Marriage With Benefits(15)

Cia Wheeler. It wasn’t as if Lucas had made forty-seven other unreasonable demands. It was petty to keep being freaked about it.

So she spent a lot of her shift trying to get used to the name, practicing it aloud and writing it out several hundred times while she manned the checkin desk.

Dios, she’d turned into a love-struck teenager, covering an entire blank page with loopy script. Mrs. Lucas Wheeler. Cia Wheeler. Dulciana Alejandra de Coronado y Allende Wheeler. Like her full name hadn’t already been pretentious enough. Well, she wouldn’t be writing that anywhere except on the marriage certificate.

The evening vaporized, and the next set of volunteers arrived. Cia took her time saying goodbye to everyone and checked on Pamela Gonzalez twice to be sure she was getting along okay as her broken arm healed.

A couple of weeks ago, Cia had taken the E.R. nurse’s call and met Pamela at the hospital to counsel her on options; then she’d driven Pamela to the shelter personally.

Victims often arrived still bloodstained and broken, but Cia considered it a win to get them to a safe place they likely wouldn’t have known about without her assistance. It wasn’t as if the shelter could advertise an address or every abuser would be at the door, howling for his woman to be returned.

Pamela smiled and shooed Cia out of the room, insisting she liked her three roommates and would be fine. With nothing left to do, Cia headed for the new house she shared with her soon-to-be husband, braced for whatever he tossed out this time.

She found Lucas’s bedroom door shut as she passed the master suite on the way to her smaller bedroom.

She let out a rush of pent-up air. A glorious, blessed reprieve from “practicing” and that smile and those broad shoulders, which filled a T-shirt as if Lucas had those custom-made along with his suits. A reprieve by design or by default she didn’t know, and she didn’t care. Gratefully, she sank into bed and slept until morning.

By the time she emerged from her room, Lucas was already gone. She ate a quick breakfast in the quiet kitchen someone had lovingly appointed with warm colors, top-of-the-line appliances and rich tile.

The house came equipped with a central music hub tied to the entertainment system in the living room, and after a few minutes of poking at the touch-screen remote, she blasted an electronica number through the speakers. Then she went to work unpacking the remainder of her boxes.

Sometime later, Lucas found her sitting on the floor in the living room, straightening books. She hit the volume on the remote, painfully aware that compromise and consideration, the components of a shared life, were now her highest priority.

“You’re up,” he said and flopped onto the couch. His hair was damp, turning the sunny blond to a deep gold, and he wore what she assumed were his workout clothes, shorts and a Southern Methodist University football T-shirt. “I didn’t know how late you’d sleep. I tried to be quiet. Did I wake you?”

“You didn’t. I always sleep in when I work the evening shift at the shelter. I hope I didn’t make too much noise when I came in.”

“Nah.” He shrugged. “We’ll learn each other’s schedules soon enough I guess.”

“About that.”

She rose, shook the cramps out of her knees—how long had she been sitting there?—and crossed to the matching leather couch at a right angle to the one cradling entirely too much of Lucas’s long, tanned and well-toned legs. “I appreciate the effort you put into making all this possible. I want to do my part, so I found a questionnaire online that the immigration office uses to validate green card marriages. Here’s a copy for you, to help us learn more about each other.” He was staring at her as if she’d turned into a bug splattered on his windshield. “You know, so we can make everyone believe we’re in love.”

“That’s how you plan to pretend we’re a real couple? Memorize the brand of shaving cream I use?”

“It’s good enough for the immigration department,” she countered. “There are lots of other questions in here besides brand names. Like, which side of the bed does your spouse sleep on? Where did you meet? You’re the one who pointed out I haven’t got a clue how to be married. This is my contribution. How did you think we would go about it?”

His eyes roamed over the list and narrowed. “A long conversation over dinner, along with a good bottle of wine. The way people do when they’re dating.”

“We’re not dating, Wheeler.” Dating. Something else she had no idea how to do. If she’d had a normal high school experience, maybe that wouldn’t be the case. “And we don’t have that kind of time. Your parents’ party is tonight.”