The Billionaire's Marriage Contract

by Avery James

  Trish tried to brush it off. “You’re really offering me a job? You’re kidding, right? There must be something more to this story.”

  Amy pulled the contract out of her bag and handed it to Tricia. “I just need the originals of whatever photos and notes you have, and you’ll be free to go.” Amy reached back into her back and pulled out another file. “Or you can decide to play hardball. I have a cease and desist order already drafted for your blog, and a lawyer on standby to do the same for anyone else who chooses to share the photos. Like I said, I’m offering you a way to end this and still win. Trust me. I’m not in the mood to play games.”

  “It’s funny. You still haven’t admitted that you’re the woman in the photos.”

  “And I won’t.”

  “Does your husband know? This whole thing could put his business deal in jeopardy.”

  Tricia’s words hit Amy like a punch to the gut. “Who told you about that?”

  “A good journalist always protects her sources. Of course, a good journalist also recognizes opportunities when she sees them.” Tricia reached into her bag and pulled out three hardcopy photos and an SD card. “You can have the story. It barely got any hits, a few blips here in Wyoming and, curiously, a few in Washington, DC.” Tricia smiled, signed the contract, got up from the booth and walked out of the diner.

  There it was: a crisis averted, and Amy felt even worse than she had before. Tricia hadn’t deserved any reward for posting the pictures, and yet Amy gave it to her anyway. She felt like she was losing her edge. She felt like she was going soft. Maybe she wasn’t the hard-edged fixer everyone else thought she was. Maybe all that time with Ethan had really changed her. She motioned to the waitress before she realized that Tricia had stuck her with the bill.

  Why was that so easy? Amy wondered. She looked down at the photos. She felt sick seeing the way she had leaned against Logan and the way she had looked at him. She could only imagine what Ethan would do if he saw the pictures. What if he had already seen the pictures? She felt a hard pit of panic deep in her stomach. She started searching the photos for some detail that would absolve her of any guilt.

  The first two were complete busts. She could barely look at them. They were taken in the back room. Logan had his hand over her hip. He was turned at an angle that made it look like he was kissing her neck. Amy flipped the pictures over and focused on the third one. It wasn’t as bad. It was a picture of the two of them talking in the main room of the bar.

  Then Amy saw it. In the corner of one of the picture, there was a hazy object right in the foreground, too close to be in focus. Amy recognized it at once: a beer tap. Whoever took the photos had taken them from behind the bar, and, as far as Amy knew, only one person besides Logan had been behind the bar that night.

  Amy had a pretty good idea of who had leaked the photos, and she was going to rip his head off if she could find him. Attempting to seduce her was one thing, but photographing it and using it to ruin her life was another.

  ***

  As Amy made her way across town to Logan’s loft, she called Ethan to check in. When he picked up the phone, Amy could hear Vi laughing in the background. She couldn’t help but ask, “How’s the patient doing?”

  “Vi? She’s doing splendidly. She’s telling me all about her sordid past. Did you know she’s an ordained minister?”

  “You’re kidding, right? Besides, that doesn’t sound very sordid.”

  “I haven’t told you the rest of the story. Apparently she was once engaged the French Ambassador to the United States. Either that or she was engaged to someone else and then had an affair with the Ambassador; somehow in the middle of all of this, she was ordained. You can’t make this stuff up.”

  In the background, Amy could hear Vi shout, “It was the seventies!” It was good to hear Vi enjoying herself. Ethan was good with her. Most men, no matter what age, weren’t sure what to think of her. But he just went with the flow, which endeared him to her, and, in turn, made Amy think that much more of him. Listening to the two of them getting along put a smile on her face.

  “She never ceases to amaze,” Amy said.

  “On your way back, you should pick up a tape recorder so we can get all of her stories down.”

  “You know? I might do just that.”

  “Well, the second course is about ready to come out of the oven.”

  “So this is a lunch date?”

  “One with three courses. I’ve got to go. Try and stay out of trouble.”

  “Hey, I think that’s what I’m supposed to say to you.”

  “I’m with your aunt. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “Have you met her? The possibilities are endless,” Amy laughed.

  “See you soon?” Ethan’s voice had gotten softer as he posed the question. Something about his tone made Amy want to jump back on a plane and fly home to him. If he could only see the photos she was looking at, he’d be furious. She had to figure out a way to explain all of this to him. She had to find a way to make things right.

  “Of course.” She paused for a second as she wondered what to say to end the call. Finally she said, “I miss you. Bye,” and hung up the phone.

  What the hell is wrong with me? Amy thought. She missed Ethan more than she had known was possible. Her chest hurt just thinking of how much she wanted to be back with him. But when she told him as much, she wasn’t telling the whole truth. As she had waited to hang up, she had only wanted to say three little words: I love you. Instead, she had decided it could wait. She had created enough of a mess already. After all, what difference would a few hours make? She resolved to tell him in person, as soon as she got home. She would explain the photos and tell him that he meant everything to her. But first, she needed to deal with Logan one last time.

