Little White Lies

by Lizzie Shane

  “Got it,” he said, and she turned to look at him, her breath catching in her throat at his proximity. It would be so easy to kiss him right now.

  So easy. And such a huge mistake.

  She shoved away, standing abruptly. “I need another drink. This one tastes like elephant piss.”

  Pretty Boy released a bark of laughter and rose to follow her. “Then let’s get the lady a different drink.”

  He accompanied her to the bar, moving with that lazy panther gait, as if nothing in the world had ever stressed him out. While she was waiting for her drink, he rested one hand lightly on the small of her back as he handed her back her phone. She looked down at it so he couldn’t read her eyes, but every particle of her body was focused on that light touch on her back.

  He’d had his hands all over her body when they were sparring, but this was different. Electricity streaked from his hand straight to her clit and all he was doing was rubbing the gauzy fabric gently back and forth over the soft skin over her spine. She knew she should move away. Shrug him off. Shut him down. But she stayed where she was, fiddling with her phone.

  He’d taken two pictures and texted them to himself, she realized, thumbing through her messaging history. One goofy, laughing selfie and another candid shot when she’d turned to look at him. The look on her face… the desire…

  It was right there for everyone to see. She wanted him. What could one little taste of temptation hurt?

  *

  Present day…

  “Do you know why the flight attendant congratulated us as we were getting off the plane?”

  Candy blushed and admitted. “She might have thought I was pregnant.”

  “You told the flight attendant you were pregnant?” She heard the surprise in his voice. “Are we lying to random strangers on transcontinental flights now?”

  “No. I told her I wasn’t feeling well. She decided I must be pregnant on her own.”

  “Is that the next step? After we pretend to be married a while, we get to have pretend children?”

  She glared at him. “You’re in an awfully good mood.”

  They’d had a terrible headwind—as if the gods wanted to warn them against flying east—and the flight had landed over an hour behind schedule. They’d collected their bags and headed to collect the rental car—where they’d discovered that their reservation had been lost and the only thing available was not the nondescript sedan Candy had hoped for, but a bright red Mercedes convertible.

  The traffic in DC was always a nightmare and thanks to their delay and the time change, they’d hit the heart of rush hour and were currently parked on the George Washington Parkway—in one of the spots where they didn’t even have a view of the river.

  Therefore there was no good reason for the man in the driver’s seat to be so damned cheerful.

  “Of course I’m in a good mood. I’ve always wanted to see where the mysterious Candy Raines comes from.”

  She grimaced, frowning out the window. “No, you haven’t. It’s the second circle of hell.”

  “DC? Or your family in particular?”

  “Both.” She changed the subject before he could press it—they were going to see her family soon enough. No need to dwell on them now. “What did your uncle want?”

  Pretty Boy’s phone had notified him of a voicemail as soon as they landed and he’d slipped off to check it while she was glowering at the baggage carousel, waiting for their luggage.

  “His last reunion tour didn’t sell particularly well—people were pissed that their latest frontman doesn’t sound anything like my dad. And now Javi thinks the best way to revitalize his career is to go the way of Gene Simmons and star in a reality TV show, but the producers are only interested if he can get me to do it with him.”

  “Has he met you? Or is he just conveniently forgetting that you changed your name to get away from your family’s notoriety?”

  “He’s never understood what he considers my bizarre need for privacy. As far as he’s concerned, the fact that people care enough about him to dig through his garbage is a sign that he’s made it.” He shrugged. “If I hadn’t been born famous thanks to my parents, I might think so too, but my lack of privacy never had anything to do with me. Just with who my parents were and their rock and roll tragedy.” The cars around them began to move, but he slid a glance across at her before he began creeping forward. “Did you tell your family about mine?”

  “You mean that your father was a rock god and your mother ran away from her life as the daughter of a Chinese billionaire to be with him and you were their illicit love child before they died in a fiery car crash that immortalized them forever? Nope. Somehow it hasn’t come up.”

