From Fake to Forever (19 page)

Somehow that got a smile out of her. She selected a Merlot from Jason’s well-stocked wine rack and pulled the cork. The pop coincided with the doorbell. Avery must have been in the lobby when she called.

Jason answered the door while Meredith poured three big glasses. Then added another quarter inch of wine to hers. For fortification. Either this surprise visit would be her second “real marriage” test at the hands of Jason’s family or Avery planned to litter the loft with the shrapnel of whatever new bomb she had in store in her campaign to become CEO of Lynhurst Enterprises.

What else could she possibly be here for?

Avery swept into the room, not one blond hair out of place. Her chic Hurst House suit outclassed all of the women’s outfits in a five-block radius, as always, because Avery wore clothes like everyone else wore skin—effortlessly and as if everything she put on had been created specifically for her. Meredith had never seen the woman miss a trick when it came to dressing for the occasion.

It was a talent Meredith envied despite her personal feelings for Jason’s sister.

“Avery,” Meredith greeted smoothly. “How nice of you to drop by. That suit is divine. Wine?”

Jason glanced at her sideways, but she ignored him. Southern manners had been bred into her since she was old enough to tell the difference between a teaspoon and a soupspoon, and sibling rivalry couldn’t pry graciousness from her. At least not right out of the gate. When Avery got to the point of this visit, all bets were off.

“Thank you.” Avery nodded and took the long-stemmed glass from Meredith’s hand. “Sorry for the short notice. I’m glad you were free.”

“Of course,” she allowed. If nothing else, Avery had piqued their curiosity. Deliberately, she was sure.

Meredith indicated the sofa facing the Hudson in an invitation to Avery to take a seat, and then sank onto the other sofa next to Jason and handed him his glass of wine. Wasn’t this cozy?

She gulped a third of her wine in thirty seconds as Jason put an arm around her. It was a clear message to both her and Avery. Meredith and Jason were a team, regardless of the blood flowing through the Lynhurst veins.

The show of solidarity touched her and she had to school her expression before she melted into a mushy puddle. His thumb stroked her waist and she managed to shoot him a small smile that conveyed none of her surprise at how normal it felt to sit with him in the home they shared, entertaining.

Avery’s gaze cut between the two of them. “I have to confess, part of me wanted to see for myself that you were really a couple.”

“You mean you didn’t already know that we’ve been married for two years?” Jason asked in a flat tone that said if she denied it, he’d call her a liar.

“I knew,” she conceded readily. “I thought it was a much more scandalous story than it apparently is.”

More scandalous than a drunken, accidental Vegas wedding that shouldn’t have happened? What in the world would have qualified for
that
honor?

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Jason shot back with a glower. “If you only came here to check up on me, you can leave.”

Meredith put a calming hand on his arm, a little amused that playing the composed half of their couple had fallen to her. “It’s okay, honey. It’s natural for people to be curious, especially your family.”

With an evaluating once-over, Avery zeroed in on her. “That’s not the only reason I’m here. I actually came to congratulate you on your marriage. And on getting one up on me. I wasn’t going to use the stolen designs, or at least not the way I led you to believe. I was dead sure I had a Lyn spy at Hurst and I planted them in hopes of flushing out the culprit.”

I knew it!
The after-hours project wasn’t real.

“Guess it worked,” Meredith responded mildly, but it took every ounce of Miss Texas in her blood to keep the shock off her face.

It had been a trap. The whole time. Normally Meredith prided herself on reading people, especially women, but this was something else. If she wasn’t so furious, she might be impressed.

Avery’s smile chilled the air. “I left Meredith alone that night on purpose, hoping to catch her. Imagine my surprise when I reviewed the security tapes and saw my brother in cahoots with the spy.”

“Called it,” Jason murmured. “So you felt compelled to figure out our association. Nice.”

“For all the good it did. Mom flipped and not the way I intended.” Avery made a big show of sipping her wine and then commented, “You certainly managed to come out of this the winner, didn’t you?”

Clutching his chest in a mock heart attack, Jason smirked. “Hurt much to admit that?”

“Not as much as what I’m about to admit.” With a Gallic shrug, Avery focused on Meredith again. “When you called me this morning to resign, I wasn’t surprised. I wouldn’t have welcomed you back. Until Allo stormed into my office and threatened to quit unless I hired you back. Apparently HR quite gleefully informed him it was my fault you left.”

“What?” The wineglass tilted in Meredith’s suddenly numb hand and only Jason’s quick reflexes kept it off the pristine white throw rug. “Allo hates me.”

“Allo hates everyone,” Jason and Avery both said at the same time.

“Be that as it may,” Avery continued with a wry twist of her lips, “he was quite adamant that you are the best assistant he’s ever had and will not cross the threshold of Hurst again until you agree to come back.”

Meredith was already shaking her head. “Not interested.”

She had job offers coming out of the woodwork: a yet-to-be-defined executive’s job from Jason and now this. And half a wedding-dress business that she could still buy into if New York dropped off the face of the map. Or she could take the money Jason was paying her to hold off on the divorce and live in Timbuktu as a basket weaver.

