Oh God, she couldn’t believe she’d done that. Now that it was over, all the reasons it shouldn’t have happened flooded into her. What was she going to say to him?
But she wasn’t the one who spoke first. Wade’s forehead was pressed against the wall as he took a few deep breaths. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
Wade was simultaneously more relaxed than he’d been in a month, and furious at himself. Dammit, this wasn’t supposed to happen. He worked so hard in his life to maintain control, not lose it the second Zoe got his blood pressure up.
Zoe abruptly pushed him away. Because his pants were still around his ankles, he couldn’t go far but it was enough for her feet to touch the ground again as she smoothed her dress down in front of her. “I thought you were the one who wanted this. You were practically begging me to fuck you ever since we got married!”
He frowned. “You think I’m mad we had sex? I’m pissed that we didn’t use a condom, Zoe. The last thing either of us need is a pregnancy scare. Are you on birth control?” Questions he should’ve asked her already, but dammit, there had been no time.
Zoe’s face went ash-white as she fell back against the wall. Dammit, he must’ve freaked her out. He was well aware as far as pillow talk went, this was terrible. “Look, it’s not a big deal. It was just a one-time accident. Chances are, nothing happens.”
The words sounded hollow even to him, and she didn’t appear any less freaked out.
“I’m not.”
“You’re not what?”
“Pregnant. I can’t— I mean, I’m not able to—”
Oh fuck, he’d wandered into a minefield. “I didn’t mean to—”
She shook her head and wandered around the room. “It doesn’t matter. Do you see a paper towel or anything? I need to clean up.”
He kicked himself for ever putting them in this situation, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He noticed a box of Kleenex on one side of the bed and pointed to it as he bent down to pick up his pants.
He knew he shouldn’t have called it a mistake. Hell, he was pretty sure this was exactly what he needed. A chance to work out some of his… frustration. Now he could be around Zoe without losing his mind all the time.
He glanced in her direction to see her facing away from him as she cleaned herself up a bit. She tossed the ball of tissue in the garbage next to the bed and turned back, her face almost as red as her dress. “I suppose we should go out and put on a show, right?”
Show? There wasn’t really a show to put on at this point. They were really married. As of now, they’d officially consummated the marriage. What was there to lie about anymore?
“Let’s get this over then.” He buttoned his shirt. “It’s about time that I officially show you off.”
And show her off he did. To be honest, he wasn’t sure exactly how she’d react once he had her out in society. She’d seemed witty and level-headed when they were alone, but he couldn’t deny the difference in their upbringings. As much as he joked about her being trailer trash, it wasn’t something he wanted to be apparent to his peers.
However, Zoe was everything he wanted and more. She smiled when she needed to smile, was always ready with a clever comment or retort. When the guys started to talk politics, she managed to hold her own without getting into any heated arguments.
Whatever curiosity or confusion people had over their sudden marriage was immediately abated when they met her. In fact, Wade would suspect that people liked her a hell of a lot more than they liked Tara. When he brought Tara to events like this, she tended to act like the celebrity she was. A crowd would form around her while she regaled them with tales of her latest photo shoot or A-list party she’d attended.
Zoe was more of an active listener. She’d nod or chime in when necessary. Every once in a while, she’d give a gut-busting funny story about waitressing or her little brother. She was down-to-earth but not too shy to hold her own. Somehow he’d lucked out and ended up with a perfect wife. Who knew?
However, any illusion of things being perfect between them were quickly dashed once they were inside the car on the way back to his apartment and Zoe was very obviously ignoring him.
“Don’t tell me you’re giving me the silent treatment.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “Of course not. I just don’t have anything to say.”
“You’re still mad about what I said. Listen, I understand that I should’ve been more… sensitive.”
She turned back toward the window. “Of course not. I know what was expected from our contract. I don’t believe sensitivity was owed to me at any point.”
He winced. The fucking contract. “We both know that what just happened wasn’t related to the contract.”
“We both know that what just happened never would’ve occurred without the contract. You wanted to fuck to get any of the sexual tension out of the way and we did that. Now we can continue our working relationship.”
Great. Now she was more sterile toward him than ever. The driver reached the building, and before he could even think about opening the door for her, Zoe was out and on the street.
Wade gave the driver a nod good-bye before getting out and holding out an arm for Zoe. She might be mad at him, but until they were safely alone in the elevator, she had to pretend to like him.
She obediently put an arm through his, and they walked through the lobby together. As soon as the elevator doors closed, she pulled free from him. That shouldn’t bother him. He was sure that if he went to bed without saying another word to her, she’d be in a better mood in the morning. But he couldn’t stand the idea of Zoe going to bed mad at him. Before he even knew he was speaking, he said, “My father wasn’t a good person.”
She blinked in surprise as the elevator reached their level. “We don’t have to—”
“No. You wanted to know about my father. So I’m going to tell you. But I trust you to recognize that discretion is needed with everything I tell you.”
