The Decoy Bride

by Lizzie Shane

  “It’s fine, Mike. Get the deluxe.”

  “I knew you’d say that. I told Tammy you’d say that. Spare no expense, that’s our Aaron Junior. He knows how important this Field House is to Harris. That’s what I said.”

  Cross winced at the words spare no expense, since he’d already sunk over a million dollars into the new athletic center for his old high school, but at this point an extra twelve hundred would hardly make a dent and he did want everything to be perfect for the dedication. The day his father’s name was revealed on the building’s façade.

  They’d been planning and building the field house for nearly three years now and the project was almost over—which meant Mayor Mike had only three and a half weeks left to squeeze him for money in the name of his father’s legacy.

  Maybe he’d get lucky and there wouldn’t be cell service at the Luxe Resort and he could avoid Mayor Mike’s daily we have a little situation calls.

  “I have to get going, Mike, so if there’s nothing else—”

  “Actually, there was one more thing,” the mayor’s frantically cheerful voice babbled. “It’s the RSVPs for the dedication events—now, mind you, I know not everyone pays attention to RSVP deadlines, but we did request that replies be returned no later than last Wednesday—”

  “I thought I already RSVPed.”

  “Oh, you did! You absolutely did. It’s your mother. We haven’t heard from her. Now I’m sure it’s just an oversight, so we’ve included her on all the guest lists even though she didn’t follow the protocol and RSVP—” Mayor Mike did love his protocol. “But I just wanted to make sure she hadn’t said anything to you about boycotting the events. I didn’t want her to feel slighted that she wasn’t more involved in the planning of the dedication—”

  “I’m sure she doesn’t feel slighted.”

  “I’d just hate for anything negative to touch the dedication—”

  Cross repressed a sigh at Mayor Mike’s dramatics. “I’ll talk to her. I’m sure it just got lost in the mail.”

  “Oh good. Thank you. I didn’t want to worry you, but we can’t be too careful. Your father’s legacy is at stake, after all.”

  Believe me. I know. Every day of his life, he knew. It was all about chasing the ghost. Living up to the memory. Being the best. Because only success mattered—and he was his father’s legacy.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “I can’t do this.”

  Bree had always made decisions impulsively—which had led to a pretty impressive resume of mistakes, but this might be her worst yet. Did she really think anyone would believe she was Maggie Tate? For three whole weeks?

  The reality of what she’d agreed to had set in last night when she realized she didn’t have to pack, because there wouldn’t be a single second when she wasn’t being Maggie. She hadn’t slept well—whenever she’d managed to stop worrying about whether she could actually pull off three weeks of playing Maggie Tate, she’d heard Olivia Hwang’s words echoing in her brain, that blithe indictment that she had no voice. When she’d finally managed to fall fitfully asleep, that voice had blended with another, deeper voice, a masculine echo from memory.

  Not everyone has what it takes. You can’t just decide to be an artist.

  She’d jerked awake at two in the morning with that voice lodged in her brain, and hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. Pacing. Staring at her work, the pieces crammed into her apartment. Wondering if she should just quit. If it was time to move back to Clement. If she’d been fooling herself this entire time.

  She almost hadn’t gone to Maggie’s that morning. But sixty thousand would help—even if she did run home with her tail between her legs—and she didn’t renege on promises. She’d told Maggie she would do this and she would.

  So she’d arrived at dawn—eyes bloodshot and face drawn from a sleepless night—to be transformed into a goddess.

  Then Mel had dropped her bombshell.

  The brilliant make-up artist and stylist who made her over into the movie star each time wouldn’t be traveling with them—but one of Maggie’s small battalion of personal assistants would. Kaydee. And she wouldn’t be in on the secret.

  “I can’t…” she repeated.

  “Sure you can,” Mel said, glancing up from the tablet in her hands from which she managed Maggie’s world. “Just add more contouring.”

  “Not the make-up.” After the two hour tutorial, she was actually reasonably comfortable with the make-up, painting shadows and accents on her face. “This. The rest of it.”

