Contract Bride

by Kat Cantrell

  “Everything that happened was my fault in some way,” she said quietly. “Even when he hit me.”

  And that was when her voice broke. She’d gotten through most of it pretty well, reciting the facts by rote as if they’d happened to someone else, and in some ways, they had. She wasn’t that naive anymore, nor did she trust so easily. She was taking steps to become a permanent resident of the United States. If she could, she’d give up every bit of her Australian blood and embrace the safety she’d found here.

  “He hit you?” Warren’s voice had gone tight. “On purpose?”

  She nodded and told him the unvarnished truth. “It was in a fit of rage because he’d found out that I went to a party for work that I hadn’t told him about. I shouldn’t have gone, but Craig strongly encouraged me to make nice with the senior partners if I wanted to get better assignments.”

  “You should have called the police is what you should have done.” Warren’s hands had clenched into his lap but he uncurled them and gripped the armrests of his wicker chair. “Please tell me he’s in jail.”

  “No.” That would have been too poetic. “Bryan is a police officer. Who would have come to arrest him? His cronies? He bragged to me once that he could have his record completely expunged if I so much as made a single complaint to the police force. I moved out of the house we shared after the second time he hit me and hid out at my mother’s house. That’s when he got really bad. He was so angry, he used detective grade equipment to stalk me. Threatened me. Followed me around and scared my mother.”

  “No wonder you’re so skittish sometimes,” Warren muttered. “I owe you a whole lot more apologies, then. I’m sorry if I pressured you in any way. Please don’t take what I told you earlier as any sort of demand on you. I need you at Flying Squirrel. If you quit, the campaign will never be the same.”

  Why in the world would she quit the best job that she’d ever had? “I have no intention of quitting. This is my explanation for why I bolted from the terrace. Why I avoided you all day. I don’t do normal interactions with men very well. This is my apology.”

  “Tilda...” He shut his eyes and sighed. “This is a lot for me to process.”

  “I know.” This marriage of convenience had been so perfect for someone like her who needed to fade into the background. If only she hadn’t asked Warren to kiss her, she might have kept up the facade. “I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you or led you on or gave you false hope. I’m kind of a mess, so keeping things professional is best.”

  It was better this way. She’d confessed her shame and it was oddly cathartic. Oddly as if she’d gained a confidante in Warren. He’d go back to treating her with the same reserve he’d exhibited thus far, never barge in on her in the bathroom again and she’d continue to feel safe and in control.

  His eyes flew open and the calm, detached CEO had fully vanished. Her breath caught. He was nothing less than fierce and magnificent as he stood, towering over her.

  “I’m not disappointed,” he said. “I’m a lot of things right now, but that’s not one of them. Until I sort out the rest, you bet we’re keeping things professional, because if nothing else, we’ve always worked well together. Nothing that’s happened this weekend changes that.”

  Six

  Warren wasn’t a jogger. There was something so inane about running for the sake of running. It made so much more sense to have a destination if you were going to tax your body in that manner.

  But after learning that he had a desire to murder another human being in cold blood—someone he’d never met and who currently resided half a world away in Australia—running was the only thing that had the slightest chance of keeping him sane. Otherwise, he might get on a plane and make good on the need to see Tilda’s ex so Warren could explain a few things to the man. With his fists.

  The farther he ran from his house, the easier it was to keep his hands off Tilda, too, which wasn’t so much of a given after her incredibly brave recitation of the horrors that she’d left behind in Australia. His first instinct had been to reach for her, to engulf her in his embrace. As a shield, first and foremost. She’d needed protection from her ex and hadn’t found it. He was more than willing to step up where the authorities had failed.

  First thing tomorrow, he’d hire a fleet of private detectives to find the bastard who had struck Tilda and then Warren would make his life a living hell.

  In the meantime, the Australia campaign required his undivided attention and he had about as much chance of working platonically with Tilda as he did of sprouting leaves and bark. But he was going to try because he’d told her he would. They’d both needed space while he spent the night calming down.

  The next morning had dawned well before he was ready. He’d subsisted on four hours of sleep before, many times, but never after having erotic dreams starring his wife wearing white lace, a smile and nothing else. He awoke with his body on fire and his mind filled with dirty images that he had no shot at eliminating from his consciousness, not considering he’d be closeted in a small space with Tilda for a good long while.

  Of course, the fates had a field day with his beleaguered senses. Tilda emerged from her bedroom at the same time he came from his and they met in the hall.

  “I thought we could ride together,” she said with a small smile that was but a shadow of the one she’d worn in his dream. It didn’t seem to matter to his already primed body. “If that’s okay.”

  “Sure,” he croaked. “We’re going to the same place.”

  A total and complete lie. She was going to Flying Squirrel. He was going insane. As she slid into his limo and perched on the seat next to him, he got a whiff of something fruity, but he couldn’t put a name to what she smelled like. Because it couldn’t be something simple like apple or cherry. Whatever it was had coupled with her natural scent to become wholly exotic and slightly spicy. Delicious. He had the wildest urge to unbutton her blouse and bury his nose in her cleavage on a mission to discover the source of the fragrance.

