ONE YEAR, ONE HUSBAND
Book Two: The Difficult Husband
I had exactly four days to become a convincing wife, according to Ethan.
"You'll need to stop answering questions like you're being deposed," he said, standing in the middle of the study with his arms crossed while I sat on the edge of an armchair that probably cost more than my college tuition. "Reporters will ask about our courtship. You cannot say, and I quote, 'it happened fast.'"
"It did happen fast," I said. "Three days, to be exact. I could give them the exact hour if that helps."
"It does not help." He picked up a printed sheet from the coffee table, a mock interview script his publicist had prepared, and read from it in a flat voice. "How did you know Ethan was the one? Now, answer that the way a woman in love would answer it."
I stared at him. "You want me to lie to a room full of journalists about falling in love with a man who told me, in writing, not to fall in love with him."
"I want you to perform competence," he said. "There's a difference."
We ran through the mock interview four more times that evening, and each time I answered with something so deadpan that Ethan finally set the papers down and pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose like a man developing a headache he had specifically arranged for himself.
"Try again," he said. "And this time, look at me like you don't want to strangle me."
"That would require actual acting," I said, "which is generally considered a skill, Mr. Blake."
For half a second, something almost like a laugh escaped him, a short exhale through his nose that he covered so quickly I might have imagined it. I decided I hadn't imagined it. I decided to remember it, filed away next to the memory of his fingers against my spine two nights earlier, in the small, dangerous drawer of my mind labeled things I am absolutely not thinking about.
"One more," he said, flipping to the next card. "What do you love most about him."
"His humility," I said instantly.
"Mia."
"His warmth. His approachable, cuddly demeanor."
"You are enjoying this."
"I really am," I admitted, and this time the sound he made was unmistakably a laugh, brief and rusty, like a door that hadn't been opened in years, and something in my chest did a small, foolish somersault at having caused it.
He caught himself almost immediately, clearing his throat and looking back down at the cards as though they had personally betrayed him. "We're done for tonight," he said. "Wear the navy dress tomorrow. Not the green one."
"Why not the green one?"
"Because my mother will ask if it's a family heirloom, and it isn't, and you'll say something honest, and I would like one evening without an international incident."
"No promises," I said, and I meant it as a joke, but some small part of me noted, with a kind of quiet alarm, how easily we had slipped into something that felt less like a negotiation and more like banter between two people who actually liked each other.
✲ ✲ ✲
The family dinner the following evening was, according to Ethan, a biannual tradition, the kind of formal gathering his mother hosted twice a year in the great dining room with its two chandeliers and its table long enough to seat twenty, though tonight there were only eight of us. Mrs. Whitfield spent forty minutes deciding which of my three approved dresses "photographed best under chandelier light," and I stood very still while she pinned and adjusted, privately certain that no dress in the world could make me look like I belonged at that table.
I should have known Olivia would be there before I ever saw her face. I felt it in the way the room's temperature seemed to drop half a degree the moment she walked in, golden hair swept back, a red dress that cost more than my monthly rent used to, and a smile aimed directly at Ethan like she was reclaiming property that had briefly gone missing.
"Ethan," she said, kissing both his cheeks before he could so much as step back. "You look wonderful. Marriage clearly suits you." Her eyes slid to me, cool and assessing. "And this must be Mia. I've heard so much."
"All good things, I hope," I said, my smile so bright it hurt my face.
"Oh, mostly," she said, in a tone that made it clear she meant the opposite, and turned back to Ethan before I could respond. "Do you remember the Hamptons house, darling? I was just there last month. It still smells like your mother's roses."
I watched Ethan's jaw tighten, the only visible sign that the memory cost him something, and I watched Olivia watch it too, satisfied, the way a woman watches a wound she knows exactly how to reopen. Ethan's mother, seated at the head of the table in a high-collared silk blouse that made her look like she was presiding over a tribunal rather than a dinner, watched the exchange with the sharp, unreadable attention of a woman who missed absolutely nothing that happened under her roof.
"Olivia," she said smoothly, "you remember Mia is Charles Carter's daughter."
"Of course," Olivia said, her smile never wavering. "Carter Design. Such a charming little company. I do hope it recovers."
"It will," I said, "recover, that is. Charming little companies have a way of outlasting the people who underestimate them."
Something flickered across Ethan's mother's face, gone almost before I registered it, but I would have sworn it was approval.
I made it through the appetizer course without incident. I made it through most of the entrée by focusing very hard on my plate and reminding myself, silently, that jealousy was against the terms of our contract, that I had no right to feel the hot, ugly twist low in my stomach every time Olivia rested her hand on Ethan's forearm to make a point, or leaned in to murmur something that made him go rigid and unreadable in a way I hadn't yet learned to interpret.