Her jaw tightened, and he could tell she was torn between wanting to know more and wanting to be kept in the dark. “Wade, I don’t—”
“Ted Maxium was an angry, money-hungry drunk. For the most part, he was an absent father. Sarah and I were fine with that. She focused on school and I was into football. He was a good dad as long as he stayed the hell away from us. But whenever he came back to town, he’d stir shit up. Either by going on some drunken rant, usually focused on me, or accusing Sarah of sleeping around. She was only fifteen and a straight-A student, but he had a poisonous view of women, namely of our mother, and projected a lot of that onto her.
“It would’ve been hard enough if it was just us, but the entire town would taste his poison. And the worst of it was Leo’s mother. She was a single parent working as a real estate agent to make ends meet. Ted was using her to look at property around the area. He never actually wanted to buy anything, but he thought he stood a chance with her and was using the property scoping as a way to get close to her.” He kept his voice calm and steady even as old, buried emotions wanted to bubble up to the surface.
“One day, things went wrong. Very wrong. They went out to look at properties, and after a few hours with him, she ended up in the hospital. Leo and I were buddies from the team, and when he confronted me with what happened, I won’t lie. I didn’t believe it. My dad was always an asshole, but never at that level.”
“That’s terrible. Was Leo’s mom all right?”
“It depends on what you mean by all right. She was released from the hospital the next day, but she didn’t last long. Within the week, she’d overdosed on sleeping pills and wine. To this day, we still don’t know if it was intentional or not. But the point is, it happened. Even though I didn’t believe Leo, at least I didn’t want to believe him, I looked into his accusations. I was able to score a copy of the police report. The things I read there….
“Leo’s mother didn’t say much about what happened to her, but she did point a finger squar
ely at my father. Leo was furious. I tried to calm him down, or get him to talk about it, but there was no rationalizing with him. To be honest, I can’t really blame him. He ran off, and by the time I caught up to him, it was too late.”
“Too late as in….”
“Too late as in there was no heartbeat by the time I got there. I don’t want to go into details about what happened. I don’t think you want to know the details.”
“Wade, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. There’s nothing about what happened that’s right. Not what my father did, not what Leo’s mother did, not what Leo did, and definitely not what I did. It was just a tragic set of circumstances that led us to extreme measures. We made sure Leo couldn’t be implicated in anything, put it behind ourselves, and moved on.”
“But it wasn’t just you,” pointed out Zoe.
“What are you talking about?”
“The evidence I have on you. It’s a confession letter. Whoever wrote it said that there were four people involved. So there’s you, Leo, and who else?”
“What letter? None of us would’ve written a letter.”
“I was hiking with DJ in the woods when we found this metal box with just one letter inside. It was a confession, talking about how you and three others had bludgeoned your father to death and made it look like an accident. I looked at all the articles about it. All of them said it was just an accident, and I thought that was going to be that. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I had to take it a step further. Since it was a cold case that no one really cared about, I was able to sweet-talk Bobby, the newest deputy, to show me a copy of the original police record. Your father died of severe head trauma. Granted, I’m not a detective, and I bet you that under different circumstances, there would’ve been an autopsy. It’s probably just because your father was so unpopular that there wasn’t any more investigating done.”
He shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. None of us involved would’ve written anything down. I know we were young, but we weren’t stupid.”
“Okay. Don’t freak out about it. I’ll get you the letter, and then you can read it and see if you can figure out who wrote it based off that.”
Wade forced himself to take a deep breath in and out. This was gonna be okay. Sure, there was no statute of limitations on murder, but any evidence that might have existed was probably long gone by now. Even if one of them did come out of the blue and start confessing, it wouldn’t hold up in any court. He was still on good terms with everyone except for Leo, and Leo had more to lose than any of them. He was the primary aggressor, for Christ’s sake. Harper wasn’t the type to feel guilty about anything, and Shane was more laid-back than the rest. Wade couldn’t imagine any of them being torn apart by guilt.
But now that he thought about it, there was one person. No one directly involved in the murder, but who was intricately involved in the consequences.
“Shit.”
“Shit what?” Zoe asked.
“I think it’s time we had a talk with my sister.”
Zoe looked in the mirror once more. She was already certain that she looked as good as she was going to look, but she still felt unsure of herself. The last time she’d seen Sarah, she’d looked a mess. Her hair had been everywhere, and her makeup, the little that had remained on her face, had been atrocious.
Now clad in a fresh new outfit she’d bought while dress shopping the other day and some of her brand-new makeup, at least she felt she looked the part of a socialite. Her black slacks had a wide leg and were pretty damn comfortable while not seeming to wrinkle at all, and her low-cut V-neck black blouse was the perfect amount of sexy and classic. She felt as if she could turn heads while not being scandalous. Pretty much the perfect wife for a guy like Wade. It was nice to feel that way, considering so much of the time she felt out of place.
