The Marriage Contract, Natasha Black [thriller books to read .TXT] 📗

days. Every time I tried to push them away or ignore them, I would have a little bit of a reprieve. But as soon as I looked over at Matt and he smiled at me or did something sweet, they all came rushing back.

The worst part was not fully understanding what it was that I was actually feeling. I knew the situation we were in was a bit awkward. It was just hard to discern exactly what that stirred up in me. There was definitely a hint of guilt there thinking that we were deceiving people, and if they found out we were lying, it might really hurt them.

But that wasn’t what was really getting to me. Maybe it rested more on the way Matt made me feel. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be letting myself get too wrapped up in the marriage. We didn’t really have a relationship. In fact, we had openly discussed dating other people and how that would work. We had sex, and it was amazing, but that could be chalked up purely to the intense chemistry and attraction between us.

Then there was the confusion. I didn’t know what he was thinking or feeling, or if he was thinking or feeling anything in particular. So far, he seemed totally content with the arrangement and hadn’t broached the subject of there possibly being more between us. Or that he was totally confident that he didn’t want there to be more between us.

Which brought me right back to the weird, unreadable mix of thoughts and feelings. Finally, after a couple days of dealing with those feelings and finding myself avoiding Matt so they didn’t hit me so hard, I had a sit-down with myself. I forced myself to really think about what I was doing and how the feelings were affecting me.

While it didn’t do a lot of good in terms of understanding everything I was going through, it helped to give me the perspective that we were wandering through uncharted territory at the moment. It wasn’t like there were a ton of self-help books or support groups around for people in sham marriages. That meant I was bound to face some feelings that were hard to figure out and that I would eventually work through them.

That was enough to shake the feelings into the back of my mind so I wasn’t dwelling on them. By the next time we had a day off together, everything was back to normal between us, and that felt good. I was getting coffee first thing in the morning when Matt came in and gave me a big smile. It didn’t bring up any of the strange feelings. It just made me smile back at him and pull another mug out of the cabinet.

“Do you have any plans today?” he asked.

I shook my head and poured coffee into both of the mugs. “Nothing that I know of. Something going on?”

“My mom just called. She’s going to be in town and wanted to know if we could visit for a bit,” he said.

I nodded as I added a splash of my favorite French vanilla creamer into my mug and swirled it around. “That sounds nice.”

“Great. I’ll call her back and let her know. She’ll probably come over here and then we’ll go get something to eat.”

“Sounds good.”

Matt took his coffee and leaned over to kiss me on my cheek before heading out of the kitchen. I blushed as I sipped my coffee. It was always the little things with him.

I finished up my coffee and took a shower, then got dressed. It would be the first time we would see his mother since we got married, so I suddenly had the compulsion to look especially nice. I didn’t know if it was because I wanted to impress her, or if I wanted to make Matt look good because he had a pretty wife. Maybe some would say that was a touch on the shallow side, but feeling pretty never hurt anyone, and neither did a touch of lipstick. If a splash of red on my lips gave me confidence and maybe gave my mother-in-law a warm tug in her heart, I was all for it.

That thought hit me hard. My mother-in-law. I had a mother-in-law.

Matt looked me up and down when I came out of the bathroom in a new dress I got when I went shopping with Hannah and had tucked away in the back of the closet to keep for a special occasion. It nipped in at my waist and skimmed my hips before flaring out into a skirt that made the little girl inside me want to twirl around. Combined with the lipstick and extra swipe of mascara, the effect was giving me a little extra pep in my step.

The look in Matt’s eyes when he saw me was exactly the reaction I was hoping for. He came up to me and wrapped his arms around my waist. His head dipped down toward mine, but just as our lips were nearing each other, the doorbell rang.

Matt stopped, a rueful smile coming to his lips as his head dropped. I laughed and patted him on the arm.

“You better go get your mother,” I said.

“Do you think if we’re really quiet, she’ll think we aren’t here?” he asked in a whisper.

I laughed again. “I don’t think it works that way when you invite someone over.”

He faked a grimace and walked over to the door. In the seconds before he opened it and his mother came in, I got suddenly nervous. When she found out we got married, she seemed thrilled, but what if that was just her way of getting over the shock and lulling us into complacency? Could this be the moment she stormed in, ready to rip us to pieces because we ran off and did it without her?

I took a moment to think through that last flash of fear. This wasn’t my family. She wasn’t my mother. I