Gideon laughed softly under his breath, and Ben wondered if he was thinking of that stranger who’d been in here. But Kat didn’t go goo-goo over anyone. Ever.
“So, backtracking here,” she said abruptly, leaving the dreamy eyes behind, “you’re telling us that this Liz Palazzo . . . er . . . Mrs. Hughes fell for you before she knew exactly who you were?”
A slant of brightness cut through him, but it was extinguished right away. If there was one light spot to all this, it was that Liz hadn’t glommed onto him for money . . . and she hadn’t been the cheat he’d been expecting. Cheers for small wins.
Gideon’s drawl broke in. “So the way I’m hearing this, your main problem isn’t so much with Liz Palazzo as with how your brother’s gonna make your life hell as far as the rest of the family goes . . . if he finds out about the details.”
He made it sound so straightforward, even though Liz really was a factor, too. Ben had hated the look on her face when he’d let her down, hated to see that look on any woman’s face.
Ben nodded, anyway.
The cowboy idly ran a thumb across the gunpowder mark below his cheekbone then leaned on the bar again. “You’re planning on an annulment, right?”
“I don’t see any other choice.”
“Buddy, you’re not seeing the forest for the trees. If your biggest worry is saving face with your family and the public, there’s a way around this.”
Both Kat and Ben sat back on their stools.
Could there be a fix?
Gideon asked, “Just how long can someone stay married in this state before they don’t have the option of filing for an annulment?”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t know that there’s a time limit. I think the longer a person waits, though, the more a judge scrutinizes the reason for the petition.”
“Then don’t you get it?” Gideon asked. “As we used to say in the military, just embrace the suck.”
What the hell was Gideon babbling about?
The cowboy looked like a sheriff explaining an Old West code as he lazed on his stool. “First off, just act honest with your flippin’ family. Tell ’em you fell for this woman and got married to her, simple and to the point. That’d be a whole lot more honorable than nailing her then annulling the marriage.”
Kat stood from her stool, but Ben couldn’t move.
“Are you suggesting,” he asked, “that I should win her over again and double down on my mistake?”
Gideon rolled his eyes. “Listen—the press would maul you for getting drunk and accidentally getting married. But if you embrace the suck and act like you wanted to get married in the first place—that your heart was so full of this Liz Palazzo that the birds sang and the earth moved—you might get ’em on your side. Hell, as far as they know, you scooped up a down-on-her-luck ex-showgirl and you turned her into a princess. Every woman who reads the tabloids is gonna swoon at the very idea.”
So far, this wasn’t sounding half bad.
“And your father,” Gideon said, “the serial groom, couldn’t possibly fault you for getting married, of all things. You might even try to show him that you’re a better husband than he is. Buddy, if the press can spin this, so can you.”
Ben was gripping his sports-drink bottle. This idea was either genius or totally crazy and mercenary. But it was making sense: Liz had all but indicated that a quickie marriage wasn’t a bad thing in her mind. And didn’t she have a dream he could make come true? She’d mentioned being in debt, and she wanted a restaurant. How could giving her a better life hurt her?
Wouldn’t Gideon’s idea solve so much for both of them?
But there was at least one huge hole that needed to be filled here. “Unfortunately,” Ben said, “my brother would still strangle me for being with a woman he considers the enemy.”
“He’ll get over it,” Gideon said, “when he realizes that the last person who’ll go to the press with a story about his floppy cock is his brother’s wife and new member of his beloved family.”
The answer couldn’t be this simple. It probably wouldn’t be, but wasn’t it something to think about?
“Who knows?” Gideon added. “Things might even work out with you two in the end.”
Then he laughed, but there was something under it—a sense of longing that Ben had never heard before. But why would the quick-draw cowboy—so nicknamed because he was the fastest man in Rough & Tumble when it came to getting a woman in bed before anyone realized it—be longing for anything?
When Ben looked to Kat to see what she might be thinking, she was shaking her head.
