swallowed hard, his unexpected generosity bringing tears to her eyes.
‘As long as you agree to marry to me within the next month and spend the majority of your time in my home,’ he added quickly. ‘I don’t mind you visiting your mother and working part-time at the café, perhaps one or two days a week so you can keep an eye on it, but it needs to look as though the majority of your time is spent living there with me. Particularly in the evenings.’
‘So I can only work during the day?’
‘Yes. I’d like it if you were able to attend any work or social events at the drop of a hat. For that, I need you focused on your life with me as much as possible.’
She suspected that what he wasn’t saying out loud was that he wasn’t the sort of man to have the owner of a board game café for a wife and he didn’t want to have to explain himself to anyone.
‘So what will I do for the rest of the time?’ she asked as indignation rippled through her. What was wrong with working in a board game café? She really enjoyed it. It was sociable and kept her fit because she was on her feet all day.
He frowned, momentarily stumped by her question. ‘Perhaps you could work on that “high-concept business strategy” you haven’t had time for?’ He waved a hand. ‘I’m sure you’ll find plenty of things to do with your day.’
‘And what do you want me to tell people when they ask what I do for a living?’ she asked, still riled by her suspicion that he didn’t value her choice of livelihood. ‘What do the kind of women you normally date do for a job?’ she added, perhaps a little tetchily.
He rubbed a hand over his forehead, looking taken aback by the directness of her question. ‘Most of the women I’ve dated have either had a media job or been a doctor or solicitor.’
‘Well, I don’t think I’m going to convince anyone I’m a doctor or lawyer,’ Soli said, raising a wry eyebrow. ‘My sister got all the brains in the family.’
He frowned, apparently a little bemused by her now. ‘Okay, well, if you want to choose a different career for yourself, go right ahead. What would you have done if you hadn’t taken over the café? Do you have any burning ambitions?’
His question stumped her for a second. It had been a long time since she’d thought about doing anything but running the café. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly focused at school so I never expected to have a high-flying career. I liked designing clothes, but I did that in my spare time. My dad pressganged me into taking academic subjects to “give me a better chance in life”.’ She put this in air quotes, remembering with a sting of shame how she’d rallied against this notion, thinking it would bore her to tears to have a professional job in the future. All she’d wanted when she was in her mid-teens was to have a family of her own and perhaps make a living in some sort of arty career.
How naïve she’d been.
‘Well, why don’t you have a think about what you’d feel comfortable telling people you do? You’re a business owner; why don’t you go with that?’
She nodded slowly, her earlier irritation at his imagined snobbery subsiding. ‘Okay. Business owner it is.’
He nodded. ‘And what do you intend to tell your family about our arrangement?’ he asked in a careful tone.
‘I’m going to say I’ve taken a job as your live-in housekeeper, for which you’re going to pay me an exorbitant wage.’
He nodded, then pulled out his phone and began to type onto the touch screen, presumably making a note of her demands, and his, so they’d have something to refer back to should there be any issues in the future.
‘They’d buy that much more readily than the truth—that I’m marrying a total stranger,’ she added with a strange tingling feeling in her throat.
It felt so odd to say those words. Whenever she’d imagined getting married, which hadn’t been very often recently, owing to her life being too complicated for her to think that far into the future, she’d imagined herself meeting a guy, their mutual love of board games bringing them together, and dating him for a couple of years before moving in together, then him proposing to her out of the blue in some far-flung romantic destination, like Hawaii or Morocco, or maybe on a Mediterranean island whilst sailing through the clear blue water in a yacht.
They’d get married in a quaint little church with all their friends and family watching and throw a huge party afterwards, where they’d dance the night away together. Then, a year or two later, after they’d had some time together as a couple, they’d have kids, maybe three or four of them.
She’d always wanted a big family.
When she was younger, sitting bored and frustrated at school during subjects she couldn’t get a handle on no matter how hard she tried, she’d fantasised about what it would be like to be a mother. How she’d make her kids big bowls of hearty food, which they’d gobble down gratefully before going off to play happily with their toys, or do finger-painting with her at the kitchen table, laughing about the mess they were making together. Or she’d imagine ruffling their hair at the school gates and receiving rib-crushing hugs in return before they ran in, with her shouting that she loved them, which they’d pretend to find embarrassing but would secretly adore. Then later in the evening she’d tuck her sleepy, happy kids up into bed before spending the rest of the evening with her gorgeous husband, chatting about the day they’d had before retiring to bed together hand in hand.
That all seemed a million miles away now though.
It had been ages since she’d been on a proper date with anyone and even then they’d barely got to the kissing stage before her lifestyle and responsibilities had got in the way of things developing any further. She’d made it clear that her family came first and that had destroyed the chances of a relationship.
Not that she blamed her mother and sister. Not a bit. In fact, despite their difficult circumstances, she quite liked being the head of the family. The one that everyone relied on. It gave her a sense of purpose that had previously been lacking in her life.
Yes, anyway, it was a good thing that Xavier had insisted on a purely platonic relationship. It wasn’t like she had any time for romance.
‘How old are you, Soli?’ Xavier asked brusquely, jolting her back to the present.
A shiver of disquiet tickled down her spine. Was he worried she wasn’t mature enough to deal with this?
‘I’m twenty-one,’ she said, setting back her shoulders and fixing him with a determined stare. ‘Old enough to know my own mind,’ she added firmly.
His eyes assessed her for a couple of beats more before he nodded. ‘Okay, then. I guess that’s everything we need to discuss today.’ He put his phone down on his desk, arranging it so it sat parallel with his keyboard, before looking up and giving her his full attention again. ‘Look, I appreciate this is a lot to take in right now, so why don’t you go away and have a think about it, to make sure you’re comfortable with everything we’ve discussed? It’s a big decision to make and I don’t expect you to sign up for it until you’ve had a chance to check me out first.’
She nodded jerkily. Despite her bravado, she was actually glad of the chance to go and think about this away from his discombobulating presence, just to make sure she hadn’t
