Decision made, she stormed back into her room and sat down at her desk, stuffing the court appearance notification into a drawer, annoyance and guilt eating away at her stomach lining. This was what happened when she paid more attention to fake worlds and fake husbands than reality. Now the people the foundation helped would suffer. If she hadn’t been so busy with things that didn’t matter in the long run, she would have realized that Uncle Buckley not being in her business the last couple weeks meant he was up to something—in this case, that something was setting up a hearing with a judge friendly to his side of things. If the judge ruled her marriage didn’t meet her dad’s requirements in the will, there were no other options. She needed to pull herself out of the made-up stories and make-believe married life and concentrate on what really mattered.

She was still seething quietly to herself ten minutes later, when Nash got home. He didn’t stop to give the dogs a scratch behind the ears. He just came straight to her door, looking at her as if he needed to confirm she was still there. His blond hair was going every which way, like he’d been repeatedly shoving his fingers through it.

He took one look at her and grimaced. “So I guess you saw the pictures?”

Her stomach dropped all the way to her toes. Pictures? There was no way this was good. She shook her head.

“It’s nothing.” He gave her a smile, but it wasn’t even a single dimpler. “It doesn’t matter.”

That was highly unlikely.

“Show me.” Nash started to pocket his phone, but she nailed him with a do-not-fuck-with-me glare. “You do not get to make decisions for me. Only I get to do that. Let me see the pictures.”

Reluctance obvious, he mumbled something to himself about just trying to help and handed over his cell. The photo he had pulled up was of the two of them at the pet café. It was taken at an angle that emphasized every oversize curve on her body, and the lighting had been tweaked just so on every one of the lines on her forehead, around her mouth, and branching out from her eyes. In addition, every gray hair on her head sparkled in the afternoon sun. She didn’t look haggard, exactly, but she looked every one of her forty-two years and then a decade or two.

Whatever. It’s what she looked like. She saw it every time she looked in a mirror. It wasn’t a surprise or a shock even if it hurt almost as much as the headline above the picture.

HARBOR CITY’S MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELOR HEDGES HIS BETS WHEN IT COMES TO BEING THE LAST MAN STANDING WITH PLUS-SIZED MYSTERY SENIOR.