  “Of course you can,” Mel insisted, as if the alternative wasn’t even an option. Mel had sent Kaydee to walk Cecil Two, leaving them alone for the moment in Maggie’s vaulted-ceiling bathroom—which meant it was Bree’s last chance to panic.

  And she was taking advantage of it.

  “I might be able to fool the people on the island who’ve never met her before, but Kaydee knows her. You can’t seriously expect me to fool a friend.”

  Her only comfort last night had been the knowledge that the people she was going to be meeting didn’t know the real Maggie. They only knew the parts she played on film and the persona she put on for her publicity appearances. If Bree slipped up a little, Mel would be the only one to know. But if she had to perform for Kaydee all the time she was going to make a mistake. She knew it.

  Mel wrenched her attention off her tablet with a frown. “First of all, people see what they expect to see. And Kaydee isn’t a friend. She’s a yes man. Yes girl. Whatever. Her job is to agree with everything Maggie says and confirm to Maggie that every choice she’s making is the right one—even if Maggie wants to dye her hair purple and streak across the Golden Gate bridge. She won’t be looking at you critically.”

  “But she still knows Maggie—”

  “Not like you’re thinking. She may know how to bring Maggie her coffee the way she likes it and look after Cecil when Maggie can’t, but I picked her in part because she’s only been with us for two months—which makes her eager to please. Desperate to please. So just remember that you’re the boss. Be confident and commanding and she won’t suspect a thing.”

  But it would still be twenty-four seven. She would have to always be Maggie. Always be on. For three solid weeks. Panic began to squeeze her throat.

  Mel’s tablet released a muted chime and she glanced at it, giving a satisfied nod. “Cross is here and the drivers are en route. We should be ready to roll in ten.”

  “Should we?” Bree demanded, a little hysterically—because she certainly didn’t feel ready to roll. She felt like she was about to asphyxiate from sheer panic.

  She’d played Maggie dozens of times before and it had never made her airway feel tight with nerves like this, but she’d never had to keep it up for three weeks either. It had always been a few hours—five or six at the most—and she’d always been able to look ahead to a time when she could let Maggie’s persona fall away and be herself again. This time it would be all day every day.

  Three solid weeks.

  What did she think she was doing? She was an imposter. Not just as Maggie, but as an artist. As everything. What the hell was she doing with her life?

  At a soft knock on the door, Mel called, “Come in,” and the door opened. She was braced for the return of Kaydee and Cecil Two and the weight of the Maggie mask to crash down on her. She wasn’t braced for the man who walked through the door.

  He really was hot.

  Cross looked like something out of a James Bond movie. Tall, blond, and sexy as hell in a dark, tailored suit. Square-jaw, strong profile, cut shoulders—he even looked like a bodyguard. She’d noticed his physique before, his aura of authority, but this morning the low hum of awareness that always lived beneath the surface when she was with him had been cranked up to eleven and she felt his presence in her skin, felt his eyes on her amplifying her nerves.

  Brown. He had such a generic Midwestern hero look she’d been expecting his eyes to be generic Midwestern blue, but they were
brown. Rich and dark, burnt umber with a note of amber, and thickly lashed, but with blond lashes that almost disappeared.

  Pretty. The man had seriously pretty eyes.

  Bree’s heart lurched, something a little desperate inside her latching onto the sight of him because he knew. He knew she wasn’t Maggie and there was a startling comfort in that. Of course, Mel knew too, but that was different. Mel was the director of this farce, whereas Cross was inside it with her and seeing him there made her feel less alone. They’d done this before, dozens of times, and the familiarity comforted her.

  “I believe you know Bree?” Mel said into the suddenly thick air.

  He was watching her, bringing to bear on her all the intensity of his focus, and she felt her cheeks warming.

  “Bree?” he echoed, studying her face, as if trying to see beneath the Maggie mask.

  She fluttered her lashes and flashed him her very best Maggie smile, purring, “Hello, handsome.”

