Legally Wedded (Legally in Love Book 3)

by Griffith, Jennifer

  “Sorry about that little display. I just had to, you know, defend my territory.” She smiled at him, a broad, toothy smile, like the cat who got the canary. Then she mellowed a little and took his arm, leading him onto the sidewalk. “You came to see me, and we have a lot to talk about.” She squeezed his arm, and Josh had to grit his teeth at her acting like she’d done nothing wrong.

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Right? Because those letters you wrote made me realize you’re as true to me as I am to you. We’ve been through a lot together, Josh, and I’m ready to make it permanent, just like you are.” She came around in front of him and looked right up at him. Her hair was done, and her makeup was perfect. She would’ve looked radiant if he didn’t know better.

  “Brielle, there’s something important—”

  “Do you have any idea how much I’ve been longing for this moment, Josh? Just you and me together? I’ve missed you like a hurricane.” She threw herself into his arms, assaulting his face with her kisses. “Your letters were the greatest aphrodisiac ever. We shouldn’t wait another minute to make it all official between us. It’s been years coming to this point. I’m yours. All yours.” The words came through breathy breaks in the kisses she covered him with.

  He pressed her back. He’d been too familiar with these kisses in the past, and he wasn’t about to let them sway him, not with all he knew, and with how he felt about both the women in his life. “Brielle. Please. I’m really sorry. It’s not happening.” He was here to make things right. “The letters were just to prove something that has passed and gone.”

  “Nothing has passed. It’s all future for us.” She backed him up against the door of the Land Rover and draped her arms around his neck. Josh looked into her face and saw an aching desperation in her eyes. “I see now that what you did was for me, and I am ecstatic. We’re going to make it, Josh, just like you always promised we would. I know I had my doubts, and I might have been afraid, but you showed me your heart. It’s true, just like mine.”

  Her clear anxiety raised a sense of pity in him, but not guilt. He was doing the right thing, and his resolve had cemented. “No. It isn’t happening. I’m sorry.” The letters were figments of the past—a dead past. A past she’d killed, and one he’d allowed to die a natural death, even as his own present and future with Morgan had come alive.

  “Of course it’s happening. We’re Josh and Brielle.” She sniffled now and brushed at a cluster of tears. “Say it five times fast. It’s so right. We’ve come too far to turn back. You and I both know that. We had a rocky patch, but I’m ready to rebuild and go forward.” From her purse she pulled the stack of letters. “These prove you’re ready, too.” Her voice cracked. She almost sounded crazed. He had to calm her, but still be firm.

  “Brielle.” He softened his voice. “I’m not.”

  Tiki torches lining the walkway to the church flickered in the evening breeze. There were dozens of them putting off a glow bright enough to see Brielle’s face. Tears drew black mascara trails down her face, and her eyes were rimmed with red. She’d been through a lot, and she wasn’t handling it well. Pathos racked him.

  She refused to let go, like a bulldog with its quarry. “It won’t be easy, I know that, after what we’ve had to work through, but I like a challenge, and I know you do, too. You rose to every occasion, Josh.” Her voice sped up now, with the worry clearly tormenting her. “You threw your career overboard for me. You let your family know I was more important to you than them or their so-called approval. You chose me. You even told your controlling, manipulative horse’s behind of a father where he could go with his inheritance when I told you it was the right thing to do. You pass. You pass, Josh. You’re in. I’m totally ready to let you have me. Finally. I know I’ve been putting you off all these years. And telling you good-bye at the airport when I left for Germany was one of the toughest things I ever did because I didn’t know if you’d be true to me while I was gone. But from what you wrote here—” she thumbed through the letters “—you were always loyal to me. Do you know how much I respect that? And do you know how hot that is? You are going to make the best foreign agent. We’ll use my contacts, get you the ultimate job. We’ll live on the Amalfi Coast together, gathering intel, eating in Italian cafés, getting tan.”

  Her mention of the Amalfi Coast only served to send an image of the blue waters to his mind, the same blue as Morgan’s eyes.

