Counterfeit Kisses

by Cora York

  “I know you’re awake,” I said. “We should talk.”

  “We’ve talked enough,” came her mumbled reply.

  I blew out a breath. Too bad if she didn’t want to talk. I had a few things I needed to say. “I know how much financial trouble you’re in. Half a mill’s a bit of a killer.”

  If she was shocked I knew so much about her financial mess, she didn’t react.

  Silence hung between us for a few beats. “My ex-boyfriend was the finances, and I was the face of Maken Memories. We didn’t date long, but I loved him enough to give him a share in my business. Dumb, right?”

  “Where’s he now?” I lifted the covers on my side of the bed and slid between the cold sheets.

  “In the gutter for all I care. He has a fondness for liquid lunches and powdering his nose.” Her voice showed little emotion. As if she’d resigned herself to the fact there was nothing she could do.

  “Didn’t you know?” The bastard Shane Gorman had a lot to answer for. I couldn’t understand why he had approached me in the first place. What was he after? I had nothing to give him.

  “What do you think, Sherlock?” She turned to me, her face resting a few inches from mine on the white pillowcase. “You think I said, ‘please take everything I’ve worked six years to build?’” Her voice wobbled, and she took a second to gather herself. “I was foolish. I thought he loved me, y’know. He had so many good ideas about the business, and for a while, he helped me build it. He knew people. Had lots of contacts, but then… then he wanted to do something so vile to newly married couples. Something that would’ve sent me to prison. I had no choice but get him out of my life.”

  “Tell me. What did he want you to do?” I didn’t have to ask because I already knew the answer. The cameras in the bedrooms were all Shane’s idea. Tessa wasn’t the con artist, she was the mark, and now it looked as if I was a mark too.

  I plowed my fingers through my hair. Jesus. How could I have been so irrational? So pigheaded and blind? So damn arrogant? Was my desperation for the job so bad I believed a man who’d screwed my sister over?

  “It doesn’t matter what he wanted.” She sighed. “When I said no, he cleared out the bank accounts and left me and the business in a hole. I couldn’t pay creditors, couldn’t refund deposits.” A tear slid down the side of her face and dropped onto the pillow. “I ruined people’s dreams.” Rolling onto her back, she sniffed and wiped the heel of her hands over her eyes and held them there for a few seconds before clearing her throat. “I’m dragging myself up and getting on with it. The money from Violet’s wedding will help me pay some people back. It won’t cover everything, but it’s a start, I guess.”

  “I didn’t know.” Guilt tipped arrows pierced the center of my heart.

  “How could you know? And you being here is making a bad situation worse. Much, much worse.”

  For the first time since I’d gotten into bed beside her, she looked me in the eye. “How did you find out about me? About my pitch? I need to know if someone’s leaking information about the wedding so I can stop them.”

  Under her intense and hopeful gaze, I shifted beneath the covers, and the arrows turned to bullets. I should do the right thing and tell her the truth. Start over with no lies hanging between us.

  No and no.

  If she knew what I’d done, she’d make me leave. That would mean I wouldn’t be able to help her, and I wouldn’t get to spend any more time with her. And time with her was something I both wanted and needed.

  Instead of telling the truth and admitting my stupidity, I’d do what I could to make it up to her. Prove I wasn’t the monster she thought I was.

  “I know someone who knows someone.”

  “Well, that someone you know just about ruined the one chance I had at fixing things.” She signaled the end of the conversation by turning away and curling into a ball.

  Reaching out and pulling her into my arms would be a colossal mistake, but one I wanted to make with every fiber of my being.

  Chapter Nine

  Tessa

  The muffled chime of “Jingle Bells” from the alarm on my phone woke me at crap o’clock. How could it be morning already? After two hours of nightmare-filled sleep involving Barb dressed as a Christmastime Freddie Kruger, death would be a welcome relief. Beside me, Keegan lay on his side with an arm slung over the pillow barricade. Lucky pillow.

  When I finally rolled out of bed, Max jumped and yipped with excitement.

