The Accidental Bride: A BWWM Billionaire Romance

by Tiana Cole

  “At any rate, it’s good news that he hasn’t decided. That means he hasn’t blown me off completely.” He smiled at Deja. “He asked about you.”

  That came as a surprise. “Why is in interested in me?”

  “Hard to tell. I don’t know if his interest is you personally, or in how I’ll treat you, what we do.”

  “Then it’s good we haven’t done anything yet,” Kieran said. “He’ll see that you aren’t reacting without thinking.”

  James laughed. “So that has me not reacting without thinking to something that was me acting without thinking.”

  Kieran shrugged. “It means you are behaving well for the moment; there isn’t much we can do.”

  “Do you want to start the annulment?” Deja asked. “I thought you were bringing the papers.”

  Kieran nodded. “I have them, but I think we have to be careful of making it look like we are trying to sweep a mistake under the carpet.”

  James slapped his back. “Even if that’s exactly what we are doing.”

  “Especially if that’s what we are doing.”

  Deja let her mind drift back to her conversation with Alan at the diner. “And what is Alan McCabe going to do while we sit and think? When I told him I’d go to the press with the story he was livid.”

  “I would imagine that ultimately he decided you going public could actually help his case. Anything that brought the marriage back into the news, associated my name with some sort of juvenile behavior, would hurt my case with Liang.

  Even if you named him as setting it, that wouldn’t make a great deal of difference—the point, as far as Shen Liang is concerned, is how I behaved. Trying to shrug off the blame on anyone else would play into Alan’s hands. Once he realizes you don’t intend to make good on the threat, he’ll look for some way to get it into the news.”

  “Or, if he thinks Liang knows of his involvement, he might do nothing else and hope he did enough damage.”

  James laughed. “I doubt he’ll be able to resist a chance to kick me while I’m down. He’ll want to make certain not to leave anything to chance.”

  Kieran made some notes on a legal pad. “I guess that beyond what we are doing, which isn’t much of anything, there isn’t much we can do to turn this around?”

  “Not really. I haven’t been able to think of anything that could put a positive spin on things. That’s one reason I’ve resisted the temptation to do much at all—I have no idea how anything I do might be interpreted.”

  That was when Deja realized that there was something she could do. She couldn’t let James know, but she could put a few words in the right ear, even if it was out of public view. There was no guarantee her idea would make any difference, but it was the only positive thing she could see to do. So she had to try.

  “I need to run an errand,” she told them.

  “What errand?”

  “I’m still employed at the diner. When all is said and done, I’ll need that job. I want to run over there, get my paycheck and talk with Jerry, who manages the place. He’s been so nice about shuffling my schedule around Barbara’s treatments and I promised to keep him informed about how she’s doing.”

  “Sure, as long as you promise to come back here,” James said. “Today, I mean. Don’t disappear like last time. You had me worried.”

  The idea he worried about her made her feel good. “I have my things in the other bedroom. I won’t take off on you again.”

  Kieran held up his phone. “And I, James, thought to get her phone number. If she doesn’t get back, we can call and ask where the hell she is, and what she wants for dinner. Important shit.”

  “That’s why you get the big bucks, Kieran. You’re the detail man. Where would we be without details?”

  Deja liked the interplay between the two men. A lot of what had been toxic when she’d heard them over the phone was gone. Maybe after the incident with Kieran’s sister, they’d stayed apart, for proximity seemed to be healing a number of rifts.

  She thought about her plan. It was a good gamble and would move things toward resolution. She needed to get the problems with James worked out, find out what he expected from her, and just get it done. Then she could get back to trying to find the money for Barbara’s treatment. After all, that where this entire mess started. Getting that money was the entire point.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Shen Liang’s puzzle strategy had James thinking of people differently—in terms of pictures. Looking at Kieran, sipping his ubiquitous neat Irish whiskey, dressed in his impeccable suit, handmade shoes and carefully knotted tie, he knew the image was deliberately offset by the dark stubble on his chin.

  The man cultivated his image precisely. He was a careful man and a thorough lawyer. His hourly rate reflected that thoroughness. But the Irishman had once told him that he also believed in the Japanese idea that everything you created should have a deliberate imperfection.

  He had explained his theory to James when they were both starting out. “In art, it avoids the hubris of attempting perfection. In law it gives the other side an apparent weakness to attack. Works for me either way.”

  Now James watched Kieran and saw the complete picture of the man for the first time. His brain filled in the blanks—his concern for his sister, and his anger at what he saw as James’s shabby treatment of her, his desire to be the perfect lawyer, as well as look like one, and his friendship, which was made clear by the fact that he’d come to Las Vegas without being asked.

  As James watched, Kieran became aware of being studied. He put his glass on the coffee table and sat back. “So, where are we?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? I’m not entirely sure.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “What about her? She’s here, and willing to cooperate.”

  “Which means what?”

  “She’ll sign whatever you and I ask her to.”

