The Pact (Winslow Brothers 2)

“Okay, fine. I don’t know that,” I acknowledge. “But I do know that anytime you approach a situation with anxiety and fear, it makes logical thinking difficult.”

“So…what you’re saying is that I need to calm the fuck down?”

I shrug one shoulder and grin.

“You know, it’s pretty hard to calm down when losing my job and deportation are the most likely consequences.”

“Understandable.” I may not be the kind of guy who wears his emotions on his fucking sleeve, but I’m not incapable of empathy.

“And I feel horrible,” she says softly, and her chin starts to quiver. “I feel like I’m making my problems your problems, and it just feels wrong. You didn’t ask for any of this. You hardly know me. And you certainly don’t owe me anything.” A few tears fall down her cheeks, and that doesn’t sit well with me. At all.

The last thing I want to do is see this beautiful woman cry. Her vibrancy and enthusiasm are what drew my eyes to her in the first place. It’s what captured my attention in the middle of a crowded casino, and it’s what led me to doing the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever done in my life—marry a complete stranger.

“Daisy.” I say her name, attempting to grab her attention, but she’s looking away from the camera, sucking her bottom lip into her mouth and losing the battle against the tears that keep falling down her now pink and splotchy cheeks. “Daisy,” I repeat again, and this time, quite possibly because this is one of the only times I’ve bothered to repeat something in my life, she meets my eyes. “First of all, I put myself in this situation. I offered. So, you feeling guilty is unwarranted. It’s going to be okay.”

She huffs out a sigh. “No offense, but now isn’t the time to say shit you don’t mean.”

I give her a knowing look, one she seems to understand immediately. I never say shit I don’t mean.

“How could you possibly know it’s going to be okay? Because from where I’m standing, it feels apocalyptically dismal.”

I make a show of looking over my shoulders. “It can’t be that bad. I don’t see Bruce Willis anywhere yet.”

She snorts at that, and my chest lightens. As the flow of her tears starts to slow, I try to infuse the conversation with logic.

“You said you work for a big real estate firm, right?”

She nods.

“Do they just sell in LA or other cities like New York, too?”

“LA, New York, Miami, Vegas are EllisGrey’s primary markets, but there’re a few other cities on the list.”

Bingo. I simply shrug one shoulder, and she searches my face for a long moment before questioning, “Wait…what are you trying to say?”

Although the answer is pretty fucking obvious to me, I can understand that her emotions are running high at the moment.

“If your firm sells in New York, then I’m thinking it’s possible that you relocate to New York for a while.”

Her eyes turn wide. “Relocate to New York? Why would I do that?”

I almost want to laugh, but I swallow back the urge. “Well, babe, we do have to show proof of living together. And the only way to do that is to actually live together.”

“Oh…Oh my God,” she mutters and slaps a palm to her face. “Of course. Duh. You probably think I’m the biggest idiot right now.”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

Worked up and emotional? Yes. But an idiot? Not at all.

“Move to New York. To live with you,” she says more to herself than to me. Like she’s testing it out on her tongue to see how it sounds out loud. “I have no idea how my boss would take something like that.” She digs her teeth into her bottom lip. “But it’s not like I haven’t helped with staging properties on the East Coast before…”

Daisy looks away from the screen of her phone, sighs, and when her eyes meet mine again, the depths of green appear lighter, closer to a jade gemstone than the deep green of the forest.

“Are you sure you’re okay with that?” she asks, and my answer is far simpler than I would’ve ever thought it would be.

“Yes.”

Her eyes search mine for a long moment, and then, they flit down to my bare chest. “Holy hell, are you naked? Like, you’ve been talking to me this whole time while you’re naked?”

I almost want to laugh at how quickly her mind changes topics. “I just got out of the shower.”

Her jaw drops wide open. “So, you are naked?”

“Not entirely,” I say and tilt the screen down slightly to show my towel.

“Oh, cool,” she mutters, and her eyes flit between my face and chest some more. “Cool. That makes sense!” she exclaims a little too loudly, and her cheeks flush pink. “People take showers all the time, right? I mean, I do. I take showers. Lots of them. And you take showers, and we’ll have to take showers in New York because that’s what people do, right? Ha. They shower. Which, you know what, that’s exactly what I have to do right now. Yep. It’s shower time! Okay, I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”