by Nikki Wild
I groaned. I couldn’t go back to that, not after I’d gotten a taste of the limelight. Now I needed to stay there at any cost… but at the cost of this girl’s happiness, or even her reputation? I felt like scum, though from the smile on Tessa’s face, you’d think she’d just won the lottery.
“Up and at ‘em, then, Julian!” Tessa said, her voice rising to delighted heights. “We’ve a plane to catch and a sham marriage to reap the benefits of!”
I sat back a moment and took a breath, still reeling from the idea that any of this had even happened. The pit in my stomach had only grown as I’d learned the details of Tessa’s plan, and with her machinations already in motion, I knew it wasn’t going to shrink anytime soon.
I rubbed my face and hoisted myself up off of my couch, searching around for something clean to wear as Tessa made excited phone calls just out of earshot.
“No press is bad press,” I muttered to myself.
5
Elizabeth
“Oh, God! Jen this is so bad,” I said, peeking out from between my curtains at the mass of vans and camera crews milling around just inches from my front yard. It had only taken them a few hours to start gathering after the news had leaked my name to the entire state—hell, even TMZ was outside waiting for me to make some kind of statement for them.
I wasn’t giving them a damn thing, though. They’d been out there for almost twenty-four hours now, just waiting for me to come outside. There had to be some kind of public ordinance about this thing. Could I call the cops?
“You keep saying that, hun,” Jen said from my couch. She’d braved the clamoring masses to knock on my door this morning, McDonald’s breakfast and coffee in tow. My stomach had been too upset for me to feel excited about either one, though I couldn’t deny how sweet the gesture was. “But this could be huge for you! You’re Julian Bastille’s wife! This is awesome!”
“How is this awesome?!” I asked, my voice rising to uncomfortable levels. “I have people outside my house with cameras! Nothing about this has been awesome so far!”
Jen looked over at me for a few long moments before heaving a sigh and hefting herself up from the comfort of the couch cushions.
“Listen, babe,” she said as she sauntered over, “you’re currently married to one of the hottest guys in the UK. I’d give my left arm to be in your position. Sitting here listening to you complain about having a bit of media attention outside of your house is a little annoying… and the only reason I’m not standing with a crowd of Bastille fans cursing your name is because of how much you mean to me.” She grinned. “And ‘cause being your friend means I might get close enough to touch him. You have nothing to worry about! Worst case, this all goes away in a few days.”
I bit my lower lip and Jen laid a hand on my shoulder, smiling sweetly, though the way her words had come out I swore she was about to smack me upside the head. I’d already called into work today—again. The only thing I could do was sit and wait to see if this bastard would so much as acknowledge the shit storm he’d just dropped me into.
“You’re right,” I said, smiling half-heartedly. “I don’t have anything to worry about—not yet, anyway. I’m just surprised that his lawyer or manager or whatever hasn’t called yet. We need to get this marriage annulled quickly.”
“Give it time, Liz,” Jen said. “Guys like him love shit like this. If he doesn’t call you, then he’ll probably be on the news soon anyway.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to calm myself down. My nausea had abated somewhat, though I could still feel my stomach teetering on the precipice of butterflies versus queasiness. I’d thrown up twice before Jen got here. Nothing like waking up to your gag reflex in overdrive. “I just wish my doctor would call me back.”
“Lab work can take a few days,” Jen said, waving her hand as she turned toward the reflective surface of my television—which I’d turned off, after that bombshell dropped—and started to preen herself. “Do you think I look good enough for the news?”
I stared at her. “That’s what you’re thinking about right now?”
She laughed. “Are you kidding me? This is the biggest thing to happen in this town since the history of forever! Hell yes, I give a damn about how the world’s going to see me when I make my big television debut!”
“Unbelievable,” I muttered as I headed toward my bathroom. I needed a shower, and not just because I felt dirty, but because I was a mess. Ever since I’d gotten home from the doctor’s two days before, I had been practically useless.
I stripped out of my pajamas I’d and turned on the shower, making sure to avoid the windows. I’d seen enough movies to know that these paparazzi pricks loved to get shots of their subjects when they were looking—and usually in the most compromising positions.
For extra measure, I turned the water as hot as I could stand, waiting until it was steaming before I stepped inside. I breathed deep from the humid air that whirled around me as the near-scalding water beat down on my skin, eliminating all traces of the world outside. I’d always loved taking hot showers, the way the white noise of the water rushing through the nozzle could clear my thoughts. In here, I could have a moment’s respite from the stress of life outside this room. In here, I could forget the name Julian Bastille and all the ways he had royally screwed me over.
In some ways, literally.
I’d just barely managed to get my muscles to relax when I heard Jen calling to me from outside the bathroom door.
“Hey, hun? You might want to come out here and see this.”
My stomach clenched. Just like that, all my tension was back. Those words couldn’t possibly mean anything good.
“In a minute,” I called back to her before beginning to wash my hair and body in earnest. I didn’t even want to think of what awful thing had happened now—all I wanted to do was get myself clean again.
