by Nash, Willa
It wasn’t a small room, but with the two of us in here, it felt half the usual size. She’d slept in the king-sized bed. That hadn’t been strange. Why was this?
She cast me a glance over her shoulder and shoved the line of hangers and clothes down the rod so I could hang up the rest. Then we stood there, cloaked in uncomfortable silence.
“Make yourself at—”
“This is awk—”
We ground to a halt in unison.
Everly scrunched up her nose. “This is awkward.”
“Pretty much.” I nodded. “Did you tell Lucy?”
“No.” She walked to the bed, plopping down on the edge.
That one move and the tension eased. Probably because Everly in bed was something I could compartmentalize. The bed was familiar. The bed was easy. If we had one thing going for us headed into this shitshow, it was the sex.
“I’ll tell her after we’re married,” Everly said.
“Think she’ll talk you out of it?”
She shrugged. “She’ll try. If our roles were reversed and she was sitting in my position, I’d try.”
“No one can know it’s fake. Lucy’s married to the sheriff. If the judge asks Duke to testify, then—”
“I know.” She held up her hand. “The real reason is between you and me. I’m good with vague. People can think what they want. Most will probably assume I’m pregnant or something.”
Hearing those words made my stomach drop. We’d taken precautions with the condoms and if she wanted to keep up the physical stuff, those precautions would continue.
Everly was my future ex-wife. There was no way I’d risk adding another kid to the mix.
“Two years. Maybe less. If I can get custody, then we can get a divorce once things smooth out.”
“We’ll get her.”
There was something about the we in her sentence that gave me hope. Dangerous hope.
“Can I ask you a question?” She shifted on the bed, dropping back on her elbows.
I leaned against the wall. “Shoot.”
“What made you change your mind about all this? You were so adamantly against it.”
I sighed. “I came home after dropping you off and went to work in the studio. Sat there and couldn’t paint. I kept thinking about what Aiden said, about what you said. Nothing has changed since the last time I tried to get Savannah. Yeah, it was years ago, but I’m still the same guy. Same house. No judge is going to give me my kid.”
There was a hopelessness in my voice. She sat up straighter, then gave me a sad smile. “We’ll get her.”
There was that we again. “Hope so.”
“Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.”
I chuckled and pushed off the wall, jerking my chin toward the hallway. “I’m going to go order some dinner. You good with pizza?”
“As long as it comes with a cold beer.”
“Christ, we might actually survive this thing. Toppings?”
“Ham and pineapple?”
“Spoke too soon.” Fruit didn’t belong on pizza.
She giggled. “I like Hawaiian best, but I’m not picky. Whatever you’d like is fine.”
I turned to leave but stopped short of the door. I’d been dreading this part since dawn. Get it over with.
“I, uh . . . got you something.” Before I’d gone to pick up Everly from the apartment this morning, I’d taken the hour-long trip to Prescott. Their jewelry store was better than the one in Calamity. Not because they had better jewels, but because the staff wasn’t from Calamity. If any gossip traveled across the county line, it wouldn’t hit town until after Everly and I had already exchanged vows.
“Here.” I tossed the ring to the bed. The diamond glittered against the dark comforter.
Everly’s eyes went wide as she picked it up. “Hux. This is . . .”
I didn’t wait for her to gather the words. I didn’t want a thanks or anything else. It was an engagement ring because we were engaged. She needed a ring, so I’d bought her one.
Leaving her in the bedroom, I hurried downstairs to order pizza. Then I took out a beer from the fridge, drinking that first gulp when the doorbell rang.
Ugh. Today was not the day for visitors. I crossed the living room for the door, flinging it open. Son of a bitch. Should have checked who it was first.
“What do you want, April?”
My ex-wife crossed her arms over her chest, shooting me her favorite glare. She’d had that look since we’d been kids. Why the fuck I hadn’t seen it for pure evil then I blamed on youth and sex. Like most teenage boys, I’d thought more with my cock than my brain so I’d missed the viper behind the blond hair and pretty face.
“You need to stop texting Savannah,” she ordered.
“No, I don’t.” There was nothing in the past judgments that prevented me from contacting Savannah. Aiden had dug into the technicalities to be sure. There was nothing April could do to prevent me from calling, emailing or messaging my daughter. I had no visitation, but communication was allowed.
“Stop texting her or Julian will be forced to mention your little movie date to the judge.”
April did love her threats.
For a lot of years, I’d feared them because I’d thought she’d actually act on them. When Savannah was little, April had threatened over and over to leave Calamity. She’d promise she’d take Savannah and disappear to the other side of the country. I would have followed, but it would have meant uprooting Savannah’s life. At the time, I hadn’t had a lot of money to afford a cross-country chase either.
But I’d caught on to April’s game eventually. She was more bark than bite. Julian, on the other hand, was a fucking pit bull.
That son of a bitch loved to sink his teeth in. Given past history, my movie date with Savannah would have sent him straight to his friend at the district court. Maybe April hadn’t told him yet. Or maybe that friend of hers thought she’d seen me there with Savannah but hadn’t been sure. I wouldn’t put it past April to have tricked Savannah into a confession.