  “Ssssh, there’s a good boy. Don’t wake the big bad wolf.” For once, Max listened and sat down, his spindly tail smacking off the floor. I didn’t want to wake Keegan because I didn’t want to see the look of pity in his eyes again, the one he’d given me last night when I’d revealed what had happened with Shane.

  Spilling my guts wasn’t something I’d planned on doing, but when he’d asked questions, I couldn’t stop pouring out my problems. So much for a problem shared is a problem halved. Slicing open my veins with a rusted knife and watching my blood spill would’ve been an easier option.

  By the time I left the room with Max under my arm, Keegan had tunneled beneath the covers. In a different reality, I would’ve spooned into him and spent the morning having headboard-shaking sex, but that wasn’t my reality and never would be.

  Barb prowled through the foyer like a starving lion ready to disembowel its prey. As usual, she had her phone stuck to her ear, and she continually dragged her fingers through the blunt ends of her hair. The bruised circles beneath her eyes showed a vat of intravenously administered caffeine was needed. Stat.

  Despite Max squirming and yowling in the crook of my arm and the mass of electronics and files balanced in my hands, I managed to wiggle my fingers toward Barb and mouth, “Good morning.” Staying professional and courteous wasn’t easy where Barb was concerned, but it was a necessity.

  My greeting wasn’t returned. Instead, I received a shake of her head and a thinning of her scarlet lips.

  She stopped prowling and tapped a staccato beat with her foot. She was pissed. Or hung-over. Probably both. Too bad. I had too many things to figure out today, and appeasing a snippy woman wasn’t on the list.

  Max wiggled free from my arm and scampered toward Barb. The dog must have a death wish. On top of everything else, I’d now have to deal with her reaction to a dog that looked like a lab experiment gone awry.

  The tiny canine circled Barb’s legs and jumped up, placing two tiny paws on one of her shins. Her eyes widened, and her foot ceased tapping. If the bitch kicked Max off her leg or hurt him in any way, I would kick her back and then quit.

  I held my breath and prayed. Barb’s lips lifted into a smile, not a smirk or a grimace, but an honest-to-goodness face-splitting grin. She hunkered down and tickled Max under the chin and behind his ears before looking at his dog tag. Maybe the ice-queen had a heart after all.

  The front door banged open, causing Max to run behind Barb’s ankles and pee on the floor. I was thankful he hadn’t peed on her thousand-dollar pumps.

  A gust of wind and a flurry of snow followed Gary, the head contractor, into the foyer. He stomped along the floor, leaving clumps of melting snow in his wake.

  He shoved back his hood and wiped a calloused hand over a long, shaggy black beard that may or may not house a mouse or two. “Most of the men won’t be in today, love. The roads are like driving on glass. I’m lucky I made it.”

  Jittery panic flip-flopped around my stomach, and I glanced at Barb to make sure she hadn’t heard. She hadn’t. She sat on a chair by the embers of yesterday’s fire cooing over Max, who was now curled up on her lap, staring up at his new friend adoringly.

  I rubbed a hand over my forehead. “I need a cup of coffee before I can process this.” The guests would arrive in a few days, and even if the castle wasn’t perfect, it needed to look a damn sight better than it did now. “Want one?” I asked, walking toward the stairs to the kitchen.

  Gary followed me. “Is the Pope Catholic?”
/>   “How much work still needs done?”

  “Too much. I’ll finish fixing the heat today. That way no one will freeze, but as for the rest, the rooms won’t get a new lick of paint or a deep cleaning. My crew’s stuck in Lifford. Unless there’s a thaw by tomorrow, there’s no way we’ll get everything finished by the deadline.”

  “Okay—” I said, blowing out a controlled breath and placing my various electronics and files on top of the butcher’s block, “—this isn’t the end of the world, the rooms are more authentic without fresh paint anyway, and I can clean. What else?”

  “Only seven out of the fourteen bathrooms have a working shower, but the taps on all the tubs work, and the toilets flush. The cottages on the grounds should be all right with a good cleaning. They’re not as old as the rest of the castle.”

