by Lizzie Shane
“Your father’s in politics, right?” he prompted, providing the one tidbit he’d gleaned about her history. That she’d grown up in multiple countries where her father had been posted as some kind of ambassador or diplomatic aide.
“They’re all in politics,” she corrected, twisting her hands in her lap. “My mother’s never run for political office, but she’s the most Machiavellian of them all. The perfect political wife. That’s what she wanted me to be too.”
“I bet that went over well.”
She grimaced. “You think? No wonder I ran away to California when I was eighteen and never looked back, right? Though she still tries to run my life from afar. She hates that I refuse to get involved in the family business and every time I go back home for a family event she tries to drag me back into it. We’re a dynasty, you know. At least in her mind.”
Ren nodded, keeping his face carefully neutral. Candy shook her head, as if shaking away her mother’s hold on her.
“Anyway, at my sister’s first wedding she kept trying to set me up with ‘suitable’ men. I’d had a few too many glasses of champagne and she was driving me crazy as only my mother can, so I told her I was seeing someone to get her off my back. You.” She blushed, smoothing the fabric of her snug blue jeans down over her thighs. “I had that stupid drunk selfie we’d taken at the office party on my phone and I showed it to her to help sell the story.”
Ren blinked, mentally doing the math. That selfie had been taken years ago. The first night they ever hooked up, long before they’d had anything that could have been called a relationship. Though he wasn’t sure anything they’d ever had could be considered a relationship since this was the first he was hearing about her having a sister.
“Anyway, she was still giving me shit, saying we couldn’t be serious or I would have told her—which is total bullshit because I don’t tell her anything—but I wanted to get her off my back so I told her we were engaged, but I hadn’t worn my ring because I didn’t want to take the focus away from Charlotte and Reggie at their wedding.”
“Okay.”
He tried to sound nonjudgmental, but Candy reacted as if he’d challenged her. “I know it was stupid, but you have to understand, my mother can wind me up like no one else. I just needed her to give me five seconds to breathe, you know?”
“I understand.”
She shook her head, not seeming to hear him. “Obviously, I didn’t think it through. As soon as I got home she started pestering me to bring you back to DC so Daddy could meet you and harassing me with calls and emails about planning the wedding. Had we picked a date and did I want my sister to be my matron of honor and I tried to tell her the truth—that we didn’t have to plan a wedding, but as soon as I said that she assumed that we’d broken up and started badgering me to date some city councilman or other who used to work for my father and had just moved to California. All I could think was that it was never going to end, she was never going to accept that I was leading my own life and I didn’t want to be the political princess.”
He could see where this was going. “So you doubled down.” He knew what Candy did when she felt cornered.
“I told her there was no wedding to plan because we’d already eloped. Then I got stupid drunk and photoshopped wedding photos using some pictures of you in a suit that I grabbed from your modeling days.”
“Wow.” Candy certainly had the computer skills to make the pictures look real, but he was impressed by the effort she’d gone to in order to sell the lie.
“I just wanted to shut her up. I know it’s insane. Who lies about something like that, right? And to your own mother. But… I don’t know. It just felt like such an obvious solution. My mother stopped trying to set me up with clones of my father, she stopped trying to plan our wedding—and it’s not like they ever come out to California to see me so no one had to know the truth. It turned out to be a surprisingly effective plan.”
“How long did that last?”
She grimaced. “Longer than it might have if my siblings hadn’t been hit by a run of drama that kept my mother busy in DC. My youngest brother’s wife had just had twins when she was diagnosed with cancer, so my mother became Super Grandma and stepped in to run his life and coordinate charity fundraisers for Ovarian Cancer Awareness. Then after Chloe passed away it seemed like the wrong time to come clean and the next time I went home after that my other brother was going into rehab and my sister’s husband came out of the closet and the divorce was the kind of high drama my mother thrives on and Charlotte needed her, which she always does, so visiting California just never came up and the lie just sort of perpetuated itself.”
Ren blinked, blown away by the sheer quantity of information she’d just spilled about her personal life. When Candy decided to open up, she didn’t hold back.
“My father wanted to meet you,” she went on. “He was going to fly out here to do the paternal thing, but politics always come first in our family and there was a diplomatic posting in one of the Stans and I…” She blushed.
“What?”
“I sent him an email from you. You’ve been, uh, corresponding with my father for a while now.”
“Jesus.” He rubbed a hand over his face, not sure whether he was worried or impressed.
“I know! It’s insane. But once I started I just couldn’t stop. I hate lies. You know that. It isn’t me—”
He jumped in before she could get lost in the babble. “They never suspected? How long has this been going on?”
“Almost four years?” She cringed at his incredulous expression. “I know! Every time I thought the truth would come out, something would happen or I would make some excuse and everyone would decide it was totally understandable that they’d never actually met you face to face. I tried telling my mother the truth once, but she told me it was a joke in poor taste and refused to believe me. At the time I wondered—I’m not sure and I don’t know that it matters, but sometimes I wonder if she’s suspected the truth all along, but likes the lie as much as I do because it gives her something convenient to tell her DAR friends about her rebellious daughter who ran away to California. Like she doesn’t want to know the truth any more than I want to tell her. She didn’t even seem to care that she’d never met you.”
