One Night Stand Bride

She glanced up at him for the first time since walking through the door. “I was thinking it might be safe for me to move back to my loft. I miss it. This house is nice but it’s not mine, you know?”

He nodded even though he didn’t know. Hell, if she’d wanted to live at her loft while they were married, he would have accommodated that. They’d chosen his house for their marital experiment because it had historical significance and there was a possibility they’d do a lot of entertaining.

That possibility still existed. This conversation was extremely premature, in fact. They couldn’t get a divorce tonight.

But all at once, he wasn’t sure that was his biggest problem. The divorce was merely symbolic of what was happening faster than he could wrap his hands around—the end of his marriage. “You’re thinking of moving back to your loft soon?”

She shrugged. “Maybe tomorrow. No one is really paying attention to us anymore now that we’re a respectable married couple. It would hardly raise eyebrows if anyone realized I didn’t live here anymore.”

“It might.” The first tendrils of panic started winding through his chest. Roz was already halfway out the door and he hadn’t had one second to sort through what he hoped to say in order to get her to stay. “I think it would be a mistake to split up too early. We might still be called on to attend one of my mother’s functions. It would look weird if we weren’t there as a couple.”

“I don’t know.” Roz rubbed at her forehead again as if this whole conversation was giving her a headache. “I got the impression from your mother everything was fine. Maybe I don’t need to be there.”

Maybe I need you there.

But he couldn’t force his tongue to form the words. What if she said too bad or laughed? If she really cared about him the way he cared about her, she wouldn’t have even brought up the divorce. She’d have left that conspicuously out of the conversation. For the first time, she wasn’t so easy to read and he was definitely paying attention to her, not her panties.

He’d had enough practice at it over the course of their engagement and marriage that it was second nature now to shove any physical needs to the background while he focused on what was happening between them. He didn’t need the ache in his chest to remind him that what was happening had all the hallmarks of the end.

Because he’d taken public sex off the menu of their marriage? Surely not. The ache in his chest intensified as he contemplated her. What a not-so-funny paradox that would be if he’d ruined their relationship by attempting to remove all possibility of scandal. Actually, that was irony at its finest if so. They had a marriage built on sex. Only. Just like he would have sworn up and down was perfect for him. Who wouldn’t want that? He was married to a hot woman that he got to sleep with at night. But apparently that wasn’t enough for her to stick around.

What would be? The continued irony was that he wasn’t even talking to her about that. Couldn’t even open his mouth and say I’m falling for you.

If he didn’t use the word love in that sentence, he wasn’t breaking the pact, right?

He was skating a fine line between a mutual agreement to end an amicable fixer marriage and laying his heart on the line for her to stomp all over it—and the way this was going, the latter felt like more and more of a possibility.

That couldn’t happen if he didn’t let on how this conversation had the potential to rip him to shreds.

“We don’t have to get divorced right away. What’s the hurry? Why not let it ride for a while longer,” he said casually as if his entire body wasn’t frozen.

She blinked at him. “What would be the point?”

What indeed? All at once, the ache in his chest grew way too strong to bear. Wasn’t she the slightest bit sad at the thought of losing what was great about them? The parts that were great were really great. The parts that were bad were...what? There were no bad parts. So what was her hurry?

“Because we enjoy each other’s company and like the idea of being married?”

She recoiled. “You mean sex.”

“Well, sure.” Too late, he realized that was probably not the smartest thing to say as her expression closed in. “Not solely that.”

But of course she knew as well as he did that sex was what they were both good at. What they’d started their relationship with. What else was there?

The black swirl in his gut answered that statement. There was a lot more here—on his side. But she didn’t seem overly interested in hearing about that, nor did she jump up in a big hurry to reciprocate with declarations of her own about what elements of their marriage she might wish could continue.

“I can’t, Hendrix,” she said simply.

And without any elaboration on her part, his world fell apart.

It was every bit the rejection he’d been so careful to guard against. The only saving grace being that she didn’t know how much those three words had sliced through all of his internal organs.

It wasn’t Roz’s fault that he’d hoped for something legit to come out of this marriage and ended up disillusioned. It was his. And he had to step into the role she’d cast for him whether he liked the idea of being Rosalind Carpenter’s ex-husband or not.

It was fine. He still had a decade-long friendship with Jonas and Warren that wasn’t in any danger. That was the place he truly belonged and it was enough. His ridiculous need for something real and legitimate with Roz was nothing but a pipe dream.

* * *

They didn’t talk about it again, and neither did they settle back into the relationship they’d had for that brief period after the wedding. Hendrix hated the distance, he hated that he was such a chicken, hated that Roz didn’t seem overly upset about any of it. He moped around until the weekend, when it all got very real.