The Wife Arrangement

I grit my teeth together. It’s hard to think about this right now, given the mess everything has become. But when I clear my mind and think back to all the times we shared … when I think about our first weekend away together—and not just about our hot our chemistry in the bedroom, but the times we had exploring the boardwalk and the shops, or the times driving around aimlessly, just enjoying the feeling of being on the road… Or the long talks we had late into the night, side-by-side curled up in bed.

I think about how much we have in common. How I light up every time she enters a room, even if she’s just walking past on the far side of the office, and I catch a glimpse of her on my way into a meeting.

I open my mouth, but Dad shakes his head.

“You don’t even have to say it, son,” he tells me. “It’s written all over your face. You love her.”

Love. It sinks in, deep.

I’ve never really been in love. I teased Dee about that, teased her for never having felt like she was in love before. But neither had I, really. I wasn’t even sure I was now, until I hear Dad say the words. I love her. I love Dee. I really do.

“I do, Dad,” I murmur.

“There you go, then.” He slaps my back once more, chuckling. “As for what I think of her, Jasper, not that my opinion matters, but—I think she’s refreshing. A much needed down-to-earth presence in this family. And your mother will recover from the shock—it’s really just the suddenness of all this that got to her, not the wedding or Dee herself.”

“Yeah, well, who’s to blame for that?” I point out with a halfhearted glare at him. I’m smiling underneath it, though. Still reeling from the realization of how I feel about Dee. Love.

“I apologize for pushing you so hard about getting a wife,” Dad says. But he’s smiling beneath that apology, too. “But it worked out, didn’t it? You’re happy now? So, really, I think in the long run, you ought to be thanking me…”

I elbow him. “Don’t get carried away, Dad. And I think you’ve had plenty of this to drink by now.” I pluck the ouzo from his hands.

He rolls his eyes. “Fine, I’ll soldier on without any thanks for all of my hard work in convincing my eternal bachelor of a son to finally settle down. But you know what I’m going to start in on next, don’t you?” He lifts his eyebrows significantly.

“Don’t even start,” I groan.

“I would make an excellent grandfather, you know.”

“Dad.”

“I’m just saying.” He smiles, and his gaze drifts away from me. Finds my mother instead. “You understand it now, though, don’t you? The desire to start a family, once you’ve found the perfect person to begin one with?”

My heart begins to pound, deep in my chest. I think about Dee’s smile. Her laughter. How perfect that smile and that laugh would sound coming from an adorable little baby like the one my cousin Alexander is toting around right now. Or on a toddler like one of Sofia’s little devils.

I think about Dee carrying my child, wearing my wedding ring on her finger for real, not a fake one, and my heart swells so hard it could burst. “I get it, Dad,” I admit, my voice low. “I really do get it, now.”

15

Jasper

Late that night, well past midnight, after the whole clan has finally stumbled to bed, I make my way back to our suite. I know she’s probably still pissed. I told my cousin Alexander the bare details, and secured a place on his couch for the night, in case this chat doesn’t go the way that I hope.

But Dee was drunk earlier, and so was I, and she’d just learned what a jerk I was when she and I first met. Besides, I have some things to tell her. Important things about how I really feel. So I’m hopeful that this attempt at a conversation will go more smoothly than the last.

But when I reach our suite and try the doorknob, it’s open. And when I push the door open, I find our room empty, the windows still open from where I unlatched the balcony window earlier, the curtains fluttering in the breeze. My heart seizes in my chest, a premonition hitting me. On instinct, I cross to the far side of the room, to where we stowed our suitcases.

Only my slim black leather bag is there. Not the hot pink wheeled and overstuffed bag Dee packed.

My stomach churns.

I turn and race out of the room, heart pounding. I scan the hallway, but of course, she’s not there. I race down to the lobby, taking the steps two at a time.

