The Virgin's Secret Marriage

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  Joe shrugged. “There was a female producer a few years ago who tried. She was immediately fired from the network, her own professional reputation trashed. Tiffany accused the woman of sleeping with a player who had been on the show.”

  Emma edged closer to Joe as they hit the sidewalk. Speaking even lower, she looked up at him and asked, “Was it true?”

  “Yeah—” Joe’s eyes were grim as he leaned down to whisper in Emma’s ear “—but they were dating. It wasn’t like the producer was hitting on every jock that came on the show.”

  Emma sighed as they approached the sidewalk. There were other people there, waiting for the light to change, and they had to put off their conversation until they had crossed the street, moved through the marble-floored lobby of the Hanover Building and were in an elevator again, on the way up to Ross’s office.

  “But it didn’t matter in the end, that the whistle-blowing producer wasn’t really guilty of sexual harassment, that her affair with the player was a mutual thing, apart from his appearance on Tiffany’s show,” Emma surmised.

  “Nope.” Joe’s lips were set in a harsh, unflattering line. “The producer was still canned because her daddy didn’t own the network.”

  Emma studied Joe. She could tell by the way he wasn’t looking her right in the eye that he still hadn’t told her everything. “Just out of curiosity—has Tiffany Lamour ever hit on you directly?”

  Joe grimaced in a way that let Emma know she had just made it to the bonus round. “Only because I’ve never let her get physically close enough,” Joe said.

  From any other man, Emma might have thought that was just ego talking. The distressed look in Joe’s eyes said differently.

  Tiffany Lamour was doing her best to get Joe to take her where he didn’t want to go. He wasn’t going to let it happen. It was that simple.

  TO EMMA’S RELIEF, ROSS SAW them right away. Speaking for both of them, Joe brought him quickly up to speed about what had just occurred at the press conference. Like everyone else in Raleigh who watched the news or read the papers, Ross already knew what had happened Friday night at the Donovan estate. “So what I—what we—need to know is, was Tiffany Lamour telling the truth?” Joe asked Ross. “Are we still married?”

  “Then you’re not denying you eloped when you were nineteen?” Ross regarded them both solemnly.

  Joe and Emma looked at each other. Both nodded reluctantly.

  “And then what?” Ross said. “Did the two of you get divorced? Was the marriage annulled? How long were you married?”

  Emma and Joe exchanged glances. “Thirty minutes,” Emma replied, making a wild guess.

  “About that,” Joe agreed.

  The normal poker-faced Ross did a double-take. “I’m all ears.”

  Emma recalled that awful moment of truth as if it were yesterday. The stunned, then angry look on Joe’s face when he discovered who her father was….

  “Emma?” Ross’s patient voice drew her out of her pensive thoughts.

  Emma blinked and swallowed around the knot of emotion in her throat. “What?”

  “Is that the way you recall it?” Ross asked.

  “Recall what?” Emma flushed, embarrassed she had been so caught up in the past she had completely lost track of the conversation.

  “That as far as you and Joe knew, after you talked to the justice of the peace who married you, that the papers had been torn up, the marriage wiped completely off the books.”

  “Yes.” Emma nodded vigorously. “Yes, that’s exactly what happened.”

  Joe continued his pacing by the windows, overlooking the Fayetteville Street Mall, the state capitol and sundry other downtown high-rises. “Except it’s still on the books somewhere. Otherwise, Tiffany Lamour never could have found out about it,” Joe murmured. He raked both his hands through his sandy-brown hair, looking as distressed and disgruntled as Emma felt about that.

  “Well, that’s easy enough to confirm one way or another. If you two will excuse me a moment, I’ll go make a few calls, check public records.” Ross exited his private office and shut the door behind him.

  Once again, silence fell between Emma and Joe. “What a mess,” Emma murmured eventually.

  “You’re telling me.” Joe thrust his hands in his pockets. Funny, he thought. He hadn’t thought about any of this stuff in years. Or at least he had tried not to. But now it was as clear in his mind as if it had happened yesterday.

