As I reflected on where I was, both geographically as well as where my life choices had taken me, I decided that my life had been missing something for the last decade. Maybe even longer. Maybe my life had been missing something since the very beginning.

  I’d needed this.

  I’d needed a little excitement, a change in routine, an event to shake me awake from my sleepy existence. Reluctantly, I admitted to myself that a smidge of upheaval every now and again wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

  “Ready?”

  I turned and found Rex standing three yards away. He now wore a finely cut dark gray suit, a light silver shirt, and an ice-blue tie. His short hair was still wet from his shower, he’d shaved, and one of his inscrutable stares was pointed right at me.

  Even though it was just us, I grinned and said, “I am ready to depart, husband.”

  Something flared behind his eyes, the suggestion of a smile tugging at his mouth. “You’re going to call me husband from now on, aren’t you?”

  “I am. Husband.”

  His smile, though exceptionally small, broke free. “Does that mean I can call you wife?”

  I sauntered over to him, tapping my chin, and said, “I think I actually prefer babe.” Now that I knew we weren’t flirting, and we never would be flirting, ease and comfort had replaced confusion and hope. Perhaps, before we went our separate ways, I’d start to think of Rex like a brother, similar to how I viewed Walker.

  Still giving me his little smile, his eyes narrowed at my approach. “What? Like the pig?”

  “Exactly like the pig.” I snorted twice, punctuating the sound by poking him in the chest. He glanced down at my hand but made no move to remove my fingers. “Wait, wasn’t the dog’s name in that movie Rex?”

  His smile widened, but he refused to flash any teeth.

  “I always loved it when the farmer said, ‘That’ll do, pig.’ Like, I don’t know, everyone wants to be told they’re doing a good job by someone they admire and respect, you know? It’s a universal theme, I think. Such a wholesome, wonderful movie.”

  “And that’s why you like babe? Because it’s wholesome?” Rex reached for my hand and wove it under his arm, pressing my fingers to the crook of his elbow as he turned us toward the exit.

  “Uh, no.” I laughed. “I like it when you call me babe because you make it sound like the opposite of wholesome.”

  Rex’s steps slowed. “Oh?”

  “Yep. You make all this pretending fun, Rex.” I used a weird voice and an affected accent to keep the mood light. “And if I have to be fake married to anyone, I’m glad it’s you.”

  His smile waned just a little and he deadpanned, “Because I’m so cuddly and approachable.”

  Without skipping a beat, I nodded. “I’m fairly certain, judging by that hug last night, you are a championship cuddler, husband.”

  “Is this your way of hinting that you want to add cuddling to the agreement? Because, if so, just say the word, babe.”

  I busted out laughing, withdrawing my hand so I could shove him away playfully. He was so solid, he didn’t move an inch. But he did laugh, his teeth finally making an appearance. Rex caught my hand and brought it back to his elbow, trapping it there.

  “So what do you want to do?” he asked, sounding happy. Since there was no one else around, I let myself believe his happiness was real. “I have a game tomorrow, but how about dinner?”

  “My plane leaves at nine thirty tonight. I should be getting to the airport.” I sent Rex—my boss—an apologetic smile. “Maybe next time?”

  Once again, his steps slowed, and this time the smile fully vacated his features. “Wait. No. I told Bernadette to fly you out tomorrow, after the game.”

  “Yeah, but I asked her to change it last night, after the charity thing, so I can get back and have a full day at the studio tomorrow.”

  Rex’s expression seemed to darken, his jaw set, his eyes cutting away.

  I studied him, not understanding his reaction. “I’m—I’m sorry. We didn’t have anything tomorrow on the schedule. I didn’t think you’d care.”

  He shook his head, his eyebrows pulling together, though he did not look at me. “You’re right. It’s fine.”

  I squeezed his arm. “Rain check, okay?”

  “Sure.” Rex nodded, looking distracted, his eyes on the Astroturf. “When am I seeing you again?”