Halfway across the lobby, I run headlong into Greg, dressed in a coat and carrying car keys, which he drops into his pocket. “Hey, man, where’s the fire?” He half-grins at me. The smile falls away at once, though, when he catches a real look at my expression.

“Where’s Dee?” I cry out.

His eyebrows shoot skyward. “Dee?”

“Yes, you know, Dee, the girl I came here with, my wife, where is she?”

“Whoa, man, calm down.” Greg reaches out to grip my shoulders. “Hey, come here, let’s talk somewhere a little less…” He glances around the lobby. I realize, belatedly, there are a couple of other late-night stragglers here, other hotel guests, ones I don’t recognize. Some of the few unlucky souls stuck sharing this resort with our whole brood.

“Okay.” I trail after him into a side room, a little waiting room area for hotel guests. When we’re alone, though, I explode again. “Her suitcase is gone. Our room is empty. I need to find her; she’s never even been out of the country before, and she doesn’t speak Greek, she won’t know where she’s going—”

“Calm, calm. Deep breaths.” Greg coaxes me, and waves for my attention. “I know where she is, Jasper.”

My eyes light up. “You do? She’s safe? Take me there right now.”

“Not until you get control of yourself, dude. What the hell is this all about? First she’s freaking out, now it’s you, God, the two of you are almost as messy as real newlyweds.”

“She was freaking out because she learned that you and I pinpointed her for a gold-digger lookalike, and that’s why I decided to fake marry her,” I say.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry for letting that one slip, but I sort of figured you’d told her the whole plan already. You two seemed pretty chummy, so I thought you would’ve let her in on all the details…”

“Well, I didn’t, okay?” I rake my hands through my hair. “I didn’t because I didn’t want her to know why we picked her. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I thought… I thought she’d do this.” I fling my arms wide. “And now she’s run off in a foreign country—where did she go, anyway?”

“The airport.”

My stomach hits the floor. No, it passes through it, down into the wine cellar. “What?”

“She wanted to go home. She was really upset about how your parents reacted to her, and I think the stress of so many people spreading rumors about her at work was getting to her too, so I thought I’d help by…” He breaks off, because I’ve grabbed the lapels of his jacket and started to shake him.

“What flight, Greg? Dammit, just…” I shove him off. “Get the car. Drive me to the airport.”

“Jasper, it’s taking off in…” He pauses to check his watch. “Five minutes. It’s past midnight. Let’s just go to bed, and in the morning you can call her and apologize—”

“That’s not good enough,” I snap.

“What has gotten into you? I thought this was what you wanted!” Greg flings his arms wide. “You wanted a wife who’d piss off your family, well, storming off in the middle of the big reunion is just about the best possible way to do that, no?”

“I love her,” I blurt.

Greg freezes where he’s standing, arms still flung wide. He stares at me like a cartoon caricature of himself, shocked into silence for once.

“I love her,” I repeat, louder now. “And I want her to be my actual wife. Not my fucking fake one. So if you want to keep your cushy assistant’s job, drive me to the airport right now, because I’m way too drunk to get behind a wheel still, but…”

“Say no more.” Gr

eg has already spun on his heel and begun dashing toward the parking lot. I race after him, hard on his heels. “Try calling her,” he shouts over his shoulder. “Tell her not to get on the flight.”

Oh. Duh. Drunk me is an idiot. As I race after Greg, I fish in my pocket for my cell phone. We climb into the car, and I hit Dee’s number. Wait for the ringtone.

Predictably, it goes to voicemail on the second ring. She’s screening my calls. Which, after all this, I can’t exactly say that I blame her for.

I try a text instead, which will be less easy to ignore.

DO NOT BOARD FLIGHT PLEASE.

WAIT FOR ME.

I HAVE TO TALK TO YOU.

The all caps also might be overkill, but I’m hoping it will get my currently very desperate and somewhat drunken point across. Greg, meanwhile, true to his word, floors the accelerator and speeds us along the narrow, twisting highways toward the airport. It was about a half an hour drive, if I remember correctly from when we landed here what feels like a lifetime ago. Was that really only this morning?

