Kenna’s status as his wife was temporary and in name only. Much more important was the fact that she was his friend, which meant that he definitely should not be thinking about her in her underwear.
They weren’t sharing a bed—they weren’t even sharing a bedroom. But in order to maintain the illusion that theirs was a normal marriage, they’d decided that Kenna’s clothes would hang beside his in the closet and he’d empty out a couple of drawers in his bureau for her use. For a brief moment this morning, he’d forgotten that.
He pulled the drawer open farther to return the undergarment to its proper place, and discovered a riot of color and texture. There were pastels and brights, smooth satins and delicate laces, polka dots and animal prints, many of them decorated with little bows or sparkly beads.
He’d never given much thought to what Kenna wore beneath her clothes. Her status as his best friend forced him to steer away from thoughts in that direction. He couldn’t deny there’d been some curiosity—because yeah, he was a guy and it was unnatural not to wonder—but he’d never let his mind wander too far down that forbidden path. His mind was definitely wandering now...and that subtle stirring wasn’t so subtle anymore.
He had a close and intimate acquaintance with women’s lingerie. He could unfasten a front clasp as easily as he could back hooks; he knew the difference between a G-string and a thong; he appreciated that push-up bras enhanced a woman’s attributes and despised padded bras for false advertising.
He found himself examining a bra of purple satin overlaid with black lace, thinking that the deep color would provide a stark contrast to her pale skin, and the scallop-edged cups would entice a man to discover what was inside. He definitely wouldn’t mind seeing what she looked like in it...and then out of it.
“There’s French toast in the...” Kenna’s words trailed off when she spotted the bra in his hand. “What are you doing?”
“Trying not to think about how you’d look in this,” he admitted.
Color stained her cheeks as she snatched the bra out of his hand, stuffed it back in the drawer and pushed it firmly shut. “Stay out of my underwear.”
He grinned. “I never gave much thought to getting into them...until about three minutes ago.”
“Well, stop thinking about it,” she advised. “Just because I’m your wife doesn’t mean I’m going to get naked with you.”
“A crazy idea,” he agreed.
Her lips twitched in response to his dry tone. “Almost as crazy as the two of us getting married.”
“But we did that anyway,” he pointed out.
“You set out the terms,” she reminded him. “A one-year marriage on paper only.”
He had set out the terms—desperately and impulsively. And he would have offered her anything, agreed to anything, because getting her to that chapel in Vegas had been a prerequisite to the release of his trust fund. But agreeing to twelve months of marriage on paper only when he’d already been celibate for more than six had not been a well-thought-out plan.
Especially now that he’d seen his wife’s underwear.
“What if I want to renegotiate?” he asked.
Kenna shook her head. “Not going to happen.”
He took a step closer, deliberately invading her personal space. “You know me well enough to know that I can’t resist a challenge.”
She held up a hand, no doubt to push him away, but her palm hovered in the air, as if reluctant to touch his bare skin. Her gaze dropped to the towel slung around his waist, and her breath hitched.
Clearly his wife wasn’t as unaffected as she wanted him to believe. He caught her wrist and pressed her palm against his chest, so she could feel his heart pounding against his ribs.
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, drawing his attention to the tempting curve of her mouth. And he was tempted. Since the brief kiss they’d shared in that Las Vegas chapel, he’d spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about the lushness of her mouth, wanting to sink into the softness, savor her sweet flavor.
One simple kiss had blown the boundaries of his relationship with Kenna to smithereens, and he didn’t know how to reestablish them. Or even if he wanted to.
“Aren’t you the least bit curious about how it might be between us?”
“No,” she said, though her inability to meet his gaze made him suspect it was a lie. “I’d prefer to maintain my unique status as one of only a handful of women in Charisma who haven’t slept with you.”
“I haven’t slept with half as many women as you think,” he told her.
She lifted her brows. “Half of a thousand is still...ick.”
His eyes narrowed. “You know I’ve never been that indiscriminate—and I know what you’re doing.”
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“Deflecting the conversation. Pretending you don’t feel the pull between us. Trying to annoy me so that I stop wondering what you’re wearing under that dress.”
“And maybe you’re flirting with me to keep me from worrying about my sister’s doctor’s appointment this afternoon.”
“I’m not that noble,” he assured her.
She shook her head, but the hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “There’s French toast and bacon in the oven, if you want it.”
“I want to know if you really wear that stuff.”
“No, I just buy it to take up storage space and torture your imagination.”
“You’re a cruel woman, Mrs. Garrett.”
She tossed a saucy smile over her shoulder. “Have a good day, Mr. Garrett.”
When Kenna was gone, he poured himself a mug of coffee and sat down with the hot breakfast she’d left for him.
It was day three—only three hundred and sixty-two more to go.
He had a feeling the next year was going to be the longest year of his life.
