Wilde at Heart

by Tonya Burrows

  “I was trying to be polite, but if you’d rather I put it in terms you understand, then fine. No fucking.”

  “What about oral?”

  “We will not be sharing a bed. Period.”

  She was getting under his skin. She could tell by the tick in the muscle just below his temple as he tried to hang on to his temper. And maybe she was suicidal, but she had to keep poking at him. She wanted to see him lose that mighty control, same as he had earlier in the evening when she’d tied him to the bed. “You don’t have to do it in a bed. I mean, you should know that since you worshiped quite thoroughly at my altar in the hotel’s hallway.”

  His teeth ground together. “I’ve never paid for sex in my life, and I’m not starting now.”

  The words hit her like a slap, and every drop of amusement drained away. If they had sex, and he gave her money to pay back her debt, that would essentially make her a prostitute, wouldn’t it? Her stomach knotted. “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” was all Reece said, his tone heavy with scorn.

  “Oh my God. You think I’ve done it before? Traded my body for money?”

  “What you’ve done in the past is none of my business. Just know it’s not happening with me.”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a complete asshole?” Tears blurred her vision as the car came to a stop. She didn’t wait for the driver to let her out, but gathered her poufy skirts in one hand and shoved open the door, because she was about five seconds from a sobbing fit, and she wasn’t going to let him see how much he’d hurt her. The hotel entrance was busy with people, and a few stopped to stare as she stalked across the pavement and pushed into the front lobby.

  Her intention was to go up to her room, pour herself a glass of wine, and have a good long sulk, maybe make use of the Jacuzzi tub, but that idea was dashed when she turned the corner into the elevator bank and literally ran into her sister and Cam, both still dressed in their wedding clothes. And, crap, there were Vaughn and Greer getting out of one of the elevators. And Jude and his wife Libby. The whole fam damily.

  “Shelby!” Eva grabbed her in a hard hug, then set her back at arm’s length. “Jesus. Where have you been? And…what the hell are you wearing?”

  She sensed Reece approaching behind her and told herself to suck it up when his hand landed on her shoulder. She had a role to play. The sulking would have to wait until later.

  Eva narrowed her eyes at Reece and then her gaze zeroed in on his hand—his left hand—and her eyes bulged. The expression would have been comical if Shelby could work up the energy to be amused. As it was, she just felt…used up.

  Why did they all have to be standing right here, right now?

  “What. The. Fuck?” Eva said, and that was the only warning she gave before winding up and sending her fist into Reece’s jaw. His knees buckled, and he collapsed right there on the hotel’s marble floor.

  The brothers all burst into motion. Greer stepped between them, using his big body as a blockade, and Vaughn yanked Shelby out of the way. Cam locked his arms around Eva and all but lifted his wife off her feet to keep her from going at Reece again. Jude hurried to Reece’s side and propped a shoulder under his arm to help him up.

  “Motherfucker!” Eva spat. “How dare you take advantage of my baby sister!”

  “You assume I’m the one taking advantage.” Reece swayed a little on his feet and touched his quickly bruising jaw. “It was a mutually agreed upon marriage.”

  “What?” Several of the guys said at the same time, and their heads all swiveled in Reece’s direction.

  “Dude. You married Shelby?” Jude said, and burst out laughing. He grabbed his phone from his pocket and started snapping pictures. “Oh yeah. This is going in the family album for sure.”

  Everyone ignored him.

  “I assume this is your doing, because she doesn’t know any better,” Eva said, jabbing a finger in Shelby’s direction.

  All right. Enough of this.

  Shelby crossed to Reece’s side and slid an arm around his waist since he still seemed a bit unsteady on his feet. “Evie, I’m almost thirty. Stop treating me like a child.”

  Eva whirled on her. “Then stop acting like one! Jesus, Shelby. In what world is marrying a man you hardly know adult-like behavior? This isn’t a fucking Disney movie.”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  Eva snorted. “That’d be a first.”

