Page 67 of Married in Michigan

“No,” he says, “there areformerhomeless men out there wearing a fifty-thousand-dollar custom Brioni suit without realizing it.” A cocky grin. “The difference is vital.”

I frown. “Let me guess, the charity organization and the donations look good on the campaign trail.”

He laughs easily, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “It does, yes.”

I hesitate, hating the squirmy, leaden sense of having deeply offended him. “That was shitty of me, wasn’t it?”

He shrugs, still giving me that grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. “No, you’ve got me pegged.”

“Paxton—”

A sigh, a wave of his hand. “It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. That wasn’t fair of me. There’s more to you than that, I’m realizing, and I’m sorry.”

He blinks, the hardness in his eyes softening a little. “That charity is not publicly tied to me. It’s called Dress For Success, and it’s run by a nonprofit I started back in college, under a DBA that can only be traced back to me if you know how to look.”

“DBA?”

“Doing business as,” he says. “A way to do business under a name other than your own.”

“And you started it in college?”

He nods. “It was part of a project for a business class. I went through all the steps, but for the project you weren’t supposed to actually go through with it and make it legal, you were just supposed to knowhowto do it. But I figured, I’ve already done all this work, why stop there, right? So I created the 501c3, registered it, built the charity structure, borrowed financing from Mom and Dad to fund it and hire staff. It took a few months of extra work, but I got it off the ground and set it up to run without any input from me, and hopefully without anyone knowing it’s my work.”

I tilt my head at him, taking a seat on the stool beside him. “Why don’t you want people to know?”

“Because that’s not the point of it.”

“What is, then?”

“To help.” He meets my eyes. “As you’ve pointed out numerous times, I’m spoiled rotten. Entitled. Born with a golden spoon in my mouth. I know it. I’ve always known it. I guess I felt like…I needed to do something to offset it. Like, in order to be able to consider myself even a remotely decent person, I had to do something to give to other people. If I profited from it, even in terms of reputation or publicity, it would counteract the whole point of it.”

I can’t help but laugh a little—it’s a soft, quiet huff, not meant to mock. “I’m not sure that’s how being a good person works, Paxton.”

Another of those maddening, insouciant shrugs. “It’s all I’ve got. Being a good person doesn’t come naturally to me, after all. I’m two parts asshole, one part selfish prick.” He smacks his legs. “So. Let’s see your haul.”

And just like that, sharing time is over, and there’s no chance to even think about his revelation, because he literally and legitimately has me show off several of the outfits for him. I’ve never paraded around in front of someone so much in my life, and it’s odd. For Julie, it was purely business—she was being paid to assess how I looked.

Paxton?

I’m not sure what his motivations are. First, he has me try on a few casual outfits, and then some of the dressier ones. Finally, wearing a pair of soft gray linen pants and a yellow top with a plunging neckline and shoulder cutouts with a low wedge heel, he nods, smiling at me.

“That’s the one.”

I blink. “The one, what?”

“The perfect outfit.”

“Perfect for what?”

He ignores my question, moving over to stand in front of me. He reaches up, his thick arms framing my face, and slides my springy mass of curls out of the loose half-bun I had it in. My hair flops and bounces down around my shoulders, and he nods again.

“There, better.” He ambles over to the jewelry box on the bureau, sorts through it, and finds a simple but pretty pendant, a tear-drop crystal set in fine platinum. He examines it, wrinkles his nose, flicking the big center crystal. “Is this Swarovski?”

I shrug. “I dunno. I think? I know it’s real platinum, because the clerk behind the counter made a big deal out of it.”

He tosses it back into the box, careless and dismissive. “We can do better. Julie should know better than to fuck around with fake garbage.”