“What changed? Why are you telling me this now?”
Candy groaned and seemed to hunch in on herself. “My sister’s getting remarried and my mother has decided it will look bad if the entire family—including spouses—don’t make an appearance. She even threatened to bring the wedding to California if I didn’t show up and produce a husband. Apparently Eden, California has become the place for high profile matrimony ever since that wedding show Max’s sister does started up, but I can’t have them invading this life. I’ve worked too hard to create something that was mine and has nothing to do with them.”
Ren nodded—he would have done it for her for much flimsier reasons. “Okay.”
Candy didn’t seem to hear him. “I know I should just come clean, but as much as my sister and I sometimes struggle to see eye to eye, I don’t want to ruin her big flashy wedding with the scandal that I lied about being married for years—and my sister would definitely see any gossip leaking at her wedding as a personal attack.”
“Candy, I’ll do it.”
She plowed on. “It would only be a week. Not even a week. Five days. The ceremony is at my grandfather’s estate in Virginia. We fly out, you pretend to be my loving husband, and then as soon as Charlotte takes off on her honeymoon I pull my parents aside and break the truth to them. I promise. No more lies. I just don’t want to ruin things for Charlotte. Especially after the way her last marriage ended.”
“Candy. I already said I would do it. I’m in.”
She froze, her eyes going wide as the words finally penetrated. “Seriously?”
The look on her face would have been reason enough to do it—like he’d just single-handedly saved a bus full of orphans from driving over a cliff. “Sure.” He smiled “I fi
gure I owe you. You’ve always helped me keep my secrets.” More than kept them. She’d helped him bury them deeper. “When do we leave?”
CHAPTER TWO
Five years ago…
The Elite Protection receptionist looked like cotton candy temptation—all sweet and deceptively innocent. She had a generically pretty face, so perfectly symmetric it was almost unmemorable, and smiled at him like a cheerleader posing for her yearbook photo when he walked through the door.
“Ren Xiao?” Even her voice was sugar sweet—light and girlish.
He rewarded her smile with one of his own and strolled to prop his forearm against the reception desk. “That’s me.”
She gave a dazzled little blink—a reaction his smile had been getting since puberty—before pulling herself together and forcing her smile even wider as she rose from behind the desk. “Mr. Dewitt has requested that one of his associates conduct your interview. If you’ll follow me?”
She turned and led the way down a hallway, her little kitten heels clicking on the hardwood floors as he tried not to be distracted by the twitch of her ass under the just-barely-long-enough pink and white checked sundress. Her blonde ponytail swung as she bounced down the stairs to a lower level, leading him into a large, open room that looked like it would someday be a sparring gym, though it was still under construction.
“Why would you want to be a bodyguard?” she asked in that sweet, light voice, a voice that doubtless made every man who ever met her want to coddle her and protect her and buy her things. He wondered if she even knew how much power that innocent little girl vibe gave her over men.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he teased with a wink. “For the women.”
He glanced around the workout room—she’d stopped in the middle of the practice mats, but he didn’t see any hulking bodyguard types waiting to interview him—and he wasn’t above pumping her for any information that might give him an edge until his interviewer arrived. “Do you know who’s interviewing me?”
She swept his legs so fast he was flat on his back, wheezing from the breath being knocked out of him, before he even saw her move.
She looked down at him with a sweet smile that suddenly had an edge of something else. Something wicked. “I’m Candy Raines,” she said in a voice that had suddenly dropped to a husky purr. “And the interview’s already started. How do you think you’re doing?”
*
Present day…
Ren didn’t immediately move away from the door after shutting it after Candy, watching her through the window as she moved quickly down the walk toward her car. Wicket whined at his side and he absently reached down to rub her ears as they both watched Candy climb into her car.
“So you’re pretending to be married now.”
Shit. He winced at the sound of Jess’s soft statement, turning away from the front as Candy drove away.
Jess’s expression hovered somewhere between frustration and sadness. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but you know how sound carries in here. And you weren’t exactly trying to be quiet.”
No, they hadn’t been. If he was honest, he’d forgotten that Jess was here, only a few feet away, around the corner in the kitchen. “Sorry.”
“For what?” she challenged. “For agreeing to play husband for your ex without even asking me?” She shook her head before he could reply. “Never mind. Let’s eat. I burned the risotto, but I think some of it is still salvageable.” She turned and retreated back to the kitchen without another word.
He trailed after her with Wicket at his heels, watching her serve them both and carry both plates to the dining room table she’d set—complete with candlelight. Jesus, he was an ass. “Jessica—”
She set the plates on placemats he didn’t even remember owning and took her seat, shooting him an expectant look. “It’s getting cold.”
He sat down and they silently set to eating. The risotto was overcooked, but it was still delicious. Under normal circumstances, Jessica was an amazing cook and she claimed she enjoyed modifying her favorite recipes to suit his vegetarianism. He complimented the meal and she hummed noncommittally, leaving the table once again ominously silent.
