Part-Time Lover (Part-Time Lover #1)(56)

My jaw drops. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, come now. You’ve been married a couple of weeks.” She turns to Christian. “That’s when her picture showed up on your Facebook page. Do you think I’m stupid?”

I laugh then cover my mouth.

Jandy glares at me. “Is something funny?”

I raise my chin. “It’s funny that you would ask that because I don’t think ‘stupid’ is the word anyone would use to describe you.”

She parks a hand on her waist, her elbow akimbo. “What word would you use?”

Oh, she’s walking into this one. “Cold.”

Christian raises a hand. “Callow.”

“Cruel.”

I flash Christian a wicked grin. “Classless.”

Jandy holds up a hand, but my husband gets in the last dig. “Cutting.”

“I second that. You’re totally cutting,” I add.

“You don’t know me,” she says, raising her chin. “You don’t understand what I’ve been through.”

Christian shakes his head, sneering. “Enough of the whole daddy talk. I don’t know what your issues are, and I don’t want to know. But this isn’t how you treat someone who treated you like the world. You were everything to my brother. He gave you his heart, and you stomped on it like it was rubbish.”

Her jaw is set hard, but her eyes are glossy. She seems to steel herself though, speaking through tight lips. “You don’t know me, and this isn’t about me.”

Christian holds up his hands. “Oh, it’s not about you? Then enlighten me. What is this about?”

“I came here because it’s clear this is some kind of sham marriage to trick the shareholders.”

Christian arches a brow. “Sham marriage?”

“Do you two really think they won’t be able to tell you married her simply to try to keep the company?”

“One, my grandfather’s trust outlined precisely how the firm would be handed over. Two, Elise and I are legally married, and three—”

“How dare you suggest you know something about our marriage? You know nothing,” I say.

She snaps her gaze to me. “I know you married only a few weeks ago. And prior to that, I’d not heard you so much as existed.”

I step closer. “And do you know I met Christian more than a year ago? Do you know he asked me out on our first date last June on a boat tour in his hometown? Do you know we were on the same plane flying home? Do you know he courted me for a year?” I grab my phone, click on my handstand photos, and shove the screen in her face, covering his bottom half with my thumb. “Do you know I have pictures of him from that time because I was so utterly transfixed with him, and I believed fate had brought him into my life?”

Jandy stammers, her eyes welling again. “Umm.”

“Exactly. You know nothing.” I put my phone away, grab Christian’s arm, and plant a possessive kiss on his cheek. One that says he’s mine. I do it again. And God, I do it a third time, then I turn back to the woman who had inadvertently pushed me closer to him. “You know nothing because our relationship is private, and it has nothing to do with you that Christian is the most wonderful husband in the world. Before that he was a fantastic fiancé, and before that he was an incredible boyfriend. Even before all that, he pursued me and totally won me over. So yeah. Game over. He’s mine, and I’m his, and there’s nothing you can suggest to anyone in the whole wide world that’ll obviate the truth.”

I give her a checkmate look, and she huffs. I don’t care about her anymore. I care about the man by my side.

I grab his face in my hands and press a searing kiss to his lips that has nothing fake in it at all.

In fact, as I kiss him, the thought flashes like a neon sign turned on. There’s nothing fake between us.

Everything, all of it, from my mind to my heart, is genuine.

When we break the kiss, Christian glances at Jandy and makes a shooing gesture. “Off you go.”

She leaves, her tail between her legs.

I turn back to him.

“You were amazing.”

“I got the account,” I blurt out.

“I knew it. I bloody knew it.” He picks me up and spins me around. “So proud of you.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you.”

A game whistle sounds.

“I need to go,” he says, setting me down. “But we are going to celebrate the hell out of you winning the account.”

“Go, go.”

He runs to the field, and I spend the next hour watching the man I feel everything for play a game.

I came into this arrangement believing my walls were fortified. That my lessons learned would serve as armor for my heart.

But this time, I wasn’t the one fooled. I fooled myself into thinking I could keep from letting him into my heart. That’s where he is.

I’ve fallen in love with my temporary husband.

As he scores a goal and thrusts his arms in the air in victory, I cheer wildly for him. He looks over, a grin lighting his handsome face as he points to me. It’s exhilarating, this moment of connection. My heart somersaults, trying to kick its way free and gallop over to him.

I want that. I want that terribly, and more than I should.