Slow Hands

not marrying for the wrong reason. Again.
    “Money has nothing to do with why I’m marrying Bradley.” Tabitha’s tone was sharp. “I love him. Besides, you and I both know I don’t need his money, and he doesn’t need mine.”
    That was one reason Maddy had high hopes for her sister’s next marriage. There was no obvious reason—beyond compatibility and real emotion—for the couple to wed. “True.”
    “The point is, people trade commodities all the time. Money for property. Stocks for liquid assets. Sex for marriage. Look at my mother—off on some yacht in the Mediterranean with her latest. Do you know she’s not even coming home for the wedding?”
    Having met Tabitha’s mother more than a few times while growing up, Maddy could muster no surprise. Sympathy, yes. But no surprise.
    “Anyway,” Tabitha continued, returning to the subject at hand, far beyond any ability to be hurt by her neglectful mother. “Why not a hot affair for a few bucks?”
    She tried to put it in perspective for her sister. “Have you noticed that I’ve never bought a used car?”
    “As if you’d need to,” Tabitha replied, not getting the point.
    Remaining patient, Maddy bit out, “I don’t particularly care to take another nighttime spin with someone who’s piling on the mileage with other drivers during the day.”
    “Ahh, I get it. That is a little, um, distasteful,” Tabitha admitted. Grimacing, she continued. “Imagine if Bitsy Wellington or one of those old collagen-injected, stapled-together wicked witches tracked him down.”
    Thank God her sister hadn’t mentioned their stepmother’s name. That mental image was enough to make Maddy nauseous.
    “But certainly you’re not naive enough to think men don’t sleep around.” Squinting her nose in disgust, Tabitha added, “You certainly should have learned that much from that bastard Oliver.”
    “I did. But it’s not just the physical squeamishness. I actually like Jake. Maybe I like him too much,” Maddy admitted, angry both at herself for voicing the words, and at Tabby for making her.
    “Oh.” Her sister’s expression softened. “I see.”
    Maddy believed she did.
    “It’s not the ick factor. It would be too emotionally painful to be with him one day,” Tabitha mused, “knowing he might have been with someone else the night before.”
    Exactly. Painful. Uncomfortable. Too much to take.
    Maddy was a strong woman, but she was not that strong. She had already developed feelings for Jake in the brief time they’d spent together. Friendly feelings , she forced herself to remember. Just friendly.
    Well, and lustful ones, she had to concede.
    But with just those— friendly feelings—it had still horrified her to think of him leaving her home Wednesday morning to go spend forty-eight hours with another woman due to a previous booking.
    How much worse it might be if she continued to see him, she couldn’t imagine. Which was why she was still certain she’d made the right decision in sending him away. Even if, at least physically, she’d been regretting it ever since.
    Her mind had been one hundred percent responsible for the plan. But her body was still pretty unhappy about it.
    “Maybe he’d give it up for you.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. Why should he? He’s known me for less than ten days.”
    Tabitha pursed her lips slightly, then lifted her hand and rubbed her chin. Maddy recognized the look. It was what got her into this mess in the first place. “No.”
    “No what?”
    “No to whatever scheme you’ve come up with.”
    “You wound me.”
    “You have dragon scales in place of skin, Tab. You can’t be wounded.”
    “I can if I’m struck through the heart.” That should have come across as earnest and sincere, but Maddy knew her sister well enough to hear the note of jaded amusement.
    “Well, I don’t have scales or protective armor around my heart, either. So I’m not risking it.” Not now. Not ever again .
    “Think of it logically—what would you be risking if you got involved with him physically ?”
    “Uh, humiliation, jealousy?”
    Tabby got to the point. “But those things wouldn’t be an issue if he wasn’t seeing anybody else.”
    “We’ve been over this already. I’m not going to ask a man I’ve known for less than two weeks to change his whole life for me.”
    Not only because it was too much to ask, but because she already knew he’d say no. Any reasonable person would resist a major life change