  “The bathrooms could be a problem.” I grabbed two mugs from a cupboard and filled them with coffee from an already brewed pot. “You have no way of getting a plumber here?”

  “I can take care of most of the basic plumbing issues.” Gary accepted a steaming mug from my outstretched hand. “But I’d be lucky to get one bathroom a day fixed on me Jack Jones.”

  “The shower in the honeymoon suite works, right?”

  “It does.”

  “Then everyone else will have to make do.” I held the hot mug to my cheek and mentally ran through my to-do list. Everything was on the knife-edge of disaster, but that didn’t mean I’d fall on the floor and flail my arms while screaming, ‘why me.’

  Hysteria simmered inside, but I drowned it with a large sip of coffee. I needed all of my wits about me to deal with Barb, Violet, and Keegan.

  “I know you’ll do what you can,” I said, “but if you could do more than that…”

  “I’ll do me best, love.” Gary drained his coffee and set the empty mug in the sink.

  The lights flickered off for a second causing my stomach to sink to my toes. Losing power wasn’t something I’d considered. No way could it happen.

  Gary cast his eyes upward. “I’ll get to work. See if I can get the backup generator working in case the power goes.”

  “And I’ll get to work to make sure I have everything ready for the guests.” I grabbed my iPad and pulled up the weather app to check the forecast. Sixteen inches of snow expected today alone. All flights in and out of Belfast and Dublin airports canceled. The weather in Ireland was as changeable as Violet’s mind.

  I grasped the tablet to my chest and closed my eyes. What was I going to tell Barb?

  Chapter Ten

  Keegan

  I pressed end call and kicked the pillow barrier to the ground. Grit scratched my eyes, and on a yawn, I scrubbed my hands over my face.

  I’d been awake until the wee hours rehashing the arsehole I’d been, and my cousin had just confirmed I was the biggest bollox to ever walk the earth. Niall corroborated what I suspected. Tessa didn’t have as much as a speeding ticket to her name. Gorman had cleaned out her bank accounts, stolen her jewelry and anything else of value in her apartment, and was now on the run.

  After everything Shane had put my sister through, why the fuck had I believed his lies?

  The stress I’d put Tessa under was unforgivable. She was doing all she could to survive a crappy situation. If I had any decency, I’d leave, go to my parents’ or try to catch a flight back to New York. But if I did, she’d never make the wedding work, and even though it went against the very reason I’d flown over, I’d help her as much as I could. But getting Tessa to accept my help would take a lot of persuading.

  I opened the Today FM app on my phone and listened to the over-excited DJs talk about the worst snowstorms Ireland had experienced since the winter of 1982. It couldn’t be as bad as what they were saying. Irishmen were known for telling stories and exaggerating the details.

  I went to the window and peeled back the curtains. They weren’t exaggerating. Twenty inches or more lay in an undisturbed layer. All airports would shut their doors, and because it was Ireland, they wouldn’t reopen for a few days, which meant I wouldn’t get a flight even if I wanted to.

  If I went to my parents’ house, my mother would try to overfeed me while interrogating me about girlfriends, marriage, and babies.

  Staying at the castle was my best option, and the first thing I needed to do was find Tessa and apologize for acting like a self-absorbed shithead.

  Barb sat by the fire in the lobby with her head in her hands and Max by her feet. I wanted to pretend I didn’t see her, but before I could creep past, she lifted her face and stared me down.

  “Can you believe this?” She gestured around the empty foyer.

  I glanced around, baffled. “What?”

  “No one’s coming to work today because of the snow. How backward are these people, this country?”

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. “Ah, begorrah begosh, sure, ‘tis a fine soft mornin’ out there. Nothin’ but a wee drop o’ snow.”

  “Who are you supposed to be, the fricking Lucky Charms Leprechaun?” She didn’t crack a smile. “I don’t appreciate your flippant attitude.”

  I staggered back and clutched my chest. “Flippant? Me? I’m as serious as they come.”

