Double Contract Love novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Release Him

"It's what I wrote on the first night," I said.

"I know when you wrote it."

"Dal, that was before..."

"Before what?"

He read from the page in a flat voice I did not know.

"Day 1, find a husband. Day 3, show up, make her sweat. Day 90, release him with a thank-you."

He put the notebook down on the table very gently.

"I'm not mad that you planned something," he said.

"I thought you'd planned something. A woman doesn't walk into a bar and ask a stranger to marry her for no reason."

"Then what?"

"Birdie."

My stomach dropped.

"You sat on that porch tonight," he said. "You braided my daughter's hair. She asked you to come back Saturday and you said yes."

"I meant it."

"She'll ask for you every day, Lillian. She'll set a place at the table. And on day ninety you're a thank-you on a list."

"I didn't plan her."

"No," he said. "That's what scares me."

He took his keys off the hook and walked out the back door.

The screen banged behind him.

I stood in the kitchen with my heart going, looking at the cold plate of chicken I hadn't finished.

Then I picked up the notebook, tore out the page, and followed him.

The yard was dark except for the porch bulb and the pale gleam of the truck.

He was sitting in the driver's seat with the door shut and his hands on the wheel, not going anywhere.

I opened the passenger door and climbed in.

"Go away," he said, without heat.

"No."

"Lillian."

"I'm going to tell you something, and you can say whatever you want after."

He looked at the windshield.

"I came to that bar to humiliate my stepmother," I said. "She took my fiance and my mother's ring and my father's house, and I wanted to take it back where she could watch. You were a tall man in a canvas jacket. I would have asked anybody."

"Thanks," he said dryly.

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