Sitting there in the passenger seat of my car—Holden had insisted on driving since I was beyond exhausted—my heart caught again as I glanced down at the round-cut diamond on my ring finger.

Once more, I reminded myself it was just for show. That he’d insisted on buying it instead of letting me pay for it didn’t mean a thing other than it appeared more “normal” and probably assuaged his male pride, and those were the reasons I’d eventually given in. I’d figure out how to repay him later, after we ended the marriage. He wasn’t made of money, and the financial ramifications for him would probably last longer than our marriage of convenience itself. I wasn’t okay with that.

“Eighteen months is more realistic,” he insisted now. “Neither one of us is the type who would give up on something we wanted after only a year. Besides, didn’t the doctors give Angelica up to twelve months to live?”

“They did.”

Angelica had said it previously, and based on how she’d looked this morning, I had to agree that that might be overly optimistic. Emotion balled up in my throat even though she and I weren’t personally close. It was still going to be a giant loss, and I hated to think about it.

“If we’re going to do this, we need to do it all the way in order to get the desired result,” Holden said.

He glanced over at me when I didn’t say more, too bowled over by this wave of sadness. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he reached across the console and took my hand in his other one and just held it. He caressed his thumb over my fingers as we drove by farmland, trees, hills, and a stunning number of country churches.

“Does all of this make me a bad person?” I asked quietly, finally letting out the thought that’d been jabbing at me for more than a little while. “We’re deceiving a dying woman to get what I want.”

“Angelica has a brain tumor,” he said soberly. “She’s likely not long for this earth whether you try to convince her you’re the better option to take over her life’s work or not. I don’t get the impression it’s money you’re after.”

I shook my head. “I have money.”

It had taken me a long time to grow into the shoes of someone who had money. Like, years. My very first paycheck from Marks International, though a fraction of what I now made, was damn good money for a new college grad, but I’d had the mindset of a destitute girl for a long time after it.

Now, even after the investment in Holden’s brewery, I had enough smartly invested that I could live for years, decades probably, without another paycheck.