by Joss Wood
But tonight she’d stood inside the flames, her skin melting.
Now, as Brooks Abbingdon’s jet cut through the dark night, Teresa felt frozen, her heart encased in dry ice. Maybe true hell was this dead-on-the-inside, will-never-recover feeling.
Teresa flopped down into the chair opposite Brooks Abbingdon and eyed her brother through half-closed eyes. A bright blue bruise colored his jaw, and his lower lip was swollen. She loved Joshua, but right now she didn’t like him even a little bit. The only man she felt remotely charitable toward was Brooks Abbingdon, who’d offered her a ride out of the nightmare that was her latest professional disaster zone. He was also sitting across from her, ankle on his knee, deep in thought.
Teresa swallowed down a groan and felt her stomach cramp. Her reputation, along with her company, had been dancing on the knife-edge of ruin for weeks but her brother gate-crashing her most illustrious clients’ gala evening and, worse, grabbing the mic from singer Jessie Humphrey and placing himself front and center while ranting about rich losers and liars had pushed her off that sliver-thin edge.
And since she would be, if she wasn’t already, person very non grata by morning, why had Brooks Abbingdon, CEO of Abbingdon Airlines, rushed to her rescue? He was rich, successful and gorgeous so she had no idea why he’d offered them a lift on his plane heading back to Seattle. But she wasn’t complaining; she needed to get Joshua back under the radar as soon as possible and Brooks had offered her a way out.
Joshua was hunched over in his seat, mumbling to himself. Thank God he’d stopped ranting, his words and sentences not making any sense.
Teresa couldn’t pull her eyes off his face. Joshua had been a pain in her ass, especially these past few years, but he was her baby brother; she’d always looked after him. Initially, she’d blamed his actions on a combination of drugs and alcohol, but earlier she’d touched his left arm and he’d cried out. Teresa rolled back his sleeveshirt to see a small but distinctive puncture mark on his forearm. In a place where it would be difficult for him to self-inject. Like so much else about this night, nothing made sense.
But hell, why was she surprised? This was her insane life; everything and anything was possible.
Teresa looked from Joshua to Brooks and found his eyes studying her. Teresa waited for the kick of attraction, for a spark, and sighed when nothing happened. Maybe she wasn’t responding to him because she was exhausted and overwrought because Brooks was everything she normally found attractive in a man. At six-four or so, he was tall but perfectly proportioned with wide shoulders, narrow hips and long, muscular legs. His voice, carrying the accent of an expensive British education, was deep and luscious, his face masculine and sexy, and his skin the color of old sepia photographs.
But he wasn’t, dammit, Liam.
Gah!
As if she’d summoned him, Teresa heard the discreet beep of her phone and there was his name, flashing on the screen. Her heart whimpered and her stomach clenched. Nope, she couldn’t talk to him, not tonight, possibly never again. For the past few months, since she’d stumbled back into his orbit, she’d felt off-kilter and was constantly uncertain about what she’d face on any given day. She’d been a duck, serene on the outside but paddling like hell under the water. As a result, she was utterly drained on just about every level. Tonight she’d bled out every pint of energy she’d ever possessed.
Teresa simply did not know if she’d be able to pick her head up, struggle on. Curling up in a ball and weeping sounded far more fun than fighting another day.
She was done. Possibly for good.
Brooks cleared his throat and Teresa lifted her head to see him holding out a tumbler of whiskey. Taking the glass, she glanced at Joshua. He’d fallen asleep, his head between the edge of the seat and the wall of the plane. Tossing back her whiskey, she lowered the glass and met Brooks’s sympathetic eyes.
“Would you like another?” Brooks asked, his words holding the snap of Eton and Oxford.
Teresa shook her head. “If I do, I’ll collapse in a heap and then you will have two St. Claires to deal with.”
Teresa blew out her breath and gestured to Joshua. “I am so sorry. I know I’m repeating myself, but I don’t know how he found out where I was working or what prompted him to—” She hesitated, looking for words. Destroy my career? Embarrass the hell out of me? Bankrupt my business? “—do what he did.”
