The Buy-In (Graham Brothers #1)(68)

No kissing (if the situation calls for a kiss, it must be quick and closed-mouth)

No calling each other husband or wife in private or mentioning marriage

No shared bedrooms or beds

No sex

When in public, do as much as needed to validate the relationship, but no more

The marriage should be dissolved at a mutually agreed upon time so as to benefit both parties



After a moment, Pat looks up. “This is certainly thorough. Did you buy a manual on fake relationships or something? A template from Etsy?”

“I read the occasional romance novel. They’re full of useful ideas.”

Pat picks up the pen, twirling it in his fingers like a magician as he frowns down at the handwritten page. “You really want me to sign this?”

I just barely stop myself from saying, I do. “Yes. Please.”

When he scrawls his name across the bottom of the page, the pen nearly ripping through the paper, I feel hollow. He pushes the paper back to me, but it catches air and slides off the table to the floor. Neither of us moves to pick it up.

Pat stands. He’s so tall and broad, making the kitchen seem Lilliputian. Strangely, Pat never made me feel small, though in comparison to his height and bulk, I am. It always felt like together, we were more than what we were on our own—perfectly sized. At least, that’s how I felt then. Now, I’m still not sure how or what I feel, other than twisted in a knot.

“You aren’t going to haggle over the details?” I ask. “Argue the finer points?”

“Nope.”

I didn’t realize how much I was looking forward to the back and forth until he signed his name. I expected hours of verbal sparring over this. It’s why I made a full pot of coffee earlier.

“No getting semantical with me?”

I’m baiting him, throwing out playful banter. I’ve sent my pawn forward, taunting his knight. But Pat only shakes his head.

“Nope.”

“That’s surprising,” I tell him. “I expected more fight from you.”

When Pat places both palms flat on the table and leans toward me, I almost pour hot coffee on my lap. He blinks, a smile slowly dawning on his face like a lazy sunrise.

“Oh, there will be a fight.” His voice drops to a husky purr, one my feral cat responds to immediately. My stomach tightens. Not with fear, but with a soul-deep want.

Why am I fighting this again?

“Yeah?” It’s the only thing I can choke out, and it’s an embarrassing sound.

“You forget, Lindybird. I’m the king of bending all the rules.”

He leans forward slightly, and I find myself doing the same. The zombie butterfly army is mobilized, though I think they’ve somehow turned themselves back into the real kind, fluttery and light and less interested in brains than they are lips and hands and other things.

Pat’s going to kiss me. I know it from the way his breath hitches, how his lids are hooded over his espresso eyes, from the way he keeps inching toward me.

It will be a real kiss this time. Not a chaste kiss, a courtroom kiss.

We are engaged in the slowest head-on collision of all time, a game of chicken I know I’m going to lose. I’m tempted to end it, surging out of my seat to fuse my mouth to his, but I’m still aware enough of what’s at stake to resist. That doesn’t mean I back away, though, and we move closer still.

And closer.

And closer.

I can’t focus on both of his eyes now because they’ve merged into a blur. I drop my gaze to his lips, barely parted. So tempting.

Just before our mouths meet, Pat inhales sharply and takes a step back. I almost groan in frustration. It’s like a frigid wind has blown open the back door, swirling a winter storm in the room, strong enough to blow out the fire we’d been building.

I’m almost light-headed with want and with loss.

Pat knocks once against the wood, like he’s decided something. “Goodnight, darlin’.”

I toss a fork at him, the one he used to scratch his ankle, and I wish I had something heavier to throw, like an anvil. On his way out the door, he happens to notice my to-do list, which more accurately should be named a never-done list. It’s written on the back of a lime-green takeout menu in three different colors of pen. Not for aesthetics. For lack of ever being able to locate the same pen.

Pat snatches it right off the wall. “What’s this? ‘Fix the screen door, get a new dryer, Jo’s bookshelves’?”

I’m on my feet in an instant, trying to snatch the paper, which—fortunately or not so fortunately—means getting up close and personal with him. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

He holds it up above his head, craning his neck to read it while swatting at me with his other hand. “Looks like a to-do list, which is very fortunate because I don’t have anything to do right now. I think I’ll take this.”

“You will not!”

I grab Pat’s shoulders and try to climb him like a tree. This is a common description that romance novels should stop using because not only is it physically challenging, it’s not super romantic. What I end up doing is somewhere between a celebratory chest bump and mild assault.

“Ow!” Pat yelps. “That’s my shin you just kicked. You realize you’re breaking rule number one, right? Hardcore on the unnecessary touching.”