  He was still deep in thought remembering the past when Ross came in the room.

  “The marriage is still on the books. There is no record of it being annulled or expunged in any way.”

  Joe swore virulently beneath his breath. He thought, but couldn’t be sure, Emma did the same. “So now what?” Emma said, abruptly looking every bit as soul weary as Joe felt.

  Ross sat down behind his desk. “That depends on whether or not the marriage was ever consummated.”

  Emma flushed a becoming pink. “We told you. As soon as we walked out of there, we had a fight and Joe walked back in and told the JP to tear up the papers.”

  “So the answer is no,” Joe affirmed.

  “I meant in any time since then,” Ross explained. “In the last seven years.”

  Joe could see how that would complicate things, if the marriage was still on the books. Fortunately for him and Emma both the answer was still the same. “No. We haven’t seen each other until last Friday.”

  Ross continued looking at them, waiting. Not quite believing…

  “So you’re saying—” Ross phrased the query as delicately as he could.

  Joe scowled. “No. Nothing happened,” he reiterated flatly.

  “But you don’t believe us, do you,” Emma guessed slowly, still blushing, a little bit.

  Ross put down his pen. “I do. Others might not.”

  “And that could complicate things?” Joe asked.

  Ross nodded grimly. “More from a public relations point of view than legally, as long as your accounts of the events of Friday evening’s mishap are in accordance with each other’s.”

  Seeing where Ross was going with this, even if Emma didn’t—yet—Joe swore silently to himself. He hadn’t even thought of that. Although he should have.

  “What do you mean?” Emma asked.

  Ross and Joe exchanged telltale looks.

  Finally, Ross continued, “The Storm runs a very clean, scandal-free operation, Emma. What happened Friday night—Joe turning up naked with any woman not his wife—was not good. But that at least could be explained. Your secret seven-year-long marriage, on the other hand…”

  Emma turned back to Joe.

  His heart going out to her for the mess they were both in, Joe explained carefully, “I think what Ross is trying to say is that people are going to speculate that you and I have been carrying on with each other all along and hiding it from everyone. For kicks, I guess.”

  “But we know that’s not true,” Emma protested, incensed.

  “In the arena of professional sports, perception is what counts,” Ross said quietly. He and Joe continued to look at each other in silent understanding.

  “I won’t kid you about this, Joe,” Ross continued finally. “Saul’s protectiveness toward Emma is legendary.”

  “No joke. After he caught Emma and I breaking up, he sent me back down to the minors the very next day. I never even made it to Raleigh. The Storm traded me soon after to the lowest-standing team in the AHL.”

  “I remember,” Ross said. “I had just started working in Raleigh. Everyone wondered what you had done to ire Saul.”

  “Well now they know,” Joe said glumly. He looked at Emma pointedly. “It took me another two years to get back into the NHL, Emma.”

  “And it wasn’t your playing,” Ross said.

  “No, my stats were good.” Joe recalled how hard he’d had to work, just to get back to where he was, career-wise, when he had first met Emma. “But there was this perception put out there that I was trouble. I had t
o disprove that.” And it had taken a while. A long, butt-busting while. Joe had no wish to return to that kind of uphill battle.

  Emma swallowed hard. She looked even more distressed. “I’m sorry. I had no idea. I mean—my dad never discussed it with me. He didn’t even ask me what happened that night. He just told me to never see you again. I said not to worry, I had no intention of doing so, and that was that.”

  “But you were aware I had been sent back to the AHL,” Joe said.

  Emma looked abruptly guilty. “I told myself it had nothing to do with me. Or my dad. I mean, it happens all the time. Players get called up to the NHL for a trial, then sent back down. I really wasn’t paying attention. Since then, I’ve spent very little time watching or following hockey.”

  Joe could believe that.

  He had tried not to know anything about what Emma was up to, either. Tried to pretend as if his brief romance and marriage to her had never existed.

  For all the good the head-in-the-sand approach did either of them now.

  Ross and Joe sighed in unison. Emma looked equally distressed.

  “What do you think I should do?” Joe asked Ross tiredly.