Brooks lifted his shoulder in a quick shrug. When he didn’t respond, Teresa took a deep breath and bit the bullet. “I will absolutely understand if you want to rescind your offer to have me plan your wedding.”
Brooks stared at her for a long time and Teresa resisted the urge to squirm. She wouldn’t blame him if he pulled his offer for her to plan his wedding; he’d floated the offer earlier that evening, back at the gala, before her carefully planned event went to hell on horseback.
Unbidden, snapshots of the evening jumped onto the big screen of her mind. Joshua ripping the microphone from Jessie’s hand, his incoherent screaming. Liam, bigger and stronger than her lanky brother, tackling him to the ground, his fist connecting with Joshua’s face. And all of it streaming live to Jessie’s fans around the world.
Teresa placed her hand on her heart and tried to rub the pain away. But nope, it wasn’t going anywhere.
Brooks tapped a long finger against the Waterford tumbler and shook his head. “Up until your brother’s unfortunate interruption, the gala evening, and the weekend, was going well. I’m intelligent enough to see how much work you put into the preparations and how dedicated you are to your job. What he did wasn’t your fault.”
At the unexpected vote of support, Teresa felt her eyes sting. “Thank you.”
“Let’s discuss my wedding.”
Teresa frowned. It was close to three in the morning, she was exhausted and, after a crappy evening, Brooks wanted her to talk flowers and food? Teresa slapped back her frustration. He was offering her a lifeboat as she treaded water in a stormy sea.
Okay, then. She’d talk weddings. “Sure.”
Then she realized that she had no idea who Brooks was marrying and, come to think of it, was still surprised to hear of his engagement. She’d pegged him as a confirmed bachelor, someone who wasn’t interested in settling down. She pulled a smile up onto her face. “Who’s the lucky lady?”
Brooks stared at her for a moment, his eyes not leaving hers. “You will be informed in due course.”
Okay, then. That was a super-weird response. Teresa worked hard not to show her shock, to react in any way other than polite acquiescence. Why the secrecy? Wasn’t the bride supposed to be part of these discussions? What was going on here?
Her thoughts scrambling, Teresa linked her hands around her knees and tried to corral her thoughts. Right, moving on. “Do you have a preference on where you would like to marry? When? How many guests? What’s your budget?”
Brooks held her eyes when he dropped what Teresa hoped would be the last bombshell of the evening. “You have an unlimited budget and I’m offering to pay double your normal fee.”
“What’s the catch?” she asked, not sure that she wanted to know.
Brooks smiled. “I need you to organize the wedding of the year so that it can take place on the thirtieth.”
“Of what month?” She needed at least six months to prepare; six months was tight but doable.
Brooks held her eye and didn’t flinch. “I’m getting married on the last Saturday of this month, Teresa.”
Two weeks?
Frick.
Teresa held out her glass and nodded to the whiskey bottle. “Can I have another? And, respectfully, are you insane? There is no way I can plan a wedding in two weeks.”
Brooks pulled out his phone and dialed. “She said she can’t do it,” he said to the person on the other line. He then handed her the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”
Two
There was a method to his madness...and a madness to his methods. Shakespeare’s quote, Brooks Abbingdon thought, had never been more apt. His particular method of madness was to marry.
In two weeks’ time.
Teresa hung up the phone and looked at him with wide, defeated eyes. “I’d be...” she hesitated “...happy to do your wedding. Two weeks is no problem.”
Another success for The Fixer and that meant that another hefty bill would be landing in his Brooks’s inbox soon. Fact: sometimes you had to pay for things to go your way.
Seeing that Teresa was at the end of her rope—it was the early hours of the morning and she’d had a hell of a day—Brooks told her to rest and Teresa immediately dropped her head back and closed her eyes. She’d been shocked by his time frame; hearing that he had yet to choose a bride might cause her brain to explode.
Because, really, who planned a wedding without securing a bride?
Apparently, he did.
