The Accidental Bride: A BWWM Billionaire Romance

by Tiana Cole

  If the girl he’d hired did her job right, then things could happen fast. He had to assume that if she was willing to marry the guy for a fat paycheck, she was the kind to find other ways to exploit the story, make it public. That was fine. That was the free market, right? He’d even help her out, give her a lead or two, just in case she didn’t think of the press angle on her own. There was money to be made from it, and every bit of publicity would help shaft any chance James had of locking down this deal.

  Alan wanted to celebrate, but it was too soon. He had things to do, a few important calls to make. A business deal like this one wasn’t won simply by making a good presentation and having a good strategy. No, it was just as important to do everything possible to fuck over the competition, to kick them when they were down so that you seemed to be not only the best choice, but the only one.

  And now he had what he needed to knock out the only other big gun at the table.

  Best of all, James had no clue at all that they were competitors. He’d been sloppy. He hadn’t worried about anyone else, just what he could do for Shen Liang.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  James came back to the room to find Deja showered and dressed and sitting on the bed. The television was on and she was watching the local news. He glanced at the screen and saw a blonde with too much makeup and a very smooth presentation explaining about a criminal who had escaped the jail in Bullhead City by crawling through a ventilation duct.

  As he watched her sensationalize what seemed only clever, he tried to think of something he could say to Deja that would be casual and pleasant, yet not be patronizing—he failed miserably.

  How to be casual with her failed him. He felt completely without any guidelines. How could he be causal with someone he’d been intimate with, yet didn’t know?

  Part of him resented her. Actually he resented the idea that he needed her, needed her help in unraveling things. What happened next wasn’t just up to him and he was always uncomfortable when he was in that position. This morning both his business deal and his life had put him there—waiting.

  Part of him wanted to make her happy, whatever that meant. She was pretty, personable, and from what he could tell, the other passenger in a strange journey they’d taken together. They had shared a bed, and much more.

  He straddled that divide in an awkward and uncomfortable stance. While he couldn’t entirely blame her for his discomfort, she played a part in it and he had to confront that if he wanted to make small talk. He wasn’t good at small talk under any circumstances, and now it was artificial, something he was doing to put her at ease. In short, it was phony.

  She raised the remote and thankfully switched off the television. “Have a nice chat with your old pal, Alan?”

  He caught a catch in her voice that told him she was hiding some emotion. Maybe she was as confused and upset as he was, but he didn’t think so. She didn’t really seem confused. He suspected something more like anger bubbled inside her. If not anger, some other unsettling and troubling feeling. She was at odds with herself somehow. So was he.

  The good news was that as his head returned to normal he was starting to notice those sorts of things. He had trained himself to pay attention to those markers. Last night, of course, all he noticed was that she looked outstanding. He would have missed any subtle clues—he would have missed anything more subtle that a slap in the face.

  “It wasn’t really a nice chat at all. It was damn uncomfortable, actually.”

  “He didn’t help you understand whatever it is you wanted to know?”

  “Like what happened last night? No. I’m afraid he was too busy gloating about the advantages of spending the night with an upmarket hooker.”

  “You mean pay for play as opposed to the joys of marriage? I mean, I assume you gave him the news.”

  “He seemed to think it was funny. I think it tickled him.”

  “You really are in a funk.”

  He sat on the bed. “Don’t patronize me, Deja, let’s be honest with each other. I need you to tell me what happened.”

  “I have.”

  “There are things missing. I’m not used to being so unsure about what’s going on around me. I’ve been successful by being focused and staying focused. I wasn’t focused last night. I’m still not sure how the things that happened came about and so I’m thrashing about here.”

  She laughed. “I’ve told you what happened. You came up to me and asked me to dance. We did. Your friend left, we went outside—”

  “Yeah, I get the chronology. I’ve never been drunk that way.”

  “Well, I can’t tell you why you did any of what you did. When you screwed me, I assumed it was because you liked me. I could be wrong. It sure feels like that now.”

  “You weren’t as drunk as I was, were you?”

  “No. I don’t think I was, but I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.”

  “But you never suggested we get married?”

  “This is really starting to get creepy. The morning after our wedding, after a great night together, all you are interested in is doing damage control. Or are we just playing the blame game? You make me feel like a giant catastrophe fate inflicted on you.”

  “Actually, I see you as a beautiful distraction.” That much he could tell her truthfully. Even under the circumstances, he couldn’t look at her without his heart pounding a little harder. Now that he was feeling better, he knew he wanted her. If she tried to seduce him, he’d be putty in her hands. That part he hoped he could conceal from her. “I’m not sure about the situation, our situation yet. I don’t know what we should do.”

  “Still hung over?”

  “All the drinking last night isn’t the only thing that has my head spinning. There are things happening on so many levels that it’s difficult to sort out. Alan’s attitude has me worried.”

  “Your friend? His shortage of advice and abundance of gloating worries you?”

  He appreciated her insight. “Among other things.” He couldn’t help but look at her, thinking about what he should or could tell this lovely woman. He didn’t even know what he wanted from her, other than more sex, and he couldn’t let that happen. Obviously he’d been drawn to her, even drunk, and he knew that if he were to describe his dream girl, any reasonable person would point to her as being exactly what he wanted. So he was caught between a dream and a disaster.

