Blush

by Jen Doyle

  After taking in a deep breath, he turned around, expecting to see hatred already in Nicki’s eyes. But instead there was compassion. Understanding. All kinds of things he didn’t deserve.

  Proving he was his mother’s son, he summoned up his ruthless streak. “You did hear her say I’m married, didn’t you?”

  Jeremy’s gaze came up in astonishment—as if the man didn’t know him well enough by now. And Nicki, well, for a second or two she looked like she was ready to kill him. Jeremy, who was paid to ensure that didn’t happen, clearly agreed. But then Nicki tilted her head and looked directly into Simon’s eyes and smiled. Her real smile; the one she saved for her friends behind the curtains. “You know, if you’re going to try to scare me away, you should put the rest of your clothes on. It’s hard to be intimidated when I’m looking at a tattoo I had my tongue all over only a few hours ago.”

  When she started at her buttons again, presumably to take her—his—shirt off right there in front of Jeremy, Simon was immediately in front of her, grabbing her wrists.

  Although he knew he owed Jeremy an apology—and was equally aware Nicki was baiting him—all he could do was grind out the word, “Don’t.”

  Jeremy started for the door. “I’m just going to—”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Nicki snapped, her eyes flashing with anger. “Because, trust me, Mr. Bodyguard. You don’t want to leave me alone with Simon right now.”

  So she wasn’t entirely unmoved.

  With a glare, she said, “I’m assuming there’s an explanation. Because if you just made me the other woman, I might truly have to kill you.” She crossed her arms and stepped back, before he answered, though, softly asking, “What situation were you supposed to ‘handle’?”

  It was like water dousing a flame. His own anger suddenly dropped away to nothing. He could barely speak. “Our annulment. It… It may not have gone through.”

  Her mouth dropped open as her hands fell to the side. “What?” She blinked. “May not have? You don’t know?”

  “I…” He’d tried to get an answer to that question; he’d tried desperately. But not one of his solicitors had been willing to give a decisive yes or no.

  “Are we still married?” she whispered.

  Clasping his hands behind his head, he looked down at the floor. “I don’t know.”

  That wasn’t even the hard question, as it turned out. If she’d left it at that, he might have been fine. She didn’t, though. Her lower lip trembled. Her eyes filled with tears. And in the softest, most heartbreaking voice, she added, “Do you want to be?”

  Yes, he should have answered without hesitation. Desperately. To the end of his days. Except words like ‘duty’ and ‘obligation’ and ‘family’ sounded loudly in his head, obliterating nearly everything else.

  Everything else except her sudden intake of breath. The soft sob that cut through the otherwise deafening silence. No, the deadly silence, one he nevertheless allowed to go unbroken.

  “I see,” she finally said, holding his gaze unwaveringly and not retreating even a little bit.

  An unfamiliar lump clogged his throat as she came right up to him, those beautiful eyes looking into his. He nearly crumbled when she raised her hand to his jaw, caressing his still stinging skin. “She holds nothing over you, Simon. Not anymore.”

  He leaned into her. She was going to break him. “She’ll hurt you. She’ll do everything she can to destroy you.”

  Nicki’s expression softened. “Don’t you understand? The only thing she can do to me is take you away again.”

  And then she kissed him, her lips so soft and gentle, his head cradled in her hands. But before he’d had a chance to savor it, she pulled away. “I’ll let Russel and Dana know they’ll need to have someone else work with you.” The fire returned, however, as she added, “And if you back out of buying the house now, by the way, I won’t just kill you, I’ll resurrect your body and kill you all over again. Your mother has nothing on me.”

  Simon was pretty sure Jeremy wouldn’t let that happen, but he couldn’t swear Nicki wouldn’t win that fight in the end. Not that it mattered. “I’m not backing out of the house.”

  “Good.” She rubbed her eyes for a second before saying, “Hold on.” She went into the bedroom, coming back a minute later wearing a silk kimono and handing him the rest of his clothes, his shoes and his phone. “Forgive me if I don’t see you out.”

  Then she returned to her room and, demonstrating she wasn’t nearly as calm about all this as she appeared to be, slammed the door so hard it rattled the table by the front door, knocking over a small dish. Afraid his emotion might betray him, Simon bent down to right it rather than look over at Jeremy.

  Which was the wrong decision, as it turned out. Because sitting there, right underneath the mirror, was Nicki’s wedding ring. The one thing that had never shown up in the records of sale when everything was said and done. He’d always assumed she’d thrown it off the Hoover dam or something equally final. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

  Reaching out, he picked it up, wondering if he’d ever have the chance to tell her he’d held on to his as well.

  Jeremy cleared his throat. “Are you, uh…”

  Simon knew he owed Jeremy an apology, but he wasn’t quite up to that yet. All he could do at the moment was look in Jeremy’s direction.

  “Right,” Jeremy muttered, it being so very clear that, no, Simon wasn’t okay at all. Jeremy clasped his shoulder and walked past him to the door.

  Going against every instinct he had, all of which were urging him to go directly back to Nicki’s bed, Simon put the ring back in the dish. Then he pulled on his shirt and, as he left her house, tried to think about something—anything—other than the fact that he would never see her again.

