Page 28 of Married in Michigan

Something.

I have to at least consider it, because this could be a chance, my one chance, to get Mom taken care of without working my ass to the bone twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Marry this guy, play the game, and then I get a nice little divorce settlement that will hopefully allow me to take care of Mom.

The middle part gives me more than a little pause.

“I’d have to quit my job,” I point out.

“I’d make sure you were well taken care of in the divorce,” Paxton says. “Or if you don’t want the divorce on your back, we could even get an annulment and have an agreement where I make sure you’re taken care of. Either way, quitting your job won’t be an issue, because you’d be in a position to choose what you want to do with your life, instead of having to…you know...” He waves a hand vaguely.

I quirk an eyebrow. “Work?” I fill in.

He narrows his eyes at me. “A seat in Congress isn’t exactly all tea and crumpets, you know,” he says. “And despite my reputation, I do take my responsibilities as a representative very seriously.”

I watch the lake in silence for a long time, and this time Paxton is the one to sit and wait and let me have my silence.

“I need to think,” I say. “This isn’t something I can just go, ‘oh sure. Why not?’”

Paxton sits forward, blinking at me. “Wait—you’re considering it?”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…yes. I am.”

He blows out a breath, rubs his face with both hands. “Wow. Not what I was expecting. It was a long shot, and I really did just expect you to tell me to go fuck myself.”

I laugh. “That makes two of us.”

“I’ll take you home.” He stands up, grabs his glass of scotch, and holds it out to me. “A toast.”

I stand up with my own glass, but arch an eyebrow at him. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Moneybags. I haven’t agreed to anything. I said I’dthinkabout it.”

“Which is more than I was expecting, to which I say, let’s toast.” He holds out his glass. “To thinking about this crazy-ass idea.”

I shake my head, snorting a disbelieving laugh, and clink my glass against his. “To thinking about this crazy-ass idea.”

7

Ihaven’t slept more than three hours at a time in the four days since my conversation with Paxton.

My brain is operating in turbo, hyper, super mega overdrive. Constantly trying to make sense of why I’m even remotely tempted by the idea. Why it doesn’t seem as crazy as it should seem. Why there’s a part of me that wants to be a part of his fuck-you to Camilla deBraun and the rest of his bizarro hyper-rich family.

Is it about the money? About the chance to see what the one percent live like? And honestly, the deBrauns are in the one percent of the one percent, and that’s a whole different level of wacky-rich. As I’ve said before, I suffer from a debilitating case of curiosity—what is Paxton like, day to day? What are the deBrauns like? What is it like to never ever worry about money, or bills? What is it like to just go out and buy things just because you feel like it?

Is it more than that? Is it abouthim? That’s dangerous thinking, girl.

Whatever it's about, I’m curious, and very little can make me ignore something as obviously stupid as the need to satiate my curiosity.

Which is a really, really,reallystupid reason to marry a man—any man, let alone one like Paxton deBraun.

I go over it in my head again and again—while I’m working, while I’m at the gym, while I’m in the shower, while I’m trying to fall asleep. I go over all the reasons I shouldn’t even think about it anymore, all the reasons why even considering it makes me the single dumbest human being on the planet—past, present, or future. I go over and over and over all the reasons against considering Paxton’s crazy-ass idea.

Yet despite the heavy list of reasons against it, I can’t shake the burning curiosity. I can’t dull the sharp edge of what-if.

I know the most logical reason in the “for” column is that it will, one way or another, put me in a position to take care of Mom. And that’s worth a few weeks, months, or even years of a fake marriage to an arrogant, self-absorbed, egotistical narcissist rich white boy.

I once got an offer to be a high-end escort making serious bank, and I nearly went with it. I also have had several offers to be an exotic dancer, and I actually accepted one of them, and showed up for my first day—this was before Mom was completely wheelchair and bedbound. She showed up and hauled me home, verbally berating me the entire way.

“You willnotwhore yourself out for me, child,” she’d shouted. “I’ll die before I see you strip or whore yourself out to pay for my care. I’ll die anyway, but I’ll kill myself before I let you do that.”

She hadn’t been kidding, and that was one of the worst fights we’d ever had—me screaming at her about how she can’t talk like that, that’s not an issue, and her screaming back about how I don’t know what it’s like to live with MS, and how she knows she’s a burden on me and she hates that more than anything. When we both ran out of energy to scream, we collapsed into sobbing on each other, ate a gallon of ice cream between the two of us, and came to an agreement: I wouldn’t sell my body in any way to pay for Mom’s care, and she would in turn fight as hard as she could against the incurable, degenerative disease.