Page 29 of Sucker For You

No.

She lurched backward through the hole she’d kicked into the beach debris, down past rockweed groves to the shoreline, where the silt was packed firm with the pressure of its last high tide.

I was. I am.

No, because what was worse than pranking, worse than betrayal, washope. She couldn’t permit that glimmer to catch at her heart. She couldn’t dare to believe that this stranger—a man with nothing to gain in return—would offer her grace—herlife—with such open-handed generosity, so unexpectedly, so blithely, when they’d known each other for fewer than twenty-four hours, since—

Why would he?

Hope was too cruel.

She kept retreating into crusted sea foam tangled with kelp, until a gush of surf spat against her heels, engulfing her sandals, soaking the cuffs of her trousers. She gasped at the cold.

And she stopped.

As the breaker rippled up the beach to its zenith, before racing past her in its own retreat to the sea, so did the babble in her skull: the staticky noise reached a sudden fever pitch and just as abruptly faded to a simmer. Small bubbles shimmering, clearing. Her knees locked against a second wave.Anchored. She breathed again. A third wave hit and left her with another shiver. But with words, too.

“You don’t want to marry me. You can’t. You don’t know me.”

“Yeah, maybe I don’t know you.” Wes loped down the sand with easy grace, his hands shoved into his pockets while the wind tugged at his hair. “I want to help, though.”

She inched a few steps farther into the water. “No one is that altruistic.”

“Maybe not.” Two more strides brought him within reach of the waves. He hissed at the icy froth hitting his skin and speckling his jeans, his mouth shaping a curse. But he didn’t stop until he’d joined her in the ankle-deep ripples, pebbles raking over their feet with each tidal exhale. He shrugged, or hopped against the surge of glacial water. “Christ—but I’d be getting something from this, too.”

“How?”

“Isabel, I’m a freelance photographer. Marriage has useful legal, consumer, and Social Security benefits. Financial benefits. Plus—look: I’m crashing my menace of a sister’s romantic beach getaway because my hostel isn’t ready. Monterey has dozens of touristy hotels for weekenders. I’m obviously strapped for cash.”

“Oh.”

So he wasn’t an altruist. His offer had a mercenary rationale. As sand shifted under her heels with the drag of an incoming wave, that admission kept Isabel steady. Altruism made no sense. A financial incentive, however?

Maybe. . .

She raised her gaze from the spume. Fixing her attention just past Wes’s left ear, she said, “I—I have money. I was a ward of the Canadian government. When people like. . . me. . . age out of care, we receive a one-time payment. A support fund.” Children exiting the systemnowreceived that fund anyhow. The policy hadn’t existed when she’d left—though a grandfather clause stipulated that financial support was also due to individuals who’d aged out within the past decade. By then, she’d already been managing alone for several years. She hadn’t received the federal money until after she’d arrived in San Francisco. “Thefund is meant to help us establish ourselves as adults. It isn’t a very large amount. Not considering everything. But it’s not nothing, either, and though I can’t officially work in California without a sponsor, I haven’t spent much of it. It doesn’t cost anything to walk along the wharves and Ocean Beach.”

“Beach babe,” Chase had called her.

With him, her expenses had been minimal. He’d never let her pay for the dinners or the clothes—his choices—that she needed for his networking events. How could she protest, when the meals were hot and the clothes were so nice? Besides, if she made no choices at all, she couldn’t make the wrong ones. And because the BioPulse clinical trial was running at UCSF Medical Center, her medication had cost nothing.

“We could make an—exchange,” she continued, still avoiding Wes’s gaze. Pity would have undone her. This was logic. “A percentage of my fund for a Green Card. Thirty-five percent? Ten thousand United States dollars. It could be a fair trade.”Almost. “You’d receive a tangible and immediate asset. Something less nebulous than Social Security benefits?”

Silence.

But then Wes snorted a laugh. No pity; she breathed. “Jesus, you really are Canadian! Social Security benefits are gold to people like me. You’d be doing me another favor, too, getting my mother off my back before the holidays. Her gentle hinting’s getting relentless on our Monday calls. “What are your plans for Christmas, sweetheart? Will you be coming back to Michigan? Alone? Or should I set another plate, just in case?” My dad actually noticed it last year and—um. . .No, sorry. You’re right. This is serious.”

“It is.” If she was grateful for his ease, his levity, his lack of questions, she couldn’t laugh with him. “So?”

“Right,” clearing his throat. Then, with another shrug, almost as if he’d extend a hand to shake—which he didn’t—he said, “So. Yes, I agree to your terms. We’ll get married, but instead of trading empty promises at the altar, we’ll trade a Green Card for—a down payment on a boat. Deal?”

Deal.

Her agreement was perfectly rational. However, a dim ship’s bell of anxiety swung deep in her mind when she paused to balance the situational calculus, double-checking for outs and doubts and dangers. There was something he’d said about. . .

Benefits.

“Wait.”