  Chapter 21

  After getting off the phone with Amy, Ethan stepped back into his kitchen and turned his attention back to her aunt. He bit his lower lip and mustered the nerve to ask the question he had been waiting all afternoon to ask. “Vi, can you keep a secret?”

  “Only if it’s an interesting one.”

  “I lied to Amy.”

  “What kind of lie?”

  “When I asked her to marry me, I told her it was so I could seal a business deal.”

  “And here I was thinking you wanted to seal a different kind of deal with my niece.”

  “Yes. No. I mean I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I’ve been in love with Amy for a long time, so when I had a chance to finalize the business deal, the only thing I could think of was that it would mean losing her, and I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “So are you saying you sabotaged the deal?” Vi pushed back in her seat and crossed her arms.

  “I delayed it.”

  “And now you want to go through with the deal and stay together with Amy?”

  “I want to tell her the truth. I’m tired of playing coy and pretending I’m anything but head over heels for her.”

  “So what’s the problem? Go after her. She’s an adult. She can handle the truth, especially when the truth is that a handsome, rich man is in love with her. Tell her how you feel. I’m sure she’ll survive the shock.”

  Ethan laughed, “It’s not that simple. I need to find a way to show her that I want to be with her because of how I feel about her and not because of money or opportunity or anything else. Otherwise, I’m going to lose her. But, I think I know what to do.”

  “Well, spit it out, you’re feeding red meat to a woman who just had a heart attack, we don’t have much time to waste.”

  “Did Amy ever tell you about the night we spent together in Chicago?”

  “I don’t believe she did, she seems to have a habit of leaving out the good stories.” Vi leaned back in over the table, her eyes widening as she waited for Ethan to continue his story. “I’m all ears.

  “Well, it was several years ago. I had just lost the only family member I’ve ever had, and I was a wreck. I hated myself and
my lifestyle and everything I was doing with my life. Not knowing what to do, I called Amy. She dropped everything and flew to Chicago to be with me. I made her think I had been stood up for a charity function, but the truth was I just needed someone I could talk with.”

  “Ohh yes, that I remember. When Amy got back, she was in a huff for nearly a month. She wouldn’t spill, but I had a feeling man troubles were to blame. From what Callie told me, you stood her up.”

  Ethan laughed. “Nothing could be further from the truth. We had a wonderful night. I don’t know if you’d believe this, but I have a hard time opening up to people. That night, I bared my soul to her. I told Amy my every fear, my every worry. The thing is, within a few minutes she had gotten me to forget all about it. Just talking to her was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. Everything flowed so naturally. It felt like a dream.”

  “So what does this have to do with proving to her that you love her?”

  “At the end of the night, Amy kissed me. It was late, and we had been drinking all night, and, even though I knew she didn’t want anything serious, I kissed her back. The moment my lips touched hers, I felt like the earth had stopped spinning, and I had floated into orbit. I was ecstatic. After we kissed I asked her what would happen between us if I wanted to be more than just colleagues. She smiled at me and said that it would be a breach of contract. She said she had just the fix. She reached over to the coffee table. She grabbed a pen and a napkin, and she held eye contact with me as she wrote. If I close my eyes, I can still see the way the corner of her mouth curved up when she smiled. I can see her dimples and the mischievous look in her eye. She handed me the note and crossed her arms while I read it.” Ethan trailed off as he thought back to that night, losing his train of thought and forgetting everything but that look on Amy’s face.

  Vi cleared her throat. “Well, what did it say? Stop being such a tease!”

  Ethan laughed. “It said that there were some things you have to earn. Then she signed her name.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “She smiled and kissed me again, and then she fell asleep in my arms, right there on the couch. I knew she’d be embarrassed as hell in the morning when she realized that she had spent the night with me, so I laid there with her in my arms until the sun came up, and then I put a blanket over her, kissed her on the forehead, and left.”

  “That’s it?”

  “No. I wrote her a note, too.”

  “Which said?”

  “I said I would earn it, no matter how long it took. Amy doesn’t remember any of it. Hell, I’d believe that I’d dreamt the whole thing up if I didn’t still have her note.”

  “You kept it?”

  Ethan reached into his pocket and pulled the note out. “I’ve kept it with me every day since then. And I’ve treated it like a contract. I’ve done everything within my power to live up to it. I read it every morning when I wake up, and every night before I go to sleep.”

  Vi smiled and leaned back. “I think you know just fine how to show her what she means to you.”

  “I’ve just been waiting for the right time to tell her.”

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t wait another minute. I’d tell her the next time she walks through that door.”

  Ethan ran his fingers against the frayed edges of the napkin. He had studied it so many times, had pored over every little letter Amy had written on it. He had held it as a secret for years. When he realized that Amy didn’t even remember writing it, it became even more dear to him. “You know, Vi, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. But I’m going to need your help.”

  “Why would you need my help?”

  “Before I prove to Amy that I want her and only her, I have to prove I would want to be with her even if I didn’t need her for the business deal or any other reason for that matter.”

  “What are you suggesting, young man?”

  “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

  “You’re already married.”

  “That’s why I’m going to ask Amy for a divorce.”

