A Beaumont Christmas Wedding (13 page)

“Or the one time when you—” added Jo.

“Hey!” Frances yelped, her cheeks turning almost as red as her hair. “That’s not fair!”

“We’re just being honest,” Serena said with a grin that bordered on mean.

Jo nodded in agreement, giving Whitney an encouraging grin. “What did Phillip tell me about that one guy? What did he call you? His Little Red—”

Frances’s phone chimed. “Sorry, can’t listen to you make fun of me. Must answer this very important text!” She read her message. “Byron says he can’t believe that’s really Whitney Wildz.” She began to type a reply.

“What are you going to tell him?” Whitney asked.

“What do you think?” Frances winked at her. “That your name is Whitney Maddox.”

* * *

“Is that...Whitney Wildz?” Byron held his phone up to his good eye. “Seriously?”

“What?” Matthew grabbed the phone away from his brother. “Jesus.” It was, in fact, Whitney, standing next to Frances, smiling for the camera. She looked good. A little worried but that was probably because Frances had a death grip on her shoulders.

He was going to kill both of them. Why would Whitney let anyone take her picture? And hadn’t he warned Frances not to do anything stupid? And didn’t taking a picture of Whitney and plastering it all over the internet count as stupid?

The phone chimed as another message popped up.

Tell Matthew that she made me promise to only send it to you. No social media.

Matthew exhaled in relief. That was a smart compromise. He could only hope Frances would hold up her end of that promise. He handed the phone back over, hoping he appeared nonchalant. “That was a character she played,” he said in his most diplomatic tone. “Her name is Whitney Maddox.” He shot a look at Phillip, who was enjoying a cigar on Matthew’s private deck.

Phillip gave him his best innocent face, then mimed locking his lips and throwing away the key.

The guys had managed to arrive at Matthew’s place without notice. It was just the five of them. Byron didn’t get along with their other half brothers David and Johnny at all and Mark was off at college. Matthew had decided to keep the guest list to the wedding party. Just the four Beaumont men who could tolerate each other. Most of the time.

Plus the sober coach, Dale. When Phillip was out on the farm, he was fine, but he’d been sober for only seven months now and with the pressure of the wedding, no one wanted a relapse. Hands down, that would be the worst thing to happen to the wedding. There would be no recovering from that blow to the Beaumont image and there would be no burying that lead. It would be game over.

Matthew and Phillip had made sure that Dale would be available for any event that took place away from the farm. Currently, Dale was sitting next to Phillip, talking horses. This was what the Beaumont men had come to—soda and cigars on a Saturday night. So this was what getting old was like.

“Who?” Chadwick asked, taking the phone.

“Whitney Wildz.” Byron was studying the picture. “She was this squeaky-clean girl who starred in a rock-and-roll update of
The Partridge Family
called
Growing Up Wildz
. Man,” he went on, “she looks
amazing
. Do you know if she’s—?”

“She’s not available,” Matthew said before he could stop himself. But Byron was a Beaumont. There was no way Matthew wanted his little brother to get it into his head that Whitney was fair game.

All three of his brothers gave him a surprised look. Well, Chadwick and Byron gave him a look. Phillip was trying too hard not to laugh, the rat bastard. “I mean, if anyone tried to hit on her, it’d be a media firestorm. Hands off.”

“Wait,” Chadwick said, studying the picture again. “Isn’t this the woman who’s always stoned or flashing the camera?”

“She’s not like that,” Matthew snapped.

“What Matthew means to say,” Phillip added, “is that in real life, Whitney raises prize-winning horses and lives a fairly quiet life. She’s definitely
not
a fame monster.”

“
This
is the woman who’s the maid of honor?” Chadwick’s voice was getting louder as he glared at the phone. “How is this Whitney Wild person not going to make this wedding into a spectacle? You know this is the soft opening for Percheron Drafts, Matthew. We can’t afford to have anything compromise the reception.”

“Hey—easy, now, Chad.” Chadwick flinched at Phillip’s nickname for him. Which Phillip used only when he was trying to piss off the oldest Beaumont. Yeah, this little bachelor party was going downhill, fast. “It’s going to be fine. She’s a friend of Jo’s and she’s not going to make a spectacle of anything. She’s perfectly fine. Matthew was worried, too, but he’s seen that she’s just a regular woman. Right?” He turned to Matthew. “Back me up here.”

