Her Accidental Husband

by Mallory, Ashlee

  He hung up the phone and picked up the last gordita on the plate and sank his teeth into it. What did that make…five? No sense letting good food go to waste. Especially since he couldn’t take another bite of those chocolate bars Payton bought that morning after taking her first bite and falling in love.

  He shook his head again at the thought that any mother would force starvation on an already gorgeous and healthy daughter so she looked the right way for a wedding. It made him doubly grateful for the warm, loving parents he and his siblings were graced with. Who accepted all of them for who they were—although, since Dominic found Kate, there had been more “helpful” hints from his mom about not getting too caught up in finding success he didn’t have someone to share it with.

  But to tell the truth, none of the women he’d dated had sparked that interest in him. Sparked that need to be with them longer than it takes a construction project to run through to completion, to want to plan a future with someone who, in twenty years, he’d want to snuggle up against him in bed—ideally naked.

  Not until recently.

  Hell and damnation. He was not going to think about Payton that way. He couldn’t. Not because there was anything wrong with her, contrary to what her mother may have ingrained her to believe, but because…he didn’t have anything to offer someone like Payton.

  Not yet.

  Not until he could prove that he and his company were as good as Dick and Brad Eastman, like the Vaughns and Vaughn Communications. Not until he could rest assured that another person, someone like Brad Eastman, couldn’t just walk into his life and steal away his happiness again.

  Until he had everything to offer to someone like Payton.

  Chapter Seven

  With Cruz at the wheel, Payton went to work syncing his phone’s Bluetooth to the car’s radio. She stared at the phone, waiting as it tried to find a connection.

  Four hours. They were still four hours from Puerto Vallarta, and if she didn’t have some recognizable music soon, she was going to go insane. Well, that or be forced to start singing “99 bottles of beer.” Maybe even the song about finding a peanut.

  Cruz would be the one ready to go insane. But that would only serve him right for the little stunt he tried before. Although, now that she’d had some time to nurse her wounds, she was willing to put it behind her. This deal was important to Cruz. To his family. And he at least came clean.

  It also had made her face a few things about herself. About her feelings toward Brad.

  Finally, the connection took, and she went to the “music for the road” playlist she’d put together.

  Hmm. This really is an art. Choosing the right stuff. Which one to lead with…

  She spotted a title and smiled.

  The speakers shuddered for a moment as she turned the music up and then AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” blared out.

  She looked over at Cruz, waiting for a reaction.

  He gave her a sideways glance. And smiled. “Okay. I’ll give you that one. Solid choice. But if I hear any country, it’s going off.”

  “Hey. There’s nothing wrong with country music, buddy. The old clichés of drunk assholes bemoaning the loss of their wives and dead dogs is not even close to true.”

  He guffawed.

  Is that a challenge?

  She brought up the music store on his cell phone and typed in the next musical choice. This was too much fun.

  When the AC/DC song was over, Brad Paisley’s twangy “I’m Gonna Miss You” streamed next. She hadn’t been able to resist but already had another song waiting to follow it up.

  “I’m going to be sure to send you my phone bill from this little trip of ours.”

  “Every dollar will be worth it,” she said smugly and watched as he rolled his eyes as Brad sang about a man choosing fishing over his wife. But there was still the tiniest of smiles.

  “Which actually reminds me,” he said, clearing his throat and turning the music down to a more manageable level. “Kate called earlier to check in on you. She mentioned that your mother reached her. Seems pretty determined to speak with you.”

  “I’ll just bet she is.” Payton was reminded once again why she’d chucked her phone, and any lingering regret flew away.

  “You okay?” he asked, a note of concern in his voice from her continuing silence. She noticed his tanned fingers gripping the steering wheel. Concern for her?

  She took a breath and tossed her head back, this time smiling a full sincere smile. “I am. Really. And if my mother knew what was good for her she’d book herself into a spa somewhere for one of her bi-monthly serenity checks.” Something her mother did anytime Payton resisted her attempts to control her life. “Thank you, though. For your concern.”

  “Oh. And Kate also wanted you to know that she’s really looking forward to your girls’ night out but we’re not to kill ourselves trying to get to the hotel in time.”

  At this she laughed outright. “Did she actually tell you that?”

  “Um, something along those lines, I think.”

  “You’re almost as bad of a liar as she is. No, Kate thinks my plan is to paint the town red and all that, as I’ve convinced her, but I know my best friend better than anyone and I know that a night in, just the girls, is closer to heaven for her. My real plan is to surprise her later tonight. Not to say I don’t have a few surprises, but they’ll all occur in the safety of her suite.”

  “It’s good to see it’s not only me that you like to torture.”

  “Nope,” she fluttered her eyes at him. “It’s not just you. But you do bring new challenges to my endeavors.”

  He laughed out loud at that and turned his attention back to the road. His shoulders relaxed, his shades on. Payton tried to resist staring at him. It was difficult to remember why she didn’t want him turning to her and leaning across the way, placing a kiss on her lips, feeling his breath on her, his fingers in her hair, maybe lower…

  “Tell me about you and Kate. How did you two meet?”

