“How nice,” I muttered.
He started to laugh and rubbed at his face. “I don’t know what’s crazier about this day. That I got fired, or that I’ve ended up in a car pretending to be the spouse of a pathological liar.”
“Hey!” I said, backhanding him in the chest. Which only made him laugh harder.
“Is there anything real about you?”
I frowned as those words sank into me. For one second, I could swear I felt Aunt Ruby in the car with us, repeating those same words. Intuition.
* * *
We got to Carmen’s office, a small building in the larger town of Goldworth, just outside of Charmed. My heart started to race as I pulled the keys and put them in my bag.
Deep breaths. You can do this.
“You all right?” Nick asked.
I met his eyes briefly. “Yeah. Just—I don’t know. I never knew I’d have to compete for the house. And weirdly, it didn’t matter until I found out about my cousins getting it. They couldn’t possibly have good intentions for it. So now it’s like—”
“You’d be letting her down,” he said.
I nodded, feeling the tears brimming again. “No, no,” I said, leaning my head back. “No crying allowed right now.”
He pulled down my visor and slid the mirror open. “Here, fix yourself up.”
I faced forward again and gave him a sideways look. There was a reason I didn’t hook up with guys who were prettier than me.
“I look that bad?”
“No, you look beautiful, actually,” he said. “But if we only drove from the airport, you might want to freshen up.”
Damn, this guy was more on point with this charade than I was.
“True,” I said, swiping under my eyes and digging for my makeup bag. “So, we good with all the details?”
We’d finally gone over the major points. Anniversary—May twelfth. Likes and dislikes—I love food and hate rap music. I’m afraid of fireworks. He loved reality TV and hated butterscotch. No major phobias. We both loved coffee and met in a coffee shop. Keepin’ it real.
“I think so,” he said.
I touched up my eyes and slapped on some powder and gloss. Refastened all the fallen hairs while Nick nicely took Ralph on a walk.
“Shouldn’t be long,” I said to Ralph as he jumped back in looking sad. I cracked the windows. “Then I’ll bring you to a big yard you can run free in. Terrorize the squirrels.”
“We gonna be able to stay there if—” Nick met my eyes. “Things go the wrong way?”
I hadn’t thought of that, but of course we could. Shit.
“It’s still my house in theory,” I said. “I have a key. It’ll happen.” I took a deep breath and blew it out. “It’ll be fine.”
Nick gave me a long look and then blinked away as he pulled the ring out of his pocket. He slid it onto his finger, his jaw twitching as he did so. One hand landed at the small of my back as he turned me.
“Let’s go do this,” he said.
I stopped short. “Why are you doing this?”
He looked down at me, jaw twitching again. “Because I’m recently unemployed, and I need the five hundred bucks,” he said. “You think your life is sad?”
Weren’t we a pair.
I nodded. “Let’s do this.”
There was a one-story elevator ride, and then we were outside the door embossed with Carmen Frost, Attorney at Law. And then fingers were on my top button.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, batting his hands away.
“Relax,” he said, returning to the scene of the crime. His fingers brushed the tops of my breasts as he unbuttoned the top button of my blouse. And arranged the flaps to lie there sexily. Heat rushed to my face as our eyes met. My fingers. Some other places. “You look too uptight. Remember, we’re married. We’re in love. We’re comfortable with each other.” He nodded toward the door. “And she’s your old friend. She’ll know if you’re aren’t.”
Great. More to worry about. “True.”
“It’s a game,” he said. “Think of it like that. Points we need to score. We’re a couple.”
“We’re a couple,” I echoed.
“You should walk in there totally at ease with the world. Like you’re getting more sex than anyone in that room.”
My jaw dropped open and a belly laugh sprang forth from pure shock.
“That’s it,” he said, opening the door in the middle of my laugh.
Oh, he was good. Walking into a room full of the enemy—not Carmen, but the five other people clustered together on all the comfortable furniture—with a laugh on my lips and a blush to my skin, that was genius. And instantly made me feel I had this.