“Phillip’s correct. Whitney will be able to fulfill her role in the wedding with class and style.”
And
, he added mentally,
with a little luck, some grace
. He hoped he’d put her in the right shoes. “She won’t be a distraction. She’ll help demonstrate that the Beaumonts are back on top.”

Funny how a few days ago he’d been right where Chadwick was—convinced that a former star would take advantage of the limelight that went with a Beaumont Christmas wedding and burn them all. Now all Matthew was worried about was Whitney getting down the aisle without tripping.

He glanced up to see Byron staring at him. “What?”

It was Chadwick who spoke first. “We can’t afford any
more
distractions,” he said, half punching Byron on the arm. “I’m serious.”

“Fine, fine. I prefer to eat my own cooking anyway.” Byron walked off to lean against the railing on the balcony. Then he looked back at Matthew.

Matthew knew what that meant. Byron wanted to talk. So he joined his little brother. Then he waited. It was only when Phillip distracted Chadwick by asking about his baby daughter that Matthew said, “Yes?”

“Did you ask Harper?” Byron kept his voice low. Yeah, there was no need to let Chadwick in on this conversation. If Chadwick knew that they’d asked his nemesis to the wedding... Well, Matthew hated bailing people out.

“I did. He refused. The Harpers will not be joining us at the reception.”

“Not even...?” Byron swallowed, staring out at the mountains cloaked in darkness. “Not even his family? His daughter?”

Suddenly, Matthew understood. “No. Is she the reason you’ve got a black eye?”

Byron didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “Is Whitney Wildz
your
reason?”

“Her name,” Matthew said with more force than he probably needed, “is Whitney Maddox. Don’t you forget it.”

Byron gave him the look—the same look all the brothers shared. The Beaumont smile. “Exactly how ‘not available’ is she, anyway?”

Deep down, Matthew had to admire how well his little brother was handling himself. In less than a minute, he’d completely redirected the conversation away from Harper’s daughter and back to Matthew and Whitney. “Completely not available.”

“Well,” Phillip announced behind them, “this has been lovely and dull, but I’ve got a bride-to-be waiting for me who’s a lot more entertaining than you lot.”

“And I’ve got to get home to Serena and Catherine,” Chadwick added.

“I swear,” Byron said, “I leave for one lousy year and I don’t even know you guys anymore. Chadwick, not working? Phillip, sober and monogamous? And you?” He shot Matthew a sidelong glance. “Hooking up with Whitney Wild—”

“Maddox,” Matthew corrected.

Byron gave him another Beaumont smile and Matthew realized what he’d just done—tacitly agreed that he was, in fact, hooking up with Whitney. “Right. You hooking up with anyone. Next thing you know, Frances will announce she’s joining a nunnery or something.”

“We can only hope,” Chadwick grumbled before he turned to Phillip and Dale. “You okay to get home?”

Dale spoke. “You’re going straight home to the farm?”

“Yeah,” Phillip replied, slapping the man on the shoulder. “Jo’s waiting on me. Thanks for—”

Matthew cut him off. “I’ll see that he gets home.”

“What—” Phillip demanded. He sounded pissed.

Matthew didn’t look at him. He focused on Dale and Chadwick. “There’s been a lot of pressure with this wedding. We can’t be too careful.”

“—the hell,” Phillip finished, giving him a mean look.

Matthew refused to flinch even as he wondered what he was doing. At no point during the wedding planning had Phillip been teetering on the brink of dependency. Why was Matthew implying that he suddenly needed a babysitter?

Because. He wanted to see Whitney.

“Good plan,” Chadwick said. “Dale, is that okay with you?”

“Yeah. See you tomorrow at the rehearsal dinner.” Dale took off.

When it was just the four brothers, there was a moment of awkward silence. Then the awkwardness veered into painful. What was Matthew doing? He could see the question on each man’s face. Byron’s black eye. Casting doubts on Phillip’s sobriety. That wasn’t who Matthew was. He was the one who did the opposite—who tried to make the family sound better, look better than it really was. He put the family name first. Not his selfish desire to see a woman who was nothing but a PR headache waiting to happen.

Phillip glared at him. Yeah, Matthew had earned that. “Can we go? Or do you need to take a potshot at Chadwick, too?”