  Ross lifted his hand, let it fall. “Figure out how to fix it, I guess, within the perception of the public.”

  Emma snorted in disgust. “Like that’s possible,” she muttered, rubbing the back of her swanlike neck.

  Never one to give up easily, on anything—except maybe his relationship with Emma—Joe turned back to the woman who was still his legal “bride.”

  “Maybe it is,” he murmured as inspiration hit.

  Chapter Five

  “I’d like to talk to Emma alone for a few minutes,” Joe said to Ross, his frustration shifting into the same type of cool determination he showed on the ice, when reacting to some down-and-dirty play by his opponents. “Is there somewhere we could have a few moments alone?”

  Emma wasn’t sure she wanted that. Not that it appeared it was up to her…

  “Sure.” Joe’s attorney smiled at them both reassuringly, as if he, too, thought it were a great idea. “There’s a conference room down the hall.” Ross escorted them to a small windowless room with an oblong table and chairs, got them both a couple of diet sodas from the refrigerator in the corner and shut the door behind them.

  Aware her pulse was suddenly racing, Emma circled around to the opposite side of the table. She pulled out an upholstered chair with a swivel bottom and sank into it, grateful for the piece of furniture between them. Pretending to be as coolly confident as he, she looked him straight in the eye and murmured, “I take it you’ve got an idea.”

  Joe nodded as he popped open the lid on his soda. “The way I see it we can keep on playing defense or we can go on the offense.”

  Emma had a bad feeling about where this was headed. She had never been a strategy-over-heart kind of person. Joe, however, was. “Spoken like a true right winger.”

  “Hey.” He looked her up and down before returning to her eyes. “Those points I score are no accident. You want to get ahead in this life, you’ve got to get out there and mix it up.”

  Make that a really bad feeling. “You want us to scrimmage with someone?” Emma countered dryly, not liking the ornery glint in his eyes one bit.

  Joe’s chair squeaked as he tipped it back as far as it would go. He rubbed his hand across the sexy stubble on his jaw. “I want us to catch the opposition off guard and do exactly what they aren’t expecting us to do.”

  Emma kept her gaze away from his delectably soft lower lip. “Which would be?”

  Joe shrugged his broad shoulders lazily. “Stay married.”

  Emma choked on her drink, just barely managing to avoid spraying the table. She pressed her hand to her lips as she fixed him with a withering glare. “I don’t find that suggestion at all amusing, Joe.”

  The amusement left his amber eyes. “It’s no laughing matter for me, either, sweetheart,” he said as he leaned across the table.

  Emma gulped, not sure whether to laugh or cry, just knowing she felt like doing both. “Y-you’re serious,” she stammered finally.

  Joe nodded and sat back in his chair, all business once again. “The way I see it, Em, we can keep denying there is anything between us until we’re blue in the face. But because people now know that we ran away and secretly eloped when we were nineteen—”

  Emma saw where this was headed. “—no matter what we say to the contrary, they’re going to speculate that there is still some chemistry between us.”

  “Right.” Joe looked happy they were on the same page, at long last. “And that puts us in a high-pressure situation. So,” he continued as pragmatically as if they were discussing the weather, “the logical thing to do is just stop fighting the inevitable gossip. Go with it and stay married. That way, there will be talk for a few days. And then, after a few news cycles, our little scandal will be history.”

  Oh, if only it were that easy, Emma thought sarcastically. “Except we’ll be married, Joe.”

  Joe lifted his hands, heavenward. “We’re married now.”

  Emma curtailed the urge to lunge across the table and grab him by his shirtfront. “But we didn’t know we were married until a few hours ago,” she pointed out sweetly.

  Joe twisted his lips into a crooked line then dissented equably, “That doesn’t make it any less true.” He drummed his fingertips on the table urgently. “We have to go with reality here, not what we wish would have happened. And unless you’ve got a better strategy, I suggest we go with mine.”

  Strategy, smategy. Emma glared at him in exasperation. He was making his plan sound simple and it wasn’t, damn it! “This isn’t a game,” she said, scowling. It wasn’t a matter of semantics. They were talking about their lives!