“Lanie,” Carmen said, warmly but not with the excited hug that she brought the last time. She couldn’t, with a room full of legalities, I knew that. She couldn’t take sides. She’d already told me too much.
“Hey, Carmen,” I said, nearly tripping over my tongue when Nick interlaced his fingers with mine. I cleared my throat and smiled at the cousins. “Bryce, Treena, good to see you again.” They smiled and fidgeted on the sofa with their clueless spouses. Bryce, the oldest, was balding and sweaty and looked to need a fresh shirt soon. Gross. The fifth woman, I didn’t recognize. She was younger—wait—yes I did. She was at the funeral. The others weren’t. She was the homely younger woman with the frizzy blond hair that I’d assumed might be the maid Aunt Ruby hired.
“Hi,” I said, extending my unlaced hand to her. “I’m Lanie.”
“I know,” she said, chuckling as she took my hand in her limp fish one. Ugh. “I’m Alicia, the baby.” She rolled her eyes as if that was cute. “Eight years younger than Treena. We probably never met as kids.”
Well, since I’d barely met the other two, and they were a few years younger than me, probably not. Making her, what? Twenty-two? Yikes. She hadn’t inherited good genes.
“Oh, okay,” I said. “Well, nice to meet you.” Nick squeezed my hand, and I remembered that whole couple thing. “This is my husband, N—Michael.”
Balls. I almost blew it in the first sentence.
He shook hands all around, looking totally at ease in his own skin. In that suit. Good God, he could be a rich jet-setter just as easily as he flipped burgers.
“This will be a quick meeting,” Carmen said, sitting on the front of her desk instead of behind it. She looked so together, with her blond hair pulled back loosely in a professional barrette, her simple form-fitting chocolate brown dress perfectly matching the strappy heels on her pedicured feet. My feet wanted to hide just looking at hers.
Nick pulled up the one remaining chair and gestured for me to sit while he stood behind me, hands on my shoulders. Damn good thing he knew how to play this game, because I was an epic fail.
“A lot of the outcome of this reading depends on you, Lanie,” Carmen was saying.
“What?”
She smiled and blinked away, putting on some cheater glasses and opening a folder.
What did that look mean? Just what she’d told me, right?
“I’ll begin,” she said.
There was a lot of legalese. Small stuff. Personal stuff that went to me, which touched me even though I expected it. I was basically her daughter in every sense except blood, so anything sentimental was not a surprise. The cousins had to be wondering why they were there. Except if Bryce already had plans for the land, then he knew. Sneaky little shit.
“That brings us to the last two major things,” Carmen said, addressing the room as a whole and not making eye contact with me. I felt chilled all of a sudden.
“Ruby Barrett had significant financial holdings, made up mostly of some smart investments and CD’s. Her life insurance took care of her burial expenses, as you know.” I knew that because I made all the arrangements. What did these people know? “So once her holdings were liquefied and the medical bills paid, the amount is substantial.”
“What kind of substantial?” Bryce asked.
What a weasel. Maybe ten grand, dude. Take a breath.
“To the tune of eight hundred thousand dollars,” Carmen said.
I sat forward, Nick’s hands dropping free. “Excuse me?”
Carmen just nodded.
“That’s—that’s impossible,” I said. “I would know if she had that kind of money.”
“It wasn’t in her bank account, Lanie,” Carmen said. “It wasn’t usable money, it was—”
“Hidden really damn well,” I finished, patting my face. “Holy shit.” Treena snickered, and I turned to face her. “What? Did you know about it?”
All three of them held up their hands and shook their heads.
“Okay then,” I said. “Shock value justified. I mean, I was on her account and paid all her bills at the end. She had thirty-five dollars left after that.”
Carmen nodded again. “Like I said, this was totally separate.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, so next up. The house.”
I sat back in the chair and blew out a breath, actually comforted by Nick’s cool fingers returning to my shoulders and moving to the back of my neck, which had to feel like a million degrees.