  Shelby flinched. Ouch. To her surprise, Reece’s armed curled around her shoulders and tightened, pulling her against his side.

  He glared at Eva. “Apologize.”

  Eva crossed her arms. “No. She needs to hear it.”

  Their argument was starting to draw a crowd, and Greer made a cutting motion with his hand, ending all discussion. “All of you. Upstairs. Now.”

  Chapter Nine

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Greer demanded and whirled on Reece as soon as the suite’s door shut behind them. Everyone thought it best to keep Eva away from him, so the women had broken off and gone to Cam’s suite, leaving the brothers to duke it out in Reece’s.

  They should have let Eva have another go at him. Getting his ass handed to him by her would be easier than the upcoming conversation. “I was thinking…it’s none of your fucking business.”

  “Goddammit, Reece.” Greer dragged a hand across his jaw, scrubbed it over his military-short hair. “I told you to stay away from her, not go and fucking marry her.”

  Exhausted, his jaw aching, Reece dropped to the couch and stretched out on his back, resting his arm over his eyes. “It’s a business arrangement. Nothing more.”

  Vaughn entered the suite carrying a bag of ice from the machine down the hall. “For your jaw. She whacked you good.” He tossed the bag at Reece’s gut, then smirked over at the rest of their brothers. “And you all thought I had issues.”

  “You do,” Cam said to his twin. “But that’s a discussion for another day.” He squared off in front of the couch and crossed his arms. “What kind of business can you possibly have with Shelby? I mean…Shelby? Really, bro? I get that you had a thing for her, but Jesus Christ.”

  “He must have knocked her up. That’s the only explanation,” Jude said cheerfully and helped himself to a beer from the fridge.

  The suggestion set them all off again like a match to a bomb’s fuse. Reece closed his eyes, pressed the ice to his jaw, and let them rage around him. Was Shelby having any better luck with Eva and Libby?

  Probably not.

  “Holy fuck,” Cam said as he paced back and forth across the room. “Please tell me that’s not the case. Eva will kill you.”

  Vaughn nodded his agreement. “Oh, hell yeah. And slowly.”

  Cam groaned. “Yeah and then she’ll ask me to help her hide the body. I don’t want to make that choice between my wife and my brother.”

  Reece sat up. “Shelby’s not pregnant.” At least, as far as he knew. Damn. Maybe that was the reason she pushed for marriage? “Or if she is, it’s not mine.”

  Cam scowled. “You’re gonna play it like that? I’ve never known you to shuck your responsibility.”

  “And I’m not now. I’m telling you she can’t be pregnant because we’ve never fucked, all right?”

  “What about earlier tonight?” Greer asked softly, finally breaking his silence.

  Jesus. Could this conversation get any more uncomfortable? “It was a blow job. Now can we drop this?”

  A murmur of awkward agreement went around the room, and the five of them sat in brooding silence for several minutes.

  Cam scrubbed his hands over his head. “Just…why?”

  Now came the tricky part. How did he explain the marriage without divulging the blackmail and the potential for Wilde Security’s financial ruin?

  Reece met his brother’s gaze. “Cam, you know me. You know I always have a reason, and you just have to trust that I know exactly what I’m doing. Like I said, it’s a business arrangement, and when I can tell you the whys o
f it, I will. But until then, I need you all to play it like we’re really married.”

  “You are legally married?” Greer asked.

  “Yes, we are. But for the sake of appearances, it needs to look like more than the business arrangement it is. It needs to look real.”

  Cam paced away. “This is so fucked up.” He stood in front of the windows for a moment. Then with a shake of his head, he spun back to face the group. He held up a finger in warning. “Don’t hurt her, Reece. You hurt her, you’ll hurt Eva, and then we’re gonna have problems.”

  If anyone was going to get hurt in this whole fucked up situation, he had a feeling it’d be him—but he wasn’t about to say that to his brothers. “I’m not going to hurt her.”

  The room settled into another uneasy silence.