  While he was there, he could satisfy his burning curiosity for what she had hidden under the suit today. They never had circled back around to that after she’d thrown him totally off track with the story about her ex.

  Today was a new day. Plenty of opportunity to nose around, so to speak.

  The torturous car ride mercifully ended a few minutes before eight when Warren’s driver dropped them off near the entrance to Flying Squirrel. Warren’s father had built the corporate office complex about fifteen years ago and then left his sons in charge when he retired. Invisible hands kept the grounds meticulously groomed, and a cheerful fountain gurgled in the central pool in the middle of a courtyard area shadowed by a large arch spanning the entrance. Typically, Warren didn’t register much of it because he always had his phone out as he swept through the courtyard, but it seemed rude to be face down in his email with Tilda by his side, so the phone stayed in his pocket.

  He should keep his phone in his pocket more often. A quiet sense of pride sneaked over him as he soaked in the landscape of the company he ran with his brother. This was his legacy, the continuation of the drinks his father had started making in his mother’s kitchen during the seventies. That’s why Warren worked as much as he did. He truly loved what he was doing here, contributing to the vision on his way to global domination.

  Tilda was a big part of that. For now. Eventually the campaign to smear Down Under Thunder off the map would be successful and his need for Tilda’s marketing expertise and project management skills would be at an end. Then what? She no longer worked for Craig. She’d have a green card, so she could stay in the US if she wanted to, but that didn’t necessarily mean she’d choose to stay in Raleigh or even continue her association with Warren once their marriage was dissolved. They’d have no reason to see each other again.

  Unsettled Warren shrugged that off, nodding to the people who worked for him as he
and Tilda navigated the building to the executive office suite on the top floor.

  “Get some coffee and meet me in my office,” he told her brusquely, and she scurried to do as requested.

  God, did he always sound like that? He’d never really paid attention to how he talked to his staff other than to notice whether they did as he’d directed. It was his job to run the company, not to make friends, and the more distance he employed, the easier it was to avoid complications that came with his drive to run other people’s lives in much the same way he did Flying Squirrel.

  That’s what ultimately had happened with Marcus.

  But Tilda wasn’t a run-of-the-mill employee. She never had been. And when he’d admitted that he’d been attracted to her prior to the marriage, he was also acknowledging it to himself. Her response? I’m skittish because the man in my past is an ass.

  When she bustled into his office with coffee in one hand and her tablet in the other, she wore her game face and what he’d noted earlier was the world’s ugliest suit. He had the strangest urge to take her shopping. She was his wife. Wasn’t it normal to want to buy her pretty dresses? She’d look spectacular in green. One of those soft fabrics that draped at the hip, a wraparound maybe, with a neckline that crossed over her breasts into an X that marked the spot Warren could not stop obsessing over.

  “I was thinking we should start with the Wheatner and Ross proposal,” she said and took her typical seat on the other side of his desk.

  Too far away. That was not where he wanted her, but somehow he didn’t think she’d appreciate the suggestion to hop up on his desk so he could get to work stripping her out of that horrific suit. It was criminal that she hid such an amazing body behind the boxiest, most unattractive outfit imaginable.

  “That’s a great place to start,” he told her as he rose from his seat and rounded the glass desk to sit in the matching chair next to hers.

  Her slightly widened eyes tracked his progress as he settled in. “What are you doing? You always sit behind your desk.”

  “The view is better from here.”

  As he let his gaze trail down her legs, the only part of her she hadn’t hidden, her cheeks pinked up. “You can’t say things like that. We’re at the office. We agreed to keep things professional between us.”

  “I agreed to no such thing. We work together. Ergo, our relationship is defined as professional by default. But that’s not the extent of it and you know it. I can’t unsee you in that white lace.” He pointed to his temple. “It’s all right here.”

  “It shouldn’t be,” she countered under her breath and shot a glance at the shut door, like the lingerie police might burst in at any moment to arrest her for daring to wear something racy under her utilitarian suit.

  All at once, it dawned on him, and wow—he wasn’t normally that slow. The only excuse he had for not realizing the source of her ups and downs was that she’d fried his brain from second one. “You like wearing things that show off your body. But he didn’t like it at all, did he?”

  That son of a bitch.

  Fiercely, she shook her head and she might as well have had denial stamped all over her. “My style is my own and I’ll thank you to stop questioning me about it.”

  “Come on, Tilda. I thought we agreed to be honest last night. I was honest with you and I thought you were reciprocating. But you only told me half the story, didn’t you?” Guilt crowded into her gaze and he pounced on it. “That’s why you were worried I felt deceived. Because you’re lying to everyone. Every day.”

  “It’s not lying,” she whispered.

  He bit back a curse, feeling as if his heart had been wrenched out of his chest to land somewhere on the floor, still beating.

  Her ass of an ex had done a number on her, obviously. She’d flinched when Warren raised his hand, hid her sexuality beneath a layer of boring and then plainly told him not to bother with her because she was messed up.

  To hell with that.

  “Tilda, I’m sorry,” he murmured, but it wasn’t enough.