  The Richmond game. At the reminder, the smile vacated my features as well. “Thanksgiving. If I see you after the game, that is.”

  He glanced at me. “You sound nervous.”

  “I am. A little.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged, feeling shy about telling the truth. But then I remembered that Rex was my boss and he needed to know if I was struggling with a work assignment. “I’m a little worried I won’t fit in.”

  “You will. Just . . . do whatever the other wives do.”

  “Okay.”

  “You still look nervous.”

  “I am.” I ducked my head.

  He brought us to a stop, waiting until I met his searching eyes before saying softly, “Don’t be. Be yourself. If they don’t love you, they’re idiots.”

  That was nice of him to say.

  “So, will I see you?” I asked. “After the game?”

  “Yeah. All the wives go down to the locker room after, it’s tradition, then they leave, then we all meet up again and the whole team has Thanksgiving together.” He gave me a barely-there smile. “I’ve seen you eat, you’ll do great.”

  “Ha ha.” I rolled my eyes, but I took a measure of comfort in his reassurance. “Then I should bring my knitting?”

  He tugged me forward again toward the exit. “Sure. I believe one or two of them knit, I couldn’t tell you who, though.”

  Now I pulled him to a stop and captured his eyes to make sure he wasn’t teasing. “Wait. They knit?!”

  He nodded.

  I exhaled my relief, feeling immeasurably better. Now that completely changed everything.

  CHAPTER 15

  “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

  W.B. YEATS

  “Hello?”

  “Abby, hey.”

  I grinned. “Who dis?”

  “It’s Rex.”

  “Rex who?”

  A pause, then, “Babe.”

  “Ohhhhh.” I chuckled, a shiver running down my spine. I seriously loved how he—my boss—said babe. In the days since I’d returned from Chicago, he’d been calling just as much as texting, checking in throughout the day and sending me Babe: Pig In The City memes. “Hello, husband. How are you?”

  “Gooood.” He sounded good. If I had to guess, he wore a smile. “Did you see the paper?”

  That brought me up short. “Uh, paper?”

  “The Austin Sentinel.”

  Oh!

  I jumped up from my stool, rushing over to my backpack. I’d left for the studio so early this morning, I’d shoved the paper in my bag without reading it. “Wait, I thought the article was going to be published next Tuesday.”

  “No. Today. I wanted it done before there was a leak.”

  Rex sure was efficient.

  Apparently, today—the Tuesday after the wedding and not next Tuesday as I’d thought—was the day Rex’s interview and our wedding photos would appear. Rex had specifically asked to run it in the middle of the week.

  “I haven’t seen it yet.” I unzipped my backpack and pulled the plastic-wrapped newspaper out. “Was the reporter nice? What did they say?”

  “He was nice.” Rex’s voice contained just a hint of a menacing edge. “If he hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have done the interview. It’s in the sports section, like we wanted.”

  The paper had wanted to put Rex’s interview on the front page, but Rex and I both agreed the article was a necessary evil, a low-key way to share the news of our wedding and broach the subject of my sordid past so we could control the story.

  Freeing the newspaper from the sleeve, I flipped to the sports section and reared back. “Hey. That’s us.” I hadn’t seen the wedding photos from our awesome ceremony in the stadium last weekend. Rex hadn’t sent me any and I felt weird asking for them.

  The main picture for the article was a candid shot taken just after Rex’s blink-and-you-would-miss-it kiss. Our foreheads were pressed together, and we were both smiling. “Aww. Look how cute we are, boss,” I said, spreading the paper out on the wedging table.

  “Read the article when you have the time, but I think you’ll be pleased.”

  I scanned the text quickly and spotted the softball editorial style right away. Local boy football hero returns to small-town Texas and sweeps local girl / lost love off her feet after she endures heartache and tragedy, blah blah blah. “You rescued me?” I smirked at the first sentence of the fifth paragraph.