  16

  Well, at least this time Nicki didn’t owe anyone a shitload of benjamins.

  That was the thought with which she tried to console herself over the next week, but it didn’t work. She thought she’d meant enough to him. She truly thought he’d at least call. But she’d clearly been wrong. So, well, good riddance. She hadn’t expected him to come back into her life in the first place, and she certainly didn’t need him there now.

  Except the problem was that she wanted him. She’d been so good—cautious—for almost the whole time he was in Santa Christa. She’d kept her expectations low to non-existent and had taken it one day at a time. Right up until the moment he’d placed his hands on her hips and drawn her to him. Then she was gone.

  Throwing her nightshirt into the hamper, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and was glad her makeup was good enough to hide the fact that she’d been crying for days on end. She was as angry at herself as she was upset, partly because even though she should have learned her lesson after the last time he’d left, she’d called in sick. And then she’d decided to work on the website for the last few days because she could do it from home. Russel had seemed to be perfectly fine with that, but she’d gotten a text from him this morning that he needed her to come into Napa—to Drew’s office, specifically—and that didn’t sound good. She wasn’t sure what kind of outfit you were supposed to wear to a meeting with your boss and his legal representation, especially when you worked for your friend and had no interest in going with the tight blouse that showed a lot of cleavage.

  Oh, God. What if Simon had backed out and she was on the hook again—for $12 million this time around? She had no hope of paying that back.

  There was more traffic than she expected so by the time she got to Drew’s office she’d nearly given herself a heart attack three times over. It didn’t help that Drew’s assistant looked like a lineba—

  Hold on, he had been a linebacker.

  But he just smiled when she said as much and ushered her into the conference room.

  At the sight of Russel and Drew at the table, she felt a little faint. Holding on to the back of one of the chairs, she blurted out, “I can’t afford $12 mil
lion. I just can’t. I’ll make sure Simon pays you back, I swear, but it might take some time.”

  The look on their faces would have been comical if she weren’t doing everything possible not to shake like a leaf. That they didn’t say anything at first didn’t help matters at all.

  But then Russel jumped to his feet at the same time Drew shook his head. They both started talking at once.

  “You don’t…”

  “That’s not…”

  Russel pulled out a chair and basically forced her down into it. “You think I’d do that to you? Jesus, Hollister. If you weren’t a girl, I’d totally hit you right now.”

  That was more like it. She rose to her feet. “You know you can’t take me.”

  “Ladies!” Drew whistled. “Please. We have business.”

  Still, Nicki gave Russel a little bit of a shove as she sat back down. He gave her a little bit of a shove right back. Feeling somewhat relieved, Nicki looked at the papers Drew had just placed in front of her. And there it was, the annulment document that was apparently questionable.

  “You know?” Russel asked, folding his arms across his chest.

  Nicki nodded, blinking to make sure the tears that threatened to fall stayed locked away. “He told me the other night. Just before he left. What’s wrong with it?”

  Watching her intently, Drew tipped his chair back and propped up his feet. “It looks like there may have been an error in the original paperwork.”

  “What kind of error?” Nicki asked as she looked down again. “Who is Nickolas?” Oh. Duh. “My name doesn’t have an ‘s’ at the end.”

  Drew nodded. “That would be the error.”

  She pushed the paper back. “Shouldn’t someone have caught that?”

  Looking her directly in the eye, all human lie detector-like, Drew let his chair fall back down to the floor. “The argument might be that you were supposed to catch it since it was your name.”

  What? “He left me with a $210,000 hotel bill! I was a little busy with other things.”

  And now Drew smiled. “I like you, Hollister. I do. That would be the exact argument I would make. It gives us something to go on.”

  “Argument for what?” She was really wishing she’d had a second cup of coffee this morning.

  Drew handed her yet another set of papers. “For when you file for divorce.”

  Seriously. Her head was swimming. “But it’s not like we’re still married.” Which felt silly to say. But it felt sillier to say she was married, so there you go. “Not really, at least.”

  “Interestingly,” Drew said. “Some people might agree with you; it could be that the annulment will stand. But if it doesn’t—and if you then move on to filing for divorce—you could end up a very rich woman.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want a divorce. We’re not married. I don’t care what anyone says.”

  Although Drew tended to smile a lot in a happy go lucky way, he wasn’t doing so now. It scared her a little. When he handed her a manila folder with an envelope she was almost afraid to look inside.

  “This would be the other side of the coin,” he said, and another set of papers was put in front of her. “This is the draft of a civil lawsuit against you on behalf of the Grenville family. It’s a lot of technical legal language that I’d be happy to spell out for you, but what it essentially means is that the family is holding you accountable for breaking the your marriage contract to the tune of one billion dollars.”

  Nicki’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t breathe. “But… I don’t… How can they…?”

  His eyes kind, Drew leaned forward. “I’m not entirely sure they can. To be honest, I don’t know if they’re entirely sure they can. But although it’s highly unlikely any court would ever allow it to stand, it could tie you up for some time. And I can’t lie; it could be painful.” He gently took the envelope out of her hand and dropped a series of photos out of it. They were all pictures of Nicki with various men she’d dated.