  Her tone was light. She’d learned that Ren didn’t do serious when it came to talking about his past. He smiled now. “Thank you.”

  “They don’t need to know,” Candy said. “Knowing my mother, she’d probably either be scandalized by their liberalism or try to use your fame to get my brother reelected. Either way, her ignorance is our bliss.”

  The traffic opened up and they zipped west toward her grandfather’s estate in a prestigious McLean neighborhood. The houses got bigger and farther apart—though many of the stately mansions on sprawling plots of land had been torn down to make room for three or four McMansions in the original’s place. Her grandfather’s three-acre, twenty-thousand square foot sprawl of wealth and luxury remained as part of the old guard, a throwback to an era when DC power players rubbed elbows from a discreet distance, before the new upstart millionaires began moving in and crowding the neighborhood.

  From the front gate, all that was visible was a tree-lined drive. Pretty Boy slowed the car, hesitating when the GPS informed them that they had arrived at their destination.

  “Don’t chicken out on me now, Pretty Boy.”

  Startled out of his daze, he pulled into the drive, rolling down his window so he could reach the code box for the gate. “I’m suddenly realizing why you love that High Society movie so much.”

  “I love that movie because there is nothing sexier than a young Frank Sinatra. Don’t overthink it.”

  She gave him the code for the box and he punched it in, watching as the giant wrought iron masterpiece swung inward with ponderous grace.

  “Seriously, this is like something out of The Great Gatsby.”

  Candy snorted. “Be sure to tell my grandfather that. He’ll eat it up.”

  “The great Dalton Montgomery. Does Max know you’re related to him?”

  “You think he didn’t do a background check on me when he hired me?”

  “I’m not sure I ever heard how you were hired. From the way Max talks about it, it sounds like you were always part of EP.” The car rolled through the gate and slowly up the gently curving drive.

  “Tank came on first, technically. Then this awful Russian who didn’t last—great connections, terrible people skills. But by then Max had met me and I changed his life for the better. I’d had an old mentor—a former secret service agent who’d been my bodyguard when I was young—and she recommended me for the job. That was all it took.”

  Then the house came into view and Candy knew the exact moment Ren stopped hearing her. Her grandfather didn’t do anything in a small way.

  “Holy shit.”

  She sighed. “Yep.”

  The giant stone mansion was designed to awe and it never failed to make an impression. The driveway flowed into a circle around a massive fountain, flanked on either side by matching three-car garages—called “carriage houses” just for that extra splash of snobbery—each with an apartment above for guests. The main house sat between the two carriage houses, four stories of shock and awe with gabled windows and artfully arranged ivy climbing the walls. The house was nearly as deep as it was wide, but that wasn’t enough for Dalton Montgomery. In the back there was also an elegant pool house perched between the pool and outdoor tennis courts, as well as a three-bedroom “cottage” near the stream that ran
through the grounds behind the gardens.

  “Is there a servants’ entrance we should be using?” Pretty Boy asked dryly.

  Candy pointed to the grand staircase leading to the front door. “Park over there for now. I’m sure my mother has a plan for us.”

  Her mother always had a plan.

  Candy climbed out of the car and was halfway up the grand staircase before she realized Pretty Boy wasn’t with her. She turned and saw him opening the trunk of the car, reaching inside for their bags.

  “The staff will get that,” she called out.

  He arched a brow, but shut the trunk and climbed up to join her. “Are we the first ones to arrive? Or do they also valet?”

  “You’re joking, but I bet within two minutes of our walking through that door someone will take your keys to park the car for you.” They’d reached the top of the steps and Candy pressed the bell, listening to the gong echo inside.

  “Seriously?” he asked, but the question went unanswered as the door popped open, revealing the most senior member of her grandfather’s staff.