  Last night, he’d let the conversation go because he’d genuinely feared he might put his fist through the wall since he couldn’t unleash it on Tilda’s ex. But she needed something else from him.

  So he did what he should have done yesterday. He stood, set the computer tablet in her hands aside and pulled her into his embrace. For a half second, she hesitated, her body vibrating with a million unspoken emotions, and then, holy God...she melted into him, conforming to his contours as if she’d been fashioned from a mold with his exact dimensions.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured, not even sure why he felt compelled to repeat what had become a common phrase between them, but he wanted her to know he was sorry—for Bryan’s behavior and his own. “I don’t mean to keep upsetting you.”

  What else would be the result of a cross-examination? He knew how to get results, not how to comfort. Look what had happened when he tried to comfort Marcus. He’d truly hated to see Marcus in so much pain, had truly wanted to help. But he’d ultimately failed.

  “You’re not the problem,” she said, her voice muffled against his lapel because she hadn’t bothered to move her face from where she’d snuggled into his shoulder, which felt a lot nicer than it should. “I am. I tried to tell you that.”

  “Stop. Your ex is the problem. And I’m not him.”

  Her amazing, sexy body unpeeled from his. “You think I don’t know that?”

  She stared at him, composed and blank faced. It was nearly miraculous how she morphed so easily back into the formal woman he’d first met a few months ago when she’d started on this project. Obviously she’d had a lot of practice at hiding behind her reserve.

  That made two of them. And this was not one of those times when he could retreat.

  “No. You don’t know that. Maybe rationally, you can repeat it to yourself. But it’s not sticking where it counts.”

  “Now you’re an expert on me?”

  He cocked his head. “That wasn’t a denial.”

  “I’m here to do a job, Warren. Can we just focus on that and forget about the personal side of things?” The desperation in her tone hurt nearly as much as the tears.

  He nodded, but not because he agreed that the conversation was over. His problem in a nutshell: he was as much of a liar as she was. He didn’t maintain distance with people because he liked being that way. It was how he protected himself from failure.

  Yes, he was pushing her. Because she was free to be as sexy as she liked around him and he’d treat it like the gift that it was. She needed to feel sexy and have a bone-deep understanding that it was okay to be as demonstrative with it as she wished. She needed to know that she was desired, but at the same time, that she could kiss a man and back off without retaliation. Bottom line, she needed Warren to undo all the damage the bastard had done to her.

  He’d failed Marcus, but he couldn’t fail Tilda. She was his wife. Not in all the ways that counted, but that didn’t seem to matter to his bleeding heart, which was still somewhere on the ground.

  Tilda was his do-over.

  * * *

  Warren had shut up about her sexy underwear, thank God, but the overwhelming vibe of awareness in the room never faded. By lunchtime, Tilda was a wreck.

  This was so far from the professional veneer she’d worked hard to maintain. What had possessed her to spill all her secrets to Warren? She could have left it alone, appeared before him last night in the solarium with some made-up explanation about her lingerie set and gone on. But no. She’d had to blab about Bryan and give Warren enough ammunition to figure out that her ex had stripped away her confidence when it came to her interactions with men.

  Easier to not engage. Which she’d tried to do by avoiding him, only for him to yank her back into his presence with a flick of his wrist. She should hate how dictatorial he was about everything, bu
t of course, she didn’t. Apparently all he had to do to fix that was hug her in what should have been an awkward show of comfort and support.

  Not awkward. A total turn-on. Warren was an authoritative man with a kind streak who was keeping her away from Melbourne. Her little crush on him had exploded into something she had no idea what to do with.

  Warren, on the other hand, had plenty of ideas.

  “Let’s go to lunch,” he announced at ten till noon.

  “We’re in the middle of crunching these numbers from Wheatner and Ross’s revised proposal,” she reminded him—unnecessarily, since they’d been doing it for hours. But hey—at least her voice hadn’t squeaked.

  The very last thing she wanted to do was go somewhere with Warren. The less he clued in that she was a quivering mass of nerves and emotion, and had been ever since he’d touched her, the better.

  “They’re crunched. We both knew the revisions were on target the moment we looked at them. Now we’ve both appeased our obsessive tendency to overanalyze and we can move on. The only thing that makes me hungrier than overanalyzing is being obsessive. Indulge me.”

  Against her will, she had to smile at his perfect assessment of why they’d spent an entire morning buried in a proposal she’d known by nine o’clock that they’d accept. “Fine. You pick.”

  Dumb, ridiculous idea. She should be spending her lunch hour getting herself under control, not having lunch with her boss in the middle of downtown Raleigh where everyone would see them.

  Clearly she needed to redefine her parameters, because the moment they left the building, Warren ceased to be her boss. He held doors for her, helped her into the limo and settled into the creamy leather so close to her that it would have been awkward if he didn’t sling his arm around her, so, of course, that was exactly what he did.

  She braced for more discussion about stuff she’d rather not talk about, but it never came. Warren sat in the car with her as if they always cruised around town in a pseudo embrace as he pointed out various landmarks like her own personal tour guide. In all the weeks she’d been in Raleigh, she’d never once done any sightseeing. There’d never been time—one of the symptoms of being a workaholic.