Married In A Heartbeat novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Dress

On Friday at noon the cashier's check was waiting on the desk in the glass office.

Colt's father slid it across without a word.

It said $61,400.00, made out to Leanne Cobb.

I checked the zeros twice.

"Pleasure doing business," Colt's father said, and he did not look at Tobin at all.

Tobin stood by the door with his hands in his jacket, the picture of a man with nowhere better to be.

In the truck I held the check against my chest and cried quietly for a minute.

He started the engine and didn't say anything, which was exactly right.

On Saturday morning I woke up in his bed to the sound of eggs.

He stood at the stove in boxer briefs and a gray T-shirt, scrambling with a fork because he owned no whisk.

I lay still and watched him.

A billionaire was making me breakfast in a kitchen with a leaky cabinet door.

I had known for four days.

I had decided not to say a word.

I did not want to be a woman who learned a number and changed her face.

And I wanted to see what my father's table would do, before it learned the number.

I wanted to know who they were when they thought he had nothing.

He turned and caught me looking.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing. You scramble like a man who has opinions about it."

"I do. Low heat."

"Is that all you have opinions about?"

"I have an opinion about you in that shirt."

I was wearing his shirt from the night before, and nothing else.

I smiled and said nothing, and he turned back to the stove with a flush on his neck.

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