  His answering smile burst out, fast and lethal, while his voice stayed deep and calmly professional. “Ms. Tate.”

  “No.”

  Bree jumped at the sudden outburst from Mel—and the reminder that she and Cross weren’t alone in the master bathroom. “What?”

  “No flirting.”

  Bree felt her face heating and very pointedly did not look at Cross, though she caught a glimpse of his lips twitching in the mirror. “Maggie flirts constantly.”

  Mel gave her a pointed look. “Not like that. Not with intent.”

  Her face had to be bright red now. She refused to look at Cross, focusing on Mel. “I wasn’t—”

  Mel held up a hand to cut her off. “Those aren’t the kind of rumors we want to start.”

  “I wasn’t aware we wanted to start rumors.”

  “This is fame, darling. We always want to start rumors.”

  Before Bree could respond, a bright voice sing-songed from the attached master. “Here we are!”

  Cecil Two returned in a clatter of tiny puppy toenails against the tile and Kaydee bounced in behind him with an equal degree of youthful enthusiasm. She looked about the same age Bree had been when she first came to LA—so bright-eyed and young it almost hurt to look at that much hope and fresh-faced optimism.

  And this little girl could bring the entire house of cards toppling down if Bree wasn’t careful.

  She had to sell it. So she threw out her arms to the dog and cooed, “Baby!”

  *

  Damn, she was good.

  Cross watched as Maggie’s persona fell seamlessly over the decoy—Bree. He hadn’t even realized she’d let the act fall away until it was back, subtly transforming her face. Her adorable blush was gone, the vulnerable uncertainty in her eyes gone, and only Maggie’s flashy, flirty confidence remained as she baby-talked at the dog.

  Mel was right. Maggie always treated Cross like he was part of the scenery—absently flirty and friendly without ever looking directly at him—but Bree looked him straight in the eyes and it had been almost unnerving, though not unpleasant, that look. Not in Maggie’s vague, oh-are-you-here kind of way, but right at him. Into him. Like she saw him and wanted him to see her.

  Suddenly she’d been real—not the Movie Star, a real person with Maggie Tate’s face—and it was surreal.

  He found himself studying her, stealing glances as Mel herded them downstairs to the waiting pair of SUVs that would take them and their luggage to the airport.

  Even knowing for a fact she was the decoy, all Cross saw when he looked at her was Maggie Tate. With the giant floppy hat, oversized sunglasses, and designer tote carrying a designer dog, she could have been any wealthy woman on her way to a beach vacation, but the smile was all Maggie.

  Her face was exactly the same. Her mannerisms. She didn’t say much, but when she did speak it was all Maggie—the cooing baby talk for the dog, the flirtatiousness for the drivers that was delivered in an automatic, almost absent way, like a habit she’d forgotten to turn off.

  Cross couldn’t resist glancing down to try to spot the differences. Surely there was no duplicating Maggie Tate’s legendary ass. But there it was. Perfect. Flawless.

  The fact that she was a decoy had never bothered him in the past—but he’d rarely thought of her as anything other than Maggie before. Now…it was disconcerting, knowing she wasn’t Maggie, but seeing only Maggie when he looked at her.

  Once “Maggie” was settled in one SUV with Cecil B. DeMille in a designer dog carrier at her side, Kaydee retreated to the second SUV and Mel grabbed Cross’s arm before he could take his own place in the passenger seat. Her manicured nails creased the fabric of his coat as she yanked him to a stop.

  “Stop it,” she hissed under her breath.

  “What?”

  “Stop looking at her like you’re trying to see through the cracks. You’re going to tip Kaydee off.” Mel pointed with one perfect nail toward the star in the SUV. “That’s Maggie. Treat her like Maggie. We picked you because you’ve always been good at treating them both like Maggie in the past. Don’t make me regret the choice. And stop staring at her ass.”

