The Temporary Wife - By Jeannie Moon Page 0,6
quickly and stepped behind her. She squealed as she started to fall, but before it could develop into a full-blown scream, she landed neatly in his arms.
Her face was pure panic as she recovered from the fall and looked at him. Her breathing caught and her eyes grew wide. Jason smiled, simply because she was so pretty and she felt so damned good in his arms. Okay, maybe he could get used to this.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”
“Rescuing you, it seems. What were you thinking, climbing up there? You have zero balance.” He’d forgotten that Meg was the most accident-prone person he’d ever met. She’d trip over her own feet if she didn’t watch where she was going.
“I do so have balance,” she blurted out.
He raised an eyebrow and had no trouble calling her bluff. He’d known her too long not to. “Seriously?”
“You don’t have to pick on me.” She swatted his arm. “Put me down.”
He let her down, and she was a little unsteady on her feet, so he kept his arm around her shoulders. “Maybe if you stopped walking around on those stilts, you could stand up better.”
He looked at her feet as she admired her shoes. They were hot shoes, but she was going to break her neck if she kept wearing them.
“It doesn’t matter what I wear.” She shrugged. “I fall anyway.”
Jason grabbed the box from the shelf and followed her back into the classroom. When she wasn’t stumbling, Megan moved like a runway model, fluid and graceful, but remembering what he’d just seen, he reminded himself the woman was a five-car collision waiting to happen. “Where do you want this?”
“That table is fine.” She motioned to a crescent-shaped table that was surrounded by little chairs on one side and had an adult desk chair on the other. He put the box down, turned to face her, and found she had backed herself against her desk.
“Why are you here?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.
“I’m hoping you’ll listen to reason.”
The oath she muttered under her breath was a little strong for kindergarten-land, and Jason almost laughed when she walked over to the table and unpacked box after box of markers. The anger was just sizzling, and she was damn cute when she was mad. “I’m not getting into this with you. Your idea is ridiculous.”
“Why is it ridiculous? You need help keeping my parents in check, and I can help you.”
“Getting married is not help, Jason. It’s absurd. No one will believe for one minute that it’s legitimate.”
“Why not? We could make up a cover story. It would give you everything you need to keep my parents from getting custody of Molly.”
“Why this sudden interest in me and Molly? Why do you care?”
He took a step toward her, and then another. Crowding her was a deliberate attempt to make her uncomfortable and intimidate her, but when Meg folded her arms and gave him a look that could have frozen fire, Jason stopped with the game. “I don’t want my parents messing with Grace’s will. She didn’t want my parents in Molly’s life all that much when she was alive, and she wouldn’t want them to have a hand in raising her. This isn’t about you or me. It’s about my sister and my niece.”
Meg looked away and then straightened her back before looking him right in the eyes.
“Okay. But marriage? They’ll have their lawyers all over that. Everyone knows we can’t stand each other.”
Jason felt a twinge of anger at the comment. “I don’t have a problem with you.”
“Oh, well . . .” Meg fumbled with her words, and when she took a step away from him, her heels betrayed her once again and she stumbled. Fortunately for her, Jason caught her before she hit the deck. Although after that comment, he almost would have enjoyed watching her land right on that glorious ass of hers.
“I think,” he said, “that you like me just fine, but you’re still hurt.” Just like me. “We broke up, what? Fourteen years ago?”
Meg pushed away from him and tugged at her top. “Something like that.”
“And you don’t want anything to do with me?”
“I don’t particularly care for you, no.”
“Well, that actually makes this perfect.” He had to find a bright spot here. Maybe this was it. “If you don’t like me, it will be easier to separate once we decide my parents have been sufficiently reined in.”
“This has disaster written all over it. There has to