This was one of the worst nights of my life.
But her face wasn’t drawn up like she was prepping for a battle. Her eyes weren’t blazing the way I was used to seeing them as we battled out whatever topic of the day we’d latched onto.
“Are you okay?” she asked gently, moving toward me.
My brows drew a hard line. “What?”
Nina’s hands formed on my chest, the length of her forearms running down my body. “Are. You. Okay?”
Her touch. It was messing with my head like it always did. Instead of working at its typical pace, my brain was moving at quarter speed. “I’m fine.”
She gave me a look that implied she knew better. “No, you’re not.”
I sighed, irritated that I could rarely get a thing past her these days. Well, other than the fact that I’d fallen for her for real.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m fine or not. Right now, we just need to get through tonight without me strangling my father.”
She looked up at me, her hands pressing deeper into me. “It matters to me. You matter to me.”
Before I could work out my reply to that, her hands tied around the back of my neck as her body fitted against mine. Her head pressed into my breastplate, and she held me tightly.
Was she hugging me?
God, I thought she was. As innocent as a hug might have been, I was not having innocent thoughts with her body pressed into mine. She might have been the woman I was paying to marry me, but right then, I wanted her to be the woman I spent the rest of my life with.
Squeezing my eyes together, I backed away, searching for the place where reality had left off.
“They can’t see us anymore. You can cut the act, Nina.” My voice was off, sounding like someone was squeezing my vocal cords.
She looked at the space keeping us apart, indecision heavy on her face. “This isn’t an act. Maybe it was in the beginning. Maybe I wish it still were. But this”—she motioned between her and me—“it’s not an act.”
Okay, so now my brain was working on back-up power. The way she was looking at me, the way she’d just been touching me, what she’d just said. What the hell? I couldn’t tell up from down right now.
“What are you saying?”
Her gaze lifted to meet mine. “You know what I’m saying.”
My lungs were laboring, and my head was swimming. I could comprehend the words she was saying, just not the meaning behind them.
I didn’t know how long I stood there in that dark room, staring at her, working out what she’d just said, trying to make sense of it. However long it was, it was a moment too long.
“Just forget it, okay, Max?” Nina shook her head and turned away. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Nina,” I called, finally able to put my thoughts together enough to manage her name.
“No, forget it.” She kept walking away, pulling the door open. “We’ve got enough to deal with tonight without having to work out what I just said.”
I stood there, dumbfounded. Had Nina just said what I thought she had?
Smiling at the spot where she’d disappeared in such a hurry, I replayed her words in my head. Again and again until I had my answer.
Fuck. This was one of the best nights of my life.
And that just happened. The guy I’d promised to marry, the guy I’d sworn to myself to hate, was the one I’d confessed to having feelings for.
I’d been replaying the scene from last night in my head all day. When I’d pulled him into my room, I hadn’t planned on dropping that FYI on him. That was a secret I had been planning on taking with me to the hereafter. Why I’d told him, I didn’t know, but I would have given a limb or two to travel back in time and get a redo.
Had Max responded differently, then it wouldn’t be such a big deal. But he’d stood there, silent, in shock, not having a clue what to say. Just thinking about the way he’d looked at me made my stomach churn for the five hundredth time today.
It wasn’t a face of outright disgust and betrayal, but more one of shock. Surprise. Like he hadn’t expected it, wasn’t ever expecting it, and didn’t have a clue what to do or say knowing I felt something more for him. Shit, I’d promised him nothing more than a farce. I’d promised myself that. So why had I gone and gotten feelings tangled up between us? How had I let myself get to this point, where thinking about him made something ache inside me? Where being around him made that ache subside?
So much for vows and promises. I couldn’t seem to keep to one.
My thoughts had fueled my day so far. The dogs had gotten in an extra mile thanks to my furious pace, and the handful of potatoes I’d planned on peeling had turned into the whole bag.
Max was at work, and his parents had gone out sightseeing this afternoon but were back now. They’d come through the front door arguing, paused long enough to throw a couple of conventional smiles at me, then picked up their argument as they marched upstairs to the room we’d put them in last night. A half hour later, they were still at it. I’d turned on the radio a while ago to drown out the noise, but it wasn’t that effective.
