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shared, even as he knew they made things way too complicated.
    At the front desk, Samantha went outside while he paid. The clerk offered to package up the old clothes for him, but he just shook his head. Even if she was mad at him, he never wanted to see her in those clothes—that particular lie—again.
    She didn’t ask about her clothes when he joined her. Her eyes were challenging him to back down, to say the subterfuge had gone far enough.
    But the look of disdain in her eyes was so much safer for him than the look in her eyes when she had been twirling in front of him, filled with glorious certainty of herself, that he felt more committed than ever to his plan. They’d visit the Finkles, he’d takeher home. Leave her with the outfit to assuage some faint guilt he was feeling. If he did end up buying her building, he would keep it strictly business.
    Though he wasn’t sure how, since he had utterly failed to keep things strictly business so far.
    What if it could be real?
    He didn’t even know her, he scoffed at himself. But when he looked at her, her eyes distant, her chin pointed upward with stubbornness and pride, he felt like he did know her. Or wanted to.
    “What’s the plan now?” she said.
    “We’ll go to the Finkles. Let’s just say we’re engaged instead of married,” he told her.
    The stiff look of pride left her face and something crumpled in her eyes. “Even dressed up, I’m not good enough, am I?”
    “No!” he said, stunned at her conclusion. “That’s not it at all. The problem is you are way too good for me. Duper of old people, remember?”
    And then he hurriedly opened the car door and held it for her, before he gave into the temptation to take her in his arms and erase any thought she’d ever had about not being good enough, before he gave in to the temptation to kiss her until she had not a doubt left about who she really was, a woman , who deserved more than she had ever asked of the world.
    He knew if he was smart, he would just pass the turnoff he was looking for and take her straight back to St. John’s Cove, cut his losses.
    But now he felt he had to prove to her it was him that was unworthy, not her.
    It was probably the stupidest thing he’d ever done, to continue this charade.
    But looking back over the events of the last day, since he had first seen Samantha Hall standing at the altar beside his cousin, it seemed to Ethan Ballard he had not made one smart decision. Not one.
    He glanced at the woman sitting with her dog slobbering all over her new silk skirt, trying to read her expression.
    “Look,” he said awkwardly, “any man would be lucky to call you his wife. And that was before we went shopping.” He was a little shocked by how much he meant that, but he had failed to convince her.
    He wanted to just call this whole thing off, forget the Finkles and go home to the mess-free life he took such pride in.
    “Humph,” she said skeptically.
    If he did call it off now, was Samantha really going to think she had failed to measure up to his standard for a wife? He sighed at how complicated this innocent little deceit had become.
    Here he was smack-dab in the middle of a mess of his own making.
    Samantha Hall looked straight ahead, refusing to meet his eyes, but the dog slid him a contemptuous look and growled low in its throat.
    Ethan Ballard thought he had heard somewhere that dogs were excellent judges of character.
    “I used to play baseball,” he said. It was a measure of his desperation that he was trying to win her respect back this way, when he hated it when people liked him for his former career. But the truth was, right about now, Ethan would take her liking any way he could get it.
    He wanted that look back in her eyes, he wanted the radiance back, even though it was a very dangerous game he played.
    “Didn’t we all?” she said.
    “I meant professionally. I played first base for the Red Sox for a season.”
    “And you are telling me this why?” Not