  “Those were his words, not mine.”

  I chuckled, opening the paper to where the article continued, speed-reading until I got to a surprising quote. I blinked at it, read it again just to make sure I had it right, then cleared my throat to recite the quote. “‘McMurtry admits that his wife Abigail was the one that got away, and that he’s always hoped he’d find a way to get back to her.’ Admitted that finally, did you?” I teased.

  I knew it was all fake—just like we were fake—but it still made a squiggle of warmth dance in my tummy.

  “I didn’t say that,” he grumbled. “He paraphrased.”

  “Then what did you say?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “How convenient.”

  He grumbled again, something unintelligible, but it did not sound authentically grumpy. I could tell he was still smiling.

  “What was that, husband? I didn’t hear you.”

  “I said, Abby is the love of my life.”

  There was no way he’d said anything remotely close to that, but it was fun to hear him say the words. “Damn straight, you did. What else?”

  “Flies love her feet and so do I.”

  I threw my head back and laughed.

  He also laughed, loud enough for me to hear it over the phone.

  “Did you talk about how you love my eyes and they were the first thing you noticed about me?” Even though he couldn’t see me, I fanned my eyelashes, blinking my eyes several times. “And how you want to lose yourself in their glowing depths?”

  “Glowing depths makes you sound like an alien. And it wasn’t your eyes, it was your hair.”

  I cackled. Before the trip to Chicago, I would’ve considered this flirting, but now I saw it for what it was. Like Walker, Rex liked to tease, and that was perfectly fine with me. I also liked to tease. “Is that what you told him? Because it’s red?”

  “Because you had your back to me and it was all I could see,” he said, then added a second later, “And I was hungover.”

  “You told him you were hungover?”

  “No. Read the article.”

  “Fine. I will.” I closed the paper so I could look at the photo of us again. It really was a beautiful shot.

  “Are you all set for Thanksgiving? You got your flight?”

  “Yep.” I traced the skirt of my wedding dress with my index finger. “But your agent’s office didn’t send through the hotel information.”

  “Oh, the place is booked full. You and I will be sharing a suite.”

  My eyes widened. “A what?”

  “A suite. It has two bedrooms.” He seemed to hesitate. “Is that okay? I should’ve checked—”

  “No, no. That’s fine. I’ve never stayed in a suite with two bedrooms before. It sounds fancy. Totally fine.” It was totally fine. Walker, his wife Ramona, and I had shared a hotel room once. This would be just like that.

  Except you’re both the wife and the employee this time.

  Before I could think too much about that twisted thought, he said, “There’s something else.”

  “Something else?” I inspected Rex’s smile in the picture. It looked genuine, and I had no doubt that it was. He must’ve been so relieved to finally have it done and over with, and everything settled.

  “My—uh—aunt called me.”

  I looked up from the photo. “Your Aunt Sally?”

  “That’s right. She wanted your number.”

  I rolled the edge of the paper between my thumb and index finger, unease settling in my stomach like a snapping turtle. “Oh?”

  “Yes. She wanted you to come for Thanksgiving. I explained you’d be in Richmond with me.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t seen Rex’s Aunt Sally since my mother’s funeral. I liked the woman, she’d always been kind to me. She also had the same fun-loving worldview as Rex’s dad but without the short attention span and impatience for anything other than instant gratification.

  Rex cleared his throat. “She wants us to come for Christmas too.”

  “For Christmas? I thought you didn’t see your family for Christmas.”

  “I said I don’t see my dad and my siblings for Christmas. But sometimes I do spend part of the week with my Aunt Sally and Uncle Terry.”

  “I see . . .” My brain was all over the place. I really didn’t want to playact in front of Rex’s aunt. In addition to being kind and generous and awesome, she was also wicked smart. She’d see right through Rex, and that would make everything awkward and awful.

  He was quiet for a beat, then said, “I can tell her you have to work.”

  I thought about my options. “Do you want me to come?”