  Finally, Jude held up the beer in a mock toast. “Let’s all just take a moment here to appreciate the fact that I am no longer the family fuckup.”

  A chorus of groans rang out, and Vaughn smacked him upside the head.

  Even Greer cracked a small smile. “Nobody can take that hard-won title from you, little brother.”

  Jude shrugged. “But you gotta admit, Reece is doing a damn fine job of trying. And Vaughn’s not far behind. Hell, Greer, even you’ve been in the running lately. A distant third, but still third place. I should have trophies made up.”

  More groans. And just like that, everything was normal again. Reece had to admire Jude’s ability to break the tension in any situation. For the longest time he’d thought his youngest brother was little more than the family clown—annoying, somewhat scatterbrained, and all but useless during a crisis. He’d been wrong. Jude wasn’t an idiot, and he wielded his sharp wit like a weapon, but also knew how to use humor as a kind of glue to bring the five of them back together after a fight. It was a respectable talent, one not many people had.

  Shelby had that same talent, he realized with a jolt of surprise. But somehow he doubted she was using it now over in Cam and Eva’s suite. If anything, Libby was playing the peacemaker between the sisters. And for some idiotic reason, he wanted to walk over there and stand in front of Shelby, use himself like a human shield to keep away all the hurtful things Eva was probably saying. The kinds of things he knew too well because he’d said them enough times to Jude over the years.

  He watched his youngest brother mercilessly poke fun at Greer, who sat there and took it with a half amused, half exasperated expression on his hard face. It was like watching a grizzly bear patiently enduring the antics of a rambunctious cub.

  Reece had never been patient when it came to Jude. Still wasn’t, although he was working on it. And he’d already apologized for it, but…

  Suddenly, it didn’t seem enough.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Jude’s right. I fucked up.”

  And there went the moment of levity. If Jude’s superpower was humor, then he must be the villain of this story, the anti-Jude, sucking the funny out of everything.

  The room went silent again.

  “Well,” Cam said after an uncomfortable amount of time. “I’d better go make sure the girls aren’t killing one another. Reece, you should probably stay out of Eva’s way for…ah, the next decade or so.”

  “Unless you want to be KO’d again,” Jude said. “She knocked you flat.”

  “Yeah, man, what happened to all those black belts you have?” Vaughn asked.

  “I don’t hit women.” Unless it was his open hand on Shelby’s gorgeously heart-shaped ass.

  And, fuck, that was not an appropriate thought, given the circumstances.

  Vaughn grunted. “You could have subdued her.”

  Yes, he could have, but he’d deserved the punch for the way he’d spoken to Shelby in the limo. He was an asshole.

  And he owed her an apology.

  Reece knew when he was being avoided, and Shelby had gone into full-blown avoidance mode since the disastrous announcement of their marriage to the family. He’d tried to corner her in the casino, and again during a tense dinner with the family, but she always managed to escape before he could talk to her.

  This marriage scheme wasn’t going to work if she kept avoiding him.

  But now, as they boarded the plane back to D.C., she wasn’t going to have a choice but to talk to him.

  He boarded first and waited, watching the line of passengers until she finally appeared. She spotted him, too, but then pretended to concentrate on looking for her seat.

  He caught her arm before she passed. “Where are you going?”

  She didn’t even glance at him, stared straight ahead. “To my seat, if that’s okay with you.”

  He motioned to the empty spot beside him. “This is your seat.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s in coach—” She glanced down at her boarding pass, then up at the number over the empty seat. Scowling, she plopped down. “You changed my ticket. I know I didn’t buy a first class seat.”

  “Yeah, I did.” He lowered his voice. “We’re married now, and we need to act it in case someone’s watching.”

  “I really doubt anyone is.”

  “Someone was in the hallway at the hotel.”

  She opened her mouth but pressed her lips together a second later without uttering a sound. She dragged her bag up onto her lap and started digging through it.

  Shit. That had been the wrong thing to say. He scrambled for another conversational thread. If he could just get her talking…

  “Uh, how did it go with Eva?”

