Reece whirled on her. “We’re not getting married.”
“Just hear me out, okay? I know it’s nuts. We’re east and west. But you need the blackmail threat to go away and if we’re married, those pictures and video become sleazy. No longer blackmail material. You can secure your business deal and then we can get it quietly annulled and go our separate ways.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Opened. Closed. Like a fish gasping for breath. Finally, he shook his head and muttered, “It would solve my problem, but what’s in it for you?”
Oh, bugger. She hadn’t thought this far ahead. She should have known he’d not go blithely along with such an insane plan without asking questions first, but how much to tell him?
What’s in it for me, you ask? Well, if we do this, I can unobtrusively get all up in your business, give Jason the information he wants, and maybe, just maybe, he will finally let me go.
Yeah, no. The truth was 100 percent out of the question. She bit down on her lower lip, glanced toward the door, and settled on a version of the truth. “I, uh, kinda need money.”
His eyes darkened and he shrugged off the hand she’d set on his arm. “I should have known.”
“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t ask but I…” Okay, deep breath and spit it out. “I lied to everybody. I, um, kinda own The Bean Gallery.”
“You what?”
“Yeah. Surprise.” She tried for a smile, but it withered under his blistering stare. “I borrowed money from some bad people and bought it when the owners put it up for sale in November, then I told Eva I got a job there.”
Reece pinched the bridge of his nose. “Let me get this straight. You bought a business when you have zero management experience?”
She shrugged. When he put it that way, it did sound ridiculous, but she was a fast learner and until the arson, The Bean Gallery had been doing just fine. “I thought it would be a good way for me to go straight and do something right for once, but now it’s gone and I don’t have a way to pay back the money I owe.”
God, her stomach hurt. The lies came much too easily now.
“Shelby…” Clearly exasperated, he dragged a hand through his hair, tousling the neat strands. “What about insurance? Surely you had the store insured.”
“Yes, but the people I borrowed from…” She motioned to the door behind them and let Reece draw his own conclusions about why Jason had been following her. “They’re not content to wait for an insurance payout and as long as there’s an arson investigation going on, I’m not going to see a dime.”
Reece said nothing for a long time. “So the man chasing you…?”
“Yes. That’s why.” It was the truth. Mostly. Or at least a version of it. But, God, she needed Reece to believe because this half-truth was her only way out. “They sent him after me. I…think they want to make an example out of me.”
“You think?” he demanded. Then after a beat of silence, asked, “How much?”
“One hundred thousand.”
“Jesus Christ, Shelby.”
“C’mon, your car’s worth more than that. It’s pocket change to you.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, sighed. “How bad are these people?”
Oh, God. She didn’t want to tell him.
His eyes narrowed. “Shelby?”
“They’re…” She winced. “The Headhunters.”
“The motorcycle gang? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Mom used to date one of their guys.” Another half-truth. She was digging herself into a deeper hole, but she couldn’t tell him the full truth and wasn’t that the story of her life? “I grew up around them, and they seemed like a safe bet.”
“A safe bet? Jesus. You wouldn’t know safe if it bit you on the ass.”
“And you wouldn’t know spontaneity if it smacked you upside the head,” she shot back.
Reece made a low grumbling sound in his throat and paced away from her. A few seconds later, he whirled back. “The Headhunters are a criminal organization, no different than the mob. Would you have borrowed the money from the mob?”
“No! Of course not. I have a brain.”
His expression clearly asked, Then why the fuck don’t you use it? But to his credit, he didn’t say it out loud. “They’re absolutely going to make an example out of you if you don’t pay up. That’s their M.O.”
“Yeah, not a newsflash. Why do you think I’m running from them? I like my legs unbroken, thank you very much. Even more than that, I’d really like to keep breathing for the next fifty or so years.”
“All right,” he said abruptly, startling her.
“Whoa, wait. Was that a let’s-get-hitched all right or—”
“Yes. As much as it pains me to admit this, you have a point. Marriage will solve my problem until I can figure out who’s behind the blackmail.”
Shelby exhaled hard. Okay, Reece didn’t sound thrilled about it, but he did agree it was their best option. The sense of relief that swamped her left her lightheaded, almost giddy. She might be able to pull this off after all. Solve both of their problems and keep herself alive and out of prison. Maybe after this was over, she’d even have a shot at a real life, away from people like Jason, away from the world she was born into, the world she wanted out of but kept getting dragged back to.
“But,” Reece added and her heart dropped. “If we want to pull this off, you have to stop being…” He motioned to her with both hands.
“Stop…what? Being me?”
“Exactly. My wife can’t have blue hair and tattoos and piercings and…all of this. It has to go.”
Shelby somehow managed to keep her wince inward and gazed down at her inked arms. “I can’t get rid of my tattoos.”
“You can cover them up.”
But…she liked her tattoos. She liked being her. Well, for the most part. And the thought of changing herself for even a little while caused her stomach to twist. Changing to please a man was far too much like her mother for comfort. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all.
Except what other choice did she have? Reece was her golden ticket, her shot at getting out of all this crazy and making herself a better life. If she had to change to get his help, she’d do it. She’d just think of it like a temporary witness protection program.