  Kieran crossed his legs and pointed at his Italian leather briefcase with his toe. “I called my local contacts and we have a number of options. As to what is the best thing to do, well, I don’t know the whole story. I have to say that the woman is impressive—not at all what I expected, considering what happened.”

  “I know. I told you about her sister.”

  “The one she claimed was sick and the reason she was willing to play the game?”

  “That’s right.”

  Kieran looked alarmed. “You made contact? Without me there? Whose idea was that?”

  “Mine. I insisted on it.”

  “Like you insisted on getting married?”

  “I wanted to be positive she was real. I needed to know if she was someone trustworthy who’d just screwed up, like she said, or if this was some nefarious phase two of the plan.” James picked up Kieran’s glass and went to the bar. He poured two this time and brought Kieran’s glass to him, then sat. “Call me paranoid, but until I met the sister, I couldn’t decide what to make of the story.”

  “And she is as sick as Deja claims?”

  “So says the doctor.”

  “The truth about the sister is nice to know when deciding if you are going to be vindictive or not.”

  “Vindictive?”

  “You could take her to court. We could see if there was anything actually criminal in her actions. If she was part of a conspiracy to destroy your business—”

  “None of that crap, Kieran. I’m satisfied that she acted out of desperation. And pursuing a criminal complaint against anyone in this case, even McCabe, would make me look petty. It’s okay if I act petty, but I’d rather not advertise my shortcomings.”

  “Tell me more about this sister. What’s she like?”

  “She is quite a woman. Sick, dying, but spunky as hell.”

  Kieran laughed. “So my legal advice is that you divorce Deja and marry the sister. She sounds like a catch.”

  “I’m afraid that she’s already married and, as you know, so am I, at least for the moment.”

  �
��And?”

  “Clearly the marriage thing…well, that isn’t the biggest problem. It never was. It was a mistake, and one that’s fixable. What we do is complicated by the fact that I like her. I can live with having made a mistake. What was upsetting me was losing Shen Liang’s respect.”

  “And the deal.”

  “Yes. But at the last meeting I think I started to figure out how Shen Liang thinks—just scratching the surface. He’s waiting to see what I do, how I deal with this apparent calamity. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is at all. His idea of a person comes from how they deal with the events that actually happen. My initial thought was to undo the marriage quickly and move on. Now I’m not so sure.”

  Kieran tilted his head. “And hearing her story, and believing it has changed your view of things?”

  “Her story, seeing her with her sister, and spending time with her. All those things have given me a reason to ask you to put a private investigator on a couple of research projects.”

  Kieran looked up, interested. “Okay.”

  “Check out the sister’s family finances. I’m pretty sure they’ve told me the truth…now. But I want confirmation.”

  “Okay. That’s pretty easy to do.”

  “The other is about Deja.”

  Kieran smiled. “Beat you to that one. I got on it right away. My minions dug out all the links to her past, her secret bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, unreported marriages to deadbeat nobles, all of it.”

  “What?”

  Kieran put up his hands. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist. No record, no black marks we could find. She was attending the University of Nevada, going after a degree in literature. She won some prizes and had a nice future—tipped for big things. Then, she dropped out.

  I assume that was to help her sister. Her parents died a number of years ago and she had a partial scholarship. If the sister had to quit work and her husband has low paying jobs, she might’ve dropped out to work and help out. She has a job in a diner at the edge of town.”

  “Like she said.”

  “Like she said.”

  “Shit.” James rested his chin on his fist, his elbow on his knee.

  “What’s the matter, James?”

  “This whole thing has me feeling like a jerk, Kieran.”

  “No matter how pissed I’ve been with you, James, you are the injured party in this case.”

  “And I’ve acted like a self-righteous prick.”

  “We all go to our strengths, and that’s something you do so well.”

  James decided to ignore him. “That first morning, when I woke up, all I thought about was what this marriage meant to me. Okay, she screwed up this business deal for me, but worst case, if Liang has nothing more to do with me, it isn’t the end of the world. It’s a straightforward business setback. So the truth of the matter is that this injured party is suffering mostly from blows to his pride and self-esteem.”

  “So what’s on your mind?” Kieran asked. “I need some direction. Knowing that you think you were an ass is satisfying but not helpful in terms of giving legal advice.”

  “Cute, Kieran. But I need your help as a friend as much as my lawyer.”

  Kieran held up his glass. “Well, as long as you are pouring Irish, and asking nicely, I can manage to get off my high horse.”

  James ran options through his head. “Do you think you could find out about this procedure the sister needs?”

  “I can put people on it, sure. What do you want to know?”

  “If it’s real or smoke and mirrors, with someone looking to get paid to experiment on sick people. And what would the treatment really cost?”

  “I thought she told you the price. Do you think she was lying?”

