Yes, ma’am.
The train pulled to a stop, and I shoved my phone back into my purse and gave my surroundings my full attention. That was another habit I’d gotten into over the past couple of years. When I’d first come to Earth, I’d relied too much on my angelic instincts and the naive belief that no one would be able to hurt me. All it had taken was one encounter with a certain prince of Hell to teach me how wrong I’d been.
So now I took the same precautions most human women took when walking through secluded streets. I didn’t live in a bad part of the city, but it would be too easy for someone to corner me, especially walking home in the dark in January.
I turned onto my street and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the man sitting on the steps outside the front door.
Hayden looked less put together than I was used to. His black hair fell across his forehead in a disheveled mess, and his suit was wrinkled. But it was the defeated look in his dark eyes that made me pause. This wasn’t the untouchable heir of the Blake family fortune that appeared in magazines.
Right now he was just a man.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“You blocked my number.”
“That generally implies that I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I need your help.” The words came out reluctantly, like he was admitting a highly shameful secret. Like askingmefor help was the ultimate rock bottom for him.
But I wasn’t going to acknowledge that right now. “How long have you been sitting here?” I glanced around but didn’t see a car that looked like it belonged to him anywhere. “It’s like fifteen degrees out.”
Hayden shrugged. “It was the only way I knew to get you to talk to me, Sunday School.”
It took everything in me not to react to the nickname he’d given me at the start of our relationship. Just hearingit now brought too many unwanted emotions to the surface.
“Well, I’m here. Talk.”
“I need your help,” he said again, climbing to his feet. “My father has terminal cancer.”
I blinked at him. As far as Hayden was supposed to know, I was an emergency room nurse, not a cancer specialist. I’d picked my job because it worked well with my healing abilities. Fixing an injury was a simple matter, even bringing people back from the brink of death was doable as long as it was a wound that was killing them. But disease was a different category. I didn’t have the authority to cure cancer. That kind of healing required orders from higher up.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally. I’d seen Robert Blake on a few occasions during my short relationship with Hayden, but we’d never been formally introduced.
“He wants me to get married,” Hayden said.
Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting.
“Okay…?”
“Will you marry me temporarily? It would be for like nine months, just until he’s gone.”
“You want me to marry you?”
“Fake marry me,” he clarified. “We can come up with an arrangement that makes you comfortable, and I’ll give you two million in the divorce.”
For a solid minute I couldn’t do anything but stare at him. Hayden and I hadn’t said a word to each other in eight months, and now he wanted me to pretend to be his wife? But he was dead serious—I recognized the look in his eyes.
He didn’t break eye contact while he waited for me to digest his request. His gaze was expectant and unruffled. He really believed I was going to agree to this. Because of our history or just because he thought I was that kind of girl—nice enough to do something insane just because he asked. Or maybe he believed I wouldn’t turn down two million dollars.
I shook my head. “This is crazy. I get that you don’t want to disappoint your father, but lying to him isn’t the answer.”
He frowned, looking more confused than upset. “You’re saying no?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yep.” I brushed past him to unlock my front door. But before I could go inside, Hayden’s hand shot out and wrapped around my wrist.
“Wait.”
“Let go, Hayden.”