“And actually, the money and the house go together as a package deal,” Carmen said. “Bryce, Treena, Alicia, this is the part that involves you.”
I laid my hand on my bag, it holding the fraudulent marriage certificate at the ready. My scalp started to sweat.
“Ruby wrote this part in her own words, and I’m to read them out loud,” Carmen said, licking her lips and recrossing her legs. “The house and the money go to Lanie and her husband,” she read from the folder. “Provided she can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is indeed married.”
I nodded, pulling the envelope from my bag.
“She told me she was,” Carmen continued. “But I know my Lanie, and I know what she’d do to make her old Aunt Ruby happy.”
My eyes filled with tears, and I didn’t fight it this time. I blinked them free.
“I hope it’s true, because I want love in her life. She did a lot of pretending in her youth, a lot of avoiding, and that’s not something to play pretend with.” Nick squeezed my shoulders and I shut my eyes tight. She was killing me. “Love is everything. Nothing is worth anything without that. Not even a few bucks and a rambling, creaky old house,” Carmen read, a smile pulling at her lips in spite of the stark attempt at professionalism.
I laughed through my tears and swiped them away. The words hurt, but on the other side it felt good to hear Aunt Ruby talking to me again. Nick took my hand and held it there, and I thought screw Bryce and Treena and Alicia-the-baby. We were selling this. My childhood home was mine. The money was shocking and probably would be nice once I got my head wrapped around it, but honestly the house was more important.
“So I’m putting this condition on things, Lanie,” Carmen read. “Prove it to me. Prove it to Carmen, to the powers that be. That you are happily married to your soul mate.”
I held out the document with a prayer in my head.
“Live in the house together for three months,” Carmen continued, not looking up.
My hand froze between us. What?
“I know that involves moving, and job issues, and all that,” Carmen read, her voice going a little weak. “I know it’s inconvenient, and maybe you’ll have to figure some things out, and maybe you’ll hate me. But life and love are not to be taken lightly, my girl.”
I couldn’t breathe as Carmen looked up at me finally, and I felt the cold again for a whole different reason as Nick’s hands left my shoulders and let go of my hand.
“Three months,” Carmen read. From memory. She fucking knew. “And if that can’t be done or you fail, then at the end of three months, the house and the money go to my brother’s children, Bryce, Treena, and Alicia Clark. To be divided equally.”
Tears fell freely from my eyes as I saw everything slip away. Everything that mattered that I didn’t even know mattered. There was no way. Not for me. Not for Nick. What was she doing? What was she thinking?
“What the fuck was she smoking?” I choked.
“Don’t ever give up. Fall down seven times, but get up eight.”
Chapter Four
“Carmen,” I breathed. Begged. Pleaded with my eyes. “There—there has to be something—”
But Carmen was already shaking her head. “There isn’t,” she said. And then, almost low enough that it was just for me. “I’ve looked.”
I blinked away, not wanting eye contact with anyone. Not her. Not the worthless cousins. Not the guy pretending to be my husband that I wasn’t sure was even still in the room. If I were him, I’d be Googling the nearest bus station.
“Is there a problem?” Bryce asked, feigning concern. “I mean, if you two are really legit, what’s there to worry about?”
“Really?” I asked. “You could up and move to another state for three months with no issues?”
He kind of jutted his head in a tilt. Was that a nod? “Sure. I work out of my car, so—”
“Well, I don’t,” I said. “And neither does Nick.”
“I thought his name was Michael,” Alicia said from her perch at the edge of the couch. She glanced over at Bryce as if to check if that was okay.
Balls.
“My middle name is Nicholas,” Nick said. “People close to me call me Nick.”
Oh, thank God the dude was still back there. And that he could think on his feet better than me.
“The point is, who can uproot their lives like that?” I said, covering my face for a minute. I needed the solitude. “How could Aunt Ruby do this to me?” I whispered behind my fingers.
“Well,” Bryce said, standing in all his sweaty glory. “Let me know what we need to do or sign or whatever to take care of the house.”
