Fake Marriage Box Set

I cleared the dishes after dinner. The person who cooked never had to take care of the dishes, so Kasey bopped outside while I stacked everything by the sink. I shooed Daddy off to read the paper in the living room while I washed, rinsed, dried, and put the dishes away. I hung up the damp kitchen towel when the job was done and went to find Kasey out back. I needed to talk to someone about what was going on at work, and I couldn’t think of anyone to turn to besides my surprisingly experienced little sister.

She was on the wooden swing, moving lazily while she checked her phone for whatever gossip she’d missed while we were eating dinner. Daddy didn’t allow electronics at the table. We hadn’t even gotten cell phones until after high school. I plopped down next to her on the swing, wrecking the rhythm she had going. I pushed off with my heels, rocking us back so hard, Kasey squealed and grabbed for the arm rest.

“Em!”

“I need to talk to you,” I said, letting us relax into a less choppy rhythm, our legs moving in tandem to keep the swing going smoothly.

She looked over at me, her green eyes wide. “What is it?”

I drew a deep breath and let it out again, considering how to best put all of this — my feelings for Pete, blooming like stubborn weeds no matter how much I’d tried to chop them off at the root, the little thrill I felt in the mornings at getting to the farm, and spending the morning sneaking looks at him while we sipped our coffee.

“Pete took me out to breakfast last week,” I said, speaking in a hot gush of exhaled air. “It wasn’t supposed to be a date. Just a boss taking out his employee. But it sure felt like a date.”

She dropped her phone into her lap, its glowing face forgotten. She leaned closer to me, her eyes so wide I expected them to pop out of her head. “You didn’t tell me about going to breakfast!”

“I’m telling you now,” I said, giggling a little. “After we got back to the farm, he asked me to dinner.”

“Oh my God, Emma! That’s so great!”

“I told him no.”

Her face fell along with her shoulders. She sank back onto the swing, making a disappointed noise as she shook her head, her hair bouncing all over her shoulders. “What? Why would you do something like that? You like him!”

“I have to work with this man, Kase. And, I love the ranch.”

“Who the hell cares about the ranch?” Her voice had dropped to a deadly whisper, the way it always did when she was being serious. This was Daddy’s mark on her — getting quieter the madder she got. Her wide eyes searched my face, but it was dark out here, so she couldn’t see much. “If you like him, you should go out with him.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It sounds pretty simple to me. You like him. He likes you.” She smiled, maybe to demonstrate just how simple it was.

I shook my head. But I couldn’t find the right way to argue. Because I did want to go out with Pete. I’d seen something different in him that morning at breakfast. He became more than a set of mile-wide shoulders and a bottomless pool of bad jokes. I’d gotten to see something else: a soft, serious part behind the show he put on nonstop when he was around anyone else. The silliness was part of who he was just as much as the piercing blue eyes were, but he used it to keep attention away from that other, more vulnerable part, the part I was desperate to get to know.

Kasey seized on my hesitation. “What do you have to lose, Em? Maybe things get uncomfortable and you have to quit, or you’re fired. You’ll just be in the same place you were before you started working there. You’re smart and hardworking. You’ll find somewhere else. But there isn’t another guy like Pete just waiting for you around the corner. If you like him, you have to take a risk.”

I chewed on my lip, thinking hard. I wanted to go out with him. No matter how silly he was. I was actually coming around to liking that silliness quite a bit. Getting away from the ranch had made a difference that morning at the Texan. I was desperate to see that softer, gentler, less comical side of him. That wouldn’t happen at the ranch. It wouldn’t happen around Lacey.

Kasey was right. I had to take a risk.

Chapter Thirteen

Pete

Friday

I was on the porch, tapping my leg like crazy as I tried to relax. Riley was asleep on the floor next to the steps, completely ignoring the tension in the air like the selfish little beast he was. The week started out so well — taking Emma to breakfast and getting a few smiles out of her while we exchanged stories about our lives. But then I had to go ruining it by asking her out to dinner.

I just thought I’d seen something warm and inviting in her eyes at breakfast. Now I wasn’t even sure if she’d stay on at the ranch. Things weren’t bad between us, just unnatural. She refused to meet my eyes and avoided me like the plague in the mornings to keep from being asked to breakfast again. I’d made up my mind not to pursue this. Not if it was making her this uncomfortable. I liked her too much to lose her.

Emma walked out of the barn and turned to slide the alleyway doors shut. She leaned in to listen to the noise on the other side of the door for a minute, a small smile on her face, before starting across the driveway and up to the house. I’d caught her doing that before — just listening to the whickering of the horses in the morning before she opened the door and after she closed it in the evening. Her love for the horses was another thing that softened my heart towards her.

She walked up the steps to the porch slowly. It was the end of the week, so I owed her five days’ worth of wages. Her eyes were guarded, the tiny smile she gave me perfunctory.

“I have your money inside,” I told her. The envelope was sitting on my kitchen table.

“I’ve been thinking about what you asked the other day,” she said, staring dow

n at the snoozing shape of the dog. “About dinner?”