  No, make that highly unflattering pictures of Nicki in various states of undress with various men she’d hooked up with. It caused her physical pain to ask the question, and yet, “Did Simon do this?” She only vaguely registered Russel’s hand going to her shoulder.

  “That’s where things get intriguing.” Drew held up a much larger envelope, this one had clearly gone through the mail. “All of this came to me anonymously. San Francisco postmark, same zip code as the law firm we worked with to close the deal on the house. You do the math.”

  But before Nicki could get angrier, Drew said, “It also came with this.”

  She looked at the piece of paper with a series of case names on it. “I don’t understand.”

  “It appears to me that someone is trying to help you out. This is a list of divorce cases heard in Great Britain over the past few years. In all of these cases, the decision was in favor of the ex-wife. Who, incidentally, got more than half of the estate being contested.” Then he held up yet another small manila envelope; he didn’t hand this one over, however. “This is a similar set of photographs, but with Simon as the subject and much more explicit. They’re also time-stamped and predate the photos of you.”

  It wasn’t like she’d thought he was celibate for the past decade—the tabloids made it clear he had a whole host of women to choose from. But she didn’t quite understand what the point was here. “Why would he do that?”

  Still looking at her with that really annoying lawyerly gaze, Drew steepled his fingers and brought them up to his chin. “This is just hypothetical, mind you. But if there were a woman I cared very much about who was about to get blindsided by someone with an axe to grind and a lot of resources to grind it, I might be inclined to provide my woman with some fairly hefty ammunition should, say, a civil lawsuit emerge.”

  Oh, God. “Is, um…” Nicki cleared her throat. “Is that lawsuit official?”

  “Not yet.” Drew held up another envelope, this one the regular letter-size with British stamps. “Last one, I promise.” He handed it to her. “This is from a London-based law firm that represents the Grenville family. It’s a vaguely threatening exploratory letter that, yes, hints a lawsuit might be coming. And in it you’ll also find a newly drawn up set of annulment papers, this time with all names spelled correctly.”

  Wow. Simon’s mother really was a special kind of evil. Not that that was particularly surprising after seeing her in person. “The point being that if I don’t sign the new annulment papers then they’ll sue the hell out of me? So she’s basically blackmailing me?”

  Although Russel kind of growled at that, Drew merely nodded. “That’s my take on it.” He tapped the stack of papers and photographs. “Or you could take a chance and sue for divorce and get half of everything they own. It’s subjective, and it would be up to the courts. But you have a reasonable chance.”

  “You’re not even sure the first annulment is invalid,” Russel said.

  Drew shrugged. “Again, it could go either way.”

  Nicki sat back in her chair. She pulled the new annulment document toward her.

  Russel leaned forward and put his hand over it. “You don’t need to be nice about this. We’ll be there for you every step of the way, and I don’t give a crap about the house. I don’t give a crap about him, either, even if he’s truly trying to help you out. All I care about is you. He put you through hell and you deserve something out of this.”

  She could see it, she supposed, but if Russel really thought she’d do that, then he didn’t know her at all. Nicki just looked at him.

  He rolled his eyes. “That’s what I told Dana.”

  Nicki turned to Drew. “Are you going to try to talk me out of this?”

  He held up his hands in surrender. “I’ve got no skin in this game. My job is to tell you that you have a very good shot at making a lot of money. But it’s not a guarantee. And it’s entirely up to you.”

  She looked at the stack of papers. Then she looked down at the new annulmen
t paperwork in front of her and picked up a pen. She signed it and pushed it forward. “Are we done here?”

  Drew looked at Russel and then back at her. “Not quite.” He handed over a folder with a whole different set of papers in it, all officially signed and notarized. “This is for you.”

  It was the paperwork for the house Russel was building for Simon. “And this means…?”

  “It’s yours,” Drew said. “The house, the land… Whatever you want to do with it. It’s yours free and clear.”

  Now that she had most of her wits back about her, she was together enough for it to hurt. And piss her off. “Was that my reward if I signed the annulment papers?”

  Drew shook his head. “Simon came to me before he left town. He wanted to make sure it was yours. I don’t think he had any idea of what his mother was planning. Not then, at least.”

  Her hand started to shake. “I can’t accept this. If nothing else, I can’t pay the taxes.”

  “He allowed for that, too. There’s a trust set up for taxes, maintenance, and whatever else might come up. If you sell the house, that money goes to you, as well.”

  She pushed it away. “I don’t want his house.”

  “I’m sorry,” Drew said. “There’s nothing I can do about that. It’s yours. You can sell it, and I’m happy to handle that sale; or you can donate it, and I’m happy to handle that as well. But you can’t give it back.”

  Well, they were going to see about that. She looked at Russel and then at Drew. “Do you know where he is?”

  They both shook their heads.

  Damn it. She looked at Russel. Holy crap, she was going to get herself fired again and this time it had nothing to do with her ta-tas. But she had to do this. “Can I have a few more days off?”

  Except this time, unlike her bosses in Vegas, Russel smiled. “I’ll buy you a ticket wherever you need to go.”

  17