Wade, as usual, looked impeccable. Today he was wearing some dark wash jeans and a gray T-shirt. The fabric, which she’d felt for a quick second when he’d brushed by her earlier, was extremely soft, and she had to keep herself from running her hands across his torso. Only to feel the fabric, of course—not because she knew exactly what the muscles underneath would feel like.
Since her little slip-up last night, Wade had managed to be exceedingly professional toward her. She wasn’t sure whether it was his crazy confession from last night that had him on his best behavior, or whether he was serious about not being with her again.
Well, to be fair, he never said he didn’t want to be with her. But she had to imagine that by ending their little tryst by saying it was a mistake, it was a sign that it wasn’t going to happen again.
It wasn’t as if she even wanted to be with him again. Last night had been good. She couldn’t lie to herself and say he was bad in bed and that it was the worst mistake she’d ever made. But it had been emotional. The very thing she’d feared. They couldn’t let emotions get in the way of what they were doing. It wasn’t as though she could decide to break up with him and leave. She was stuck with him the next two years, and she didn’t want to jeopardize all that. She needed this for her mother.
She had spent all last night working on insurance paperwork. Even though she’d thought Wade had forgotten, when she looked at the computer he’d given her and checked in her email, she saw that he’d emailed her everything she needed to get her family on Wade’s company health care plan. Not only that, but since they’d gotten married, somehow he’d found the time to enroll her in the most expensive, all-inclusive one.
Her mom would really be taken care of now. If there was any medical treatment that could help her mother, they could get it now. Even if for some reason this insurance plan wouldn’t cover a treatment, at least now between her monthly insurance and the payout she was getting from being with Wade, they could afford it. It was so odd to have that weight lifted off her shoulders. On some level, being with Wade was the most stressful thing she’d ever done. On the other, this made everything so easy. Money had been a concern for basically her entire life. Except for the dark days after Johnny when nothing seemed to matter at all, she’d always been focused on the next paycheck. Keeping food on the table, making sure her mom and DJ didn’t get evicted. Money had been everything.
And now—poof. All of her worries were just snapped away.
It was hard not to feel guilty. She was cheating the system. This wasn’t how the American dream worked. People were supposed to work hard, and they got rewarded for that. Maybe get lucky and fall in love with somebody rich, not sign some sterile contract.
This was exactly why her mother couldn’t know the truth. Somehow her mother hadn’t judged her after she dropped out of college and gave up on all of her dreams. But she couldn’t risk Diane finding out. What if she was too prideful and rejected the insurance? What if she refused to talk to Zoe at all?
Maybe someday in the future Zoe could be honest with her. But not right now.
Since she’d come back to New York with Wade, she hadn’t spoken to her mother at all, but they had texted back and forth a few times. Purely about shallow things, like the weather and the sights in New York, but it was better than nothing. Zoe had also sent her mother the picture of her in the red dress. Diane had been very impressed. Of course, in the picture, Zoe had hidden the very high slit. Also, she’d sent the picture before she knew that Wade was going to screw her in it. Now suddenly every time she looked at the picture, she couldn’t help blushing at the memories that flooded back.
“Are you ready?” asked Wade as the car came to a stop.
It always amused her when he asked that. She supposed he was trying to be polite and not rush her. But the answer really didn’t matter. Whether she was ready or not, she was going to pull up her big girl panties and get ready.
To be fair, she was less worried about this than she had been about a lot of the things she’d done with Wade. For one, she’d met Sarah before. Even though they had gotten off to a rocky start, Sarah had eventually come aro
und. The only thing that made this more stressful was that Wade was going to ask Sarah about their father. Something Zoe would rather not be a fly on the wall for. But she was the one who had dredged all this up, so she understood why Wade wanted her there.
It was odd. She really had only known him for a few days, and their marriage was a sham, but she couldn’t help feeling intertwined with him already. It wasn’t just that they’d slept together. It was almost that… she understood him. She had a feeling he was more honest with her than pretty much anybody else. He didn’t have to lie to accommodate her or impress her. She was along for the ride, no matter what. When he said how he was feeling, or complimented her looks, he wasn’t just putting on a show. She believed him.
After his confession last night, she knew something about Wade that almost nobody else did. So now that they were going to confront his sister about such a painful topic, she didn’t feel she was on her own. They were in this together.
As they rode the elevator up to Sarah’s apartment, Zoe found herself reaching for his hand. Luckily, she caught herself right before she made contact. No. Just because their working relationship was doing better, she couldn’t let herself get carried away. Professional, she told herself. She was going to keep this professional.
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened to reveal Sarah waiting for them. She was dressed in an all-white silk pajama set. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, but neat, like it had just been brushed. The platinum blonde was only a shade or two darker than the bright-white silk, and the whole thing looked rather angelic.
“If it isn’t the happy couple. I’m happy you were able to stop by. I’ve been dying to ask you more questions about the wedding.”
Lucky Liar Page 11