  Damn. Shifting gears…

  “From what I know about Kate, I can’t imagine you two were playing in the same social circles. Didn’t you go to some ridiculously expensive private school?”

  “Not by choice, but yes.” Any place would have been better than one filled with stuck-up snots high on their own self-importance. Snots who’d been her friends—or what she knew of friendship up to that point. Until she met Kate. “Kate transferred in sixth grade.”

  He threw her a dubious look. “Kate attended your uppity school?”

  “You might have noticed that my best friend is very driven. Brilliant. Hardworking.” Something that Payton had always admired. And the way Kate stood up for herself and anyone else she cared about. “She was awarded one of the few financial scholarships the school handed out every year, something I count my blessings for every day. I can’t imagine what my life would be like if Kate hadn’t come into it.”

  A Sheryl Crow song came on but she was barely paying attention as she remembered that day seventeen years ago. She smiled. “You should have seen Kate then. She took herself so seriously—kind of like you. Always had an answer to every question asked, and it wasn’t hard for her to earn a few haters among the other kids. Kids who were ruthless in their taunting, mostly about things like her Payless shoes, since the uniforms eliminated the possibility of much teasing on that score. She had no reason to like any of us.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me? I wasn’t anywhere as smart as Kate, but I did okay. Academically and socially, since I was able to stay up on the latest fashions, thanks to Emily Vaughn, who actually hired me my own personal stylist. Don’t ask.

  “Anyhow, it was probably just a month after she’d transferred. Poor little old me, with my big first world worries, was crying in the bathroom because I’d heard Heather Little bragging about kissing the boy who was supposedly my boyfriend at the dance the Saturday before. Not important in the big scheme of things and, like I said
, Kate had no reason to be nice to any of us. But all the same, it was Kate who found me and who tried to comfort me.”

  “Yeah. Sounds like her.”

  The soft admiration in his tone gave her the oddest twinge of what could only be described as jealousy. Kate was wonderful. But could Cruz ever see her, Payton, in the same light?

  “Kate not only got the tears stopped, but after she told me she’d seen Rob just that morning with a cold sore the size of Mount St. Helens on his upper lip and that Heather may soon have more than a story to share about her special night, I almost bust my gut laughing. And just like that I went from sobbing to laughing on what had felt like, moments before, the worst day of my life.”

  “Don’t leave me hanging.”

  She looked at him in confusion and he smiled, giving her that squishy feeling again in her belly. Thank goodness she couldn’t see his eyes through those lenses or she might have actually purred.

  “Heather’s lip?” he asked in clarification.

  She smiled. “It swelled to the size of a small apricot. Kate and I have been best friends ever since. She’s my family. And right now, I’m about all she’s got in this world, which is why it’s so important that I be there at her side on the biggest day of her life.”

  “You’ll be there. No worries. And I’m betting right now, with my sisters’, mom’s, and all the aunts’ attention, she’s having second thoughts about having any more family.”

  “Not possible. This is everything she’s ever wanted. And I couldn’t be happier for her—” Her voice broke off unexpectedly and she felt tears well in her eyes. She was happy. But all of a sudden, seeing Kate about to be welcomed into this large unknown family, she felt a little lonely. Would Kate still need her as much?

  Cruz’s heavy hand settled on her shoulder. So solid. Warm. It felt like he was sending electromagnetic waves through her body. She willed herself not to lean her head against it. “You’re a good friend, Payton. You have every right to feel a little sad that things are changing.”

  She wiped a tear away, already done with it. “I am happy for her. Really. Just a little sorry for me is all. What if she doesn’t—doesn’t need me anymore?”

  “Never gonna happen. You’re pretty irreplaceable.”

  She cracked a grin even as her ovaries squeezed at the raspy way his voice had dropped. “Are you saying that as a compliment?”

  “Take it as you will,” he said and smiled back. Something she definitely liked on him, even if it turned her into Ms. Crazypants.

  The beginning strain of “I Like Big Butts” flooded the cab and she laughed at Cruz’s pained expression.

  She was going to have to work on getting him to smile a lot more often. It really worked for him.

  The view outside the passenger window had been spectacular as the freeway curved and looped up and down once they’d began the westward trek away from Guadalajara, and Cruz was glad he’d given in and let Payton have a turn at the wheel again. It was nice to sit back and enjoy things without having to be in control.

  The rising hills had begun to space themselves apart, and he could see the bluish tinge of the rows upon rows of agave in the fields nestled between them.

  They’d passed most of the past few hours in a comfortable silence. Just enjoying the view or deep in their own thoughts. Payton hummed almost absentmindedly to the latest tune, something that sounded an awful lot like country music and yet…he didn’t totally hate it.

  Just like he was finding that after all this time, he didn’t totally hate Payton either. In fact, maybe he never had. It had been easier to fight the unsettling attraction he’d felt for her since he first saw her by almost demonizing her, assuming she was as shallow and selfish as she was pretty.

  But now he had another image in his mind. An image of two twelve-year-old girls becoming fast friends and giggling in the school restroom. Of an overbearing mother who tried to mold her daughter into who she thought the girl should be and the girl who, despite that, went off to college and studied things as gauche as environmental and earth science. Payton was a secret tree hugger. At that thought, he smiled.

