Authors: Robyn Thomas
Jake regarded Brad in silence while he debated tactics.
Honesty—so rare in his world—was the only real option. “I thought she’d keep it on principle. She rarely does what I expect.”
He proceeded with caution, dragging his jeans on as he spoke.
“What’s the situation outside?”
“It’s bad. I heard your
engagement
announced on the radio this morning and came over when I couldn’t reach Beth by phone.
It looked like half of Melbourne had that same idea, and I couldn’t get anywhere near the place.
“I had this vision of Beth pacing around in here by herself wondering what the heck she was supposed to do, so I came up with a solution.”
“A food van?”
“Yeah, I figured no one would question a charity worker making urgent deliveries to the city’s needy. I was wrong, but the photos of Beth in my wallet convinced the security guards that I had a legitimate reason for being here.”
Amateurs. His personal security team would never have allowed the breach.
Brad studied him in pensive silence and then scowled. “How did this happen? Why Beth? And what was that about her and Ihooking up? That’s never going to happen. She might as well be my sister.”
“That’s what Beth said.” Brad looked ready to deck him, so Jake summoned a chuckle.
“You ought to hear yourself sometimes, though. Every second sentence begins with Beth.”
“Interesting. You seem to have the same problem. I’ve spoken to you on the phone more than a dozen times and you always ask about Beth. I was beginning to think you were unstable. Skyla assures me you’re not, but this ‘engagement’ has me wondering all over again.”
Skyla had stuck up for him.
“You don’t know Beth at all, yet you’re staying in her house and you’re
engaged
to her. Who does that?”
Brad’s concerns about him were remarkably similar to the ones he’d entertained. That probably meant something.
“If you had advance warning about the engagement, you should’ve done more with it than take her to bed.” Fury burnedin his eyes as he kicked the quilt. “Beth’s not like the women you usually associate with.”
“I know that. I won’t hurt her.”
Brad’s eyebrows shot up. “I don’t even want to know what I walked in on.”
For the first time, he realized how it must’ve looked to Brad— Beth kneeling before him while he was naked. He laughed and the other man’s features turned to stone.
“She was pretending to be in awe of my fame, but I’m not sure what prompted it.”
Brad gave a snort of contempt. “I hate to tell you this, buddy, but you’ll die waiting for Beth to turn into a starstruck groupie.
Her opinion of long-haired musicians is right up there with dirty politicians and used-car salesmen. It’s a wonder she recognized you.”
“She didn’t.”
Brad had turned away and taken several steps, but he stopped short and took forever to do an about-face. “Say again?”
“She didn’t recognize me. I had to introduce myself.” Brad’s silence was an invitation to elaborate, but spilling his innermost thoughts was difficult. “Being famous is a curse as often as it’s a blessing because it never shuts off. Beth sees past it and I find that—”
“Irresistible?”
“Completely.”
The curse Brad uttered was potent, but it summed up the situation in a few words. “A freaking rock star,” he said after a long pause. “She has the worst taste in men.”
The eruption of acid in Jake’s stomach wouldn’t allow him to keep quiet. “She certainly didn’t marry well.”
“What?”
The air in the room became oppressive. He caught sight of a sign saying
back off
and went the other way. “If she was my wife, I would never have let her go.”
Brad approached him and stood too close for comfort. “She’ll never be your wife so it won’t be an issue. I’ve never met a woman with a longer wish list when it comes to finding a husband, and you don’t tick any of the important boxes.” A massive frown drew his brows down, all six-foot-four of him tensing as if he’d had a horrible epiphany. “The engagement story is fake, so why are you here? Where are your PR people?” He looked around. “How are you planning to handle it, because a denial isn’t going to cut it if you’re living in Beth’s house.”
“We’ll have to allow the press to speculate for a day or two, until my team arrive to take control of the story.” Jake palmed his face as frustration and lack of sleep met head-on. “Being embroiled in this isn’t the worst thing for Beth. She can use the distraction.”
“A puppy or a kitten would distract her. Without any risk.”
Heading for the kitchen was the only thing that made any sense. “I can’t have this discussion on an empty stomach. Beth vouched for you, and it sounds as if Skyla vouched for me.