“The house,” I said, dropping my hands. “Is my home.”
“And you just said you can’t do what it takes to keep it,” Bryce said, gesturing with a finger for his non-speaking wife to get up. “I assume you’ll be turning over your keys to Carmen?”
On my feet in under a second.
“I will most certainly not,” I said. “I’m—we’re staying there tonight.”
“I kind of have a problem with that,” he said.
“I kind of don’t care.”
“Okay—” Carmen began, probably seeing a fight to the death about to play out on her carpet.
“She’s already getting everything,” Bryce said to Carmen. No, he whined it. Like a six-year-old girl. “Who’s to say she won’t—”
“Take what’s already mine?” I asked. “What am I gonna do, Bryce, strap the house to the top of my car?”
“I’m just saying.”
“You want her wooden spool collection, Bryce?” I asked. “Is that what’s eating you?” Do you even know why she collected them?”
He sighed dramatically and wiped a hand over his sweaty neck.
“I assume she sewed,” he said, a bored tone to his voice.
“You assume,” I said. “You don’t know.” The tears came then and I didn’t try to stop them. “Yes, she sewed, but she didn’t give a rat’s ass about that. She kept the wooden spools so people would think she liked antiques, but in reality they would be kindling after the fucking Apocalypse while everyone else would be hunting for wood.”
Bryce blinked, and I saw Carmen bite her lower lip.
“Do you know her birthday?” I continued, swiping at my face. “No, scratch that, you could get that off her grave. Do you know Julius Caesar’s birthday?”
Bryce pulled a face. Yeah didn’t think so.
“July thirteenth,” Carmen and I said in unison. She met my gaze and gave a small smile. “If you actually knew Aunt Ruby, you’d know that,” I continued. “But you don’t know shit. And you think you deserve her house.”
“Wooden spools are antiques?” he ask
ed.
I dropped my head and focused on the swirly pattern in the carpet. He was an idiot. He wasn’t worth murder. Orange was not the new black, and I looked awful in it.
“Hey, she wrote the damn will, not me,” he said, corralling his people who filed behind him like ducks.
“Yeah, well, she was a lunatic,” I threw over my shoulder, my voice shaking. “You would have known that too.”
The door closed behind Bryce after some muttered comments about being in touch, and then it was quiet.
“But she was my lunatic,” I whispered, sinking back into the chair.
“Lanie,” Carmen said after a pause. “I’m really sorry.”
I looked up from my misery. “You knew.”
“I was bound by law not to tell you,” she said, sounding for once like my old friend. “I already crossed like fifty lines of ethics telling you what I did.”
I just nodded and leaned back in the chair, feeling all the anxiety of the day drain out the soles of my feet.
“And now that it’s said and done and the Beverly Hillbillies are gone,” she said, bringing a weary giggle up from my chest. “You two should know that if you’re going to pull this off, you need more than a fake marriage license and a knock-off ring.”
* * *
The ride to Aunt Ruby’s house was eerily solemn, quiet except for Ralph’s breathing. Nick had grabbed the leash and took Ralph for a brisk walk the second we got to the car—probably to give me lose-my-shit time, and probably out of remorse for the bail he was about to do. I didn’t blame him.
So Ralph was panting heavily behind me, and my-close-friends-call-me-Nick was staring out the window again, a pensive look on his face and the ring safely back in his pocket.
It wasn’t the post-meeting ambiance I’d expected. Well, maybe it was before I stopped at that diner, but honestly once Nick entered the scenario, I thought we had it in the bag. It never crossed my mind that I had more to prove. It never occurred to me that Aunt Ruby would be the one to double-cross me.
Unbidden tears pricked the backs of my eyes as we passed the big Texas-shaped Welcome to Charmed sign, glowing white and yellow in the sun with painted flowers and bees in the corners. Home of the World Famous Honey Festival was scrolled across the middle in honey-colored glittery lettering.
A Charmed Little Lie Page 4