“Why did you come here?” I asked. “You’re supposed to communicate through my attorney.”
“I was in the neighborhood.”
Bullshit. April and Julian lived on the other side of town and from what I knew, she wasn’t friends with anyone on my block.
Either she was here looking for Savannah because she couldn’t find our daughter.
Or she’d heard about Everly.
April had her spies everywhere and one might have noticed my truck outside Everly’s this morning loading up.
“Goodbye, April.” I moved to close the door in her face but stopped when a hand dragged across my back and Everly appeared at my side. Lemon and lavender filled my nose.
“Hi.” She smiled brightly at April.
There was a flash of jealousy in April’s gaze that made my chest swell with pride. Everly was gorgeous. No way around it. She was fucking gorgeous and with one look, April knew I’d traded up. Way up.
“I’m Everly.” She held out her right hand. “And you’re April?”
There was no shock on April’s face. Just that infuriating glare. Yeah, she was here because she’d already heard about Everly. Goddamn it. There’d be no backing out now. Not that I’d planned to, but this was the first test to prove we were real.
April shook Everly’s hand, her grip flapping loose like a dead fish. “Yes.”
There was a lot of venom in that word but Everly brushed it off. When she let her left arm slide free of my waist, my heart skipped. She was about to drop the bomb.
Everly’s hand snaked up my spine to drape over my shoulder. She looked like she was leaning on me. Really, she was flashing April her ring.
The four-carat, emerald-cut solitaire diamond on a platinum band.
April sure as fuck hadn’t gotten that kind of ring out of me.
The minute April saw it, her mouth flapped open.
And a Cheshire cat grin spread across Everly’s face. “Did you order
pizza, honey?” she purred, standing on her toes to nibble my ear.
“Yeah. Your favorite.” I turned and brushed my nose against hers. The plan had been to slam the door in April’s face. Instead, I let it go so I could haul Everly against my body with both arms.
Everly held my gaze, flashing me a cunning smirk, then she turned to April. “You’re still here?”
Fuck, but I liked that. There were no fake subtleties. No pretending. April was public enemy number one and Everly wasn’t going to play nice.
April’s eyes narrowed but she didn’t speak. She just spun around and marched to the Audi sedan she’d left running in the driveway.
I slammed the door before April was out of sight.
“She’s lovely,” Everly deadpanned.
“Word will be all over town now.” Shit. “Better tell Lucy.”
“It will wait.” She shook her head and moved to stand in the living room. “We’re getting married on Friday. I’ll just avoid her for a couple of days. With any luck, she and Duke won’t hear about it through the gossip mill.”
“They don’t exactly run in April’s circles but he is the sheriff.”
“Let’s just let it play out. If she finds out, she’s going to have a lot of questions that we don’t exactly have the answers to yet.”
“Like what the fuck are we thinking?”
“Exactly.” Everly’s gaze moved to the door. “She’s pretty.”
“On the outside.”
“I thought Savannah looked like you, but she takes after April too.”
I nodded. “She does.”
Something crossed her expression—jealousy?—but Everly blinked it away and held up her left hand, wiggling her ring finger. “This is an expensive ring for a temporary wife.”
“I don’t plan to have any other wife, so you might as well capitalize.”
“On your commitment phobia.”
“Yep.”
She glanced at the ring. “Another woman, a better woman, would probably insist you downsize this, but it’s really beautiful and it looks really sparkly on my hand and I kind of already fell in love with it so I’m keeping it.”
“Good. I don’t have time to take another trip to the jewelry store.” And it was just a ring. I didn’t care if she kept it and hocked it when this was over. Whatever money it had cost would be well worth it if this charade worked.
“Hmm.” She tapped her chin. “Do you want a ring?”
“Bought one.”
“That’s sort of my job.”
I shrugged and walked into the living room, taking a seat on the couch.
“Well . . .” She sighed. “A visit from the ex wasn’t planned but at least it’s not awkward as hell in this house anymore.”
I chuckled. “True.”
Everly walked to the couch, but instead of taking the seat beside me, she pushed my shoulders back and straddled my lap. “I was thinking.”
As long as her thinking involved her naked body, I was for it. “Thinking what?”
She dropped a light kiss to my neck, her hair draping between us. “Instead of thinking of this as a marriage, what if we think of this as hot, exclusive sex for a couple of years?”
I shoved my hands into her hair, pushing her face away from my neck to see her eyes. “Sex.”
“A lot of sex.” A slow smile spread across her face. “I’ll win best wife award for sure.”
I chuckled and couldn’t help my own smile.
She brushed her fingertips over the shell of my ear. “You have a great smile.”
The compliment made it fall flat.
We shouldn’t be complimenting one another.
There’d be no kind words. No cuddling or pillow talk. Better to establish those limits now.
“Don’t say shit like that to me.”
Everly flinched, her expression hardening as she dropped her hand. But instead of smacking me for the asshole remark, she ground her hips harder on my groin. “Then how about you have a great cock? Can I say that?”
I flipped us, pinning her beneath me in a flash to press my arousal into her core. “Yeah.”
“Good.” She leaned up and caught my lower lip between her teeth. “Then use it.”