  Edward Walters, born Edek Walczynski, was a first generation Polish immigrant who took great pride in running a tight ship at the Montgomery compound. He’d been her grandfather’s butler since before Candy was born and he smiled warmly—though with great dignity—now as he greeted her, opening the door wider to usher her in. “Miss Candice, it’s so good to see you.”

  “Thank you, Walters. It’s good to see you as well. This is my husband, Pret—Ren.”

  “Pretren?”

  Pretty Boy thrust out his hand to shake the butler’s. “Just Ren. Nice to meet you, Walters.”

  Walters looked a little startled by the handshake, but accepted it warmly enough. He nodded to the keys in Ren’s other hand. “Shall I have the under-chauffeur park your car and take your things up? If you’ll wait in the informal drawing room, I’ll inform the family of your arrival.”

  “That would be lovely. Thank you,” Candy replied, her responses autopilot after years of training at her mother’s hand. Ren handed over the keys to a young man who appeared—doubtless the under-chauffeur—and Candy took his arm to guide him to the informal drawing room.

  “Under-chauffeur?” he whispered under his breath.

  Candy huffed out a soft, almost-relieved laugh—she’d expected him to give her a hard time about nearly introducing him to the butler as Pretty Boy. She’d been so focused on remembering to call him her husband she’d forgotten all about the fact that most people didn’t call their husbands by nicknames that had become so ingrained it was hard to think of him any other way.

  “Things will go much easier for you if you just think of it as Downton Abbey,” Candy recommended as they stepped into the informal drawing room.

  Ren whistled through his teeth. “What does the formal one look like?”

  The informal drawing room, generally used as a gathering place for the family for dinners or parties, was a large, elegant room with designer furnishings, Turkish rugs worth more than her condo, and a massive family portrait hanging over the marble mantelpiece.

  “It’s pretty much the same,” she told him. “Only without the family picture.” Because putting any trace of personalization in the public rooms was the height of vulgarity in her grandfather’s book.

  Pretty Boy moved closer to study the portrait and she trailed along with him, her nerves kicking up again. They’d abated for a while there in the car, until she almost felt like this was any old trip home, but now her stomach was twisting in knots.

  In the portrait, as in life, her mother looked like a woman who had hosted the Bushes for dinner more times than she could count and took great pride in that fact. Her dark brown hair was arranged into one of what had been a series of highly sculpted power-dos and her smile radiated poise, calm, and subtle superiority.

  At her side, Candy’s father looked cheerful and slightly lost, like a lovable basset hound who had somehow found himself surrounded by Dobermans. He had a remarkable ability to look sincere and sympathetic, which invariably inspired world leaders to want to compromise with him and women to want to coddle him—both of which he took advantage of shamelessly, because underneath his bemused exterior, her father was more fox than basset hound. His hair was still blond in the picture, though it had faded to an ashy gray now and thinned until her mother insisted he cut it Dick Cheney short.

  Candy and her siblings were clustered around them. Scott—the spitting image of their father, only nineteen in the portrait, but already sporting the bloodshot eyes and bleary smile of someone not entirely sober. Charlotte—at seventeen, the fairest of them all, with her platinum blonde hair perfectly curled, her make-up perfectly applied and her posture perfectly straight. And then Aiden, age eight, the only one of them who’d inherited their mother’s darker coloring with his dark brown hair that flopped over his eyes and the small self-effacing grin that had always made Candy want to hug him and spoil him—so like their father on the outside, but genuinely sweet and unspoiled beneath the surface.

  And now they were all back here again, posing in another of her mother’s elaborate shows.

  Candy stared up at the picture, thinking back to the day it was taken so she wouldn’t have to think about the freight train of doom bearing down on her. She’d been fourteen, already rebelling on the inside, though the external symptoms hadn’t made themselves visible yet. She wore the outfit her mother picked out for her and lined up with all her siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles for the formal portrait.