  “I do.”

  That surprised me. “Wait. What? You—”

  “It would look strange if I were there and you weren’t.”

  I opened my mouth but only a whisper of a noise came out. He couldn’t possibly want to spend a day lying to his aunt.

  “And if we arrive together—just for one day or one dinner—that should be plenty.” His tone remained conversational and completely reasonable. “I can’t spare much time, and they know that, so it wouldn’t be odd for me to fly in for a day and then fly out.”

  “They? Who is they?”

  “Aunt Sal, Uncle Terry, and their friends from the gym.”

  Rex’s aunt and uncle owned a gym in Alenbach where an annual weightlifting competition took place during the first weekend of summer. His aunt had competed every year I’d lived in our hometown and took home the first-place ribbon most of the time.

  “Rex, don’t you think they’ll see right through us? Don’t you think they’ll see it’s fake?” I was glad to be the only person in the studio this morning, it allowed me to speak freely without worrying others would overhear.

  “I don’t.”

  “Your aunt and uncle have known both of us our whole lives. And your aunt is smart. Really smart. She’ll know right away.” I was sure she would.

  At least I was certain she’d see through Rex’s act, but maybe not mine since it was less of an act and more of a . . . well, a situation.

  Rex’s Aunt Sally had known about my crush on her nephew when she was my Girl Scout leader in middle school—I was 99 percent certain she had—which would give my part of the deal credibility. And since I truly did like Rex even now, though I no longer held conscious or subconscious hopes after talking the issue through with Kaylee last weekend, I wasn’t too worried about Sally suspecting me of lying.

  “If you pretend convincingly, then there should be no problem,” he said, a cross between a grumble and a growl. “I have to go.”

  “No, not yet. You’re either being a snot or purposefully obtuse, boss.” I pushed away from the wedging table and paced over to the wheel where I’d been throwing earlier. “I’m not the issue.”

  “I’m being obtuse?” His tone reeked of incredulity heavily perfumed with disdain.

  “Yes. Obviously.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Come on. The charity gala?”

  A pause, then, “What about it?”

  “You said maybe seven sentences to me all night—which was fine, whatever, I’m not complaining. But you were not a man in love on the precipice of getting married. I was there to be helpful, I know my place, and I know I’m a paid employee. I’m just saying, you can’t treat me like an employee in front of your aunt and uncle and then expect them to believe we’re newlyweds for real. Especially not during Christmas.”

  Rex was quiet for a long time. He was quiet for so long, I had time to pace back over to the newspaper, fold it, return to my backpack, and stuff it inside.

  Eventually, he said, “Abby, I don’t think of you—”

  Setting my hand on my hip, I checked the clock on the wall and waited for him to finish his thought. I took off my watch whenever I used the wheel, not wanting to get slip and water all over it.

  Rex cleared his throat and started again. “I won’t treat you like a paid employee. I’ll be . . . convincing.”

  I shook my head, skeptical. “Think about this very carefully before you agree.”

  “I have.”

  “If they suspect you don’t have real feelings for me, they’ll push you about it. They’ll confront you. You’ll have to boldly lie to their faces or tell them the truth.”

  “They won’t suspect I don’t have real feelings for you,” he said, his voice deeper than before, giving me the sense he was losing patience with the conversation, or I’d said something to insult him.

  A humorless laugh bubbled out of me at his reaction. “Okay, if you say so.” I mimicked his grumbly tone, rolling my eyes, and knowing in my bones that this was a mistake.

  He’d been a good actor at the rehearsal dinner before Halloween, but he’d been aloof and distant during the other two events we’d attended together. These wouldn’t be friends and acquaintances in a crowded room. This was his family. At Christmas. In a little house. Family always, always knows what was real and what was lasting.

  And what was not.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  Still distracted by my phone call with Rex, I stopped in my tracks just inside the door of the Boozy Rancher. Walker stood in my way, blocking any path I might try to take into the bar.