  “Brielle.” He said her name softly, almost apologetically. “I know.”

  “Of course you know. Our future is so bright we don’t need shades. We need welding helmets!” The hitch in her voice betrayed these confident words as the last ditch effort they were.

  “No, Brielle, I know what happened in Germany, and why you’re back now. And if you’re honest with yourself, you know it’s over between us. You never wanted me most.” He almost didn’t want to let the guillotine drop. But she’d cut the rope of it herself. “But it’s more than that. I came here tonight with only one woman in my heart.”

  “Of course you did.” The content of the words wore more confidence than their delivery. “I’m the one girl you’ve thought of since you became a man. I made you the man you are, Josh. We’re going to change the world. Together.”

  There were so many things wrong with that statement, he couldn’t begin to address them, so he let it slide. He thought of his parents, of his family members, of his professors, of George at the water treatment plant who took a chance on him when no one else in all of Starry Point would hire him. They’d contributed to the man he was. He thought of the things about himself he’d had to bury because of Brielle’s non-approval of them, particularly his gift for bio-tech engineering and research. The truth was, Josh was going to change the world—just not with Brielle.

  Brielle had already changed someone’s world, destroying a family, if Claire’s gossip was to be believed. That wasn’t the kind of change any world needed, and Josh hated to say what he had to say next.

  “Brie. I’m pretty sure you’d better spend time working on changing your own world before you go stirring up things in the larger global aspect.”

  The last light of forlorn hope in her eyes faded completely now and her eyebrows fell. At last she must have realized that he knew all the details of her shame. For a second she looked horrified, then terrified, then broken.

  “Joshua.” She stepped toward him, her chin trembling. “I’m coming to you. You asked me if you should wait for me, and I said yes.”

  “You didn’t. That’s not how it happened.”

  “It is. It’s how I remember it. We were standing at the airport, I was on the cusp of a new adventure, but desperately wanting to hold onto you. I had a foot in each world.”

  “You left, you didn’t look back. I moved on, and I know you did, too.”

  “No, I was distracted. You were distracted. And now we’ve both seen the light. It’s time, Josh. Our time.” Her voice quavered on the last word, and it shot a pain through Josh’s heart. He had loved her, but so much was different now, and everything Claire had said was killing any last remnant of that love.

  “I’m sorry, Brielle.”

  “How can you say that? How can you just chuck everything that we built over the last several years together?” Tears leaked down her cheeks, wetting the freckles.

  “I should ask you the same thing. You chucked it all, while I sacrificed.”

  “On the surface, Josh, you realize none of what you did looks like sacrifice, but I believe you.” She stepped forward, holding the papers to her heart for a moment and then extending them to him. “And these letters? I bet if you just look through them, it will rekindle all those feelings. We don’t have to look backward. We could look only forward.” She had always been laser-focused on what she wanted, and clearly, what she wanted right now was for Josh to relent.

  But it was too late, and he could see that she wouldn’t surrender until he dealt her a death blow. “According to Claire, you made some real mis
takes in Germany. Is that why you came back to me?”

  “No!” Brielle pounced at this, nearly dropping the letters, but she clutched them to her chest. “I came back because Germany made me realize I wanted what I already had.”

  But what she didn’t realize was that she didn’t have him. “The reason you’re holding those letters right now is you told me to never contact you.” He watched as her eyes dropped again, making it obvious that her protests on Christmas that she’d never told him not to write had been faked. “Your choice to put my affection for you on a starvation diet is what killed it.” Meanwhile, Morgan had been feeding his soul daily, nurturing a love that he now recognized as a real love, not a demanding, forcing kind of love.

  “Look at me, Josh. Look at what I’m offering you. It’s the world, my love.” Her eyes pled with him. But it was no use. The fire he’d always felt for her had gone out. “Please, you can’t ask me to step aside.”

