“I see what you’re doing. Now that you’ve got me legally locked down, you’re going to take me deep into the woods and off me for my fortune, right?” I said.

“And I was trying so hard not to let on that I was only marrying you for your money,” she said with a quiet laugh.

We could laugh about it, but the reality was that in all the premarital paperwork for our grand marriage deal, there’d been a prenup included—to protect her assets, of course. All I had were my house, an embarrassingly small savings account, my car, and my share of the restaurant, whereas I didn’t know exactly what she had. Suffice it to say, she had more. A hell of a lot more. We’d agreed that everything needed to be spelled out so we could dissolve the marriage easily and quickly a year from now.

“In half a mile, you’re going to take a left,” Chloe said, and my brows went up. We were literally in the middle of nowhere.

“Sort of freaking me out for real now.”

She laughed. “Don’t you trust your wife?”

It’d been nearly three hours since that had become official, and it still rattled me to hear the W word in any context relating to me.

“I need to keep saying things like that to get used to them,” she said, as if sharing my take on the matter.

“Good idea… wife.”

We shared a conspiratorial look that gave me hope that maybe I hadn’t fucked up our friendship by mentioning sex, and without thought, I reached over and took her hand. I was surprised enough when she didn’t take hers back. Downright shocked when she lifted our entwined fingers and pressed a kiss to my knuckles. Then she kept ahold of me and let our hands rest on her thigh.

I glanced across the front seat, lit only by the console and dash lights, and I must’ve had a questioning look on my face because she said, “You are my husband.”

“I confess I’m more than a little worried about what you’re grooming me for.”

Instead of volleying a pun back my way, she grinned and said, “You should be. Here’s your turn.”

I took my hand back to steer as I peered out the windshield at the gravel road. There was nothing but trees and hills and a windy road. And dark. “Are we almost there?”

“Three point seven miles to our destination.”

Our destination turned out to be better than anything I’d imagined on the short, dark-as-fuck drive. After a driveway that was more than a half mile long, the headlights hit a cabin, and as we pulled up, a security light came on on the porch.

“Wow.”