She stripped me as I stripped her. When I had my dick covered with a condom, I buried myself in her tight heat and fucked her hard. My mouth latched on to a nipple. I tossed one of her legs over the back of the couch so I could strum her clit. And I pounded into her with a punishing rhythm until we both exploded together.
I reminded us both that this was about the sex. That she was just a fuck and nothing more.
Other than my soon-to-be wife.
Chapter Nine
Everly
“Do you feel different?” I asked as I scooped another spoonful of ice cream.
“Not really.” Hux shrugged, eating his own pint of chocolate fudge swirl.
“Huh,” I muttered. “Me neither.”
The two of us were sitting at the kitchen island. Hux was wearing black slacks and a gray button-up shirt. He’d rolled the sleeves up his forearms after we’d gotten home with our celebratory meal of tacos and ice cream. I was still in my dress from the courthouse.
It was a long-sleeved burgundy chiffon dress that flowed to my nude heels—the shoes having been discarded by the garage door the moment we’d walked into the house because they’d pinched my toes like snapping turtles.
I’d ordered the dress from one of my favorite online stores and had it overnighted to Calamity. If a girl couldn’t blow her savings on a wedding dress, then what were they for? It had a simple design with a small seam at my hips. The front dipped low between my breasts and down my spine in matching Vs.
It wasn’t white. It wasn’t a gown. But it had done the job. All I’d wanted was to look pretty for a picture to hang on the wall—for the sake of keeping up this charade. Judging by the appreciation in Hux’s eyes when I’d come downstairs earlier, I’d hit the bullseye.
The wedding had felt more like renewing a driver’s license than the joining of two lives. We’d walked in with the license. We’d stood before a justice of the peace who’d pronounced us man and wife. The end.
I was married.
“Does your tattoo mean anything specific?” I asked, taking another bite.
The bright colors snaked across his skin. They were chunky, like the artwork at the studio, and the lines weren’t as clean. But there was no mistaking Hux’s style in the brilliant evening sky as it met the bold, jagged ridge of the mountains.
“It was one of my first paintings. The first one that wasn’t total shit anyway.”
“Good to know.” A wife should know the significance of her husband’s tattoo.
Husband.
It should seem strange. That word should give me a thrill or a shot of panic. Instead, I just felt . . . the same. Wasn’t that weird? I’d gotten married today. Married. I was a wife.
Wife. Wife. Wife.
Husband. Husband. Husband.
Nothing. No fear. No shock. No awkward. That, we’d chased away the day I’d moved in, thanks to some epic sex on the couch. Any time it threatened to return, one or both of us would get naked.
Problem solved.
“Where did you learn to paint?” I put the lid on my pint and slid off my stool.
Hux put the lid on his so I could put both in the freezer for a midnight snack. “Prison. They had some classes they offered inmates, like science and math and stuff. I’d had enough of that in high school, but they wanted us to sign up for something because it looked good for the parole board. I did a fine arts class and another one for mechanics.”
“You must have been a natural.”
“Guess so.”
“You guess so?” I grinned. “You have seen your own work, right?”
“Took some practice. When I got out, I went to work for a guy here in town. Didn’t pay much but I didn’t have a lot of options. No one wants to hire an ex-con around here, but this guy knew
me from when I was a kid. I’d worked for him as a teenager putting up a fence on his ranch. So he hired me to do some work on his place. I lived cheap. Kept painting to keep my mind off things. Got better and then one day, Katie came home and saw my piece.”
“Katie. As in your assistant?” Okay, maybe I should have asked more questions before volunteering to marry Hux. “You lived together?”
“After I got out.”
“And were you a thing?” Were they still a thing? Because I didn’t share. Ice cream or men.
“With Katie?” He scrunched up his nose. “No. We’ve been friends for a long time but that’s it. She’s like a sister. When I got out, she was there. Helped me get back on my feet. Let me crash on her couch for a while.”
“But . . . she works for you.”
“Yeah. In a way, I owe her my career. She saw a painting and thought I should try to sell it. There wasn’t a gallery in town, not that anyone here would have bought it from me anyway. So she took it to Bozeman. Shopped it at a few places. A decent size gallery picked it up. After it sold in less than twenty-four hours, they bought five others. I sold exclusively to them for a year until I had some money saved up. I kept working until I had a good chunk set aside. I bought this place first, then the gallery.”
“Good for you.” A surge of pride swelled. He’d worked so hard. He’d built himself up all from a skill he’d learned in prison. “What do you sell your paintings for?”
“Depends.”
“Give me a ballpark.” There hadn’t been any price tags in the gallery and my curiosity was piqued.
“I commission some for the gallery in Bozeman. They still sell twenty or thirty for me a year. Those go for about five thousand.”
My jaw dropped. “Dollars?”
He nodded. “On average.”
“Um . . . wow.”
“The pieces at the gallery range in price. I’ve got some at about two thousand. Some up to fifteen. Just depends on the piece.”
“I’m so impressed. How many pieces do you sell in a year?”
He shrugged again and stood from his stool. “About a hundred. Then I do about fifty commissioned pieces. But those cost more.”