Page 6 of Bad Boy Husband

SADIE

I t was after eight p.m. before I realized my fridge was empty. Half a bottle of mayonnaise, some hotdogs that had seen better days, and an empty jar of olives I’d kept for the bit of juice left. That was all I had.

At least Hooch still had food. For now. Eating like a king, he didn’t even look up when I shook the last cereal box and realized there was nothing left in there either.

I groaned. Growing up, I’d been served three-course meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and even at college, my food had been gourmet.

I’d only tasted ramen for the first time about a year ago and I hadn’t had a good eggplant parmesan for so long I was half-convinced I’d forgotten what it tasted like.

I looked around my kitchen and accepted that I had absolutely nothing to eat, so I decided that two-dollar pizza would be my dinner tonight. There was a place not far from there that sold their slices for that after eight p.m.

Once I had a slice of greasy pizza and a flat fountain drink that tasted vaguely like soap in my hands, I felt better. It was hot and cheap, and for approximately seven minutes, it made me feel like I could pull my shit together.

The feeling shattered when I got back to my car and turned the key. The engine coughed once, but as if it was personally offended by my renewed sense of optimism, it died completely after that one sputter.

I tried again, but there was still nothing. Not even a click or a twitch.

And then, somehow, because fate had a real sense of humor, it got even worse. The skies opened up and rain started bucketing down out of nowhere. It wasn’t just a polite drizzle either, but a downpour of absolutely biblical proportions.

My jaw clenched, hopelessness, frustration, and pure, unbridled exasperation flowing through me like a magnificent waterfall of despair. But I climbed out of the car anyway, drenched in an instant as I slammed the door behind me.

My hair stuck to my face as I popped the hood and pretended to know what the hell I was looking at, but even then, the night wasn’t done screwing with me yet. The heavy, final click of the automatic lock rang out in front of me and my stomach dropped.

Immediately, I knew what had just happened. For a long minute, I just stood there trying not scream. Water ran off my nose and I had the pizza box I hadn’t even had a chance to put down yet clutched in my hand.

The universe had officially made its point and I was done trying to fight it.

My reality wasn’t pretty. I was soaking wet, broke, locked out of my dead car, starving, and I had just enough cash to catch the last bus home. It was time I faced the facts—my mission of establishing and maintaining my independence had failed.

The only way I was going to get to keep doing any good was if I went back to Dallas with my tail stuck between my legs. My parents were going to win and I would have to smile like it had all been my idea, but having a choice wasn’t a luxury I could afford anymore.

Fine , I thought as I trudged toward the bus stop, my shoes squelching on the sidewalk and my pizza probably a soggy mess. I’ll go back to Dallas. Maybe it won’t even be so bad. Look at Sterling and Laney. Everything worked out pretty freaking well for them.

People got married every damn day and they all survived it. Some just barely, but the point was that love wasn’t a requirement to get that money—only marriage. I was halfway between determination and feeling sorry for myself when I felt a prickly sensation on the back of my neck.

Someone is watching me.

My head snapped from one side of the street to the other, and as soon as my gaze fell upon the window of a trendy bistro across from me, I saw him. Jameson fucking Westwood.

Seated at a table right beside the wide wall of windows, he was dry and warm with a drink in his hand, looking like the billionaire he was. Perfect black suit. Perfectly, purposely tousled hair. Perfect fucking intensity in his gaze as he followed my march along the sidewalk.

Across from him was a stunning brunette, a woman with expensive hair and an expensive bone structure, wearing a devastatingly expensive dress. She was talking animatedly, her hand curled around a glass of red wine, but Jameson clearly wasn’t listening.

He was still looking at me. One of his eyebrows arched in that smug, infuriatingly amused way. I didn’t have to speak to him to know what he was thinking. The universe had delivered me like the punchline of a bad joke right to his dinner table.

I glowered at him before I shook my head and turned back to the street, wrapping my arms around my damp, ruined pizza box and pretending the rain didn’t bother me.

My stomach was snarling with hunger, my life in ruins, and he was on a freaking date with a supermodel, ignoring the appetizers spread out in front of him like he’d never even been nibbly in his life.

Moments later, I felt a warm hand close around my elbow. “Need a ride?”

His voice was deep and calm, like he hadn’t just abandoned his date mid-monologue and raced over to catch up to me. I couldn’t even look at him, starvation and humiliation forcing me to keep my gaze glued to the puddles on the sidewalk.

“I’m fine,” I snapped. “Absolutely fine.”

“Yeah, sure. Absolutely. You look it.” He didn’t let go of my arm, and before I could even think of protesting again, he was steering me toward a parking lot.

The next thing I knew, I was stuffed in the back seat of his luxury sedan, dripping water all over the buttery soft, dark leather. His date was in the passenger seat and she swiveled to look at me, her mouth slightly open as if she was frozen in an elegant rendition of horror.

I knew her type well enough to know exactly what she was thinking. Who the hell is this drowned rat? Are you kidding me right now, Jameson?

“I know a mechanic,” he said, glancing at me in the rear view, the city lights catching in those hazel eyes I hadn’t been able to stop daydreaming about. “I’ll give him a call and arrange for your car to be towed and fixed up.”

“How do you even know it’s broken?” I asked flatly. “Maybe I just felt like taking a walk.”

