Marriage For One

“Where are you going again?” I asked, realizing I had no idea.

“London.”

“Oh, I’ve always wanted to visit London—anywhere in Europe, really. You’re lucky that you get to travel. I don’t know if lawyers do a lot of traveling, of course, but…”

I paused and waited for him to say something, if nothing else just to help me make pointless conversation, but I had a feeling it wasn’t happening. I wasn’t wrong.

“Do you have a client in London?” I tried again, but I knew it was hopeless.

Jack lifted his arm and checked his watch while shaking his head as an answer to my question.

“Raymond, take the next turn. Get us out of here.”

When there was nothing but silence in the back of the car, I closed my eyes and pressed my temple against the cold glass of the window.

Ever since I’d said okay to this crazy plan, I had done my best not to think about it too hard. Now it was too late to do any kind of thinking. We hadn’t even had time to discuss where I would live. With him? Without him? Would we even get along if we lived together? Joshua… Would he hear that I had gotten married? And so soon after our breakup, too. Suddenly, every single question I had and ones I hadn’t even known I had all rushed into my mind all at once.

Ten minutes had passed where no one in the car had uttered a single word. For some reason, that was causing me to panic more than anything. What had I gotten myself into, really? If I couldn’t even manage to have a simple conversation with the guy, what the hell were we gonna do for the next twelve or twenty-four months? Stare at each other? Feeling sick, I pressed my palm against my stomach as if I could hold it all in—all the emotions, disappointments, forgotten dreams—but it was too late for that. I felt the first tear slide down my cheek, and even though I quickly tried to brush it away with the back of my hand because there was no reason for me to cry, I couldn’t stop all the others that followed. In just a few minutes, I was full-on silently crying, the tears a quiet stream I didn’t know how to stop.

Very aware that my mascara had probably made a mess of my face, I cried without making even a peep until the car came to a stop. When I opened my eyes and realized we were heading toward the wrong side of Central Park, I forgot about my tears and looked at Jack.

“I think…” I started, but the words died in my throat when I saw the expression on his face.

Oh shit! If I thought he had been angry when I dropped the ring, I was sorely mistaken. His brows snapped together as his eyes roamed my face and the tension in the car tripled.

I tried my best to wipe the evidence of my tears away without looking into a mirror. “This is the wrong side—”

“Take her to the apartment, please. I’ll get to the airport on my own,” Jack said to the driver. Then his expression closed up, his face blanking as he addressed me. “This was a mistake. We shouldn’t have done this.”

I was still staring at him in shock when he got out of the car, leaving his bride—AKA me—behind.

This was a mistake.

Words any girl who had gotten married only thirty minutes earlier would want to hear, right? No? Yeah, I didn’t think so either.

After all, I was Rose, and he was Jack. We were doomed from the very beginning with those names. You know… the Titanic and all that.

The number of times Jack Hawthorne smiled: zero.

Chapter Two

Jack

After spending days trying to ignore what I had done, I was finally back in New York and still nowhere near ready to face the clusterfuck I had created. Exiting the car the moment Raymond pulled up in front of my building, I walked past the doorman and stepped into the elevator. As I was checking my voicemails, I tried not to think about who and exactly what kind of situation would be waiting for me in my apartment.

Would I have to carry on a conversation with her? Answer more questions?

I certainly hoped not because talking to her was the last thing I wanted to do. Not if I was planning on sticking with my plan of keeping her at arm’s length.

The moment I stepped through the threshold, I knew she wasn’t there. Feeling both relieved and annoyed at the same time—relieved because I was alone just as I liked, annoyed because she wasn’t where she was supposed to be—I dumped my luggage in my bedroom and slowly walked through the apartment, just to make sure. Turning lights on and off, I checked every room, inspecting everything, looking for anything that was out of place, looking to see if someone had even been there after I left. When I reached the last room—the room she was supposed to be staying in—and found it just as it had been when I’d left for London, I rubbed my neck, hoping it would help with the headache I could feel coming on. Walking through the room, I stepped out onto the terrace to stare down at the busy city, wondering what I was supposed to do next.