Maybe we should accept their judgments for now and pool our resources?”
Brad followed him into the hall. “You sent Skyla on a business trip a week before her wedding, so she’s not your biggest fan at the moment.”
The news hit like a knockout punch. Skyla and Beth were both worse off because he’d interfered in their lives. The mess he’d created with this marriage lottery was going to be hell to fix, and he’d cut the two women off from each other before he’d understood how their support system worked.
Brad bumped into him, shoved his shoulder, and stepped past him. “I don’t trust you, but Beth must see something I don’t.” He scowled. “Skyla too. So I’ll tell you what I have in mind. I can smuggle Beth out of here in the van. That’s what I came to do, but I didn’t count on you being here.”
Beth’s laughter lightened the moment. “You don’t think a
kazillion reporters would notice if you put a bag over my head,
bundled me into the back of a van, and sped off?”
She was laughing. For Brad. Resisting the urge to haul her
into his arms for a bone-crushing hug, Jake chuckled at the picture she’d painted. “The bag might not be the best solution, but you should take your chance to leave. Get as far away as you can.”
She glared at him, the deep red of her seventies-style dress making her freshly scrubbed skin glow with vitality. “Please don’t offer money or a vacation on a private island. It’s quite insulting that you expect me to jump at it.” She turned to Brad. “Don’t ask. We’ll discuss it some other time.”
“Tell me now.”
“I can’t. I’m busy clearing the air with my fiancé.” She was fierce, fragile, and honest as she stood her ground and turned to Jake. “You’ve turned my life upside down because my ex-husband mentioned me too often in conversation. Do you know how hard that is to reconcile? You were suspicious of Brad and yet I’m the one you chose to target. Who does that? Someone with a private plane and a rock-god mentality? My life must look pretty small in comparison to yours, but don’t make the mistake of thinking it doesn’t matter.”
Brad thumped him on the back. “She won’t leave without a fight, but someone should. I can smuggle you out in the van instead?”
Jake laughed. These were good people. Beth had a right to voice her grievances, and his low opinion of Brad had taken too many knocks to sustain. The man had Beth’s and Skyla’s best interests at heart, and that was all Jake had ever wanted.
“As tempting as it must be for you two to orchestrate what will happen next, there’s no need for it. I spoke to Tom, and he’s on his way over with all the vans in the fleet. They’re going to park out front, and as soon as I load the food, I’m going to join them and get lost in the crowd. It’ll be hard to follow the right van when there are ten identical ones, and I’m looking forward to seeing where my food ends up.”
“You’re going to take it to the streets,” Jake muttered. “It’ll be fabulous until you’re besieged by paparazzi.”
Beth swished the flirty hem of her dress. “That’s why I’m wearing this. Retro clothes will be so much fun for the media to describe: a crimson seventies-style dress that’s short, but not too short. An underskirt tight enough to make the future Mrs. Olsen walk like a lady—” She demonstrated, then spun to make the fabric swirl around her, “with several floaty layers on top to give the impression of being lighter than air. A perfect choice, right down to the scooped neckline and the stiff bow just below her breasts.” She laughed. “How did I do? I shouldn’t quit my day job for stripping, but what about journalism? I nailed it, didn’t I?”
“Stripping?” Brad sounded horrified, but neither of them paid him any attention.
“It’s a great dress, but image can’t compete with safety. You can wear anything you like because you won’t be going out.”
To his surprise, she swiped the keys out of Brad’s hand and dangled them. “I have keys. What’s to stop me from walking out the door and driving off?”
Brad snorted. “You can’t drive a manual car. That ought to stop you.”
“I can drive it well enough to get by. Unless Jake wants to volunteer? What do you say,
Famous
Man
, want to bring it down to street level and donate a few precious hours to charity?”
…
“I’m giving myself a swift upgrade from lottery-hopeful to philanthropist. I know our arrangement is temporary, but I need to extract something positive from it. I don’t particularly want to be Cinderella, but at least she’s busy. I need some busyness in my life in order to move forward, and what I have in mind for today will require leaving the house and returning home afterward.”