  “It didn’t. She was already pissed about Mom and then we sprung this marriage on her and… Well, she’s not speaking to me.” She pulled an iPod and large set of pink earphones from her bag. “And I don’t want to talk to you.”

  Damn. Tiptoeing around the ugly words still hanging in the air between them wasn’t getting him anywhere. He should’ve known it wouldn’t. Shelby was nothing if not direct.

  “Hey.” He stopped her from putting the earphones on and blocking him out. “Will you let me apologize?”

  She heaved a sigh and finally looked at him, one eyebrow arched.

  And now that he had her attention, the nice little speech he’d composed in his mind flew away, leaving him grasping for whatever words he could find. “Uh, what I said to you in the limo was wrong. I’d had a lot to drink and was overwhelmed—and-and that’s not an excuse. I’ve never thought of you as the type of woman to sell your body, and I’m sorry for insinuating that you are.”

  “It’s okay.” She lifted a shoulder in a shrug meant to be dismissive, but he saw through it. He’d hurt her deeply with his careless remark, and he had no idea how to make it up to her.

  “No.” He reached out, covered her hands with his. “It’s not okay. I was an ass.”

  “Yeah, but you’re also not that far off from the truth. I mean, you’re paying me to be married to you.” She released a humorless laugh. “New low for me. It feels…sleazy. I really don’t want it. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I don’t want your money, so let’s get the annulment when we get home, and I’ll figure something else out.”

  His heart sank. Surprising, since he’d been conflicted about this plan from the get-go. “No.”

  Her eyes popped wide. “What?”

  “We’ve taken it this far already. Might as well see it through. I need your help with this blackmail problem.”

  She huffed out a breath and leaned back in her seat. “I can’t—”

  “Please.” He squeezed her hand. “And if you’re not comfortable accepting money from me, then at least take the protection of my name for the next sixty days. I don’t know much about The Headhunters, except that they’ve been around for decades, and I doubt they’ve outlasted their competition by being stupid.” Even though the motorcycle club was a criminal organization, they were also a business. And if Reece knew anything for sure, it was business. “They’re not going to attack a well-known businessman’s wife. Too much risk with not enough payout.”

  Shelb
y said nothing in response until the plane pushed away from the gate and the flight attendants started their safety spiel. She glanced away from him, but not before he saw a glimmer in her eyes, something dangerously close to fear. “I don’t want my past hurting you. I’ve…done a lot of things I’m not proud of.”

  “Shelby.” He waited until she lifted her gaze to his. Then he gave her the truth, point-blank. “Wilde Security is not going to survive if I don’t get this contract. We’re operating in the red, and it’s dragging DMW Systems down with it. And I can guarantee my deal with Irving James will not happen if that video or those photos leak. I need your help with this.”

  She plucked at the cord of her headphones. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll help, but I’m warning you, it’s going to get messy and chaotic, and I know how much you hate that.” Without another word, she put on her headphones, closed her eyes, and leaned her head back against the seat, blocking him out.

  He sat back and turned his gaze to the window, watched the ground drop out from under them as the plane took flight.

  She was right. He did hate mess. He hated chaos. And his life had been nothing but since she flounced into it.

  Jesus. He hoped he was making the right call here.

  Chapter Ten

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Reece’s apartment was…sterile. It was the only word Shelby could think of when she stepped through the door. He’d done nothing to the plain white walls. His furniture was black leather, and the end tables were all glass and metal and sharp angles. A huge island with a breakfast bar separated the kitchen and living room, and the space off the kitchen meant for a formal dining room was empty. The floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room offered breathtaking views of the city, which was about the only thing this apartment had going for it.

  She looked as Reece. “It’s cold in here.”

  “I’ll turn up the heat.”

  “No, not temperature-wise. Just…unloved. It’s not a comfortable space.”

  His brow wrinkled and he opened his mouth, no doubt to ask what the fuck she was talking about. She waved a hand, cutting him off before he made a sound. “Never mind. Where am I staying?”