  He needed to find a way to ask his dream girl what she wanted, what she was after. He needed her help and wished he had a clue how to start a conversation like that without making it an accusation. He couldn’t exactly just ask what she was after without it sounding nasty.

  A knock on the door startled him from his reverie. After a short pause, the hammering came again—a brash thumping on his door demanding attention.

  It wasn’t just the heavy handedness of the knock that startled him. He noted that the intrusion summoned up feelings of guilt. There was something about a hotel room that made a simple knock on the door, when one wasn’t expecting someone, when one hasn’t called for room service, that sent the hair on the back of the neck rising. It didn’t help that he was sitting in a hotel room with a woman he had slept with and somehow made his wife. Facing the outside world when he hadn’t even sorted out his inner world made the impulse not to answer almost overwhelming. He was in his room with this woman who was his wife, but somehow shouldn’t be.

  That sudden guilt that rose up was an almost paranoid reaction. A reflex. He wasn’t one to give in to emotional impulse. Still, an unexpected knocking on his Las Vegas hotel room in the morning after his ill-advised evening of drinking and getting married couldn’t herald any good at all.

  For a moment, James froze, more out of indecision than fear. He looked at Deja, thinking about how she was his wife. No matter how crazy that seemed, it was true. Eventually the word would get out. Hotels didn’t keep secrets well.

  The knock came again. “Mister Andrews,” a woman’s voice called.

  He wished i
t to go away, knowing it wouldn’t, knowing that the longer he waited the more it would seem like he was hiding something. Just because he was, making others realize it didn’t work to his advantage. No matter how he felt about the things that had happened, hiding from reality wasn’t a real option. Not for a person like him. He didn’t run from fights or hide from things. At least he tried not to, and now, every bone in his body wanted to run.

  As he wallowed in his indecision, he saw she was quietly studying him. She tipped her head and smiled at him, looking amused. Whatever he did about her, this woman who was his ostensible and temporary wife, he couldn’t deny being attracted to her. Her smiled pulled at him.

  He glanced over at Deja. “I have no idea who this might be.”

  “I sure as hell don’t either.”

  He hesitated, looking at the door. “Whoever it is, let me do the talking.”

  She laughed, and it was a delicate, musical treat. “Of course. No one gives a damn what I have to say anyway.”

  He opened the door and stood squarely in the doorway, looking at a couple he didn’t know. The woman was tall and blonde, and wore a severe suit that actually looked rather good on her. Professional. She looked familiar. The man, sloppily dressed in jeans and a dirty sweatshirt, held a video camera. He trained it on the woman, framing James in the doorway. She held out a microphone.

  “Mister Andrews, I’m Donna Dirby from the local ABC affiliate television station.” Then he knew. She’d been the one reporting on the escaped con on the news. “We heard about your sudden wedding. What can you tell us?”

  “Not a damn thing you probably don’t know already,” he said, letting himself answer calmly. It felt good, like he was in control.

  “I was hoping to get an interview with you and your bride.”

  “Why?” he asked as the reporter peered around him, into the room. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Deja sitting on the bed. When she saw the camera was on her, she smiled and waved her hand, saying hello.

  “Is that her? Deja? We’d love to meet her. We can let the world get to know her.”

  “Well, that’s very nice. How thoughtful of you to tell me what you want. Everyone wants something. For example, I want to be left alone. Maybe if I shut this door, one of us will get what they want.”

  “All we want is an interview.”

  “So why don’t you go find someone who wants to be interviewed?”

  “Please, at least tell me…is Deja really her name? That’s such an interesting and unusual name.”

  He felt the calmness evaporating. “It’s a popular Mongolian name that loosely translates into ‘leave us the fuck alone.’ Feel free to use it for one of your own bastards. Now go away.” Even as he did it, he knew that slamming the door in the woman’s face had been the wrong play. Reporters turned from persistent to insistent and viscous in a heartbeat. And she was right that the public would consider something about him newsworthy.

  He turned and faced the bed. “Well, I guess I fucked that up.”

  “Unless what you wanted was to alienate a major news outlet.”

  “Not really.”

  “Then yeah, you fucked up.”

  “I seem to be on a roll in that respect—fucking things up, I mean.”

  “I have to say that liked the part you ad libbed about my name, though. It was clever, if kind of caustic.”

  “I don’t think Donna Dirby thought it was clever.”

  “No, I suppose not. Nasty, maybe.”

  “She’ll probably decide I’m too hostile to confront, but she’ll try to find a way to get you alone.”

  “She’s not my type. I’d tell her that.”

  “Now who is being clever and caustic?” he asked

  She giggled. “So sue me. I’m bored.”

  “Bored?” He turned away to stare out the window.

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t help wondering if maybe you didn’t expect the reporters.”

  “Me? Why would I expect them?”

  “I’m not entirely sure why, but you didn’t seem to mind them showing up at all. In fact when they put the camera on you, you gave them a pretty big smile and a wave. You played to the camera.”