“Naturally.” A slow grin spread on his lips. “This is perfect walking weather. There have only been about half a dozen warnings today about the downpour. Who wouldn’t want to go for an evening stroll?”

I sighed and turned toward the window. Obviously, he would keep track of weather warnings and updates. Why does he have to be so incessantly prepared for absolutely everything?

“Jameson,” the brunette said suddenly, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. “Who is this?”

“She’s an old friend,” he said curtly, barely glancing at her as he made a left. “I’ll take you home.”

While I wanted to argue or maybe ask if he would pick up Hooch and give us a ride to the bus station, I couldn’t seem to get a word out.

The brunette was in a huff. Jameson either didn’t feel or was pretending not to notice the tension in car.

I just sat there, wondering if dogs were allowed on interstate busses.

We drove in tense silence until he pulled up in front of a beautiful high-rise with a valet out front and the lobby clean and gleaming inside. Without ceremony, he got out, opened the passenger door, and swept a hand toward the sidewalk. “Out.”

The woman hesitated, but when he gave her a pointed look, she let out a disbelieving scoff and climbed out.

Once she was under the fancy green and white awning outside her building, she turned back, her gaze cutting across Jameson first before it bored into me like she couldn’t decide which of us to hate more.

With a firm shake of her head, she spun and stalked into the lobby, long, impossibly smooth hair swinging behind her.

Rain was still pummeling the car roof like the drumming of angry fingers. Jameson slid back behind the wheel, glanced at me in the rearview, and the smirk softened just a little bit. “Are you okay?”

“No,” I said honestly. “Maybe one day, I will be though, but thanks for asking. It was a dick move, by the way, to drop your date off first. I don’t think she’s going to want to go out with you again.”

He didn’t even flinch. “It wasn’t a date. It was an interview.”

I frowned. “An interview? It sure looked like a date to me, unless you’re interviewing potential escorts for a girlfriend experience.”

“Like I need that.” He chuckled but then let out a sigh and dragged a hand through his damp hair, flicking away the droplets that came off his fingers.

“Actually, her dad is friends with mine. Harlan thought she’d make a good wife, so he set it up.

I couldn’t marry her unless I could turn my hearing off, though. ”

The words landed somewhere deep in my chest, soft and heavy at the same time. So it’s not just me with my family breathing down my neck, trying to script the rest of my life.

“So you’re in the same boat I am. That’s why you wanted to talk about it the other night?”

His mouth twisted. “Something like that.”

I stared at my reflection in the rain-dappled window before I glanced at him again. “At least you don’t have to move back to Dallas to get married. I do, and I’m pretty much out of options, so…”

He arched an eyebrow at me in the rear view. “You have to get married in Texas for the trust fund to be applicable?”

“Nah, but I’ve run out of time here, unless I can get access to it,” I admitted, my voice flat and resigned.

“I can’t touch that money until married and my parents cut me off this spring, so I’ve got about three hundred bucks left to my name, courtesy of being a vet’s assistant at the nonprofit clinic downtown.

I’ll have to look for a husband here while I’m homeless, or I have to go back to Dallas and have my parents set me up with someone there. ”

He didn’t say anything at first, but I saw the muscle in his jaw tick. The city slipped by outside the window, the storefronts dark and the neon signs glowing, and I realized then that he was taking the longest possible route to my apartment. Side streets. Cutting through quieter neighborhoods.

It made me worry that he didn’t actually know where he was going. One night during the planning for the block party, I’d stayed late helping Laney at the store and Sterling had insisted on driving me home after. Jameson had been in the car too, but I had no idea if he’d been paying attention.

“You do know where I live, right?” I asked dryly.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “We’re just talking, right?”

Eventually, though, when he couldn’t stretch it out any longer, he turned into my neighborhood, a mess of cracked sidewalks and tired streetlights, and finally pulled up to the curb in front of my building.

He stared out the windshield for a second, then looked back at me, doubt written all over his gloriously chiseled features.

“Do you really live here?”

I looked up at the squat, slightly crooked brick building. The old iron gate in front of the door leaned at a bit of an angle, but it was home. “Yep, I do. I had to move out of my townhouse last year and this was the best I could find. It’s small, but it’s mine.”

He didn’t look convinced at all, but I didn’t care. I forced myself to grin playfully as I reached for the door handle. “Anyway, congratulations on the upcoming wedding to whatever Interview Girl’s name is. I’m sure you two will be very tolerant together.”

“It’s happy,” he said, his tone dry. “I’m sure you two will be very happy together, but no. I’m patient, but just really not that patient.”

I shrugged. “Sorry?”

“It’s not my loss.”

“That’s fair.” Before things got awkward, I shoved the door open and stepped into the wet night. “Good night, Jameson.”

He didn’t answer, but I could feel him watching me as I jogged up the uneven steps, soaked pizza box tucked under my arm and rain soaking through my jeans again. After unlocking the door, I went inside and got up to my studio, flicking on the living room light.

Something told me he was still down there though, and sure enough, when I went to look out the window, there he was, idling at the curb with his headlights low. A few minutes later, he finally drove away.

Oddly, it made me smile that he’d hung around for a bit, making sure I really was home safe. A stupid, stubborn part of me that refused to hate him fully wondered what that meant, but Jameson and I had been down this road once before and it hadn’t ended well.

I had absolutely no reason to think that things would be any different if we actually decided to try again.