Chadwick paused. He’d already headed for the door. “Problem?”

“No. Nothing I can’t handle,” Matthew hurried to say before Byron and Phillip could tattle on him.

He could handle this. His attraction to Whitney? A minor inconvenience. A totally amazing, mind-blowing inconvenience, but a minor one. He could keep it together. He had to. That was what he did.

Chadwick nodded. That he was taking Matthew at his word was something that should have made Matthew happy. He’d earned that measure of trust the hard way. It was a victory.

But that didn’t change the fact that he was, at this exact moment, undermining that trust, as well.

Yeah, he could handle this.

He hoped like hell.

Fourteen

T
he drive out to the farm was fast and tense.

“After this wedding,” Phillip finally said as he fumed in the passenger seat, “you and I are going to have words.”

“Fine.” Matthew had earned it, he knew.

“I don’t get you,” Phillip went on, clearly deciding to get those words out of the way now. Matthew thought that it’d be better if they could just fight and get it over with. “If you wanted to come out to the farm and see her, you could have just come. Why’d you have to make it sound like I had my finger on the trigger of a bottle? Because I don’t.”

“Because.”

“What the hell kind of answer is that?”

Matthew could feel Phillip staring at him. He ignored him. Yeah, he’d bent the truth. That was what he did. Besides, he’d covered up for Phillip so many times they’d both lost count.

“You don’t have to hide her. Not from us. And certainly not from me. I already know what’s going on.”

The statement rankled him. The fact that it was the truth? That only made it worse. “I’m not hiding.”

“Like hell you’re not. What else would you call that little show you put on back there? Why else does Byron have a black eye? You can dress it up as you’re protecting her because that’s what you do but damn, man. There’s nothing wrong with you liking the woman and wanting to spend time with her. You think I’d hold that against you?”

“You would have. In the past.”

“Oh, for crying out loud.” Phillip actually threw his hands up. “There’s your problem right there. You’re so damn concerned with what happened last year, five years ago—thirty-five years ago—that you’re missing out on the
now
. Things change. People change. I’d have thought that hanging out with Whitney would have shown you that.”

Matthew didn’t have a comeback to that. He didn’t have one to any of it.

Phillip moved in for the kill. Matthew wasn’t entirely used to the new, improved, changed Phillip being this right and certainly not right about Matthew. “Even Chadwick would understand if you’ve got to do something for
you
. You don’t have to manage the family’s image every single minute of your life. Figure out who you are if you’re not a Beaumont.”

Matthew let out a bark of laughter. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

If he wasn’t a Beaumont? Not happening. He’d fought too hard to earn his place at the Beaumont table. He wasn’t going to toss all that hard work to “figure out” who he was. He already knew.

He was Matthew Beaumont. End of discussion.

“Whatever, man. But the next time you want to cover your tracks, don’t use me as a human shield. I don’t play these games anymore.”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

The rest of the drive was silent.

Matthew was mad. He was mad at Phillip—but he wasn’t sure why. Because the man had spoken what felt uncomfortably like the truth? And Byron—he’d gotten that damn black eye. Because Matthew had asked him to do something dramatic.

And he was—he was mad at Whitney. That was what this little verbal skirmish was about, wasn’t it? Whitney Maddox.

Why did she have to be so—so—so
not
Whitney Wildz? Why couldn’t she be the kind of self-absorbed celebrity he knew how to manage—that he knew how to keep himself distant from? Why did she have to be someone soft and gentle and—yeah, he was gonna say it—innocent? She shouldn’t be so innocent. She should be jaded and hard and bitter. That way he wouldn’t be able to love her.

They pulled up at the farmhouse. Matthew didn’t want to deal with Phillip anymore. Didn’t want to deal with any of it. He was not hiding her, damn it.

He strode into the house as if he owned the thing, which he didn’t. Not really. But it was Beaumont Farms and he was a Beaumont, so to hell with it.

He found Jo and Whitney on the sofas, watching what looked like
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
, the one he’d watched back when he was a kid. Whitney was already in her pajamas. Jo’s ridiculous donkey, Betty, was curled up next to Whitney. She was petting Betty’s ears as if it were a normal everyday thing.

Why didn’t he feel normal anymore? Why had he let her get close enough to change him?

“Hi,” she said in surprise when she looked up. “Is everything—?”