  She remembered how much her life had felt like a box. A trap slowly closing tighter and tighter around her. How it had taken her years—and a flight to California—before she had finally begun to feel free. To feel like she didn’t have to sit up straight and smile pretty and always, always say exactly the right thing because in California no one knew her as Dalton Montgomery’s granddaughter or Thomas Raines’s daughter. She was just Candy. And she could be anyone she wanted to be. Because no one cared.

  No one was telling her to sit up straight or use her good smile or who to be friends with.

  None of that had mattered anymore and she’d known within a week she was never moving back home.

  “Candice! We expected you hours ago, darling.”

  Candy turned to greet her mother, her cheeks aching with the effort of keeping her smile in place as that first oh-so-innocent little dig about their tardiness landed. Her mother never said anything that couldn’t be completely innocent, but the criticism beneath came through loud and clear.

  “Mother. Good to see you. Our flight was delayed, but we got here as quickly as we could.”

  Regina Montgomery Raines was still a handsome woman, the elegant, poised politician’s wife who aged gracefully with the help of boatloads of money and tips from the ladies at the DAR. She didn’t come forward to hug Candy—they weren’t a hugging family and her attention was already locked on Ren anyway as she smiled, measuring him with her eyes. “You must be the son-in-law I’ve never met.”

  Candy gritted her teeth through her smile. “Mother, may I introduce Ren? Ren, my mother, Regina Montgomery Raines.”

  “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mrs. Raines.” He extended his hand.

  Her mother eyed it for a moment before delicately placing the tips of her fingers across his palm—forcing him to either give the world’s most awkward handshake or kiss her hand. Pretty Boy compromised with a half-shake, half-squeeze.

  “You’re very attractive, aren’t you?” her mother said, the words sounding somehow critical. As if Ren’s face was too good looking and he really should do something about such ostentatious sex appeal.

  He smiled, all gracious charm. “I lucked out in the genetic lottery.”

  “And what are you exactly?”

  Candy stepped in—literally—placing herself between them with a hand on Ren’s arm. “He’s a person, Mom.”

  “What?” Her mother blinked innocently. “Am I not supposed to ask his
ethnicity? I bet Ren gets asked that all the time, don’t you, Ren? People want to know these things.”

  “I’m Chinese, Latino, and African American,” Ren answered without batting an eye and Candy met her mother’s gaze with the full force of her own before she could remark on his heritage.

  “Where’s Charlotte? Has she already arrived?”

  Her mother’s frown flickered, so brief it was almost imperceptible. “She’s gone to the airport to pick up the maid of honor. You remember Alicia Whitcomb?”

  She did remember Alicia—a petite brunette with a perky smile who excelled at the sycophantic compliment and loved nothing more than juicy gossip. Candy had never understood her mother’s restrained distaste for Charlotte’s bestie. She was one of the Whitcombs, much like the groom was one of the Newtons, and Alicia had always seemed like exactly the sort of person Candy’s mother should adore, but for some inexplicable reason, Regina had never taken to Alicia. Maybe because she had a tendency to upstage Charlotte, who Regina thought should always be the star.

  “Alicia will join us for family dinner tonight and then tomorrow the groom and his family will arrive. Thursday has been set aside so the two families can get to know one another—golfing, shooting, a nice spa day, just the usual. The rehearsal will be on Friday, with the rehearsal dinner following at the club. Then of course the ceremony on Saturday.”

  And on Sunday Candy could flee screaming back to the west coast. Just five days. Not even a whole week. She could make it.

  “Aiden and the children arrived this afternoon. They’re getting settled in the cottage, but they’ll join us for dinner. Charlotte and her bridesmaids are in the pool house, so we’ve put the groom’s party in the east carriage house. You two will be sharing the west carriage house with Scott and Eleanor, who should be arriving any minute now.”

  Throughout this entire speech, her mother watched Ren, eyeing him as if trying to figure out some way to use his looks to her benefit. Because in Regina Montgomery-Raines’s world, everything could be used to her benefit.