I did not make it through dessert.
Somewhere between the second glass of champagne, which I had assumed was champagne, and the small crystal glass of something amber that a waiter refilled without asking, I found myself several degrees braver than I had any right to be.
"You know," I announced to the table at large, apropos of absolutely nothing, "Ethan snores. Just a little. Like a very polite bear."
There was a beat of silence. Ethan's mother, at the head of the table, raised an eyebrow with what I would later realize was poorly disguised delight.
"Mia," Ethan said quietly, a warning wrapped in my name.
"And he alphabetizes his shirts," I continued, because apparently I could not stop myself, riding some reckless current straight past the shore of good judgment. "By color, then by fabric weight. Who does that? A robot does that. I married a very handsome, very organized robot."
"That's enough," Ethan said, though I noticed his mouth had gone suspiciously tight at one corner, fighting something that was absolutely not a smile.
"I'm only being honest," I said, turning to look at Olivia, who had gone very still, her fork halfway to her mouth. "Honesty is important in a marriage. Isn't that right, Olivia? Or did you two not do a lot of talking, back when?"
The table went silent in an entirely different way. Somewhere down the table, one of Ethan's uncles made a small, strangled sound into his napkin that might have been a laugh.
Ethan's hand found my elbow under the guise of helping me stand. "I think my wife needs some air," he said smoothly to the room, and the warmth in his voice was so convincing that for one absurd second even I almost believed we were happy.
✲ ✲ ✲
He walked me down the hall and up the stairs with one hand at the small of my back, steady in a way that suggested he had done this before, steadied someone who had drunk more than they meant to at one of these dinners, though I refused to wonder who.
"I wasn't that bad," I said, gripping the banister a little harder than necessary.
"You called me a robot in front of my mother."
"An organized robot. There's a difference."
"You also implied Olivia and I never talked. In front of Olivia."
"That part I stand by."
He didn't answer, but I felt his hand tighten slightly at my waist as I misjudged the last step and pitched sideways, my whole weight suddenly caught against his chest instead of the stairs. For a moment neither of us moved. I could feel the solid warmth of him through his shirt, could hear his heartbeat, faster than I expected, faster than a man who alphabetized shirts by fabric weight should reasonably have any right to.
"Careful," he said, his voice low, his hand splayed wide against my back to keep me upright.
"You're not as cold as everyone says," I said, looking up at him, the champagne apparently having stripped away whatever filter usually stood between my thoughts and my mouth.
Something flickered across his face, there and gone, before the familiar wall slid back into place. "Everyone says a great many things," he said, and set me carefully back on my feet, releasing me the moment I found my balance, like a man putting down something he wasn't entirely sure he should have picked up.
He walked me the rest of the way to my room in silence, and at my door, he paused.
"Drink some water," he said. "And Mia."
"Yes?"
"Alphabetizing shirts is efficient. Not robotic." A pause. "There's a difference."
"Noted, Mr. Blake."
"Ethan," he said, so quietly I almost missed it. "Just Ethan is fine. Tonight, at least."
I was still smiling long after his door clicked shut down the hall.
✲ ✲ ✲
I should have gone straight to sleep. Instead, I sat on the edge of my bed, replaying the stairs, the warmth of his chest, the small, private syllable of his own first name he'd handed me like it cost him something, and I might have fallen asleep smiling if my phone hadn't buzzed on the nightstand with a message from a number I didn't recognize, a single photograph attached beneath it.
I opened it before I thought better of it.
It was from Olivia, and the photograph showed Ethan, younger, laughing in a way I had genuinely never seen him laugh in the two weeks I'd known him, his arm around Olivia's shoulders at what looked like a lake house somewhere, both of them sun warmed and easy in a way that made something cold settle behind my ribs.
He's very good at pretending, isn't he, the message read. I'd know. I watched him pretend with me for three years before he decided love was inconvenient. Ask him what happened to the ring he never gave me. Ask him why he really needed a wife before the board vote. It isn't the reason he told you.
I sat there in the dark, phone screen glowing against my face, the warmth of the staircase, of his hand at my back, of the almost-smile I had been so foolishly cataloguing all evening, curdling into something much colder.
It isn't the reason he told you.
I set the phone down, and for the first time since I had signed my name beneath his in that lawyer's office, I let myself wonder exactly how much of Ethan Blake I had actually agreed to marry, and how much of him I had no idea existed at all.