Both men were staring at her as if she’d lost her mind, but she plunged ahead anyway. “I want to have a hand in what’s printed about me instead of waiting for tomorrow’s papers to find out what they came up with on their own.”
“Beth.” Jake stepped forward and took both of her hands in his, swinging them wide, then drawing them against his bare chest.
Being angry with him didn’t stop her from wanting to explore his pecs, but he refused to let go of her hands. “What you’re suggesting is charming, but it won’t work.” Hazel eyes met hers head-on and the pity in them caught her by surprise. “You can’t choose what they’ll say about you, and making yourself available to them will only give them more to work with.”
“That’s the idea.”
Brad cleared his throat and waved his arm toward the back of the house. “I’m gonna load the van. I have a football game in an hour so I’d like to leave as soon as possible.”
She summoned a smile for him, aware that it was the first time he’d ever allowed her to fight her own battle. He was usually heavy-handed, territorial, and downright obnoxious, taking his big-brother role to the extreme and conveying the gist of her thoughts without consulting her first. “Thanks
Bradley
.” Her smile widened as he mimed tearing his hair out. “If you’re hungry there’s caramel apple cake already cut.”
Jake frowned at their exchange, then shook his head when Brad wandered off. He wound her hair around his finger and she watched as it unfurled. The thick silver band on Jake’s thumb was downright sexy. He had too-long blond hair that was beautifully styled and expensively colored, tattoos, a ring, a job that kept him on the road and a womanizing reputation, but he was more than the sum of those parts. He was also watching her as she silently itemized his faults. Did he know that she couldn’t find any real flaws? Oh yeah, he knew.
“What?”
“You’ll wind up regretting it if you go out today. Imagine candid shots of the wind whipping your hair across your face or your skirt up, mocking headlines about Cinders trying to rise above her class, and speculation about how convenient this sudden interest in charity is. Imagine microphones and cameras in your face, a crush of people all shouting at you at once, and the certainty that they’ll take what you say and use it to rip your character to shreds. Why would you want to play a game you can’t possibly win?”
Pretense dropped away and she shrugged her shoulders in an awkward arc. “I don’t want to play. The game had already begun when you rang my doorbell. You
could
go outside now and set the record straight, say there’s been a mix-up or a mistake…”
“No.”
“
I
could stay inside all day and feel like a sitting duck trapped in a glass enclosure, but I’m not going to. Our fake engagement was your idea, your
fault
, and the next move is mine. The whole world’s watching us and I don’t even have a rulebook.”
“Neither do I. Earlier this morning”—he clamped his entire
hand over her mouth for a brief second and glared until she gave him the go-ahead to continue speaking—“that wasn’t what I came here for. You can’t read anything into it other than I find you irresistible, okay?”
“I suppose I can live with that, but I still want to go out and do the deliveries. I’ve spent a lot of time on the sidelines the past few years and I promised my mother I’d start participating. Today I have a choice between grieving in the shadows or doing something charitable with one of the most famous people on the planet. I need to take the option that requires pushing myself and stepping out of my comfort zone. I promised my mother I’d make the most of every opportunity, and that promise is one I intend to keep.”
He raised her hands to his mouth and kissed them, his voice betraying emotions she couldn’t identify. “It’s a great promise, but the stakes are life-changing and the odds are stacked against you.
My team will be on the ground in a day or two to advise and direct you, and they’ll get you out of this as painlessly as possible so you can participate next time.”
She shook her head and stepped back, his low growl of frustration echoing in her ears. “Good advice, I’m sure, but I’m not going to take it.”
I can’t take it. My mother said I’ll never be
happy while Brad and this house are the only things in my life. And
when I look at you, I can see her point.
“Venturing outside will be a mistake you’ll regret. You have everything you need right here.”
“No. In here I have a house full of memories that are oppressive because the worst ones are crowding out the good ones until I feel like maybe there
aren’t
any good memories. On top of that, I also have a fake fiancé, an ex who feels compelled to stick around and supervise, and the awful knowledge that people I don’t know are making up stories about me to share with the entire world.” The woe-is-me speech drained her, but she had Jake’s full attention.