  “I was being polite. Try it sometime. Just because they barged in, doesn’t mean we need to be rude. Anyway, how would I know they were coming? I don’t even know how they knew where we are. The hotel doesn’t give out room numbers.”

  “They aren’t supposed to, but employees can be bribed. Or maybe when I was gone you called them and gave it to them.”

  “And maybe you did.”

  “That would be stupid. What would I stand to gain from publicity?”

  She turned and looked at their reflections in the mirror. “As far as I know, the same thing I get out of it—nothing at all. But if it was someone in this room who tipped them off, there is a fifty-fifty chance it was you, and taking into consideration that I know it wasn’t me, that makes it you. Besides, why would I want to be interviewed? I can’t see the upside.”

  “Some people in the news media, especially tabloids, often pay people for inside stories. Especially what they happily call human interest stories. In this case an interview with a woman who bagged a rich husband in Las Vegas might be worth a nice piece of change. Hell, for all I know, that’s what you intended from the beginning.”

  “What I intended by saying yes to your proposal you mean? Damn it, James, I don’t know any inside story.”

  “They want to know about me.”

  “And about all I know about you is that you are fun, a decent person, and good in bed. That doesn’t strike as fodder for the tabloids or something it would kill you to have in print if they got ahold of that breaking news.”

  The idea that she thought he’d been good in bed stopped him for a moment. “What they print about me doesn’t matter. It’s all just goddamn hype anyway. A tabloid screaming ‘I married a billionaire’ gets attention and I don’t like being in the limelight.”

  “And you don’t like attention?”

  “It’s meaningless noise. I can’t abide noise.”

  “And the reason I’ve seen your face featured on websites and magazines is because you’re such a fucking introverted hermit?”

  The observation jarred him. “So you knew who I was.”

  “After we started dancing, sure. I don’t wear blinders, but I don’t believe the crap I read about people either. Don’t think you’re the only person in the universe who can’t see through the hype.”

  “Point made. Okay, I am a public figure, of sorts, and the media is usually around, lurking somewhere. Normally I do what I can to avoid them without actually going into hiding. No, I’m not a hermit, but once your face is known anything you do in public becomes a balancing act, Deja. For celebrities, it’s all good. For a businessman who wants to just do good deals, it isn’t so good.”

  “And now this involvement with me is making you rather unbalanced.”

  He saw she was hurt. Maybe whatever she had in mind, whatever had caused her to marry him, had nothing to do with the reporters. He didn’t think she had sent them. “It could’ve been Alan.” He said it just as he thought of it. Alan had something up his sleeve.

  But there was also something behind this marriage—something he didn’t know. “Alan is up to something. But I don’t think the entire story is on the table yet,” he said. “I can’t shake the feeling that there is a lot to come out.”

  She laughed. “To come out? You intend to import professional interrogators to see what deep dark secrets I might have in my sordid past?”

  “I intend to find out about you. Who you are matters…to me.”

  “I think that right now all that matters to you is how marrying me affects your business deal.”

  “To some extent, that’s true.”

  He saw her wince, and wished he had couched it differently.

  “Well, that is certainly food for thought. If being married is less important to you
than the motives of the people around you and the public attention it attracts, it says something about your values, doesn’t it?”

  He sighed. He’d started wondering the same thing himself. He hadn’t done much lately that made him proud or even like himself. No matter what had happened, treating Deja like dirt wasn’t going to make things better. Even if somehow she deserved it.

  “I’m sorry. That was said badly.”

  “I think it was said rather well. Succinct and to the point, as an arrow should be.”

  Something in her face unnerved him. A lot about her unsettled him—she made him nervous and unsure of himself, but this was something deeper. It had to do with whatever drove her to accept his drunken proposal. His instinct, something deep in his core, told him that she hadn’t been as drunk as he, that she had accepted his proposal for a specific reason. If he knew that reason, maybe he could let himself relax about her. Well, not relax. How did he relax when he were in a bedroom with the girl of his dreams? Especially when he didn’t know if she was friend or foe?

  How had he let things get so out of hand? So complicated? There was something wrong about that too.

  * * * *

  Long after the reporter left, Deja could still feel the tension in the room their abrupt arrival had created. James didn’t trust her, that much was clear. Of course, he was right not to. He’d seemed silly last night, but now, serious and trying to focus, he seemed rather formidable. As he sobered, got his senses back, his true nature was showing.

  She liked the emerging James better than the one she’d married. He was sharp and deserved respect. Although he’d been shocked to wake up and find himself married, he hadn’t flown off the handle. He’d restrained himself, and tried to work out what had happened. Even though she’d teased him about calling his lawyer first thing, it made sense. Marriage involved personal finance, and even if her financial situation couldn’t possibly have been much worse and let her still eat, he was successful. Wealthy.

  How wealthy he might actually be, she didn’t know or really care. In the light of day, what she cared about was that she felt bad about what she’d done. The man she was meeting deserved better, and obviously she’d been lied to about the real nature of the trick being played on him. It wasn’t some friendly prank—not that it would have been the least bit funny anyway, but a prank that was over the top was easier to justify, to live with, than some predatory trick.