“I understand that. I’m going to be honest with you. I’ve been told honesty is the best policy in these instances. I intended to ask you out when you came home. I was planning on giving you some time to settle in and then I was going to show up on your doorstep.”
“You were? Why didn’t . . .” She knew what had happened. “Your father died.”
“And then there was the accident.”
“And then your mom had cancer.” It had been a rough few years for Rene. “And now you’re dealing with this.”
“It’s not ideal.” He stared at her for a moment, and his voice went soft. “Why are you here, Sylvie?”
She was here because she couldn’t not be here, but she wasn’t ready to admit that to him. “How will it work?”
He moved in, his lips beginning to curl up. “Why are you here?”
The air suddenly seemed heavier than it had been before, some spark coming to life between them. “You know why I’m here.”
“I want you to say it. I want you to tell me yes.” His voice was dark and rich, tempting her.
She should run but she couldn’t make her feet move. And then she admitted she wasn’t going to run at all. She was going to do this with him. “Ask me again.”
His gaze seemed tender as he stared down at her. “Sylvie Martine, will you marry me?”
She was diving into the deep end of the pool. “Yes. I will marry you, but I have some questions. And some boundaries.”
“Of course. We should negotiate.”
“First, I do not want any kind of financial settlement.”
He hesitated.
She wasn’t going to back down. “I mean it, Rene. It’s a deal breaker.”
“Fine. I will have Quaid strike that part of the contract, but you have to get something out of this.”
“I will. I want to know if we can work, too.” She’d thought about it on the long drive from Guidry’s. If she was going to do this, she needed to be honest with him, too. “I think you’re the reason I haven’t been serious about anyone in years. I’ve dated but it never went anywhere, and I think it’s because I’ve always wondered what could have happened between us. So I’m going to ask you flat out. I wasn’t brave enough to do it back then. Why did you turn me down?”
“Because I knew I had to go to Chicago to work for at least two years. I wasn’t in a good place for a relationship, and you deserved a relationship. We were young, and I didn’t know how your family would handle it if things didn’t work out between us. Your family has always been important to me.”
She could understand that. “So it wasn’t that you weren’t attracted to me.”
His jaw tightened. “I was attracted to you then. I’m very much attracted to you now. I need this marriage, but you should understand, I want it, too. I don’t want to wait anymore. I worry if I do, I’m going to wake up and be out of time.”
“I worry about that, too. But we can’t simply say we’re married and start trying to have babies.”
“All right,” he agreed. “We’ll practice for a while.”
“Rene, I think we should concentrate on ensuring that you remain the CEO and then we can talk about how to move forward. We should date.”
“You want me to date my wife?”
“I’ll only be your wife legally. I want to make it clear that I’m not jumping into bed with you. We’ll put on a show for your family and agree to also take this time to get to know each other again. And you have to be all right with me telling my family what’s going on.”
“Agreed, and some of my friends will understand the nature of our marriage. Other than them and the people you’re close to, I think we should keep up the ruse.”
He was definitely being naïve. There was no way to keep those secrets in a small town. “All of Papillon is going to know. There are already rumors that you’re getting married to keep your job.”
Rene sat down and sighed. “Then this might not work at all.”
She didn’t think so, but he looked cute when he went all woe is me. “Are you worried about Charles finding out? Because he’s going to question the timing. He’s going to want to know why we didn’t have a big wedding. He’s going to want to know why me. Mostly he’s going to be suspicious.”
“He’s going to be more than suspicious, and that’s why you need to think this through,” Rene replied. “I’m absolutely certain my cousin will hire a private detective to watch us. Specifically to watch you.”
“He won’t see anything interesting. I haven’t done anything interesting in years. Like I said, I haven’t had time to. My last relationship was with a man in DC. We worked on a national campaign together, and for about six months we dated.” Being on the road could be hard, and it often led to affairs between staffers. “That was the last time I had any kind of a relationship, so it’s not like I’m jumping from one man to another. It’s entirely possible we’ve been seeing each other for months but we wanted to keep it quiet because of my position in the community.”