  Snorting, she snatched up a cast-iron poker and plunged it into the fire. “Where’s that fiancée of yours? She needs to fix this. When Violet finds out the airports are closed, someone’s gonna pay, and it ain’t gonna be me. Why she wants a wedding here, I’ll never understand. This is all Tessa’s fault. Filling Violet’s head with fairytales.”

  “C’mon, you can hardly blame Tessa for the weather. It’s not like she has a direct hotline to Mother Nature.”

  “She’s the one who pitched this idea. A Christmas wedding in Ireland blah, blah, blah. What better way to seal your love blah, bullshit, blah.”

  Tessa was doing all she could. A weaker woman would’ve buckled under the strain of having to share her bed with a stranger as well as keep up the pretense of him being her fiancé, never mind her suffocating financial issues.

  “The wedding will be perfect,” I said.

  “And I’m the Queen of Sheba.” Barb pulled a vape pen from inside her blazer. “I need wine.”

  “It’s eight… in the morning.”

  “Midnight in LA. When you find Little Miss Love Struck, remind her we have a FaceTime call in fifteen minutes with Violet and Archer.

  I didn’t have to look up to know Tessa had entered the lobby. The light scent of her perfume preceded her every step and coiled around my body, squeezing all the air out of my lungs.

  “I haven’t forgotten the call.” She handed a mug of black coffee to Barb.

  Barb took the coffee and leaned back in the chair, crossing her ankles. “Get me a shot of whiskey for it. It’d make this hell hole bearable.”

  “Whiskey later. Work now. Would you like an update?”

  There was a determination in Tessa’s tone, one I hadn’t heard before.

  “Not unless you’re about to tell me the bride and groom will get here for their own wedding.”

  “Like I already pointed out,” I said, coming to Tessa’s defense. “Tessa can’t control the weather.”

  The steely look Tessa shot me all but sliced me in two and told me to keep my mouth shut and nose out.

  “I guarantee the wedding will happen,” she said, her eyes not leaving mine.

  “Hmph.” Barb scooped up Max and strutted toward the staircase. “Send Brendan to my room with an inventory of his wine cellar and steak for my dog.”

  “Looks like Max found his new owner.” I laughed as Barb vanished upstairs. Apologies weren’t something I had a lot of experience with, and now Tessa and I were alone, I didn’t know what to say or where to begin. “Tessa, I—”

  “Don’t you ever get involved when I’m discussing a delicate situation with my client.”

  “How can I not get involved? She was out of line.”

  “I mean it.” Irritation tinted her cheeks a pretty
shade of pink. “Butt out.”

  “I have years of experience in dealing with people like Barb. I want to help.”

  “Sure you do.” Skepticism colored her words, and she crossed her arms, shutting me out.

  “I’m not the bastard you think I am.” Saying sorry to someone who thought I was a narcissist would not be easy. I deserved all of her anger and loathing.

  “Fooled me.”

  “I don’t like how you got this job, but I’m beginning to understand why you lied. I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I’m going to do all I can to help you with no ulterior motive.” I should tell her about Shane. Tell her I knew how this mess of a situation had happened. Confess I was a fool who fell for a con man’s lies just like her. But if I did, Tessa would never trust another word I said.

  She glared at me, her eyes narrow and hard. “Are you telling me you won’t say anything to Barb or Violet?”

  “I shouldn’t have treated you the way I did. Blackmail—,” I winced, “—isn’t who I am.”

  “Then you can understand why you have to leave and allow me to do my job the way I want.”

  I closed the space between us. “Really? You want me to walk out the door? You never want to see me again?”

  She lifted her face until our lips were a breath apart. “Sounds about right.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I captured her waist in my hands and tugged her body close. The scent of her skin drained all coherent thought from my brain. I crushed my lips to hers. A faint taste of coffee and chocolate coated her lips. There was no way I could stop even if I wanted to.

  How did she have such a potent effect on me? She was everything I didn’t want. But that didn’t matter, because right now, all that mattered was the feel of her soft curves beneath my hands.