“I’m not sure about this,” she said. “On one hand, Ben needs to make it up to this woman, seeing as he stomped all over her heart like it was a bag of shit on fire. But on the other hand? Dammit, this is ruthless and very, very wrong.”
“Not if I tell her what’s going on,” Ben said. But he realized the problem with that before Gideon even voiced it.
“Weren’t you concerned that she would go to the press with a scandal? Unless you lock her down with a contract or something, she’d have a real tale for the tabloids if you revealed the facts.”
A contract. Business. Of course. Jameson had wanted her to sign that nondisclosure agreement before, why not use one now?
Genius. Definitely genius.
Kat took the towel from her shoulder, shaking her head again and walking away from them.
But Gideon calmly drank the rest of his coffee, then said, “Believe me, I see this crap all the time with the starlets who come through here needing a bodyguard. There’re more than a few Hollywood marriages where the woman is a beard for their husband, who just happens to have a hush-hush boyfriend. But you run with those people, too, Ben. You know that the institution of marriage is bullshit, anyway, just a contract forged by society’s needs.”
Ben couldn’t disagree. He’d even signed nondisclosure agreements given to him by a few stars he’d been with. He’d never cared about having any paperwork of his own, but now that he thought about it, wasn’t everything a contract in this world?
He could use one of the lawyers Boomer knew and keep the preparation of a contract mum from his family. But how would Liz react to the proposition? Ben was sure that if she had any feelings for him at all, they were either alcohol-enhanced or one of those things that would fade after she realized he wasn’t husband material.
Then again, she had dreams of a future—and his money could buy that for her. She could come out just as much a winner in this as he would if they agreed to a set amount of time to keep this marriage going for the good of all of them.
Sure, Jameson would be pissed at first, but if Ben could carry off this deal, his practical brother would live with Liz as a loyally quiet sister-in-law. He wouldn’t squeal to their father about Liz, either, because he had too much to lose. Hell, Dad himself might even welcome Ben into the ranks of wedded bliss, gaining some respect for him because he wanted to change and settle down. And Liz?
Her life would change in so many good ways.
As Kat pressed her lips together and went about cleaning up the bar, Gideon tipped his hat to Ben. So endeth the conversation.
“Thanks, Gid,” Ben said. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“So I’ve been told before.”
The cowboy went on his way, and Ben sank into his seat, gulping down the rest of his second sports drink, much relieved.
True, he hadn’t solved Jameson’s problem in the manner anyone had expected him to, but sometimes miracles did happen in the oddest ways possible.
10
Right after the marriage revelation, Liz had rushed two floors down to her hotel room, tears leaking from her eyes, threatening to explode into a crying jag before she told herself not to let this morning’s events affect her so much. A quickie marriage wasn’t worth it.
It shouldn’t mean anything because it obviously hadn’t meant dink to Bennett Hughes.
She’d taken a deep, shuddering breath, then slid her keycard
into the lock, easing open the door into the dark room.
That’s right—Ben wasn’t worth her sorrow. They’d both been drunk and dumb, so why was she taking this so much to heart?
She’d walked into the room like such a zombie that, when Anita had sat up in bed and excitedly asked how her night had gone, Liz had only plopped onto the mattress, lying on her back, telling Anita she didn’t want to talk about it.
Big mistake, because the adjoining room door had been left open, and Mai, Darcie, Parisa, and Carolann had heard Liz come in. They’d invaded, coaxing the whole story out of her.
After Liz had dishearteningly filled them in, it hadn’t been pretty.
“Es un hijo de la chingada!” Anita muttered when Liz was done, and she’d come over to Liz’s bed to hug her tight.
Liz barely felt the embrace, barely heard her best friend calling Ben more exotic names than a son of a bitch. At some point, the numbness had taken over.
Carolann turned on the light, revealing her bedhead blond hair matted on one side. “Oh, just look at her. Please don’t cry, Lizzie.”
