by Zoe York
She gave him a long, searching look. She didn’t know what she was looking for. Not an over-the-top profession of love. She knew better than that. But there had to be some kind of explanation beyond a gut feeling. She didn’t find anything, so she pushed back with a little joke. “You’re really attached to this wife thing, aren’t you?”
He didn’t laugh. “I am.”
She was starting to think this wasn’t funny for him. “That wasn’t the plan. To get attached.”
“I thought we agreed that the plans were overrated. We’re doing this. I made you a commitment. You’ve got big dreams, Daphne, and I want to make those a reality for you. I want to own Villa Sucre, free and clear, without any doubt from the estate side of things. This is still win-win for us. Don’t lose sight of that.”
It was all so rational. And she liked the sound of win-win. But she didn’t like out-of-control feelings. Those needed to be locked down. She tugged her arm out of his hand and rubbed her fingers at the base of her neck, where her pulse was still fluttering in an alarming fashion.
“What are you thinking?”
“I…” She shrugged. “You’re right. We’re both getting something out of this. But there’s a wee bit of a power difference between us, and I need to make sure you don’t…”
“Run roughshod over you?”
“Something like that. I know you’ve made it a very fair deal, of course. But at the end of the day, we’re both in this for ourselves, and you can use me a lot more than I can use you. I can’t let some chemistry confuse the issue.”
“The kissing.”
She nodded. If he’d kept going up the inside of her arm, she’d have invited him to sleep on the other side of the curtain tonight, and that was a Very Bad Idea. “I know we need to be believable. Now more than ever. So…you can kiss any skin you can see. Within reason. If I’m wearing a tank top, you can kiss my shoulder. Don’t push it, mister. This is a very disorienting thing to navigate. I need to trust that you won’t try to get into my pants, does that make sense?”
“Got it. Deal. No pushing. Bare skin only.”
“I’m going to go find a long-sleeved shirt now.”
He laughed. “Okay.”
“And then I need to go to bed, because I have to work tomorrow. Give notice, throw my life away, all that jazz.”
“It’s going to work out.”
“Is it?”
He caught her in his arms and brushed his lips against the corner of her mouth, then her cheek, and finally at the soft spot just below her ear. “It is,” he whispered. “I promise.”
Chapter Thirteen
The next morning, Will went and fetched breakfast from the bakery and coffee shop on the main street again.
“You know we could cook something right here on the boat,” she said as she sipped her cappuccino. “And by cook, I mean open a box of cookies or slice up some fruit.”
“We could. But I like this routine of being the first person at the bakery every morning.”
She smiled. It took a while for the light to reach her eyes, though. They hadn’t talked about Gill again.
He wasn’t an idiot. “So. I have some legal matters to attend to this morning—”
“Did you ever sleep with her?” The words tumbled fast out of Daphne’s mouth, and then she pursed her lips. Like maybe she hadn’t meant to ask that question, but hey, she had. Good to know.
Maybe he was an idiot after all. How long had she been worrying about that? “No,” he said carefully. “I’ve never had sex with Gill.”
The pursed lips got tighter.
“She’s been my lawyer for a long time. Our relationship is pretty professional.”
“What parts aren’t professional? Because it didn’t seem strictly business to my eyeballs.” Daphne shook her head, her short, choppy locks waving furiously around her head. Like every bit of her was mad about this and now he was going to hear all about it. “Which is just, like… I mean, I don’t know about how…” She took a deep breath, huffed it out, and then drank a long sip of her coffee. “You know?”
“You have no reason to be jealous.”
“You said pretty professional. Does that mean entirely business, or a mix of contracts and hand jobs under the table?”
He coughed, almost choking on his coffee. “Jesus, Daphne.”
“You’re a SEAL. Don’t tell me that talking about a little professional misconduct is too much for your sensitive soul.”
He frowned. “No, but give me some credit.”
She sighed, completely a trifecta of unhappy reactions. “Sorry.”
He leaned forward and twisted his fingers through hers. “Hey. You have no reason to be jealous.”
“She gave me the evil eye.”
“The evil eye?”
“Yes! The evil eye.”
Will didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m not an expert on the evil eye thing…”
That got him an exasperated sigh. “You said it yourself—I’m your wife. I’m telling you, as a woman, she is another woman who does not like that fact. I don’t know why, but I’m telling you the vibe I got.”
There was no way Will was going to question that vibe, even if he couldn’t pick up on it. And he knew Gill had shown up for some reason. He was just certain it was an overprotective lawyer reason. “I told you I’d talk to her, and I will. But in the interest of full-disclosure—again, I’ve never slept with her—but I think she oversteps some lines because a long time ago, when I met her, I needed her more than most young men need their attorneys.”
“Most young men don’t have attorneys unless they’re looking at jail time,” Daphne muttered.
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, that’s probably true.”
“How did you need her?”