My head swims.

My pulse pounds.

We make it to the airport in 20 minutes. Greg takes after most of the employees at our company when it comes to driving. We’ll probably be mailed a speeding ticket—they’re better about speed cameras here in Greece than we are at home—but who cares. Worth it.

As soon as we pull up outside of the airport, I race inside, eyes pinned to the departures board. I scan for the flight number Greg gave me—he booked her flight with his own miles, last minute, since he thought he was doing the right thing. Helping her out, freeing her from a situation that was upsetting her.

I don’t blame him—well, except for the being such a jerk to her when she first met my parents part. But even then, he thought he was following my orders. He’s been trying to help, even if he’s been butchering it all the while.

My eyes find her flight number, and my heart sinks in my chest.

Departed.

No.

I whip out my phone and stare at my texts to her. There’s no way to tell if she got them in time. No way to know if she’ll spend her whole flight home just as depressed and down as she’s been feeling tonight. I just pray she’ll pick up when I call her again in the morning.

Maybe I should leave the reunion early too, catch an early flight tomorrow morning and try to meet her back home. We do this reunion every five years. I’ll be back. But this may be my only chance to make things right with Dee

“Hey,” says a soft voice behind me. And suddenly, I can breathe again. My chest swells, and I whip around, to find Dee, that crazy enormous pink suitcase of hers in hand, smiling tentatively at me from next to the exit doors.

16

Dee

“You didn’t leave.” That’s the first thing he says, and he looks like I’ve just handed him the best Christmas present in the world by being here.

That, more than anything, reassures me that I made the right call. “It didn’t feel right,” I say, shuffling my feet. “Storming off like that without giving you a chance to explain… I was emotional, and hurt, and I just wanted to get out of there before more of your family members started to hate me.”

He barks out a laugh, then shakes his head. “Nobody hates you, Dee.”

I snort and roll my eyes. “Okay, maybe not hate, but certainly dislike.”

“I just got done talking to my father, actually,” Jasper says. “He said that as long as you make me happy, he’s a hundred and ten percent on board with having you around. He says you’re refreshing, actually, I think was the exact word.”

I laugh a little louder this time. That I can believe, at least.

“But I realized more than that.” Jasper steps closer, and just like it always does when he’s close to me, my breath hitches in my throat. It’s suddenly hard to take a deep breath, hard to keep my head from spinning. “You make me happy, Dee. So happy, whenever I’m with you.” He wraps his hands around my shoulders, and the warmth of his hands pins me in place. “But not just happy.” His eyes search mine, darker and more serious than I’ve ever seen them. “I love you, Dee,” he whispers.

My heart feels like it could explode. “I love you, Jasper,” I say. As the words tumble from my mouth, I realize they’re true. I love you. I love him more than I ever realized I could. “I know I said I never fell in love before, and that’s true, but this… This is the real thing.” I shake my head, shocked by it.

“I know,” he whispers.

And then he drops down on one knee.

My eyes go wide as saucers. Over his shoulder, I spy Greg, looking just as surprised as I am. We lock eyes, and Greg shrugs, then winks at me, and mouths I’m sorry.

I shake my head. It’s not his fault.

I look back at Jasper, who’s drawn a small box from his pocket. “Last time I did this,” Jasper says, “I didn’t mean it. Not really. But this time it’s different. This time… it’s real.”

He opens the lid of the box, and my jaw drops when I see what’s nestled inside.

An engagement ring. A beautiful one. But not the one I’ve been wearing on my finger for the last three weeks. Not the huge gaudy one the jeweler in Newholme talked us into.

A different ring. The ring that I picked out first, the gorgeous one surrounded by sapphires, which the jeweler talked us out of getting in favor of the pricier, showier one.

“Will you marry me, Dee?” Jasper whispers.

My real ring, I think. For my real husband.

