Page 18 of Her Fantasy Husband

Chapter Four

Lexi stared out of the window at the passing streets. It was nine-thirty and still daylight. Dinner had only taken an hour and a half. It had felt much longer.

Her grandmother had been strangely quiet, allowing Daniel to do most of the talking. That worried her a little. Her grandmother had always had the control in that relationship. And why did they want Harry to move in? To spy on her? Or something more sinister?

God, she had to reel in her imagination. But she’d overheard a conversation once, just before she’d left for good. Daniel had apparently thought it would be an excellent idea for her and Harry to marry.

Yeah. Super idea. Not.

That hadn’t been what decided her on her somewhat drastic course of action, but it had certainly given her a nudge in that direction. Her feelings for Harry could be summed up in one word.

Ugh.

It wasn’t really Harry’s fault. As she’d told Josh, she hardly knew him, just from brief meetings over the years. But he reminded her too much of his father, and Daniel made her skin crawl.

She knew perfectly well what her grandmother wanted to talk to her about. They needed money. Now she had to decide whether she would give it to them. Probably. She had plenty, though there were far more worthy causes to spend it on than her grandmother’s shopping habit or whatever expensive vices Daniel used to while away his time. She could guess at a few.

Her grandmother had gone through three other husbands in the time Lexi had lived with her—though lived was hardly the right word; she’d spent most of her time at boarding school—but Daniel was the first she had really disliked. Two had ignored her, one had been kind, and then there was Daniel. The creep.

Josh had been great over dinner; he hadn’t been the least intimidated by either his surroundings or her family. She had a good feel for people and their motivations, and she suspected Josh genuinely didn’t give a crap what people thought of him, which would make him hard to intimidate.

She turned her attention from the streets outside to his hands on the steering wheel. They were big hands, with long fingers, and they held the wheel easily.

Her gaze flicked to the glove compartment with its whole box of condoms. Did he have a girlfriend? She presumed he must have. A man like him was hardly likely to have been celibate for five years. Unlike herself—though she’d had her fantasies of Josh to keep her company. And her vibrator.

She couldn’t imagine Josh fantasizing about her.

Her gaze wandered to the glove compartment again.

He was going to ask for an annulment. And somehow she had to persuade him otherwise.

An idea flashed through her mind—revisiting her earlier thought about consummating the marriage. She dismissed it before it could take hold, but it slid back into her brain and refused to be pushed out. He was her husband after all. And she had been faithful to him for five years.

Maybe…

When she’d jumped him in the office, she would swear he’d liked it. So he didn’t find her a total turn-off.

She couldn’t believe she was considering this. She was a goddamn virgin. What were her chances of seducing a gorgeous hunk like her husband?

If she repeated the word “husband” enough times, she’d feel less like a manipulative little bitch for even considering what she was considering, and more like a wronged wife pursuing her conjugal rights.

He was the one in the wrong here. He’d agreed to this marriage. He had no right to back out now just because it was inconvenient. And why did he want to anyway? Why now? He’d been happy enough to stay in the background for five years. A horrible thought crossed her mind, and she blurted out the words before she thought better of it. “Do you want to marry someone else?”

His eyes darted from the road to her, a frown between his eyes. “Christ, no.”

He sounded horrified, as though he had as low an opinion of marriage as she did. Maybe even lower.

What had made him that way? She was quite aware of where her own aversion had come from. Her grandmother had hardly provided her with a good example—all of her marriages before Daniel had ended acrimoniously. Lexi had grown up determined she would never marry. And she’d worked too hard to get control of her life to hand it over to some man.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No.” This time she could hear a faint thread of amusement in his voice. “Why the inquisition?”

She gave a casual shrug. “Just wondering.” At least she wouldn’t be stepping on anyone’s toes. Was she really considering this?

---