  Joe tilted his head back and flashed her a winner’s smile. “Au contraire, babe,” he argued cockily. “To ratings-greedy newshounds like Tiffany Lamour, it is a game, albeit a very high-stakes one. And I’m telling you right now that I have no intention of letting her win.”

  His stubborn competitiveness again. Emma shook her head in withering censure. “No matter how many people you take down with you?” she confirmed in a low voice dripping with sarcasm. She had never resented his relentless drive and ambition for “greatness” more than she did at that moment.

  Emma started to rise, the session, as far as she was concerned, over.

  Her hips had barely cleared the seat when Joe reached over and clamped down on both her wrists. His preemptory action caught her off guard and forced her off balance. Her buttocks hit the seat again as Joe continued to glare at her indomitably.

  “Let’s recap for a minute here, shall we?” he suggested emotionally. “And remember exactly whose fault it is we are in this mess in the first place. Because had you told me who your father was, or how he felt about you being involved with hockey players period, I never would have even been dating you, never mind asking you to run away and marry me. You would have been safe in your little girls-only dorm at Brown. And I would never have had my own rep trashed to other owners, or have been tossed back to the minors or had to work my way up to the NHL all over again. The bottom line is you owe me, sweetheart.” He released his possessive grip on her wrists and sat back. “You owe me big.”

  Guilt swept through Emma. Much as she wanted to, she couldn’t disagree, her inability to be honest with him had cost them both a tremendous amount of hurt. But that did not mean his cockeyed plan was going to work. Every inch of her throbbing with built-up tension, she countered passionately, “My father will never go for it.”

  This time it was Joe who was up out of his seat. But instead of leaving the table, he leaned over it, caged her with his arms and lowered his head, until their faces were mere inches apart. Until she could feel the heat emanating from his body, the strength in his sinewy frame.

  “Well, then we’re going to have to make him go for it,” Joe growled fiercely. He paused for a moment, ensuring she underst
ood the depth of his determination, “because it’s the only way I can stay on the team!” He straightened abruptly, moved away.

  Trying not to feel as bereft by his abrupt absence as she had been stunned by the way he physically invaded her space, Emma pushed back her chair, stood ever so gracefully and purposefully, and straightened the hem of her business suit. She turned a level, patient gaze Joe’s way.

  Joe turned back to her, his gaze roving her upturned face dismissively. Noting the strength of her resolve, he seemed to calm down a little bit. “Besides,” Joe said offhandedly after a moment, “it’s not as if either of us are seriously involved with anyone else.”

  Emma tried—and failed—to be completely immune to the news he was not romantically connected to anyone else right now. “How do you know?” Emma challenged right back, irked by his presumption that she was as “romantically alone” as he apparently was.

  He regarded her smugly, a sense of purpose glittering in his eyes. “One, because when we were caught in a compromising position, no one came over to punch me out afterward or said in absolute horror at the time, ‘Omigosh, what will so-and-so think?’ And two, I talked to Janey about you the other night before I went camping and she said you are every bit as famous for your ‘one and dones’ as I am.”

  Emma’s heart gave a nervous kick against her ribs. “One and dones?” she repeated, confused by the unfamiliar slang.

  He settled against the opposite wall, arms folded against his chest, and continued playing King of the Mountain—or in this case, conference room. “One date and you’re done and you never want to see the other person again. You’re completely disinterested.”

  Okay, so that was true. But it wasn’t for lack of trying, Emma conceded temperamentally, irked that “her husband in name only” could still get her so riled up, so fast. Wasn’t she supposed to be over Joe? Way over him? As for the rest of her romantic life… During the past seven years, Emma had tried to find someone compatible whom she was attracted to, but it just never worked. The chemistry wasn’t there, or their values were so far apart it was ridiculous, or the guy had no sense of humor, or just wanted to get into her pants. It was always something. Always, Emma thought fiercely. And it had nothing to do with the fact that whenever she did let someone else kiss her, all she could see—or think about—was Joe Hart’s face.