Max’s parent clearly weren’t thrilled about our engagement, and I got that. Any parent would probably be skeptical of this rushed engagement, especially when it was between two people as different as Max and I were. That wasn’t my issue with them. My issue stemmed from the way they clearly set Max on edge.
Last night, he had been a different man in that living room with them. Tense, terse, cold. Max had enough going on without adding this kind of tension to his life, and I would do everything I could to make this easier on him.
That was why I was making a big dinner tonight and had already set a few board games on the dining table. So we could all be together without having to actually talk about any of the stuff that had made Max nuclear last night. Hopefully.
We couldn’t avoid his parents, but I was determined to make this as easy as I could for him.
After getting the potatoes into a pot to boil, I went to work dicing up the strawberries for dessert. Max loved strawberry shortcake—which I found all kinds of amusing since he was such a sophisticated, powerful man—and I was making it as a kind of peace offering for what I’d dropped on him last night.
Because what said, “I’m sorry for confessing I dig you” more than a slab of strawberry shortcake?
When the shouts from upstairs dialed up a few decibels, I turned the radio’s volume dial up with my elbow. My hands were red and sticky from the strawberry juice and I still had a whole extra basket to slice.
The sound of the front door opening made my eyebrows come together. It wasn’t even six. That couldn’t be Max. The earliest I’d ever seen him get home was eight, but I didn’t know who else would be shoving through my front door unannounced
“Hello?” I called.
Then I heard familiar heel-strikes moving down the hall. It was him. What could have happened to make him leave work when everyone else did?
“Nina.”
I flinched when he appeared in the entry of the kitchen. His voice was back to normal and so was the rest of him. At least as far as I could tell. I hadn’t seen him since late last night when he’d left, saying he had an early morning and would be staying at his office for the night. Part of me was relieved I wouldn’t have to crawl into the same bed as him after what I’d admitted. Part of me was kind of disappointed too.
It was supposed to be our first night sharing my room. He couldn’t exactly sleep in the guest room now that his parents were here. I’d figured him leaving last night to stay at his office was his way of putting off us sharing a bed and giving him some time to process what I’d said and formulate his response. It was his way of keeping his distance.
The noise upstairs dialed up again.
My eyes lifted to the ceiling. “They’ve been at
it for a while now. Should I go check on them?”
From the corner of my eyes, I watched Max shake his head. “This is how they spend most of their days. It’s normal for them.”
“Oh. Okay.” I plucked the next strawberry from the colander, not sure what to say or where to look. Max didn’t seem to have a problem looking at me, but he wasn’t the one who’d confessed his feelings for me last night.
Nope, that was this girl. The idiot slicing strawberries, totally tongue-tied.
“We have to talk.”
My knife wobbled as I sliced off the stem cap. “Just, please, forget it.” I wetted my lips. “I shouldn’t have said that. Forget it, okay?”
Max moved into the kitchen, his steps echoing through the room. “You couldn’t plead, beg, or pay me enough to forget what you said.”
My hand was trembling now, but I kept slicing. So what if I chopped my finger off—I’d already exposed my heart for the chopping. “Why not?”
He moved closer. He didn’t stop until he was beside me. His hand reached out for mine, stalling it before he slid the knife away and set it on the counter. Then his hand returned to mine, his fingers tying through my sticky ones.
He was waiting for me to look at him, but I couldn’t. I was having a tough enough time breathing and remaining upright. If I looked at him, I wouldn’t be able to manage that either.
He leaned in like he was about to tell me a secret. “Because maybe I feel the exact same way.”
More of my body was trembling. I couldn’t tell if it was from his touch or from what he’d said. “You don’t have to say that.”
“I know.” His other hand slid my hair over my shoulder. “I wouldn’t unless I meant it.” Then his head lowered to my neck, his lips grazing it.
My body shivered in response. “Max.”
He sucked at the skin gently. “Nina.”
Tipping my head to the side to allow him better access, my hand pressed into him like I was bracing myself. “I don’t know what this is anymore.”
His mouth continued to work my neck. “Then let me show you,” he whispered against me.
I managed a nod.
Taking that as a green light, his body suddenly pinned mine up against the counter. A gasp slipped past my mouth. His chest was pressing into my back, holding me captive. His hand tied around mine released it and traveled up to my neck. His fingers formed around my cheek as he turned my head to the side.