Page 24 of Speak of the Devil

I end it by showing off Shane like Vanna White, as if his presence, his denial to marrying me, will be enough proof to annul this marriage or, better yet, pretend it never happened.

He gets her back in the game when he nods on cue and leans in closer to eye level with her. When his chin dips down but his eyes stay locked on hers, she practically falls right off her stool. “What can we do here, Roberta?” His question is drawn out,his voice deeply personal as if they’re the only two in the place. “How can we clear this up quickly?”

Glancing at me, he continues with his smooth voice that has gone into sultry territory. To her, he says, “Catalina is a lovely woman, and maybe under different circumstances we would have traveled down this road together. But under real life circumstances, we barely know each other.”

“I married my husband after knowing him a month,” Roberta counters, showing her ring to us. “He got this for our twentieth anniversary. We’ve celebrated fifteen since then.” She straightens her shoulders, and that’s when I realize it’s already going downhill from here. “Maybe this is meant to be,” she adds, “and an opportunity to spend a few days together to get to know each other better. In some countries, the couple doesn’t even meet until?—”

“You chose your husband, Roberta. I’d like to choose mine instead of leaving it to California.” I lean in, my arm bumping against Shane’s. “I’ve been married for twelve years and just found out four days ago.”

“She’s a gorgeous woman,” Shane adds, suddenly drawing both of our attention. The unexpected compliment is both flattering and confusing. I have no idea where he’s going with this, but I can’t wait to find out.

A few seconds tick by as we stare at him, unsure what he’ll say next or if he’s going to say anything at all. When time drags on, I tuck my hair behind my ear, moving my eyes to his neck so I don’t drown in the oceans of his eyes. “Um, thank you.” With my hand signaling toward him, I tell her, “He’s a very attractive man?—”

“He really is,” she adds, smiling at him again. “He deserves better.”

“Hey, wait a minute.” Raising my finger, I’m lost on how this turned on me. “I’m not so bad.”

She’s back to business but shoots me a stare. “He deserves someone who loves him.”

“She does, too,” Shane interjects. “A guy could only be so fortunate to call her his bride. She’s funny, and well, she deserves to be called wife by someone she loves instead of due to a clerical error.”

“I understand your frustration, Mr. Faris, but it’s not been an error on our part.” She looks between us, and her eyes land hard on me this time.Again. “There’s an attraction to build on. I suggest you explore it because I’m not sure what kind of game you’re playing, but your energy should be spent trying to make your marriage work.”

Draping myself on the counter, I plead, “You have to help us.” I can already see the house slipping away from me. The yo-yo of the highs and lows are trauma-inducing. “Please, Roberta.”

“Pick yourself up, Mrs. Faris.”

My back stiffens, giving me flashbacks from my childhood. “It’s Farin.”

“Now that’s a coincidence. There’s only one letter separating you from him. How convenient.”

The warmth of Shane’s hand finds my lower back again and rubs gently. “That’s how we met in homeroom junior year. Catalina had just moved to?—”

“That’s all well and good,” she interrupts, “and I’m sure it has a romantic plot twist since you got married, but I need to make myself very clear, Mr. Faris and Mrs. Farin. This isn’t an error made in our office. All the correct information is filled out.” She angles the screen toward us and points at a line. “As you can see, it’s not a slip of the fingers by one of our employees. Around twenty different lines would have been filled out to make this official with signatures attached.”

“Shit,” he mutters, leaning in to read the screen. “Can we see the signatures?”

Clicking around the keyboard, she says, “Give me a second to get to that page. These computers, I swear, are from two thousand and four.”

Too eager to look away, I’m staring at the screen like my life depends on it. I hear him whisper, “My signature is all over the internet. Autographs are sold on eBay.”

Not to shoot down his theory before it has a chance to be proven, but my head can’t wrap around the idea that someone would purposely do this to us.Why me, of all people, if they were going for him?

Since the scroll is so slow on Roberta’s side of the window, I glance up at him. “Why would a fan legally bind you to me?”

The devil is in his eyes. “Legally bound to me. Why does that sound so incredibly sexy?” His tone is more fitting for cocktails at a hideaway bar where we’d have privacy before retiring to a hotel room. But that’s not where we are, leaving me incapable of a response because my throat goes dry.

“Here you go,” Roberta announces, eyeing the screen like I wasn’t just about to mount this man beside me.

Returning my eyes to the monitor, I scan quickly to find the lines where we supposedly once signed. My body stills as I try to make sense of this. But I eventually turn to him for guidance, to say something, to help me understand how this happened. When Shane’s eyes turn to mine, and he shrugs, I know we’re in trouble. “It looks like it could be mine.”

I look back once more, my future hanging in the balance of my response. “That’s not my signature,” I whisper, mentally kissing my house goodbye as I eye Cat Farin on the screen. “But itwaswhen I was eighteen.”

8

Shane

I’m notsure what to say, but anything would be better than the silence between us. “So we’re married?”

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