“Okay.” She worked up a bright smile that hurt her cheeks. “Let’s do this.”
Sometimes when life takes an unexpected turn, it leaves you awed and excited. Other times, it just leaves you feeling off-kilter and queasy, like you stepped off a carnival ride.
Reece felt as if he hadn’t yet gotten off that ride. The world was whirling around him at nauseating speeds and he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe—
What the hell was he doing?
He stood at the jukebox-slash-altar, next to the overly cheerful Elvis, with his stomach doing corkscrews. In the ninety minutes since Shelby had disappeared with Elvis’s assistant, he’d woken up his shocked lawyer back in D.C. and had a prenup drawn up, which he then gave to the assistant to take to Shelby. He may have lost his mind, but he wasn’t about to take any chances when it came to his companies. Not when his brothers and one hundred other people counted on him to keep their paychecks coming.
The prenup came back signed and was filed along with the marriage license and—holy fuck, was he really going to do this?
Yes.
He never pictured himself getting married but, yes, he was going to go through with it. He couldn’t keep paying the blackmail. Without a doubt there was another email already sitting in his inbox, demanding more money. And he couldn’t very well leave Shelby in danger when he was more than able to help. So she was right—this was a win-win short-term solution for the both of them. Shelby would get her money, and he’d have time to figure out the identity of his blackmailer.
A business arrangement. That was all this was. They’d do the ceremony thing and then outline some rules and—
The doors at the back of the room opened. Shelby
stepped through and everything stopped. His racing thoughts. His flipping stomach. All the nerves eased away, and a strange sense of peace filled him.
She wore a classy 1950s-style dress in bridal white, but she had added a splash of color with a poufy underskirt that matched the purple in her hair. The ensemble screamed “Shelby” and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. How she managed to inject her own style into this was beyond him, but he admired her for it.
Too bad she’d have to tone it down once they returned home. His smile faded at the thought. It wasn’t fair to ask her to change herself, but it was the only way this cockeyed scheme had any hope of working.
Next to him, Elvis broke out into song. It took him a second to place the lyrics: “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
Jesus.
By the time Shelby reached them, she was laughing so hard tears streamed from her eyes. “Oh my God. You should see your face right now. Priceless.”
Reece leaned toward her, lowered his voice. “Why is he singing?”
She dropped her voice to match his. “Because he’s Elvis.”
“He could have picked a different song.”
“Like what? ‘Jailhouse Rock’?”
Reece groaned. “Can we get this over with?” he asked, interrupting Elvis halfway through the second verse.
To his credit, Elvis didn’t miss a beat as he switched into officiant mode. “Do you have the rings?”
Fuck. No. Rings hadn’t even crossed his mind.
But there was the assistant carrying a box shaped like a pink Cadillac. Inside were two rings, both plain silver except for the colorful abalone shell inlay around each band.
“They had a selection of rings here,” Shelby said, sounding uncharacteristically unsure of herself. “I picked these out while you were dealing with the paperwork. I mean, I know this is just for show…but are they okay?”
He accepted the thinner band—Shelby’s ring—from the assistant and marveled at the glint of light off the shell inlay. All the tiny swirls of silver and green and purple and black. It managed to be both practical and fanciful, and didn’t that describe the pair of them to a T?
He picked up her hand and slid the ring into place. “It’s perfect.”
Her smile lit the room and, yeah, in that second, it was perfect.
Chapter Eight
Shelby climbed into the back of the limo provided to take them to their hotel. It was just as chintzy as the rest of the wedding had been, with blue suede 50s decor, and a gaudy JUST MARRIED sign on the back window. She kind of loved it.
Reece, on the other hand…
She settled into the leather seat across from him. He was adorably rumpled, his hair tousled, his tie askew, his jacket wrinkled. If she was pressed to give a name to his appearance she’d call it “shell-shocked,” or maybe “flabbergasted” was a better term. When he reached to open the mini fridge and spotted the ring on his finger, he froze, stared at the band for several heartbeats, then grabbed the complimentary bottle of champagne instead of the water he’d been reaching for. He popped the cork and downed half the contents in one breath, his throat working with each swallow.
Damn. That was sexy.
The temperature in the car inched into uncomfortable territory, and Shelby shifted in her seat, crossed her legs under the skirt of her dress. Sure, all of the Wilde brothers were good looking, but Reece? With his long, lean muscles and cutting hazel eyes, he was sex walking around in a perfectly tailored suit. She’d always thought so, since she first saw him at The Bean Gallery, back before she knew he was Cam’s brother.
And now they were married.
Weird.
She twisted her ring around on her finger and couldn’t take his silence a second longer. “So. Interesting night.”
He made a noncommittal sound and sat back, loosening his tie with a quick tug that did absolutely nada to douse the firestorm of lust building inside her.
What would he do if she crawled over there and straddled his lap? He was her husband now, after all. Wasn’t that expected behavior on a honeymoon?