Brooks stretched out his legs and jammed his hands into the pockets of his suit pants, mostly to hide the small tremor in his fingers. Married? Him? He’d always believed, still did, that wedding rings were the world’s smallest, strongest pair of handcuffs. But here he was, about to get hitched because his grandfather refused to listen to reason.
Stubborn old bastard.
Lester Abbingdon desperately wanted to invest in a friend’s yet-to-be-developed chain of luxury boutique hotels. Brooks wasn’t convinced that the investment would provide a decent, or any, return. But Lester rather fancied the idea of being the world’s next hotel mogul and, since he couldn’t take money from the swimming-in-cash Abbingdon Trust, he was determined to raise the money he needed by selling his personal stake in Abbingdon Airlines. Brooks had no intention of dealing with a new partner, of having to justify his decisions or, far worse, ask for permission to do what he wanted, when he wanted, with his company.
No, the only option was to buy his grandfather’s shares from him and in order to raise the cash needed—without having to get banks or other investors involved—that meant, yippee-doo-dah, getting married.
Brooks stared out the window into the inky blackness and remembered his first visit to the stuffy offices of the Abbingdon Trust’s lawyers. He’d been twenty-one and in their wood-paneled offices, they told him that, as the only Abbingdon heir, he was entitled to a sizeable monthly income from the trust but he was also set to inherit a crap-ton of cash on his twenty-fifth birthday. If he was married.
The offer would only be renewed every five years and at twenty-five, using Lester’s money to buy his first two cargo planes, he’d opted not to marry—he’d been having too much fun playing the field and had no intention, and no need, to sacrifice his freedom. Ditto at thirty but at thirty-five, Abbingdon Airlines was worth the inconvenience. He wanted control and for control he needed cash; to get the cash he needed to marry...
He’d established and grown Abbingdon Airlines; it was his hard work that had made the company one of the most trusted and respected companies in the country. His clients knew that they could rely on him to get them, or their goods, where they needed to go in the shortest time possible. But Lester wanted to go and play Monopoly with real-life assets and had placed him between a rock and a hard place. Shouldn’t ninety-year-old men be smoking cigars and playing bridge?
And of course, every time they spoke about this deal, Lester never failed to remind him that he was ecstatic that he was being forced to marry and that maybe, God willing, he’d get a much-desired great-grandchild, preferably a grandson, out of the deal. Lester then launched into his oft-repeated lecture on his lack of commitment to providing an heir to continue the Abbingdon line, that if he didn’t hop to it—his words—six hundred years of DNA-soaked history would cease to exist. The art and furniture collected over twenty-four generations would scatter to private collectors all over the world. Abbingdon Castle and its surrounding land would be sold to the highest bidder. The Abbingdons weren’t royalty but they were damn close.
And it all rested on Brooks’s shoulders...
Or in his loins.
He’d have a kid, one day. Not now. Right now all he wanted to do was save his company.
Brooks took a sip of his whiskey, staring past young Joshua St. Claire—sleeping now, thank God—to the inky night beyond the window of his Global 7000 jet. The kid was so out of it, he barely registered that he was on a private jet and hadn’t noticed the rich leather seats, the fine wood veneers and the stylish carpets and stonework. This jet had just hit the market but he owned one and, being aviation crazy, it annoyed him that neither of his two guests appreciated their luxurious mode of transport.
And his annoyance had nothing to do with the aircraft’s hefty price tag, which was upward of half a billion dollars. This plane was superbly designed, exquisitely manufactured and brilliantly engineered. It was, in its way, a masterpiece. And his guests, like his grandfather, didn’t share his passion for anything with an engine and two wings.
His business was damn good. And his life, up until two weeks ago, had been friggin’ amazing.
Yet, here he was, planning his wedding. And because the Abbingdon Trust paid for all Abbingdon weddings, he was going to take full advantage and turn his wedding into a massive networking event, inviting all his present clients and anybody he thought could be a potential client. If he was going to put his head in a hangman’s noose, then he was going to swing in style.
All he now needed was a bride.