* * *
Kenna was considering how to tell her colleagues about her weekend wedding as she waited for the staff-room coffeepot to finish brewing. She was pouring the first cup when Laurel Bane, her close friend and a fellow teacher, came into the staff room.
“Oh. My. God.”
The excitement in her friend’s voice nearly made Kenna spill her coffee. “What?”
Laurel grabbed her hand, her attention obviously snagged by the diamonds flashing on Kenna’s finger. “When did this happen?”
“Saturday,” she told her friend. “In Las Vegas.”
“Wow.” Laurel enveloped her in a fierce hug. “And congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
Then Laurel smacked her in the shoulder with the back of her hand. “I can’t believe you got married without telling me.”
“We didn’t tell anyone,” Kenna said.
Her friend sniffed. “Nobody?”
“Nobody,” she confirmed.
“Okay, then,” Laurel relented, lifting the pot to pour coffee into her own mug. “I’ll forgive you if...you give me all the juicy details of your wedding night.”
Kenna felt her cheeks flush. “I guess you’re going to have to learn to hold on to a grudge, then.”
She added two spoonfuls of sugar to her coffee, stirred. “Okay, just give me a couple of really good adjectives to describe Daniel’s manly parts.”
It was only then that Kenna realized she’d never told her friend who she had married. “How did you know I married Daniel?”
“Please,” Laurel said. “As if the size of the rock wasn’t a big enough clue, I always knew there was more between you two than friendship.”
This echo of Jane Garrett’s claim made Kenna wonder if other people imagined that they saw the same thing. If it was so unusual for men and women to be friends that there was always the assumption of deeper feelings beneath the su
rface. But she wasn’t going to let anyone else’s assumptions influence her reality—her friendship with Daniel was too important to her.
“So how was your weekend?” she asked, eager to change the topic of conversation.
“Not nearly as eventful as yours.”
“Didn’t you have a date with...” She trailed off, trying to remember the name her friend had mentioned.
“Roger,” Laurel supplied.
“And?” Kenna prompted.
“And the experience reminded me that I hate dating.”
“So why do you do it?”
“Because I’m still foolishly optimistic enough to think that someone will sweep me off my feet someday.”
“Then maybe you should go out with the janitor,” Kenna couldn’t resist teasing.
“Go ahead—laugh at my humble desires and then go home to your hunky husband.”
“I wasn’t laughing,” she denied. “Okay—I was, but only at the mental image, not your desire to fall in love.”
Because she understood exactly how her friend was feeling. Not that she could admit it, of course. Laurel might be one of her best friends, but Kenna still couldn’t tell her the truth about her marriage.
“Why aren’t there more guys like Daniel out there?” Laurel wondered aloud. And then her expression brightened. “You know, it just occurred to me that a sweet and sexy guy like Daniel must have some equally sweet and sexy friends.”
“Weren’t you, just last week, talking about how much you hate being set up? How the next time someone tells you that she knows a guy ‘you just have to meet’ you’re going to run in the opposite direction?”
Her friend waved a hand dismissively. “Those rules don’t apply to you because you’ve proved you’re a true friend by not pushing me toward any pathetic-slash-desperate-slash-creepy guys.”
“You do know you don’t have to go out with any of those guys if you don’t want to?”
“I know,” Laurel admitted. “But I’m afraid that if I turn any one of them down, he might be ‘the one,’ and I really want to get married.”
“Why the sudden urgency to find a husband?” Kenna asked.
Laurel sighed. “Because it’s my birthday at the end of the month.”
“I know—you circled the date on my calendar and told me that we’re going out for drinks.”
“But I didn’t tell you that it’s my twenty-ninth birthday.”
“So?”
“So next year I’ll be thirty, and it’s a well-documented fact that a woman who isn’t married by the time she’s thirty probably won’t ever marry.”
“Documented by whom?”
Her friend shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“Laurel, you’ve got to stop believing everything you read on the internet,” she chided gently.
“I don’t want to be living alone with a dozen cats when I’m eighty.”
“Nobody does,” Kenna agreed.
And she wasn’t entirely without sympathy because she knew it was possible she could end up in the same situation. But if she did, at least now she’d be able to say that she’d once been married.
Chapter Five
Daniel had given a business card with all of his contact information to Cal Archer and was hoping to hear from him about the proposition they’d discussed in Las Vegas. But when Archie called Monday afternoon, he didn’t want to talk about Garrett/Slater Racing but the title on Daniel’s card.
After a brief greeting, he said, “So what’s a network security specialist?”
“Basically a computer administrator who specializes in protecting a company’s data and other information.”
“Do you build firewalls?”
“That’s one aspect of what I do,” Daniel told him.
“I’ve been told I need a new firewall. I don’t even know what that means.”