After I’d rinsed, I stepped out onto the coarse terrycloth rug, wiggling my toes against the scratchy fabric. The sensation of it underneath my feet make me heave a sigh of contentment—something I didn’t think I’d ever do outside of this room again—before wrapping myself up in a towel and walking out into the living room to find out just what Jen was making a fuss about.
“What is it now?” I asked, pulling the towel up to make sure that it covered all of my assets.
As I entered the room, Jennifer was standing in front of the TV, her mouth open and eyes the size of silver dollars. My heart skipped a beat as I turned my gaze toward the screen and saw Julian Bastille himself standing in front of a private jet, a crowd of reports surrounding him as he smiled like the cat that ate the canary.
“My Lizzie and I are madly in love,” he said, the lovely lilt of his accent made much less so by the subject matter at hand, “and she and I are planning on spending many happy years together.”
“His Lizzie?” I hissed, my face flooding with color. “Nobody gets to call me Lizzie.”
If there was one thing in the world I hated being called, it was “Lizzie.” This piece of crap had somehow managed to push every button I had before we’d even properly met! Not only had he recited my most hated nickname—and in front of all the world, no less—but he’d declared us lovers. As if this was reciprocal. As if I felt anything at all for him beyond horror and disdain.
“Madly in love,” I snorted. “The only thing mad about us is him.”
“This just keeps getting weirder,” Jen said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Why would he get on TV and say those things about you two? Unless you’re still not telling me something!”
“There’s nothing I haven’t told you!” I cried, throwing my hands up as I stomped back toward my bedroom to get dressed in fresh PJs. This whole mess had reached peak levels of insanity, and by this point, I was barely even able to handle the fact that none of this was a dream. I just wanted to go back to bed and have all of this be over when I woke up.
I slipped into a pair of loose-fitting harem pants and a tank top, taking as much t
ime dressing myself as I could before I went back to watching the circus that had become my life. Already I’d had fifty separate phone calls from different news networks—and not a single call from my own damned doctor!
I wanted to scream, to throw something, to shake whoever was responsible for this ridiculous story getting out to the public. But none of that would solve the problem I had right now. How I was going to fix all of this? I could imagine there were plenty of lawyers who would take a divorce case like ours, but the issue was finding a way to consult one without wading through a sea of reporters and photographers.
“Vultures,” I muttered to myself, taking a brush to my hair and then tying it back into a ponytail. If I hadn’t had social anxiety before, I certainly did now.
“Liz!” Jen called. I groaned and just barely restrained myself from thunking my head into the nearest wall.
“What now?”
“You should probably look outside,” she called back, her tone almost apologetic. Already I could feel the regret that following her instructions would bring, and I didn’t even know the worst of it yet.
I cautiously peeked through the blinds, just enough to get a glimpse of what appeared to be a rather large commotion within the crowd of press that had made a temporary camp outside my house—but for the life of me, I couldn’t get a good look at what was causing it all. Grinding my teeth, I stormed back into the living room. Jen was looking out through one of the windows. Her cheeks were red and her hands were clenched so hard her knuckles had turned white.
“What is it?” I asked Jen, gently pushing her aside to look just long enough to get a camera’s flash set off right in my face by one of the photographers, sending me reeling back from the sudden bright light.
“Jesus!” I cried, covering my eyes as I tried to rub away the spots dancing in front of my vision. “What the hell?”
Someone was knocking on the front door. I blinked, hard, and looked at Jen, squinting at her past the Technicolor star bursts flaring over her face.
“Please,” I said to her. “Please tell me that’s not…”
Jen said nothing in return. And half-blind like this, her expression was almost impossible to read.
Oh, God.
The way this day had gone, there was no way it wasn’t Julian Bastille at my door. It had to be. The clamoring of the press outside. Jen’s inability to function or speak. The fact that I’d just seen him on TV twenty minutes ago, standing in front of a private jet, professing his love for me. Our love for each other. He was at my doorstep. He was here for me.
I suppose I knew this would happen eventually—that we would have to come face-to-face and actually talk about this. But some part of me had been hoping it could all happen remotely. That we might be able to do this through lawyers and mediators and paperwork sent through the mail. The last thing I wanted to do was see Julian’s face, to add fuel to the fire of this controversy. To ruin my life more than it already was.
But there was no avoiding it. The press knew I was holed up in here. If I didn’t open up, things would get so much worse. It all came down to a single question, and a very unfair one. Which way would I prefer the world to see me: as the blushing bride, or the slut?
With that in mind, there was no contest. I had to let Julian Bastille into my home and my life. I just hoped that once he was here, it would be easy enough to shove him back out again.
I braced myself as I pulled open the front door, but nothing could prepare me for the glittering sea of camera flashes that met me. All the shouting and clamoring for attention had woken several of my retired neighbors, who stood on their lawns looking none too pleased about any of this. I hoped one of them had called the cops, or even that all of them had. Maybe joint complaints would make the police actually do something about this mess.