“I need to talk to you.” He didn’t wait for a response. Hell, he couldn’t even wait for her to get up. He scooted Betty out of the way and pulled Whitney to her feet.

“Are you—
whoa
!”

Matthew swept her legs up and, without bothering to look back at where Phillip was no doubt staring daggers at him—hell, to where the donkey was probably staring daggers at him—he carried Whitney up the stairs.

She threw her arms around his neck as he took the steps two at a time. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. Just fine.” Even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t true. He wasn’t fine and she was the reason.

But she was the only way he knew how to make things fine again.

“Bachelor party went okay?” she asked as he kicked open the door to her room.

“Yeah. Fine.” He threw her down on the bed and wrenched off his tie.

Her eyes went wide. “Matthew?”

“I—I missed you, okay? I missed you.” Why did saying it feel like such a failure? He didn’t miss people. He didn’t miss women. He didn’t let himself care enough to miss them.

But in two damn days, he’d missed her. And it made him feel weak. He wrapped the tie around his knuckles and pulled, letting the bite of silk against his skin pull him back. Pull him away from her.

She clambered up to her knees, which brought her face almost level with his. “I missed you, too.”

“You did?”

She nodded. Then she touched his face. “I...I missed waking up with you.”

At her touch—soft and gentle and innocent, damn it all—something in him snapped. “I don’t want to talk.”

She was the reason he was the mess he was. He had to—he didn’t know. He had to put her in her place. He
had
to keep himself distanced from her, for his own sanity. And he couldn’t do that while she was touching him so sweetly, while she was telling him she missed him.

One eyebrow notched up. Too late, he remembered announcing that the whole reason he was sweeping her off her feet was to talk to her.

But she didn’t say anything. Instead, she pushed herself up onto her feet and stripped her pajama top off. Then, still standing on the bed—not tipping over, not accidentally kicking him—she shimmied out of her bottoms, which was fine because it was damnably hard to think the lustful thoughts he was thinking about someone who was wearing pink pants covered with dogs in bow ties. Then she sank back down to her knees in front of him.

No talking. No touching. He would keep a part of himself from her, just as he did with everyone else. No one would know what she meant to him. Not even him.

Then he had her on her back, but that was still too much. He couldn’t look into her eyes, pale and wide and waiting for him. He couldn’t see what he meant to her. He couldn’t risk letting her see what she meant to him. So he rolled her onto her belly and, after getting the condom, buried himself in her.

She didn’t say a word, not even when her back arched and her body tightened down on his and she grabbed the headboard as the climax rolled her body. She was silent as he grabbed her hips and drove in deep and hard until he had nothing left to give her.

They fell onto the bed together, panting and slick with sweat. He’d done what he needed to—what a Beaumont would. This was his birthright, wasn’t it? White-hot affairs that didn’t involve feelings. His father had specialized in them. He’d never cared about anyone.

Matthew needed to get up. He needed to walk away from Whitney. He needed to stay a Beaumont.

Then she rolled, looped her arms over his neck and held him. No words. Just her touch. Just her not letting him go.

How weak was he? He couldn’t even pull himself away from her. He let her hold him. Damn it all, he held her back.

It was some time before she spoke. “After the wedding...after Christmas morning...”

He winced. “Yes?” But it was surprisingly hard to sound as if he didn’t care when his face was buried in the crook of her neck.

“I mean,” she hurried on, her arms tightening around his neck, “that’ll be... We’ll be...”

It.
That’ll be
it.
We’ll be
done. That was what she was trying to say. Then—and only then—did he manage to push himself up. But he couldn’t push himself away from her. “My life is here in Denver, and you...” He swallowed, wishing he were stronger. That he could be stronger for her. “You need the sun.”

She smiled—he could see her trying—but at the same time, her eyes began to shine and the corners of her mouth pulled down. She was trying not to cry. “Right.”

He couldn’t watch her, not like this. So he buried his face back against her neck.

“Right,” he agreed.
Fine
, he thought, knowing it wasn’t. At least that would be clean. At least there wouldn’t be a scene that he’d have to contain. He should have been relieved.

“Anytime you want to ride the Trakehners,” she managed to get out, “you just let me know.”

Then—just because she made him so weak—he kissed her. Because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t hold himself back. Not around her.