She’d thought Jonathan had nothing in his life but work. Evidently, she was wrong.
There was silence beside her, stretching out so long she finally turned. She caught the strangest expression on Jonathan’s face.
Half-reluctant and half-guilty.
“What is it?” she prompted. He usually didn’t express any emotion at all, his face always relaxed, even when focused deeply on the most minuscule of genetic details.
“I’m not really engaged.”
“What?”
“I lied.”
Her belly clenched with a weird combination of relief and excitement. “But he’ll have to find out eventually, won’t he?”
“I know,” he admitted, rubbing his chin in a habitual gesture. She could hear the faint sound of his bristles against his hand. He shaved every day, but he was always bristly again by lunchtime. “It wasn’t the smartest of lies. Now he wants me to bring my fictional fiancée to my cousin’s wedding.”
“I guess you could make up an excuse about why she couldn’t come.” She tried to sound normal, but she almost felt giddy.
She indulged in daydreams all the time about Jonathan, but she didn’t have any realistic hopes about a future with him. He was brilliant, handsome, and would be a billionaire when his uncle died. He commanded attention everywhere he went—so compelling was the force of his intellectual confidence and the depth of his commitment to his goals. It wasn’t arrogance or intimidation, and it was completely unconscious on his part. But she’d seen him at conferences and symposiums, and she’d seen the most skeptical of stodgy academics look at him with respect, despite his youth and despite the fact that he wasn’t affiliated with a university.
Jonathan Damon could have any woman he wanted. Sarah was smart and was good at her job, but otherwise she was nothing special. She could be content with what she had—a career she’d always dreamed of and working daily with a man as brilliant and amazing as him.
Anything more was a Cinderella-dream, and she’d always known that could never happen to her.
“Yeah,” Jonathan replied, sitting down on a stool and turning back and forth on it restlessly. “Hopefully, he’ll accept the excuse. He threatened to pull our funding because I was too focused on research to settle down and get married.”
“I heard,” she said, surprised he’d told her something so personal. They talked all the time, but it was almost always about work. “It’s probably just a passing whim,” she added, “brought on by your cousin getting married. You can just make up an excuse for her now and then later claim that she broke the engagement. You don’t really think he’ll stop funding us, do you?”
He didn’t answer immediately, just looked away, which was answer enough.
“Is he really so…so old-fashioned?” She chose her words carefully, since she didn’t want to offend him. “I mean, to insist that you not stay single.”
“Old-fashioned doesn’t even begin to describe him. He wants to be an eighteenth-century lord of the manor.” There was a slight bitterness in his brown eyes as he said the words—something she’d never seen there before. He was usually such an even-tempered man.
“Maybe you could ask a friend to pose as your fiancée,” she suggested. “Just for the wedding. That way, you can extend the engagement as long as possible before you say it’s called off. By then, maybe he’d feel so sorry for you about the broken engagement that the funding would be safe.”
Jonathan arched his eyebrows. “Who would agree to do something so crazy as pretend to be my fiancée?”
“I’d do it,” she volunteered without thinking. Mostly, she was trying to make him feel better, and she didn’t think through the implications until the words were spoken.
Her cheeks grew hot, and she lowered her eyes to the peppermint wrapper she still held. “I mean, if you decided you wanted to do it.”
***