  She was definitely not what he had expected.

  “How much longer until we make it to Puerto Vallarta?” Payton asked, pulling him from his thoughts.

  He glanced at his watch. Just after three. “We should be there in about three and a half hours. Which is actually something of a relief. The last couple of hours of driving can be pretty treacherous. It’s a two-lane highway that winds through the mountains, and I wouldn’t want to experience that without daylight.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, just staring ahead at the view of the sun on the fields outside. “It really is beautiful here. I could almost forget everything that’s waiting for me back home,” Payton said, her tone wistful. “I’m going to have to come down here again and really explore the area when I’m not rushed for time.”

  Hearing the sadness in her tone at returning home, the place where she should be happy, rankled. Not sure of her reception to his question, he started cautiously. “I have a pretty good idea what it must have been like growing up with your mother.”

  “Ha! You don’t even know the half of it.” But she was still smiling.

  “I can only imagine. You never really mention anything about your father, though. Where does he fit into everything?”

  “My father doesn’t fit in anywhere. Not in my life.” The brightness and warmth had left her voice as she looked ahead at the road. “His life is his business. Vaughn Communication is first and foremost in his life. His mistress of the month is a close second, and then somewhere after that is my mother and then me. I’m frankly surprised he even managed to pencil my wedding into his busy life.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.” Cruz’s own father might no be as ebullient and openly demonstrative with his emotions as his mom, but he loved his children in a more quiet, subdued way.

  “I assure you it is. At my sweet sixteen party—a party I hadn’t wanted, by the way, but Emily Vaughn saw it as a necessity for any young woman coming of age—he was supposed to lead me in the first dance. It was all arranged, what song the band would play and I’d even been practicing with Kate so I wouldn’t be a total spaz in front of him. Then he had a last minute trip to San Diego that couldn’t be rearranged. I danced with my Uncle Walter instead. It was pretty humiliating, even if I was only half surprised.”

  He didn’t know much about a world where sixteen-year-old girls had large parties with bands, but he did know something of teenage girls—having lived with two sisters. As much as they might pretend they didn’t care, these things were important. It obviously left a lasting impression on Payton.

  “So what is it I’m seeing planted out in the fields?” she asked, clearly ready for a change in topics.

  “Agave plants. Or what you might know better as the fruit that will soon become tequila consumed across the world.”

  She shuddered.

  “What, you’re not a fan?”

  “Only if you have limes—lots of limes—and a beer to chase it down.”

  “Don’t say that around my mom. She’ll brand you a heretic. Out here, tequila is an experience, almost a religion.” At New Year’s his mother usually brought the good stuff out and passed it around so they could all toast to prosperity in the coming year.

  “Let’s just say that six shots followed by a soak in a hot tub was not my brightest choice in college.”

  She turned a devilish grin his way, her hair blowing in the wind from her open window. It put an image in his mind of a younger but just as mischievous Payton Vaughn drinking shots in a bikini. A white bikini. She’d have been something to look at. Still was. “No. Probably not,” he said, savoring the image.

  “How about you? You haven’t said where you went to college.”

  Definitely not as scintillating of a conversation, but probably safer. “Not much to say. I worked with my dad out at the construction sites through
high school until I was in my early twenties. By then I was more aware of the many opportunities that were ours to take, but we didn’t have the wherewithal as how to do it. Don’t get me wrong. My dad’s a pretty sharp guy. But his goal had always been supporting our family, providing food and clothing, splurging on the occasional family trips. We grew up the better for it, but at the same time, a lot of prestigious and lucrative jobs passed us by. Something I wanted to change. So I went to community college and after I had enough credits, transferred to the U. Eventually got in to the business program there. The rest you already know.”

  “Driven. Dedicated. Got it. But what did you do for fun? Did you go to any parties? Hang out with a bunch of kids and just goof off? Live a little? I mean, you’re only young once.”

  “I had responsibilities to the company. My family. My dad.”

  She looked over at him with something akin to sympathy. “That’s admirable. But also…a little sad. As obsessed and hard working as Kate was, I always managed to get her to take a break every once in a while. Go to a few parties, head south for spring break.”

  “I kept my eyes on the prize. Partying wasn’t going to get me what I wanted.”

  “Which was?”

  “Success.” He stared at the rows of agave plants as they passed. “You wouldn’t really understand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He pulled his fingers through his hair, uncomfortable even mentioning this. It was the past. He made the future. But there were things that maybe he could help Payton understand. “You are wealthy, pretty, and…white. People didn’t look at your skin color and think that you were destined for nothing more than cutting their lawn or cleaning houses. When we were little, I saw the looks people gave us, especially when we were out with our mom, and they weren’t respectful.”

  He remembered hearing a couple of ladies once mock his beautiful mother, who with her halting English accent, was clearly not originally from the States. They looked at them all with barely disguised contempt. “They’d watch us carefully in the grocery store line, waiting to see if we pulled out food stamps or tried to pocket a candy bar—anything they could use to judge us.” Things had improved, of course, as things gradually did over time. But there were still a few people with preconceived ideas of who he was, what he was capable of doing.