“I’m not.”
All of them piled on Liz’s bed, group hug time. Little did they know it, but their comfort made Liz want to cry even more.
But she wouldn’t. Nope. Big girls didn’t cry, just like Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons preached.
But had Frankie’s big girls ever been taken for nitwits like Liz had by Ben? Did they still have to press their hands against their chests, keeping their needy Maddie Patterson hearts from aching too much?
Where was Liz Palazzo, the big girl, now?
And what made everything a million times more terrible was that if Ben called her up, apologizing, she would listen. Oh, she’d give him a hard time, but damn her, she’d hear him out. She had to because of the annulment.
The question was—would she let him off scot-free?
As the girls kept cooing and coddling, Anita spoke against Liz’s hair. “And I thought Donell was an asshole for dropping me last night at the first sight of that Nickelodeon actress. Guys are such dirt.”
The group gradually gave Liz room, petting her hair and staying on the bed, dressed in their nightshirts. Mai was the only one wearing actual pajamas, and they were printed with monkeys. She was still glowing from her clearly brief rendezvous at Bordello with her rock star, even though Liz was sure she was trying to hide it from the heartbroken people present.
Darcie twisted her long black hair into a high bun that told Liz she’d be here awhile. “Anita, what Donell did to you was nothing compared to Liz’s trauma. Getting married to an undercover billionaire who wanted to wheedle her into a nondisclosure contract for his brother? That takes the cake.”
“Such a jerk,” Parisa murmured, nudging up her glasses, which she only wore in private. Then she leaned closer to Liz, seeing the Rolex on her wrist. “Hey. Where did you . . . ?”
Liz swallowed. She’d almost forgotten about the expensive watch Ben had given to her. If she’d been thinking straight before she’d left his room, she would’ve taken the thing off and left it behind, although . . .
Hell, he’d given it to her, right? Why not cash in on it and use it to pay a bill? Might as well.
“It’s from him,” she said simply.
Parisa made a disgusted sound. “He was trying to soften the blow by giving you a gift, I imagine. Major jerk.”
“Douchebag,” Mai added.
“Butthead,” said Carolann.
“Pinga,” Anita finished off, making a motion like she was dismissively whacking off a penis.
They verbally smacked Ben around for the amount of time they apparently thought Liz needed to hear it. But the more colorful the names got, the more Liz wanted to say that she’d been drunk, too—and she hadn’t even been as bad off as Ben since she hadn’t tossed back all of that peach bombellini like he had and continued throwing drinks down in the limo, all on an empty stomach. She’d known damned well what she’d been doing while having sex with him and then getting quickie married, and even if he would’ve told her beforehand that he was Bennett Hughes, man on a mission for his brother, she might’ve been so blinded by him that she wouldn’t have cared.
A tiny thought in the back of her mind added something she’d been trying to ignore: If you’d have known he was a billionaire, would you have gone with the flow then, too, even if you knew he was up to something? Would marrying him have been even more appealing?
It was a gross thing to admit, but knowing he had money would’ve tempted the side of Liz that wanted to be something more: a girl who wanted to have no debt to weigh her down, who wanted to be a respected member of society, a businesswoman running her own place where people from all over town would come and compliment her on skills that had nothing to do with the way she looked.
If she’d have known who Ben really was, she might’ve had base motivations just like his own, especially since she’d been more than okay with taking Jameson’s money under questionable circumstances . . .
Jeez, who was she?
When the girls exhausted their talent for skewering her quickie husband, Liz stayed in Anita’s arms, sheltered for the time being.
They measured her with their gazes—still no tears from Liz—and Carolann ventured a comment, kneeling with her nightshirt stretched over her thighs. “I feel bad, because maybe we should’ve recognized Bennett Hughes at Bordello. We were all too involved with the champagne and men. Anita, wouldn’t Donell have known him?”
