The Prenup - Lauren Layne Page 0,42
possession by a dark spirit, though evil twin body swap is also a contender.
“Her birthday. She turned thirty.”
Ah. I hate to have anything in common with her, but I have to admit I sort of understand. I’d be lying if I didn’t have some pretty intense my eggs are rotting and my life has been a total waste moments when I came up on my thirtieth.
Many of those thoughts, interestingly enough, had to do with this man here, and the worry that I’d given the prime of my life to a man I didn’t even know at the expense of finding The One.
But at least Colin and I, on some level, can take some accountability for our situation. We got ourselves into this mess when we said our vows and again when we signed that damn prenup without reading it carefully.
Poor Rebecca—yeah, I hear it, and I can’t believe I’m saying it either. She simply made the mistake of falling in love with an Irish guy, and not at the time in his life when he’d been hard up for a green card.
“Let me guess,” I say with a small smile. “Rebecca’s biological clock started ticking louder, and with it her marriage timetable?”
“That about sums it up. She told me I could marry her, or she’d find someone who could.”
“Whoa,” I say, my sympathy for Rebecca evaporating. “She gave you an ultimatum.”
“Come on,” he says, giving me a look. “You can’t blame her. In a year and a half, I couldn’t even take her on a proper date. Any time we went to a restaurant, we had to pretend we were colleagues.”
“Yes, I’m sure everyone bought that.” I don’t even try to hide my sarcasm.
“Look,” he snaps. “I tried. I’ve been trying to do right by her, and by you—”
“By me! You’ve treated me like a pesky fly since I walked into the apartment, and you didn’t even tell me the entire situation!”
“You’re right,” he says, digging his hands through his hair. “But it’s like I said, I haven’t known where she and I stand. She barely speaks to me at work unless she has to.”
“What changed? How’d she go from ‘put your babies in me’ to not speaking?”
He looks right at me. “You.”
“But you said she knew about me. Our arrangement.”
“She did. But then, when I realized I had to marry her or lose her, I started looking into the divorce process. Read through the prenup, learned about your brother’s little game …”
“Ah,” I say, everything clicking into place. “Rebecca was okay with you having a wife you never saw. Not so much a wife you live with.”
“Well, actually, she was okay with it. At first. And then she looked you up, and it all sort of went to hell.”
“Looked me up?”
“I hadn’t told her anything about you prior to the prenup situation, and she made it a point to know as little about you as possible. I suppose I thought it would be easier for her if you weren’t a real person in her mind. No offense.”
“None taken.” I wish she weren’t a real person in my mind either.
“Then,” he continues, “when we realized what the next three months would hold, you suddenly became real. She Googled you.” He glances up. “You were apparently not what she was expecting.”
“What was she expecting?”
“I don’t know. We got into it a little after she saw your photos online. Even more so after she saw some picture on Facebook of the two of us at your mom’s party. I just wish … I wish … I wish you didn’t look like that,” he says, dropping his hands and giving me an exasperated look.
My lips twitch. “Like what?”
“Shut up,” he says irritably. He flops back on the couch, looking so boyish and out of sorts that I feel myself softening.
I stand and move around the coffee table to sit beside him on the couch, pulling one leg beneath me so I can face him.
“Colin.” My voice is gentle. “Are you engaged to Rebecca, or not engaged?”
He lightly runs his palm over his jaw, and I notice that he still hasn’t shaved today, which is all the proof I need of how far off his game he is.
“Engaged,” he says slowly. “It’s why she was so upset, I think. It hurts. It hurts knowing I’m with someone else, even platonically.”
I let out my breath on a huff, hating this situation. For me. For him. Even for Rebecca.
“So where do things stand now?” I