  “I’m not asking you to step aside. I’m asking you to look inside. Be the woman we all know you can be. She’s a good one. But she’s not ready to be anyone’s somebody. Not yet.”

  With that, he made a play for his keys, attempting to grab them from her hand. The keys clattered onto the asphalt of the parking lot. Claire and her groom came out of the church just then, but when they saw the dying embers winking between Josh and Brielle, Claire put out a hand to hold her husband back.

  Josh went to his car, while Brielle stood stunned for a moment, just staring at him. But then her face glazed into a mask of hurt, and the tears flowed freely.

  “This is completely unfair. It’s a bait and switch. You gave me these letters, and I accepted them, I believed them. How can you do this to me? I won’t let you.”

  Josh let the car door slam against his leg. It hurt like crazy.

  “I didn’t do this to you; you did it to yourself. Be honest with yourself for just a moment.” He had to be harsh now, and it pained him more than the car door on his shin. But she wouldn’t see reason or believe he was cutting her loose. He’d have to be more than clear.

  Her mouth hardened into a straight line. “Honesty gets people into trouble, Josh. If there’s one thing a study of foreign policy teaches you, it’s that.” She glanced down at the letters in her hand. “For instance, you have handed me concrete proof that you’re living a sham, and in two seconds I could call up your old buddy Paulie Bumgartner or even your eccentric benefactor Sigmund Seagram and tell either of them about the fraud you’ve been living.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “No, but if I do, I’m sure it will be about seven a.m. tomorrow morning when you’ll be getting a knock on the door of the mansion you share with that fraud. The IRS will be coming to take you down to their offices for questioning, and your precious Morgan will spend more than an hour in orange this time. She’ll have to give up all that slathering lip gloss and you’ll never get any conjugal visits, and who will feel sorry for you?”

  “Not you, apparently.” Every word she said was making the rightness of his choice all the clearer.

  “Not me.” She sniffled. “Not me.” She broke into tears again, full on crying. “I can’t—Josh. I can’t.” She was cracking now. “I’m not going to ever be your wife, am I?”

  Pressing his lips together grimly, he shook his head.

  The hurt in her face suddenly metamorphosed into something else: anger, with a hint of psychotic break. It almost looked clinical. With a low growl rising up from her chest, Brielle wailed, “Well, if I can’t be Mrs. Hyatt, neither can she!” Brielle brandished the stack of letters like a loaded gun. “Claire has Paulie Bumgartner’s number. I’m calling it. I’m calling it right now!” She’d crossed over from hurt to mad to vindictive fast—and had come totally unhinged. Josh could understand why—her career and relationships and hopes had all crumbled in the last few weeks, and this must have been the final straw. However, the crazed look in her eye made it seem like she might inflict some self-harm—right after she fired the weapon of the letters at Josh by calling the paparazzi and wrecking his and Morgan’s life.

  “Don’t think I won’t, Josh. I’ve got nothing to lose. There’s nothing more dangerous than someone with nothing to lose.”

  “Brielle—” Josh shook his head, putting up a hand to stop her.

  In a flash of black and white, two figures slipped up behind Brielle, snatching from her hand the stack of letters. Claire’s husband restrained Brielle, pinning her arms to the disturbed woman’s side, while Claire made a break for the tiki torches.

  “Here, Josh. Help me burn them. Your sweet wife does not deserve to have a single word of these hit the press.”

  Josh shot an apologetic look at Brielle, and then hurried over to help Claire, knowing the letters contained damning evidence against himself, but that more than anything they contained waning interest in the woman, showing less and less ardor with each letter. It was why he’d decided to give them to Brielle—so that she could see hard evidence of the evolution of his feelings while Brielle froze him out from abroad. Something inside him also hoped the letters would soften the blow when he broke up with her, so that she could say she should have seen it coming.

  Unfortunately, she was a woman pushed beyond her limit, and she’d threatened to take the low road with them, even if it would mean publishing to all the tabloid-reading public her own humiliation as a woman rejected.