Brooks looked at the cool beauty in the chair across from him and cocked his head. Teresa St. Claire was beautiful; there was no doubt about it. Tall and slim, she rocked an old-school Grace Kelly vibe, classy as hell. Despite the rumors and gossip swirling around her she’d held her head high and he’d yet to see her unhinged, to break into a sweat.
He liked calm women, women who could keep it together when their lives were falling apart. That showed a strength of character few women—hell, few men—possessed. Teresa St. Claire was beautiful, sexy and smart. What more could he want in a wife? The Fixer had also suggested her as a candidate to be his wife; said that she was a possibility and that he could, possibly, make that happen.
Marrying Teresa would’ve been an elegant, and quick, resolution to his current problem. Except for the little problem that she was crazy about Liam Christopher... He wasn’t the most perceptive guy in the world but even he noticed the way she looked at Christopher. Part exasperation, part denial, part annoyance but mostly like all she wanted to do was strip him naked and do several things to him that were X-rated. Brooks knew that he was marrying for convenience, as a means to an end, but he certainly didn’t need to watch his wife pine for someone else. Or wish he was someone else.
So he refused The Fixer’s offer and settled for his arranging for Teresa to organize his blowout wedding.
What could The Fixer have on her to (a) think that he could get her to agree to marriage and (b) to get her to undertake such a massive event on such short notice? It had to be something...
But Teresa’s past didn’t concern him and he had bigger worries. Like who might say yes to his crazy-ass proposal to marry him.
In two weeks’ time.
Happy bloody birthday to him.
* * *
Teresa leaned back in her chair and stared out the high-arched windows of her waterfront office in Seattle, just a few blocks from Pike Market. She loved her view, her open-plan office with its high ceilings, industrial lighting and its hardwood floors. But today all she could think about was the look of betrayal on Joshua’s face as she left him at the tightly controlled and monitored rehab facility two hours away. He understood that he had to lie low but, damn, his tightly crossed arms and the emotion washing in and out of his eyes nearly dropped her to her knees.
She wanted to believe his denials about his addictions, she really did. But she still didn’t
know how to explain that small puncture mark on his arm. Had someone injected him and then, in his woozy and hazy state, manipulated him to take a flight across the country to Napa to gate-crash Matt’s party? Was that possible or was she overreacting, allowing her imagination to run wild because she so badly wanted to believe him?
All her anxiety about Joshua would simply evaporate if she could pay off Joshua’s debt. Then they’d both be free. She’d been such a naive fool to believe that when the drug-running charges against Joshua were dropped—thanks to The Fixer—he would get his life together. Silly her.
Most women in their late twenties were concerned about their careers, their young children or their new marriages—and, frequently, a combination of all three—but no, she spent her time stressing about unpaid debts to criminals, her inconvenient attraction to a man who blew hot and cold but whom she couldn’t avoid, and rocketing from crisis to crisis. It was times like these that Teresa wished she had a mother to turn to but her mom, like her brother, relied on her. Since her father’s death, she’d been the glue holding their family together, the strong one, the capable one, the one who could always make a plan.
It would be so nice to rely on someone else, to have someone in her corner loving and supporting her but she was terrified that that person would, just like her father had, fade on her. Sharing the load meant opening up, allowing herself to be vulnerable, exposing herself...
What if that person left, disappeared on her, leaving her to waft in the wind? No, it was better to hang tough...
Besides, there was only one person who’d scaled her walls to peek inside her soul—she hadn’t told anyone else but Liam about Joshua and the stress she was under—and he was even more closed up and messed up than she was. They were a hell of a pair...
Teresa heard a throat clear and lifted her head to see Corinne hovering by her partly open door as if deciding whether to knock or not. Teresa dropped her hands, swallowed her sigh and gestured her assistant inside. Corinne’s face reflected the grim mood of the rest of her colleagues: they were worried about the future of Limitless Events, and Teresa didn’t blame them. For any event company, Saturday’s events would be a death knell and she had no doubt that most of her people were brushing up their résumés.