Page 25 of Married in Michigan

He shrugs. “Honestly, I’m not sure.”

“So you’re telling me you don’t…partake, shall we say?”

He lifts a shoulder. “Can’t truthfully say Ineverhave, but it’s not my scene.”

“What is your scene?”

He sips, licks his lips after swallowing, and sets his glass down. “I wasn’t joking before, Makayla. There is a rhyme and reason to asking you in particular to marry me.”

I groan and laugh all at the same time. “This again?” I shake my head, still laughing. “Let me put it in simple, easily understandable terms, Paxton: No. There’s no rhyme or reason you could possibly give that would convince me to marry you.”

He sighs, rubs his jaw. “Can you at least pretend to have an open mind?”

I cackle. “It would be pretending, Paxton. Not gonna lie to you.”

He runs a fingertip around the trace work design in the wrought iron of the table, eyes now flitting from me to the table, from me to the water, and then finally finds whatever is necessary to keep his gaze locked on mine. “I’m not accustomed to asking for things, or being at someone’s mercy, or having to explain myself. And you’re not making this easy on me. But I’ll try to explain my thinking as clearly as I can and, in return, all I ask is that you truly, honestly listen to me and promise, at the very least, to give it a single moment of consideration.”

I hold his gaze. “This is serious for you.”

He nods. “If my mom cuts me off because I won’t play along with her stupid political games, I can’t see myself being able to face her.” He drops his eyes. “If she’s willing to cut me off for not getting married when I’m not ready…” He shakes his head, leaving the rest unsaid.

“She said she wouldn’t disown you in an emotional sense,” I point out.

“But I would, though. And it’s not about the money,” he says, finding my eyes again. “I swear it’s not.”

“I’ll hear you out, but that’s all I can promise.”

A seagull screeches in the distance, and a thin shroud of clouds briefly occludes the sun. I’m chilled, the sweat now dry, and I feel more aware than ever that I’m more than a little undressed in front of a man I don’t know at all. Dressed like this, working out in the gym, I have my headphones on and I’m in the zone, totally focused; there’s no one else around, and if they’re looking I don’t really give a shit. This is different, somehow.

He nods. “That’s all I can ask for, I suppose. I know it sounds crazy.”

I laugh, nodding. “I wouldn’t even call our first interaction ameeting. The second time I lay eyes on you, you ask me to marry you. Even knowing the backstory of what your mom is expecting of you, it’s still crazy.”

He nods. “There are a lot of issues to this. A lot of angles. So I’m not entirely certain where to start.”

“How about with why me?” I suggest, and take a tiny sip of scotch, to fortify my nerves.

“Nothing about this is simple. It’s really not. You’d have to understand the expectations behind what a marriage means to my parents—to my mom, really, because, as I said, my dad doesn’t give a shit about much of anything but his company and his work and his cars. For Mom, everything is about appearances. Everything. Every outfit, every purse, every stitch of makeup, every appearance, every article in every magazine, every TV appearance, she takes it all into consideration. Not just herself, but me, Dad, my aunt and uncle, her brother and sister-in-law, my dad’s sister and brother-in-law—which would be Evelyn who has the purses, and Nicholas who owns some of the cars in the garage. My cousins, my grandparents, all of us, the entire deBraun clan—everything we do and say is scrutinized under a magnifying glass. We’re not just your average family, we’re the deBrauns. Dad owns MagnaCom, as I’m sure you’re aware—the third-largest telecommunications corporation in the world. I guess I probably don’t have to list my family’s various enterprises, as it’s fairly common knowledge at this point.”

I wave a hand. “You guys own football teams, basketball teams, telecom companies, hospitals…”

“My brother-in-law is president of a university, my grandparents founded the deBraun family of hotels, blah blah blah. It’s all boring. Point is, here, that we’re high profile. And no one takes that more seriously than Mom. She’s obsessed with relevance, and spin, and how thingslookfor thefamily.” His annoyance, as he emphasizes these words, is a physical force. “Sara, my sister, was engaged to Lyle Burnett, as in the eldest son of the guy who owns one of the biggest pharmaceutical research companies in the world, but Mom forced her to end it because Lyle wasn’t ‘the right look’”—and here he uses air quotes and heavy emphasis—"for thefamily. So, Sara, being the dutiful daughter she is, broke it off with Lyle, who by the way was a pretty cool guy, real stand-up sort of dude.”

“And now she’s married to Miller Frances Conroy, right?” I say, racking my brain for deBraun family facts, as learned from Buzzfeed andPeoplemagazine. “As you said, president of Calbright College, and his family are all bigwigs too, I think.”

“Yeah, his dad is CEO of a security firm, and his brother is a high-profile venture capitalist.” He waves a hand. “You want a family tree, I can draw you one some time. Our family net worth isn’t relevant. It’s about the fact that Sara really did love Lyle, and he loved her. It was the real deal. But Mom said no dice, so Sara broke it off, because losing the connections and support of our combined family is a big deal, and she knew Mom was as good as her word—she plays hardball, and she plays for keeps.”

“And then there’s you,” I say.

He scrapes out a slow breath. “Yeah, then there’s me. The bad boy of the family. Kicked out of Yates Academy for, and I quote, ‘routine and excess delinquency.’ Barely made it through military school. Mom bought me a slot at Princeton despite my somewhat less-than-impressive educational record, and I managed to find a niche in the political science program. I liked the scheming, the debates, the research, the art of compromising in a way that still benefits you more than the other person…it let me put my personality quirks to good use. At Yates, I was always working deals with people, putting groups together for various reasons. Like the kid who always has a pet cause, except my causes were always somewhat more nefarious than civic-minded. I learned to toe the line enough to survive in military school, and the value of keeping quiet and listening when necessary, and I guess that helped me more than anything.” He laughs. “Listen to me, yammering on like a tool. You don’t want a personal history. You want to know why the hell I thought asking you to marry me was a good idea.”

I wasn’t about to admit this to him, but Iwascurious—his personal, private history was something he kept under wraps. You knew the name Paxton deBraun, you knew he had a seat in Congress, and that he had a reputation as a player, a party boy, that he was photographed leaving the hottest clubs around the country with the most glamorous and gorgeous and most exclusive and unavailable women, and that somehow despite this reputation, he was considered a shoe-in for a second term in the House.

I kept quiet and let Paxton talk.

“God, I really don’t know how to make sense of this. I had it straight in my head, but putting it into words is a hell of a lot harder.” His golden eyes skim my skin, land on my eyes. “Another thing I suppose you should know is that a lot of my family is…I wouldn’t sayracistper se, but definitely classicist, and subtly, quietly not approving of dalliances outside the accepted…zone. Which is something that’s never put into words, but is just somehow made clear.”

I chew on what he’s saying, and put it in context of what I know from the media—Lyle Burnett, for example, isn’t white; his father is, but his mother is from some Caribbean island, as I understand it. She’s exotically beautiful, and was a very successful model in her day.