  Wow, she really had reached rock bottom. Josh winced, and his heart lurched one final time for Brielle, who stood shaking either with rage or sorrow in the torchlight.

  Claire’s groom took Brielle by the shoulders, and he hustled her away.

  “Come on, Brie. It seems like you’ve either had too much or not enough to drink tonight. Let’s get you back to the reception line so you can greet my parents’ friends and make excuses for the bride while she cleans up your mess. It’s the least you can do as her maid of honor.” The church door swung shut behind them with a thud.

  Brielle was gone. Forever.

  Claire held another letter to the flame, and glowing ashes of the previous letter floated with an orange rim up to the eaves of the church where the cold air extinguished it. Josh took another leaf, not sad to let them go.

  “She’s been through a lot. I tried to be as gentle as possible.”

  “I know you did. She’ll bounce back—eventually. I know her better than anyone. Trust me.”

  Josh nodded as the blackened leaves curled and glowed in his hand.

  Claire said, “I’ve already called Paulie Bumgartner to inform him what I told him last month was in error—that you and Morgan are legitimately married, and that this was all a vindictive ploy from a spurned ex-girlfriend. He said he had pictures of Brielle and you coming out of a police station and he’s waiting to use them for just the right moment. I told him I’d buy them from him, but I wanted an exclusive.”

  Josh looked up in abject shock as Claire put another letter to the flame. “What do you mean, you’d buy them?”

  “I told you I had a publishing company, right? It’s celebrity news, and Paulie is one of my best suppliers. I know I should have told you this, and it’s lower than dirt of me, but there’s big money in it.” She named a company Josh had heard of. He about choked on his own tongue to find out Claire ran it.

  “You don’t have to do that for me, Claire. I wouldn’t want you to go to so much trouble.”

  “It’s not all for you. Even though I have been completely furious with Brielle for months, she’s still my friend of twenty years. I don’t want to see Paulie sell them to the highest bidder and wreck her life even further any more than you do.”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “No, you won’t. Besides, I’m the one who caused this whole mess anyway. And another besides—your pictures aren’t exactly high dollar. As a disowned son of a little-known local millionaire, you’re not just small potatoes, you’re bits of leftover fries at the bottom of the carton.”

  “Uh, thanks.”<
br />
  “Ah, I don’t mean it that way. I mean, I can get them cheap, and I can bury them. It’s the least I can do after what I put you through.”

  She was right, of course, but Josh didn’t need her to rub it in. Besides, the truth was, Paulie Bumgartner had inadvertently done Josh a favor: those pictures he took of Josh and Brielle at the police station had forced him and Morgan to go to Seagram and spill their whole story, which prompted Seagram to give him and Morgan a deadline for making a decision about their relationship—something they might have never done. They might have gone on in the agony of suspense for the remainder of the spring semester, and their feelings for one another might simply have died on the vine. Josh might have let them—and missed out on the best thing he’d ever had anywhere close to his fool grasp.

  Bumgartner wasn’t the enemy here.

  Josh was.

  His weak moment of indecision had caused this mess. By not telling Brielle the second she stepped through the door of the Campus House all about Morgan, he was now standing in the cold night at a wedding burning his own anemic love letters, while the real woman he loved was somewhere thinking he had abandoned her.

  Even with Brielle’s manipulations now under complete control, there were consequences Josh would have to face.

  “Thanks for your help, Claire. I can take it from here. Congratulations on your marriage. I hope it’s happier than mine would have been to Brielle.”

  “I love Brielle. She’ll grow up. She’ll be somebody’s wife someday, and she will be fine.”

  Josh was just glad it wasn’t going to be him.

  Claire left and went back inside to her guests after this ten minute interruption from her reception. What a champ she was—on the biggest day of her life. She wasn’t all bad.

  He got in his Land Rover and laid his head on the steering wheel for a second to think about how to patch things up with Morgan. Now more than ever he could see what a jerk he was for not chasing her down this afternoon, and for not shouting what he felt immediately and with full clarity to her and to the whole world.