What they could do nothing about, however, was the man standing in front of me. He was wearing a pair of dark wash jeans that fit him like a glove, a band tee for The Cure, and thrown over that was a well-worn leather jacket that seemed like it had seen better days. There were a variety of patches sewn into it, though I couldn’t tell what they were for, and studs along the lapels and shoulders that glinted despite their tarnish. As I looked up into his face, my eyes dragged over the sharp cut of his jaw, the squareness of it giving way to a set of high, prominent cheekbones. That made the shading of his eye sockets a little heavier than was normal, but one thing the shadows did for him was make his gorgeous eyes glow.
I opened my mouth to speak, so say something, anything to the man who had ruined so much for me—perhaps irrevocably. But my throat betrayed me, clenching and holding fast in the face of such preternatural beauty and that riveting, verdant haze.
Come on, I willed myself. At least invite him in so you can close the door on these buzzards, for Christ’s sakes!
But I just stood there, breathless and struck dumb. I could hear myself stammering, making a fool of myself, but there was nothing I could do about it. It was like I was under some sort of spell.
One that was abruptly broken when Julian grinned puckishly and said, “Hello, Lizzie. I’ve missed you.”
6
Julian
This woman was nothing like I’d anticipated.
Elizabeth Lawson was a vision. Not that I’d expected her to be anything else, but she was somehow… more. I’d seen my share of models and actresses, plenty of sexy bartenders and exotic dancers too. I was, in many ways, accustomed to their beauty. Their svelte, willowy bodies. Long, toned legs. Picture-perfect makeup and hair at all times. Everything about them was carefully sculpted, arranged just so.
But this girl was different. Standing there just past the threshold, she was wearing a baggy pair of pajama pants and what appeared to be a tank just hauled out of the bottom of a laundry bin, with her hair in a loose ponytail and her face completely devoid of makeup. I could smell the fresh scent of her, and judging by the dampness of her locks, it was obvious she’d just stepped out of the shower not long before my arrival.
Half-dressed and looking more than a little pissed at me, she was more glamorous, more intensely beautiful than any other woman I’d ever had the pleasure of being with. That made me wish all the more that I could remember what we’d done together. God willing, we might just get to make some new memories.
“Mind if I come in?” I asked, flashing a charming smile I’d used a thousand times to get girls into the sack. “I think we’ve got some things to talk about.”
“You’re damned right we do,” Elizabeth said, her scowl deepening as she moved aside to let me cross the threshold. The door shut behind me and her anger only seemed to deepen. “You’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do. And don’t call me Lizzie if you want to keep breathing.”
I could feel my smile faltering. From the tone of her voice I could tell that she wasn’t exactly thrilled with this situation—though I couldn’t blame her, honestly.
Unless this girl was one hell of an actress, that threw Tessa’s theory about her being some kind of scheming gold-digger right out the window. I felt the muscles in my shoulders loosen just a little. Maybe that would have made things easier, had she been heartless, but it was nice to know she wasn’t.
“Well…” I began, trying my best to come up with some way to spell out the situation that didn’t leave me sounding like a complete idiot. But before I could even get out a second syllable, the door burst open again and Tessa pushed her way in behind me.
“You’re not going to say another word, Julian,” she said, slamming the door in an overly eager photographer’s face.
“Who the hell are you?” Elizabeth asked, narrowing her eyes as Tessa strode into the center of the room.
“I’m the person who’s about to change your life,” Tessa replied, letting out a little laugh.
“I think my life’s been changed plenty, thanks,” Elizabeth said, holding her hand up to stop Tessa from continuing on. “All I want is for things to go back to normal—which means you both ne
ed to get the hell out of here. Forever.”
“Come now Lizzie,” I said, trying to sound appealing. “We know this situation isn’t precisely ideal, but if you hear me and Tessa out, maybe we can—”
The way Elizabeth turned her gaze on me stopped me cold, and were it possible, I think steam might have billowed from her nostrils. Her face flushed with color, her hands clenching—I knew immediately that I’d done something terribly wrong.
And then I remembered what she’d said to me at the door.
Oh, balls.
“Don’t ever call me Lizzie,” she said, her voice just barely audible over the sound of my own heartbeat. This woman was utterly terrifying when she was mad—even at a whole foot shorter than me.
“Sorry, love,” I replied, doing my damnedest not to sound as frightened as I was. I was used to dealing with women who were a mite less dangerous than this one was, and a lot more willing to strip down to their knickers at the snap of my fingers. Seeing a girl like this was not something I was at all accustomed to… and hell, it was almost refreshing.
“No offense meant.”
“Shut it, Jules,” Tessa hissed at me, her gaze as withering as ever. I’d learned over the years that it was best to let Tessa deal with things like this, mostly from her constantly reminding me as much.
“Ms. Lawson,” Tessa began, a thin smile stretching her lips, “Do you think maybe we could speak for a moment, alone?”
She motioned toward the corner and I became suddenly aware that Elizabeth had company. This tall one looked a little happier to see me. Her cheeks flushed red as we locked eyes.
“She is staying. There isn’t a damn thing you can say to me that you can’t say to her,” Elizabeth said angrily.
Tessa turned to the tall woman in the corner as if noticing her for the first time. “And you are?”