Just like I did the last time he knelt before me, I drop onto my knees beside him and wrap both hands around his. “Of course, you idiot,” I whisper, though fresh tears spilling out of my eyes. But these aren’t tears of sadness. They’re tears of joy.

He fumbles the ring from the box, only barely manages to slip it onto my finger before I’m grabbing his face between and pulling him into a long, deep, lip-biting, tongue-wrestling kiss. The kind of kiss you get lost in. The kind of kiss that transports you to another world, and as his hands drop down to circle my waist and pull me against him, I arch my body into his, craving more, craving all of him, wanting to be his wife, the way we’ve been pretending all along.

Someone nearby clears their throat, loudly, and we break apart, breathless, only to realize I’m half on top of him, right in the middle of the airport. A few passersby are looking at us, laughing. Someone snaps a photo, and I turn my head to glare at Greg, who coughs again.

“We are still in public, you know, guys.”

“Who’s going to begrudge me a little PDA with my wife right now?” Jasper counters, leaning in to kiss me again, shorter but sweeter this time. Then he rises, and pulls me to my feet at his side. “What do you say, future Mrs. Quint?” He squeezes my hand, wrapped in his. This engagement ring feels so much more natural on my finger, lighter and smoother than the other. I turn it to admire the way it flashes in the airport lighting. “Shall we head back now?”

I trail after him, as Greg picks up my luggage for me, and tilt my head. “I don’t understand, Jasper. When did you buy this ring? I thought we settled on the other one.”

“For show,” he said. “But I remembered how much you liked this one. And then, before we came here…” He pauses. Turns a little red around the ears, the way he does whenever he’s embarrassed. “Well. I thought it might come in handy, sometime in the future.”

I can’t help it. I burst into laughter. “And you call me the hopeless romantic?”

“Maybe we’re both a little bit guilty there,” he murmurs.

“You think?” Greg shouts over his shoulder as he hauls my luggage toward the trunk. I catch the tail end of mutter about “literally racing to the airport” under his breath, and I snort softly.

But Greg does stop us once we’re in the car, and catch both our eyes where we’re curled up side-by-side in the backseat. “Seriously, though, I’m sorry for all this. I thought I was doing what you wanted, Jasper—”

“It’s ok

ay,” he interrupts. “You didn’t know. But there is one thing you can do to make up for it…” He flashes me a look. Whispers in my ear. My eyes light up, and that’s all the response he needs. “We need you to help us plan something, Greg.”

* * *

“I don’t understand.” Jasper’s mother looks from me to him and back again, confusion written all over her face. We’re standing in the little side room off the breakfast room at the resort. First thing in the morning, after driving back from the airport, we asked the Quints to meet us here to explain ourselves. Or at least, some of the story. “You’re not married?”

“Not yet, no.” Jasper runs a hand through his hair. “We… well, it’s a long story. But the short version is, we were trying married life out, and it turns out, we actually really like it. And want to make a real go of it.”

“And then we thought, since I don’t have any family to invite, really,” I speak up.

“And since our whole family is here right now…” Jasper continues.

“At this incredibly beautiful resort in a gorgeous town in Greece, which, I mean.” I laugh. “I never thought I’d find myself at, let alone with so many wonderful people…”

“We just thought this would be the perfect time to seal the deal,” Jasper finishes. “For real this time.” At that, he glances in my direction, and winks. By the time he finishes speaking, his mother is wiping at the corners of her eyes, overcome with emotion.

“I know we might’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” I start to say. But I never finish the sentence, because his mother throws her arms around me to squeeze me into the tightest hug of my life.

“Not at all. We were the ones being judgmental. I hope you can forgive us.” Mrs. Quint—Kara, I remind myself—steps back and glances over my head, at that. I turn to see Jasper’s father smiling at us all. He’d let his wife take the lead so far, while we explained that we never legally married. Now, he crosses the room to grip Jasper’s hand, then pulls him into a back-slapping hug next.