Page 23 of Mating of Convenience
“His family?” That made some degree of sense. My friend was good at hiding it, but he’d always felt a strong sense of responsibility for his younger siblings. People joked aboutmebeing in love with my baby brothers and sister, but I had nothing on Raph. He was like a bear with his cubs when it came down to it.
One reason I never understood why he didn’t want children of his own. He would make a fantastic parent. I kept telling him too, but he never wanted to hear it.
“Kendra had some health troubles a little while back and his father lost his job and they can’t pay all the bills. Raph went to his grandma for the money, which is when she told him that he needs to settle down if he wants to see any of it.”
“I didn’t know that.” I knew Raph’s little sister. She wasn’t one of my students, but I saw her around town and Raph had always been fussing about her even when we were kids. “I’m sorry to hear that Kendra’s not doing well.” But it explained a lot of my friend’s behavior to me. Why he’d come back to Oceanport.
And why he had proposed to me so out of the blue. Because he needed help and he trusted me, still.
“I’m sure things are going to work out somehow,” Conner said. “I’m sure Raphael didn’t say anything to you because he didn’t want you to feel pressured into doing something stupid. I probably shouldn’t have said anything either, I just thought you should know the whole truth. Especially now that you’ve already turned him down anyway.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I made myself utter, but I couldn’t really focus on what my friend was saying. There were too many other thoughts wrestling for attention in my head. If Raph wasn’t doing any of this for the tattoo studio but for his brother and sister, that meant he was definitely gonna go through with it, even if I wasn’t the one to help him.
He was going to marry someone.
“Nathan? Are you listening?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Wait, you’re not changing your mind, are you?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
All I knew in that moment was that the omega I still loved no matter how much I claimed to be over him needed my help. And that he was going to marry someone else if I didn’t provide it.
12
Nathan
“Ican’t believe you’re in such a rotten moodagain,” Aaron commented when I met him at the dog training grounds Friday afternoon. Miss Floofy’s owner had requested I fetch her dog because she’d had hip replacement surgery and couldn’t come herself. I was happy to help out. Not so happy to suffer my friend’s curiosity again.
“I’m not in a rotten mood,” I lied. Truth be told, I’d received an anonymous love-letter that morning. From astudent.It had been left on my desk and I didn’t know what to do with it. I kind of wanted to bang my head against a wall. Why did I only get love-letters and proposals from people I didn’t want them from?
Not that I never wanted a proposal from Raphael. I wanted him to propose to me a year ago. And tomeanit.
But the reality was that he only wanted to marry me because he needed money. To help his family, but still… I sighed to myself. Was I a bad person for turning him down? I couldn’t tell anymore. “Would you marry someone for money?” I asked Aaron, trying to sound casual and probably failing.
“I don’t know.” Aaron scratched his chin. “How much money are we talking about?”
“Enough to start up your own business that you’ve been dreaming of for years.” Seriously, I could help Raphandget something for myself out of this deal.
“What business?”
“A pet store.”
Aaron shot me a skeptical look. “Since when have you been wanting to open a pet store? I know you have a lot of dreams but that one is new to me.”
Okay, so maybe I hadn’t been dreaming of setting up my own business for years, maybe it had only been a couple days since I’d had that idea andmaybeI was making up excuses to go along with Raph’s crazy schemes, but…
Wait, was I seriously considering this?
What was wrong with me?
I didn’t want to think about marrying Raph, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw him before me. Looking at me with those big, sparkling green eyes of his. Saying no to him had always been hard for me--and saying no to him when he needed my help? Damn.
“Nathan, are you listening?”
“What?” I focused my attention on Aaron again. Obviously he’d said something I hadn’t heard.