  ***

  Neither Violet nor Ethan had heard Callie knock on the apartment door. Neither of them heard her slip Amy’s key into the lock and push the door open. Once she was inside, neither of them heard as she stopped dead in her tracks upon hearing Vi’s words: You’re already married and Ethan’s voice: That’s why I’m going to ask Amy for a divorce. Without making another sound, Callie stepped back into the hallway. She was too surprised to speak. She was too surprised to do anything but head back to the elevator. She needed to call Amy. She needed to know what was going on.

  Chapter 22

  On the flight out to Wyoming, Amy had wondered what she’d feel when she saw Logan again for the first time. After all, he was handsome and charming, and he had almost managed to break up her fake marriage. But that was before she had pieced together who had taken the pictures of her at the bar. Now she wanted to rip his head off, even if she needed his help to get to the bottom of what exactly had happened.

  Amy paced back and forth in front of his building for five minutes while she calmed herself enough to knock on the door. Before approaching the door, she stared up at Logan’s building. Why did everything in this town have to look like it was hand hewn from freshly milled logs? Even new buildings with tall ceilings and wide windows like Logan’s had a veneer of old west to them. The whole thing didn’t seem so charming to Amy this time around. It just seemed fake. When she finally walked up to Logan’s loft, the door was open, and Amy strode into Logan’s living room. It was sparsely furnished, and reminded Amy of a cross between Ethan’s apartment and a dorm room. She tossed the photos onto the table before he even realized she was there. “Tell me you had nothing to do with this.”

  Logan didn’t even look at the pictures. He just stared off into space as he said, “It’s complicated.”

  “What’s so complicated about it? Your bartender took pictures of you luring me into a room and made it look like we were having an affair. She was the only one who could have taken these. Am I missing something here?”

  “I wasn’t trying to make it look like anything. And why do you care about some pictures? You know nothing happened.”

  “I care because they shouldn’t even exist. I care because they are online. Was it her? Why did you let this happen?”

  “Do you have any idea what it’s like to have your father hand his company over to someone else after he’s been telling you it’s your birthright since you were a kid? Have you ever had to listen again and again to how wonderful that person is? Leaving you alone with me was such a taunt. Here’s my beautiful wife. You can never have her, just like everything else. You were such a convenient solution to all of his problems. A quiet quickie marriage. You were off limits and you were interesting. When your husband disappeared, I just let things take their natural course.”

  “What are you implying?”

  “I’m not an idiot, Amy. I might not be a tycoon like my father or your husband, but I know a few things, and I know how you looked at me. Try for one moment to tell me that you weren’t interested. Tell me you didn’t get carried away with it, too. I don’t think you’re mad about the picture. I think you’re mad about what it shows.”

  “And what do you think it shows?”

  “A woman who wasn’t in love with her husband.”

  Amy wasn’t sure how to respond. Logan wasn’t wrong. When she first met Logan she had been angry with Ethan for leaving her alone while he jetted back to the East Coast. She had been trying to convince herself that the marriage was just a business deal, and the whole Logan thing was her way of justifying it to herself at the time. Things had changed since then, though, and she wasn’t about to give up on what she had with Ethan just because of some misleading photos. “How did they leak?”

  “After I realized that my behavior was the reason my father had to find someone else to run the company, I decided to look in the mirror. I changed my ways.”<
br />
  “You changed your ways? And somehow escalating to tabloid fodder is changing your ways?”

  “No, I had a long talk with Hank, and we talked about a few things we had been putting off since my mom died. It was something we should have done a long time ago. Frankly, if we had, maybe I could have kept my father from selling his business.”

  “That still doesn’t explain the photos.”

  “Hold on. I’ll get to that. I decided to shut the bar down. For too long it had been the place where I let my buddies hang out, and I figured it was as much a reflection of me as anything else. I was going to close it for a few months, renovate it, and reopen it as a brewpub with a whole new staff. I figured it would show some entrepreneurial spirit.”

  “Get to the photos, Logan.” Amy said. As she waited for his answer, she paced around his living room, looking at his leather couch and his big screen TV. She tried to remember what she had seen in him. All she could think was that he needed to grow up.

  “I didn’t know about the photos. I really didn’t. When I decided to close up, the staff was pissed. They all said I had betrayed them, but Sarah, I think you remember her, took it the hardest. She said I was lying to her and everyone else and that she was going to show the world what a piece of trash I was. I thought she was just blowing off some steam. I didn’t know she had taken the photos.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “In town. I’ll deal with her. I handled things poorly. This isn’t the first time we’ve fought. I know I messed up and I shouldn’t have acted like that around you. I’m sorry, Amy. If I had known anything like this would have happened, I would have done things differently.”

  “So what prompted the change of heart and the talk with Hank?”

  “I had a chat with your husband the morning you left. You can ask him.”

  “A chat?”

  “He threatened to kick my ass if I so much as talked to you again. I invited him to. I figured that it was as much your fault as it was mine anyway. Plus if he did fight me, my father might call off the deal, and I’d have a chance to show him I was serious about growing up and taking on responsibility.”