  “No. I think that’s what they told her, but I know it’s a ballpark figure. I’m a businessman, Kieran, and from my perspective, the quoted price from a hospital is one that they set for insurance companies, knowing they’ll probably only get a fraction of that. That means a hospital is always open to the idea of cash discounts. Cash is good. Secondly, whatever they ask is just a starting point for negotiations. They’ll accept anything that nets them a positive return.”

  “When it comes to money you can be cold and objective,” Kieran said, grinning. “I like that in you. I think that instead of billing you for this work I’ll send you to negotiate for the next car I buy.”

  “It’s common sense.”

  “Still, most of us would never think about challenging the price for surgery.” He smiled. “Is all this research leading somewhere I should know about?”

  “I don’t know yet. It depends on the answers we get.”

  The attorney smiled. “I think you aren’t telling me everything.”

  “And why would I do that? I have my mystique to think of, just as you have your image.”

  Kieran stood. “I’ll go get things started. I’ll have my local lawyer set up things with a private investigator and I’ll put them to work. Don’t drink up all that good Irish before I get back.”

  “If you work hard and fast I’ll order up more bottles.”

  “You are a slave driver, but I could get to liking the working conditions here.”

  * * * *

  When she reached the lobby of the hotel, Deja looked around to make sure she was alone before taking out her phone and dialing a number from memory. When the call was answered, she spoke quickly, afraid she might change her mind. “My name is Deja Fontaine,” she said.

  “Ah yes. You are the new Mrs. James Andrews?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And did James Andrews give you my number?”

  “No. He has no idea I’m calling you.”

  “How may I help?”

  “I would appreciate it if you could spare me a few minutes of your time.”

  “I would be delighted to meet you. When would be suitable?”

  “I’m available now.”

  “Excellent. I am in the penthouse suite at the Royal.”

  “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll leave your name with the attendant at the private elevator. I look forward to seeing you.”

  When she hung up, Deja’s heart pounded. She hoped to hell she knew what she was doing because she was certain her actions would have repercussions. If she didn’t understand people as well as she thought she did, she might just be digging the hole she was in deeper.

  * * * *

  James and Kieran walked down the hospital corridor and found the doctor in her office. When he introduced her to Kieran, mentioning that he was his lawyer, she laughed. “Are you planning to sue us into making Barbara well?”

  “Not at all, but only because I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “It’s a nonstarter,” Kieran said. “It’s against the ethics of my profession to sue beautiful women.”

  The doctor’s grin told him that the flattery was well aimed. “I was hoping to learn something about this new treatment that you think might work for her.”

  “I can’t talk about my patient with you.”

  “I am family,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Deja might not have made it clear, but I’m her husband, so Barbara is my sister-in-law, and I am looking into helping get her treatment.”

  The doctor smiled. “I still can’t go into specifics.”

  “I don’t expect you to. I’m not actually asking about Barbara’s care, but about this treatment and whether she really could benefit from it.”

  “The last tests we ran suggest that she is at a point where there is a significant possibility of it working. Whether that means she is cured or goes into remission, I can’t say. If it is remission, that isn’t the same as a cure, but it would mean an indefinite period when she could heal and regain her strength.”

  “How would the treatment affect the pain she’s in?”

  The doctor smiled. “It would definitely reduce the amount and frequency of pain. Without the pain, her rema
rkable ability to recover would do wonders. As long as she gets the treatment soon.”

  “And how quickly could you could do it?”

  “It is actually a series of surgeries, done over a period of a couple of months.”

  “Is she strong enough for that much cutting?”

  “She’s tough, and by letting her recover between them, she’ll do fine. As far as when we can start, I’d need to contact the doctor at UCLA who developed it, but I know she’s eager to have more successful treatment.”

  “So it’s very experimental.”

  “Yes. She needs to prove the procedure so the insurance companies are forced to stop saying no to patients she could help. So, I’d imagine we could start soon. In a day or two.”

  James turned to Kieran. “Well, old friend?”

  “It’s your money, James.”

  “Then go see the bean counters.”

  Kieran stood and made a face. “I hate bean counters.”

  “So make them squirm.”

  He grinned. “Okay. I can do that.”

  As he turned to leave, the doctor smiled.

  “Barbara is a great lady.”

  “It seems to run in the family. Your wife is devoted to her.”

  “Almost too much.”

  * * * *

  She felt as if she started the meeting off on the back foot—off balance. She’d lost control.

  Liang had met her with a scowl that put her on the defensive. Seeing what she took as a look of disapproval, she felt a compelling need to justify herself to him. That she didn’t feel her actions were justifiable made her ramble, searching for something.

  Aware that she was making no sense, that her planned presentation was all going wrong, she stopped.

  He blinked.

  “This is terrible,” she said.

  His scowl increased. “What is so terrible?”

  “This visit. I came here for one purpose. I needed to face you and tell you, in person, the truth about what happened—to let you know all the facts.”

  “I see.”

  “Instead of doing that, and being focused, I saw your hideous scowl and started worrying about your opinion of me. I let what you think of me become important, and it shouldn’t matter.”