“A firewall protects against hackers and malicious software. It’s like a barrier between your computer and the internet. But even with a firewall, you need someone to monitor your network for breaches in security.”
“My son, Joe, takes care of that. He found the breach.”
“Did you want me to talk to him?” Daniel asked, still trying to determine the purpose of the call.
“No, I want you to come and look at my system, assess the security and tell me what I need to do to fix it.”
“Isn’t there someone local you usually work with?”
“Yeah, but he’s obviously not doing his job if someone got in, is he?”
“I’m not sure that’s obvious,” Daniel told him. “It depends on the level of security that was in place and how it was bypassed. No system is one hundred percent foolproof, which is why security measures need to be updated regularly.”
“We’ve got a major proposal that we’re working on—a bid to supply the doors and windows for a new condominium community. Joe suspects that the hacker works for a rival company that wants a peek at our paperwork in order to underbid us.”
Daniel didn’t dismiss Cal’s concerns. He knew of companies that had been hacked for less.
“I’m not asking as a favor. I’m willing to pay the usual rate for your time, including travel, and your expenses. And—” Archie dangled the carrot “—maybe we’ll have a chance to discuss your other business proposition in more detail when you’re here.”
“I’ll book a flight and get back to you.”
* * *
Life was good, Daniel thought, as he sat down to a plate of garlic lemon shrimp with pasta Monday night.
Gone were the days of coming home from work to put a frozen dinner in the microwave. Although he hadn’t proposed to Kenna because she knew her way around a kitchen, he appreciated that she did.
Of course, their first disagreement as a married couple had been with respect to the division of labor when he’d suggested that Kenna, being the much better cook, should be in charge of making dinner every night and he could take care of the cleanup. She’d argued that the first person home at the end of the day should be responsible for starting the meal, although she did agree that the cook should be excused from cleanup. Since her schedule was much more defined than his and meant that she’d usually be home first, he agreed.
And now he was reaping the benefits of a delicious meal prepared by his wife. Only a few months earlier, he’d balked at the idea of marrying in order to gain access to his trust fund. He’d told his brothers that he had no intention of tying himself down to one woman for any reason—and he’d meant it.
But when the generic concept of a wife began to take the specific form of Kenna in his mind, he found that he wasn’t so opposed after all. As she sat down across from him at the table now, he wondered if his marriage was evidence that he’d changed his mind...or had a change of heart.
“How did it go with Dr. Rakem today?” he asked.
“Good, once we finally got there.”
“Did you have trouble finding his office?”
“No, the only trouble was trying to tear Becca away from Todd.” She speared a shrimp with her fork. “They came out of the school attached at the hip like they were in a three-legged race. I don’t think I’m a prude, but the way she lets him touch her in public makes me shudder to think what they do in private. But maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, considering she lives with the example of a mother who throws herself at any good-looking guy who walks by.”
“And the appointment?” he prompted, because he knew Kenna well enough to know that letting her continue on that tangent would only get her riled up.
“Dr. Rakem is confident the surgery will be a success. Becca is excited and afraid, I think. Not about the operation so much as the possibility it won’t fix the problem. And I can tell she doesn’t want to get her hopes up.”
She nodded. “And she’s already had so much disappointment in her life.”
And because he knew a lot of that could be traced back to her mother, it seemed logical to ask, “Did Sue Ellen have any concerns about the procedure?”
“Only about who was paying for it.”
He could tell by her tone that she was more disappointed than surprised by her mother’s attitude.
“How did she respond to the news that we got married?”
“She was overjoyed that her daughter finally snagged ‘that handsome Garrett boy.’”
“And by ‘handsome’ she meant ‘rich’?” he guessed.
Kenna managed a smile. “Although you are undeniably handsome, too. And thankfully she has no clue how rich you really are—or soon will be.”
“What was Becca’s reaction?”
“She’s always liked you, so she was cool with it.” She pushed her pasta around on her plate. “Other people are a lot less so.”
“What other people?”
“People who read about our nuptials on Facebook.”
“You put a relationship status update on your Facebook page?”
She shook her head. “Laurel posted a ‘congratulations’ message on hers in the morning, and by lunchtime I’d received fifty-three messages—most of them from women who wanted you for themselves.”
“Only fifty-three?”
“There were well over a hundred by the end of the day.”
“The joys of social networking.”
She nibbled on a bite of pasta. “So how was your day?”
“Interesting,” he said. “I got a call from Cal Archer today.”
“About the sponsorship?”
He immediately shook his head. “It has nothing to do with GSR. He wants me to go to Kentucky to perform a security assessment of his business network.”
It wasn’t uncommon for him to travel for work. S3CUR3 N3TW0RKS had several big clients in North Carolina, but most of them were within a hundred miles of Charisma. So while he was often out of town during the day, it was rare for him to go out of state, even rarer just for a consult.
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