Anita shrugged. “Donell sure didn’t say anything about recognizing him, and you think he would’ve, seeing as they both own chunks of the world.”
Mai nodded. “They’re both in the Billionaire Boys Club. Or maybe Donell was too into you to notice anything else, Ani.”
“Until Ms. Fresh Tits Nickelodeon wandered by,” Anita said.
Carolann went on. “I have to say it, Lizzie—I can’t blame you for falling for such a pretty face. I hope you’re not beating yourself up about that.”
The rest of the girls agreed as Anita hugged Liz closer, then said, “Pretty and rich doesn’t mean you can go around treating people the way he treated Liz.” She looked down at her. “Honey, you realize that you could take that boy to the cleaners. Think of how much a story like yours would sell to the press.”
“No,” Liz said, the thought leaving her hollow. “It’s bad enough that Ben thought I stole from his brother. I’m not about to prove him right about being that kind of person.”
Even if she couldn’t stop thinking about how staying married might change everything.
But this had nothing to do with the money and how she’d somehow ended up married to a bajillionaire. Right?
She’d wanted him from the first second she’d seen him.
Anita clucked her tongue and leaned her forehead against Liz’s. “Hon, we know you’re not that way. I was just trying to make you feel better.”
But the fact that Anita had even brought it up needled Liz. Was that how the world saw her, as a money grubber? She and her friends had gone to dinners with their admirers after shows, and the other girls always took excessive tips from men who patted their asses while cocktail waitressing. But that didn’t mean any of them were sellouts.
Or could she be? That coarse side of her reared its head again. All his money . . . It would’ve brought such security. She would’ve also been able to hire her friends to be a part of the snazziest dinner club in Vegas. No more cocktail running and ass patting from sloshed convention-goers for them. Money would allow them to be their own women.
While the fantasy was nice, the reality wouldn’t stop throttling her heart. She’d thought she’d captured something so much more precious last night, and it had nothing to do with dollar bills.
She sat up and tried to smile at Anita, then the rest of the girls, her throat clogged again. They smiled back eagerly, probably thinking that they’d helped her feel better.
She was going to get there. Sometime. “I w
as just so sure he felt the magic with me, too, you know? But Anita can go ahead and say I told you so now.”
“No way.” Anita tapped a finger against Liz’s chin. “All of us have had hard times with men. Besides, it’s Vegas, home of the quickie. Odds are one of us was going to go there.”
Carolann sighed. “So what’s next, then? Annulment?”
Ugh. Liz wished she could block out how she’d tested Ben this morning about the marriage and if it was as real as she’d been thinking. That enthusiasm had sure worn off of her.
Mostly.
“Annulment is the only outcome,” Liz said. “Even if I didn’t want it, he’ll have some powerful lawyers who can make salsa of me.”
Darcie nodded. “Word to that.”
“It’s just . . .” A sob pushed at her chest, but she held it back for as long as she could. “I thought he really was into me.”
Carolann tilted her blond bedhead. “I get it, Lizzie. I’ve had a few who got away, too, and sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if only I’d fought for them a little harder. . . .”
Liz laughed, on the edge of complete sadness.
“It’s okay to admit it,” Carolann said. “We live a fast life. Why wouldn’t we fall in love the same way?”
Parisa, who’d been quiet this whole time, rose from the bed, grabbing the room phone on the nightstand and holding it out to Liz. “What’s his room number?”
Liz’s blood jerked in her veins, speeding up. “Why?”
Darcie caught on. “You’ll need to call him so you can start up the annulment. Or you could maybe take the discussion in a different direction. . . .”
“Oh, right.” Now Liz was going to cry. It was her nerves. Her pride. Her heart, which couldn’t take another rejection. “He’s had a blink in time to think this over and he’ll change his mind about marriage?”
“What if,” Mai said, “you just asked him on a date? Start things a little slower?”
Anita spoke up. “We’re talking about a guy who lied to her, and you’re telling her to go after him again?”
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