“Why not?”
He looked away. That muscle in his jaw started jumping. “There’s nothing for me there but ghosts.”
His voice was tight, his spine was stiff, and he looked miserable at just the mention of Kentucky. I looked down at his wrist, hunting for the semicolon tattoo, and caught a glimpse of it in the shadows.
If he was trying to get me to feel sorry for him . . . it was working a little.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “So marry some debutante and have your two point five perfect babies and live happily ever after with your country club membership and your polo ponies. I’m sorry, but I don’t see the problem here.”
Jackson turned his head and looked at me. The expression in his eyes stole my breath.
He said, “The problem is that you’re the only woman I’ve liked in a long time.”
He let that sink in, then added, “And I don’t want to be poor. I’d be exceedingly bad at it. For one thing, I’m not nice enough.”
“How ridiculous. Not all poor people are nice.”
He frowned. “Really? Every poor person I’ve ever met has been extremely nice to me. Well . . . except you.”
I threw my hands up. “God, you’re hopeless. They’re nice to you because you’re rich! They want your money!”
“Oh.” He looked disappointed. “I thought only rich people were like that.”
I stared at him in amazement. “You’re right. You couldn’t be poor. You have no idea what real life is like.”
“Exactly!” he said. “So you understand my predicament!”
“What I understand is that I have a restaurant full of guests and I’m standing in a dark alley talking to a delusional rich man about his imaginary problems. You need a bride, run an ad in the paper. You’d have five thousand responses the first day.”
“I told you. You’re the only woman I’ve liked in a long time. I don’t like strangers. I don’t trust people. Women in particular.”
Whew, I wasn’t touching that one with a ten-foot pole. “You just told me I wasn’t nice to you. Why would you like me?”
His eyes started to burn. “You’re honest. And real. And you don’t care about my money—”
“Ha! So you offer me a million dollars of it?”
“I wasn’t finished. You don’t care about my money, and you’re kind, and responsible, and you’re not afraid to call me on my shit, and you’re so fucking beautiful it sometimes hurts to look at you, like I’m gazing into the sun and could go blind if I stare too long.”
He stopped talking abruptly, as if he’d shocked himself with what came out of his mouth.
He wasn’t the only one.
Beautiful. He called me beautiful. That right there was worth more than the money he’d offered.
In a spectacular display of intelligence, I said, “Oh.”
He shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. He looked at the ground. He squinted up at the stars sparkling in the night sky. Finally when he couldn’t find anywhere else to look, he glanced gingerly sideways at me, like maybe he was expecting another smack across his face.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. Then I said, “Let me get this straight. You want me to marry you.”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t have to have sex with you.”
“Right.”
“If I don’t marry you, you won’t marry anyone else.”
“Correct.”
“And there’s no chance of you going to work for your family’s company.”
He shook his head emphatically. “None.”
“So what you’re basically telling me is that if I don’t agree to marry you, I’ll be responsible for you losing all your money and becoming a pauper and ruining the rest of your life.”
He blinked. “Well . . . yes.”
I snorted. “Gee, no pressure.”
He lifted his hands, palms out, in a surrendering gesture. “It wouldn’t have to be forever. Just five years and then we could get divorced.”
“Five years!” I exclaimed, freshly horrified. “I’m thirty-one years old, Jackson; that puts me close to forty by the time you’re finished with me!”
He looked pained by my choice of words. “I think your math is a little off there, Bianca.”
“What if I want kids? Have you considered that? By the time we get divorced, I’d be an old maid!”
He said, “Hardly. And you could always do IVF. I mean, you’d have enough money. Or get a surrogate. Or adopt . . . why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because I’m having an out-of-body experience. Somehow I’ve been transported to an alternate universe where a psychotic billionaire is trying to convince me to enter into a sham marriage, give up five years of my life, and forego the possibility of actually falling in love and sharing a future with someone. Someone who loves me for who I am, not what I can do for him. Do you really think any amount of money could convince me to do something so—so—wrong?”