  She released him, stalking around the SUV to her own place as Cross mentally kicked himself and his face heated with mortification. He’d been warned that they would be traveling with someone who wasn’t in on the deception. Only a few in the inner circle—those who needed to know in order to pull off the lie—even knew Maggie had a doppelgänger. Mel had explained that the driver, as well as the pilots and Kaydee, were all part of Maggie’s carefully crafted publicity machine.

  The most trusted members of the entourage were with the real Maggie and Demarco on a Fijian island right now, while the ones with the decoy’s team were those who were loyal to the actress—to a point. They would never say a negative word about her—but they could also be relied upon to be bribed by paparazzi for information about where she went and who she was going to be with.

  It was useful to have a few of those in a celebrity’s retinue—the people you knew would leak information, and so by controlling what information those people had, you controlled what the public learned—and everyone was more likely to believe the whispers told by make-up artists and chauffeurs than the press releases Maggie put out herself. It was how Mel controlled Maggie’s image.

  But it also meant Cross couldn’t slip up like that again. He couldn’t forget himself again. He had a job to do. A story to sell. The client’s security and privacy depended on them being able to pull this off.

  The decoy—whoever she was beneath that Maggie façade—was just a job. End of story. And Cross always did his job. He was the best.

  He wouldn’t forget again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It really should have been fun.

  The fancy car. The private plane. Being whisked off to a private island while wearing designer everything.

  Bree wanted to gape and squeal and touch everything. She wanted to be excited. She owed it to everyone who’d ever dreamed of spending three weeks living like a movie star to enjoy this, but she was too nervous to feel like Cinderella. She was the imposter, impersonating the princess, and if her mask slipped even for a second, if she let herself indulge in the experience as herself, then the entire illusion would come crashing down around her.

  So instead of gasping as she stepped aboard the luxuriously appointed Gulfstream, she yawned.

  There were buttery leather captain’s chairs arranged in two separate seating areas, a low couch, a flat-screen TV, a shiny table—and a bedroom. The plane had its own bedroom. And she couldn’t even stare.

  Catching the yawn, Mel nodded toward the bedroom. “Why don’t you go get settled and I’ll check on you after I talk to the pilots? Kaydee, can you make sure we have Cecil’s puppy pads on board?”

  Grateful for the distraction that got Kaydee’s enthusiastic chatter away from her, Bree hitched up Cecil’s Louis Vuitton carrier and headed toward the bedroom. Ever since the two SUVs had arrived at the airfield, Kaydee hadn�
��t been more than a few feet away from her, orbiting her like a very eager planet. Bree had never realized how exhausting it was to be the sun. She sank down on the edge of the bed—and the lack of sleep and stress pulled at her until she wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep for ten hours.

  Was that a Maggie thing to do? That question dominated all of her thoughts now. W.W.M.D. What would Maggie do?

  The paparazzi had followed them to the airport, IDing the SUV’s license plate as belonging to one of her regular cars as soon as they pulled out of Hidden Valley. Bree had ducked her head beneath her sunhat to deny them a picture as she was walking toward the plane with Kaydee chattering at her side—but then she’d second guessed herself. Would Maggie duck? Or would she strut? And even if Maggie would normally duck, did Bree need to not duck so the pictures would encourage the paparazzi to follow them to the Caribbean rather than searching out the real Maggie in Fiji?

  She was getting a headache just thinking about it.

  Right on cue, Cecil Two began his high, penetrating yelp of a panic-bark and the headache began to throb in earnest behind Bree’s eyes. Trying to channel Maggie’s way with animals, Bree used her drippiest, gooeyest voice and cooed, “Hush now, baby, you just rest,” at the dog—which had no impact whatsoever on the yelping.

  Cecil Two definitely seemed to know the difference between her and Maggie. Though maybe he just didn’t like traveling. Being hauled around with no control over his life. She couldn’t blame him there.

  “Who’s a sweet baby?” she baby-talked, removing her giant floppy hat and using it to shade the designer pet-carrier from the sun coming through the windows.

  “You all right?”