Three Hard Lessons (Blindfold Club 2)

Okay . . .?

“Because it’s so traditional.”

I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but he delivered the word with so much weight it made me nervous. He sighed, and locked eyes with me.

“The bad news is I changed your last name. The good news is it comes with jewelry.”

My chair squealed as I pushed back from the table and shot up. He leaped to his feet, too.

“Calm down,” he said. “It’s just for show. They won’t take an unmarried couple.”

My heart slammed in my chest and I ripped my eyes away from him. He wanted me to pretend to be his wife. I didn’t hear him come over. It was the thick arms that circled my waist that announced his presence.

“You’re asking way too much.” I said it quietly.

“It’s a lot, I know.” He pressed me against him so my face was buried against his T-shirt and I breathed in the scent of cedar and soap. “I’ll make it worth it, I promise.” A hand smoothed over the back of my head, angling me to look up at him. “I mean, if you fake marry me,” he teased, “you get half my stuff in the fake divorce.”

I pushed out a weak smile to mask the terror inside. Not terror at this idea of pretending. I’d always been a good actor. It was that the idea of actually marrying Dominic someday – it didn’t make me feel empty inside like it had with Joel. Instead I stood in Dominic’s arms and felt lightheaded.

“Okay, so say I do this. What makes you think,” I whispered, “that I’d take your last name? That’d be moving back in the alphabet.”

“Too late.” He grinned and looked thrilled I’d sort of agreed to it. “I already registered us as Mr. and Mrs. Ward. But go ahead and tell me you don’t do name changes. It’ll be fun.”

“Asshole.”

He laughed and lifted me up, causing my legs to fold around him. He stormed toward the bedroom. “That’s no way to talk to your fake husband, Mrs. Ward.”

Shit. That sent tingles down my spine. “Maybe you should put something in my mouth to shut it up then.” I slipped a hand between our bodies, rubbing him. “Like this.”

He gave me a wicked, dark look. “I’ll put that wherever I goddamn please.”

Fuck. I might just love him after all.

chapter

TWENTY-ONE

Dominic only made it twenty minutes into our six-hour train ride before asking about the rings. He’d dropped a wad of yen on the table Friday morning, along with a ring made out of paper he’d taped together for sizing, and tasked me with picking them out.

I glared at him as I dug the box out of my purse. I’d gone into a jewelry store and bought two simple silver bands, one for each of us, then bought a gaudy cubic zirconium ring at one of the tourist shops. Trying the rings on had been difficult, but I didn’t suffer the full-out meltdown until after. I’d sat in a coffee shop like a zombie for over an hour, weighing my options and forcing myself to face the fact that I was leaving Japan soon. Leaving him.

He couldn’t go back to America. My half-joking request for him to come home with me had been met with a wall of silence and an unreadable look. Slowly his expression filled with concern. “To where we’d both be out of jobs?”

No, that wasn’t an option for him. He had another year left on his contract.

I almost dropped the box with my sweaty hand. “Hope it fits, darling,” I said.

Dominic ignored me. He took the larger of the two bands, and I followed its quick descent onto his finger. How could he be so comfortable with this?

“It fits. Your turn.”

As I stared at the band on his left hand, my breath caught. A sign that he belonged to someone. To me. It was sexy. Wait, no, I didn’t like this. I grabbed my rings and shoved them on my finger, then balled my hand into a fist, dropping it out of view. I expected the ring to feel like it weighed a ton, but it didn’t.

We watched out the window as we raced through the gorgeous countryside filled with cedar trees and rice paddies. Dominic’s hand rested on my knee, and as we barreled through a tunnel, the light glinted on the new ban

d on his third finger. My eyes were drawn to it like a moth to a flame. What was wrong with me?

It was late afternoon when we arrived in downtown Kyoto, and took a taxi that wound through the city that seemed just as sprawling as Tokyo and yet more intimate. There were temples everywhere, and less neon.