“Nothing personal. Jesus, no. Not like that. It was…I had a trust fund. I mean, I’ve always had a comfortable life, but when I turned twenty-one, I suddenly had a lot of money. Investments. Business dealings that I didn’t know the first thing about. And I was a new SEAL, busy with training and deployment. She was an associate at a trusted firm, and she got my account. She made my life easier and managed everything. The accountants, the back and forth with the family company dealings. All of it.”
“So this thing where she shows up unexpectedly on the dock and gives me the evil eye? That’s going to be a regular thing?”
“The showing up…probably. I will fire her in a heartbeat if she’s not respectful to you, but I’m going to bet that’s a non-issue. Look, maybe she just had a long flight.”
Daphne snorted, crossed her arms and leaned back against the cockpit wall. She looked away, and she didn’t pursue the question any further. But, when Will headed out to go find his lawyer—and her evil eye—his new wife gave him a quick kiss and a lingering smile.
He hoped her faith in him was well-placed.
He found Gill on the verandah at Villa Sucre. She’d set up an outdoor office with a million-dollar view, and had a bag of beignets and two takeout cups of coffee beside her laptop.
“I got your text,” he said. “I see you’ve made yourself at home.”
“This place has better wi-fi than my resort does.” She gestured to the ocean. “And the view can’t be beat. Now I understand why you love it here.”
“You can see the ocean out your window back in San Diego, too.”
She shrugged. “I can’t smell it.”
He sighed. “Okay, is that enough small talk? Why are you here?”
His lawyer rolled her eyes. “Says the man who made me wait fourteen hours to have a simple conversation.”
“Will it really be simple?” He set his feet wide and crossed his arms over his chest. “I asked you to do a thing. I didn’t ask you to show up and second-guess my decision.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.” Her phone chimed, and she glanced at the screen quickly before looking back at him. “I’m doing my due diligence. As your attorney.”
“Because I m
ade it clear to you that my mind was made up. The last communication we had was when I told you it was done, the marriage was official. The next thing I know—literally twelve hours later—you’re here, surprise, because you were already in Miami. You want to tell me why? Because I promised Daphne that this would be fine, and now I feel like you’ve shown up to cause trouble, and that’s not okay with me.”
“I’m looking out for your interests,” she said coolly. “That’s what you pay me for.”
He took a deep breath. “I pay you to do to my legal bidding. My interests are my own, and in this particular matter, none of your business.”
“That’s exactly the problem. You think you know what’s what, and you don’t.”
“What’s what? Is that a legal term?”
“You want me to cut to the chase?” She lifted one shoulder. “Fine. Your marriage is not legal. Which I would have told you yesterday, but I didn’t want to cause a scene and you weren’t in a listening mood.”
“What the hell are you talking about? We looked into the rules. It’s legal by the local standards, and that has to be good enough for the guys in New York.”
“It’s not the wedding here that’s the problem.” Gill picked up her phone, tapped in her password, then handed it over. “This is a marriage license from the state of Nevada. Daphne couldn’t marry you. She’s already married.”
Chapter Fourteen
“There has to be some mistake.” Will frowned at the screen. The license was dated nine years ago. Daphne would have been a teenager. “But even if this is a thing that happened…” He squinted at the date. “On New Year’s Eve? Jesus, Gill, I can paint the picture from this. She was a kid, and probably drunk. Ten bucks says she doesn’t remember.”
His lawyer shrugged. “Go and ask her. I have a guy on the ground in Vegas looking into this, but right now, I don’t have any evidence that she is free to marry you now. That renders your contact with her null and void, and as your lawyer—”
White hot anger surged through his body. His well-trained ability to control and moderate visceral reactions had disappeared. He didn’t want to hear any more. “Enough.” He thrust the phone back at her. “Send me that. I’m going to find Daphne. There has to be a good explanation for this.”
He repeated that to himself as he jumped in his Humvee, as he headed into Petite Ciotat, and then did a U-turn when he hit the marina and remembered she was on the other side of town at work right now.
Which meant when he arrived at the bar, he stalked in—and everyone turned and looked at the large, angry man looming in the open doorway.
Definitely not a happy tourist who stumbled in off the beach, looking for a mai tai.
He couldn’t help that. It was a miracle that he could hold his tongue while Daphne warily asked someone to cover for her for a few minutes. That he kept it all in check until they were safely inside a supply closet down the end of a private hallway—and then, when he asked her if she had ever been married before, there was no explanation, good or otherwise.
“Oh. That.” Daphne’s cheeks reddened with two hot spots of guilt.
Will took a big, frustrated step back and bumped into the wall. The space was suddenly too small for him, his anger, and all that had apparently been left out of their rush to the altar.
“Oh, that? I need a few more details, wife.”
“I don’t have any more details,” she whispered. “It was a mistake. I, uh, am not really sure what happened. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s the truth.”
“You don’t forget getting married.”
“I don’t remember getting married.”
“But you know that you did.”
“Sort of.” Her face crumpled. “It was my first attempt at running away from home. I was nineteen. My boyfriend wanted to go to Vegas. It was an awful trip. He was a jackass, he wanted to win big, he didn’t. We spent our last money on getting wasted. Blackout drunk. And the next morning, we were wearing cheap plastic rings. There was a marriage certificate from a chapel I don’t remember going to…”
He felt like a fool. He’d been so confident there was no need to have any background checks done. “What happened next?”