She entertained the fantasy of hot limo sex for a few minutes, but never made a move toward him. She knew better. They may be legally married, but it wasn’t real. Yes, they had a mad case of lust-at-first-sight, but there was no love here. The optimist in her liked to think there might have been something more between them if circumstances were different, but this farce had ended any possibility of that. And she wasn’t quite sure where that left them.
Reece set the bottle aside and finally met her gaze. “We need to figure out the rules for this…marriage.”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Of course he’d want rules. He liked black and white. No shades of gray. And definitely no spontaneous bursts of color. What a boring life he must lead. “Oh, I don’t know. I thought we’d wing it.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I don’t wing anything.”
“You did a good job of it today.” She held up her ring finger, wiggled it for emphasis. “Unless you planned to put a ring on it when you got up this morning?”
Groaning, he pinched the bridge of his nose like he had a headache. “Fuck me. What have I done?”
She would not let those words hurt. Nope. Not at all. Rubber and glue and all that bouncing. “Hey, if you’re having second thoughts, we can go get it annulled right now. Claim temporary insanity. I bet it will go down as the shortest marriage in history. Even by Vegas standards.”
“No.” He dropped his hands to his lap. “We’ll see this through. We have sixty days to get an annulment. That’s time enough to solve both of our problems.”
“What if you don’t catch your blackmailer by then?”
His jaw hardened. “I will.” He left no room for argument in his tone. It was as if a conversational wall had dropped around the subject with a big sign that read, “Off fucking limits.”
O-kay then. Reece was so buttoned-up and reserved she sometimes forgot he was a Wilde. None of those brothers were soft, weak men. Even the family geek had the blood of a warrior pumping through his veins, and the glimpse of that side of him discomforted her. She’d never before lumped Reece in the same mental category with his cavemen brothers, but she’d be sure not to make that mistake in the future. He was just as dangerous as the rest of them, and it’d serve her well to remember that.
For the first time since this insanity started, she began having second thoughts. It seemed like such a good idea a few hours ago, a way to solve a whole host of problems, some of which she hadn’t told Reece about. But her worst fails always seemed like good ideas at first. Like The Bean Gallery, for example. And…other things.
A sudden case of nerves ate at her. She fidgeted—couldn’t seem to stop—and smoothed out the fabric of her skirt. “Um. What kind of rules?”
Leaning forward, he linked his hands between his knees. “If we are going to do this, we have to go all out and play it like a real marriage, like we’re madly in love, or it won’t be convincing.”
“Even with family?”
He winced, showing a chink in the armor he seemed to have drawn around himself since leaving the chapel. “I’m not looking forward to that.”
“They’ll know we didn’t magically fall in love in the past six hours and decide to elope.”
“Agreed. But we will have to make them understand our reasoning so they’ll play along. Though I’d rather not divulge the details about the blackmail. My brothers will go into fight mode, and this situation requires a more delicate touch than their slash-bang-boom method of dealing with problems.”
She laughed. Her sister really was the perfect fit for the Wilde family. That was exactly Eva’s method of dealing, too, which only highlighted how very different Shelby was from them all. She preferred to laugh away her problems and, if that didn’t work, she ran away and remade herself. Still, she could play the part of a Wilde woman for two months.
Maybe.
She also leaned forward. “If you d
on’t want to tell them about the blackmail, then I’d prefer they not know I borrowed money to buy The Bean Gallery.”
He scowled. “With the arson investigation, it’s going to come out whether we tell them or not.”
“The same can be said for your blackmail.” When the scowl only deepened, she sighed. “I know, okay? Just…not yet. Please.”
“Fine. I won’t say a word.”
She held up her hand, pinky outstretched. “No talk of your blackmail or my money issues. Pinky swear.”
He stared at her, unblinking. “You’re not serious.”
“Yes I am.” She wiggled her hand in the air. “In my world, pinky swears are as binding as a legal contract.”
“You and Jude must be from the same world,” he muttered, but hooked his pinky through hers. “Okay?”
She nodded, satisfied, and relaxed into her seat again. “Any other rules, Oh Great Rule-maker?”
And there was the scowl again. “When we return home, you’ll take my name. Doesn’t have to be a legal change, but in public you’ll be Shelby Wilde. You’ll also have to move in.”
“Whoa, hold up. The name thing? Whatever. A rose by any other name and all that. But moving in? You do know I’m a package deal, right? I have a parrot, and he lives where I live.”
“A parrot?” Reece sighed heavily. “Loud. Colorful. Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”
“He’s an African gray, for your information, and a good bird. Very affectionate.”
“Fine. We’ll make it work, but I can’t guarantee the cat won’t try to eat him.”
Of course he’d have a cat. They were a match made in pet-owner heaven. “Aloof, cold. Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”
He didn’t acknowledge her mocking tone. “You can keep your bird in the guest room where you’ll be sleeping.”
“Wow. Okay. That was about as subtle as an anvil falling from the sky.”
“You’re my wife in name only and we won’t be, uh…” He cleared his throat. “Consummating this marriage.”
“I didn’t know anyone used the word ‘consummating’ anymore.”
Wilde at Heart Page 6