As relationship fuckups went, this was apparently a big one, but he was never going to be the man who could turn Candy away when she needed help. He wasn’t wired that way.
“She isn’t really my ex—” he began and Jess cut him off with an incredulous look.
“Seriously? That’s your argument?”
She set down her fork and he had a feeling this wasn’t going to go well even before she turned her full attention on him, brown eyes dark with something he hoped wasn’t hurt. God, he was a jerk.
“You didn’t even hesitate, did you? Did you ever stop to wonder how I might feel? If maybe having my boyfriend pretend to be married to someone he obviously still has feelings for might bother me?”
“Nothing’s going to happen—”
“That isn’t the point, Ren!” Her palm slapped flat on the table, making Wicket, who had been hiding beneath in the hope that one of them would drop something, jump and retreat to the living room.
“What did you want me to tell her?”
“Anything else!”
“I thought you liked Candy. Do you want me to just—”
“Leave her to deal with her own problems?” Jess finished for him, arching one eyebrow. “Sounds good to me.”
“She’s my friend and she needs my help.”
“And that’s all this is,” she said, her voice thick with disbelief. “Two friends helping each other out.”
“I thought you’d understand—” It was a lie. He hadn’t even considered what Jess might think and the look she shot him said she knew it.
“I have been so damn understanding I’ve made myself sick,” she said, shaking her head, “but maybe I shouldn’t have been. Tell me, Ren, did you only ask me out in the first place to make her jealous?”
“No.” But he had been on the rebound. Whatever the hell the on-again-off-again thing with Candy was, it had just ended and he’d needed…something. Jessica had seemed like the perfect antidote. He hadn’t been trying to make her jealous. At least, not consciously.
Jessica must have seen the realization on his face. “Oh my God. You did.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but couldn’t lie to her. She shook her head, throwing down her napkin, and shoved away from the table, striding quickly toward the front door.
“Jessica—”
“I am such an idiot. I knew you were in love with her. I knew it. And I talked myself out of believing it. I told myself I was being paranoid, because things were too good to be true with you in every other way. God, I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
“Jess!”
He caught up with her in the foyer where she was shoving her arms into the cardigan she wore instead of a jacket, shaking as she toed on her shoes. “What secrets did she keep, Ren?”
“What?”
She stopped moving then, facing him head on. “You told her you owed her because she kept your secrets. What secrets?”
He felt his face locking down into a blank mask, the habit of a lifetime.
Jessica grimaced, her eyes falling closed for a beat. “Right. Of course.” When her lashes lifted, her eyes were dark with resignation. “Good bye, Ren.”
“Jessica…” His voice trailed away as he gripped the doorjamb and watched her storm down the walk, ignoring the urge to chase after her, to try to make things right. What would he say anyway? He was the asshole here. No two ways about that.
He’d never meant to hurt her—certainly had never meant to use her—one of the things he’d loved about Jess from the first was that things were uncomplicated with her. There were no ghosts in her eyes, no baggage from former relationships—and now he’d given her some, like a prize douchebag.
Wicket rushed for the open door and he caught her by the collar, shutting it abruptly.
He shouldn’t have dated Jess. He�
��d hoped that he would fall for her, that she would change everything, make him forget he’d ever thought Candy was the one for him. Candy, who didn’t want a real relationship. Candy, who pulled him in with one hand and pushed him away with the other, screwing with his mind—and body—for years before he’d finally acknowledged that she wasn’t going to suddenly wake up one morning wanting the picket fence and two-point-two kids.
He’d realized that if he wanted a real partner in life, the kind of love his parents and grandparents had had, he was going to have to find it somewhere else. So he’d run straight to Jess—sweet, uncomplicated Jess. The only problem was he hadn’t managed to cut Candy out of his heart before he did.
And now he’d ruined things with Jessica. All for Candy. Who still wasn’t going to suddenly become the kind of person who would let him in.
Though tonight had been different. She’d still been defensive, but details about her past had spilled out in a rush. Things she’d always hidden from him before.
Could this be their chance? He’d learned more about her tonight than she’d told him in the last five years combined.
Even if she completely closed off again, this was still his chance to meet her family, to see another side of her, to finally know her better. A chance to see behind all the secrets she kept.
And Ren, hopeless optimist that he was, couldn’t resist that chance.
CHAPTER THREE
Five years ago…
Candy dodged a jab and danced out of reach, swiping the sweat from her forehead with her wrist before it could drip into her eyes and impair her vision. As much as she hated to admit it—and she really hated to admit it—Ren Xiao, regardless of what else he might be, was a helluva fighter.
She’d caught him off guard with that first leg-sweep—and really, if he was going to be a bodyguard he was going to need to learn not to be sucked in by a ditzy girl batting big doe eyes at him—but he’d rallied quickly and they’d been pretty damn close to evenly matched since then.
She peppered him with questions as they sparred, the conversation punctuated by grunts and pauses when they were both breathing hard or focused intently on staying ahead of one another’s moves. Her long pauses were another testament to how good he was. It wasn’t often anyone could give Candy a run for her money on the mat.