“It was supposed to have been annulled.”
“Supposed to?”
“I don’t…I mean, listen…I left the States for good two years later. I never saw the guy again. He didn’t get on the flight home with me. And I’ve spent the last decade not thinking about him at all. Not even once.”
“Two years is long enough to double-check that you haven’t accidentally stayed hitched to a husband.”
“I know that,” she hissed, her entire face red now. “Jesus, Will, I had forgotten, okay?”
No, it wasn’t okay. None of this was okay. He pushed his back against the hard wall, every muscle in his body tense. The pressure wasn’t enough. He wanted to punch something. He wanted—
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her voice cracked, too, and that was it.
He couldn’t process any of this.
She stepped closer, her lips moving in slow motion. Apologizing again, maybe, but he couldn’t hear it. There was a dull, vicious roar in his ears and the edges of his vision had gone black.
Tunnel vision.
He knew it. Knew how to deal with it. He was a trained soldier, after all. Had been taught how to deal with stress under pressure in a dozen different ways.
And right now, all he could see was her mouth.
Daphne had never felt panic like this before. Adrenaline raced through her veins as rough, incomplete memories from her past flashed in her mind.
A fight with her mother. A cheap flight deal that included three nights in a crappy hotel well off the strip.
Bad sex, too much booze, and the horrifying realizations—that came in stages over the trip—that her older boyfriend didn’t really care for her in the least.
The last time she saw Adrian, he was telling her she was stupid to fly home.
She’d told him to get an annulment and get fucked.
And then she’d honestly never thought of him again. Not only not thought of him, but buried all memories of that time so deep that she’d genuinely forgotten.
Of course Will was angry.
Damn it, she was pissed too. At herself, at Adrian, at the unfairness of the situation. She’d tried apologizing, and that was enough. Will was glaring at her. His hard, unwavering gaze was painful, but she needed to do something more to fix it, because she couldn’t bear it if he left and never looked at her again.
She’d rather have his anger than his back.
“I’ll fix this,” she said finally, the words choppily fitting together. “I’ll find out what happened and—”
Will pushed off the wall and into her space, his body right against hers. His hands came up to her face, stopping her mid-sentence. The whole thing happened in a single moment, and suddenly she couldn’t see his anger, couldn’t feel his gaze, but she didn’t have his back, either.
She had his mouth, hot and demanding, and the welcome press of his body against hers.
She had the taste of him on her tongue, the scrape of his teeth against her lower lip as he tried to pull back before groaning and pulling them back together again.
Relief and need coursed through her body. Yes, this, more. Will.
They bumped against the shelf, then he spun her around and pressed her against the wall, where he’d stood just a minute earlier.
She didn’t understand what was going on, but she never wanted it to stop. His hands on her skin, his thigh rough between her legs. Grinding against him wasn’t enough. She needed to squeeze him tighter, needed less between them.
What was happening?
A bad idea.
A terrible mistake. She was a pro at those. He’d discovered the worst of that this morning, and now they were doing this. Kissing. Grinding. Touching…
Oh, God.
“Yes,” she breathed as his fingers tugged sharply a
t the scooped neck of her t-shirt. She gasped the word again as he traced the edge of her bra, then tugged her tee lower, her cotton-clad breasts popping out of her top.
Yes.
He filled his hand with one mound and her nipple immediately tightened, rubbing hard against his palm.
That felt out-of-this-world right.
Pretty sure it’s wrong. She was so fucked. She couldn’t stop this. She needed his touch. Would take it soft or hard or punishing, however he wanted to give it to her.
“Tell me to stop,” he growled.
“I can’t.”
He buried his face in her neck, sucking and licking at her skin. He bit her, too, and flames leaped inside her as if fed pure by oxygen.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, and he sucked her flesh into his mouth. A mark on her neck, another on her chest.
And then his teeth were on her breast, his mouth wide open, his tongue pushing against the bottom of her nipple through the fabric of her bra.
Don’t ever stop. I’m sorry. Oh God. What have I done? Her thoughts jammed together, like a pile-up on the highway, making too much noise in her head. She breathed his name. “Will…”
He lifted his head. His lips glistened wet and his eyes were glittery. “What do you need?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Do you trust me?” He brushed his mouth against hers.
She nodded mutely.
“Let me make you feel good, okay?”
She banged her head back against the wall. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. She was the sorry one, she was the one who’d messed up. Should she be on her knees, sucking him off?
“I want to take care of you,” he whispered. His hands skimmed down her body. “Ah, fuck yeah. Thank God for skirts.” His voice roughly caught on the words as he ran his fingers up the outside of her thigh. “Is this okay?”
Her heart hammered in her chest. “Yes.”
He held her gaze as he found the edge of her panties, his fingertips light. He circled the whole of her sex first, then up and down the center of her pussy lips, paying close attention every time she reacted to the glancing touch against her clit.