“I don’t think you understand,” Avery broke into the swirl of Meredith’s thoughts impatiently. “I cannot lose Allo. He is Hurst’s premier designer and without him, we’d fold in six months. I’d pay you two-fifty in a heartbeat if that’s what it took.”

Confused, Meredith stared at her. “Two-fifty what? Dollars?”

“Two hundred-and-fifty
thousand
. A year. I’d pay you a quarter of a million dollars annually to ensure my company doesn’t go under.”

Oh, my God
. The sum made her vision black out for a moment.

The number of choices suddenly open to her pounded through her head. She had choices...and
Avery’s offer didn’t require her to stay married to Jason
. There was absolutely nothing holding her to him any longer. If she accepted, she didn’t need Jason’s money. New York was wide-open to her.

She had no reason to stay in this marriage other than the obvious one—she’d still be married to Jason.

“Allo’s a pain in the ass. He treated Meredith like dirt, and even if he apologized on his hands and knees, she’s too good to waste her talent on him,” Jason countered fiercely. “But I’ll shut up now because it’s her decision.”

Okay,
that
was the most romantic thing he’d ever said. The warmth of his hand against her waist bled through her, arrowing straight to her heart and swelling it tenderly.

Did he realize that she alone held the power to end this rivalry between Jason and Avery by simply declining Avery’s offer?

Avery would be publicly humiliated, Hurst would be in trouble and Jason could save the day with his merger plans. No one would ever consider making Avery CEO of the newly merged company, not when she had driven off the jewel in Hurst’s crown.

But if Meredith did that, she’d be feeding the mastermind, not nurturing the man she loved.

It was all too much.

Shooting to her feet, she set down her empty wineglass. “I appreciate the offer, but it’s been a long day. I’ll have to let you know.”

Avery stood, as well, obviously recognizing that she was being dismissed. “I won’t take no for an answer. I can make your life very difficult if you refuse. You know where to find me.”

It must be killing her that Meredith’s hand held all the aces. And that was the only reason she didn’t bust Avery in the mouth and spill blood all over that gorgeous suit. “I do know where to find you. Which means you might want to reconsider threatening me.”

Despite her show of bravado, Meredith’s hands started to shake. Houston sounded mighty nice, and all at once, she longed to escape the politics and threats and manipulation.

Jason escorted his sister out and immediately came back to engulf Meredith in his embrace, murmuring reassuring phrases into her hair. Burying her head in his shoulder, she let his touch wash through her, calming her, warming her. And now
he
was the composed one. Apparently they were going to tag-team.

She sniffed and choked off a flood of emotionally laden words that she wouldn’t be able to take back.

“You okay?” he said softly and pulled back to caress her cheek. “I’m sorry she upset you. Avery doesn’t pull punches.”

Normally, Meredith didn’t pull punches, either, but Jason had her all messed up and emotional over every little thing. “That’s the reason I’m still here. You can’t take her on by yourself.”

His smile settled her in a way she’d never have expected. “Maybe not, but I can take
you
on by myself.”

With that, he swept her into his arms and carried her upstairs to his bed, where he undressed her so carefully and reverently, she couldn’t speak. Once she was naked, he palmed the remote and clicked open the curtain. It whirred up to let in the neon night and he stared at her, worshipping her with his gaze.

“Jason, I—”

“Want me to make love to you? That was the plan.”

And then he did exactly that, silently ministering to her pleasure with such exquisite care that genuine tears rolled from her eyes when he finally pushed into her. As before dinner earlier, he didn’t bother with a condom and it took on new significance. Real marriages—ones with no divorce on the horizon—didn’t require condoms.

Was this his way of communicating with her? Of proclaiming his feelings about her and their marriage?

Afterward, he spooned her against him, murmured her name and he fell asleep as she stroked his leg. And that was when she realized she didn’t have a choice. She loved Jason Lynhurst and wanted to be his wife forever. All of the confusion over her feelings and the job offers and everything else blew away.

She loved him. Nothing else mattered. Except for the fact that she still had to figure out how to tell him.

* * *

In only a matter of days, Meredith had taken over Jason’s condo.

It was the only phrase for it. She had almost no stuff. Basically just the clothes she’d packed from home and the new wardrobe he’d given her. But a simple pair of stilettos in his living room felt more invasive than a military coup.

Her perfume lingered in the air, even after she left.

Their relationship had evolved into something he didn’t understand. Somehow. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d been trying to keep to the status quo; Meredith did her own thing. The shoes proved the point and he didn’t like it.

The front door opened, startling him out of his dead stare at her sandals on the floor.

And there she was in the entry of his condo, hair wild and windblown around her shoulders and a bag of groceries in the crook of one elbow. His heart lurched, a live thing attempting to break free. How had he gotten to the point where simply gazing at Meredith caused all these
things
to happen inside?

“Hey,” she called. “I thought you were going to the office.”

“It’s Saturday,” he reminded her needlessly, since they’d had a conversation about that very fact forty-five minutes ago as she’d sailed out the door to pick up a few things. “And you left your shoes in the living room again.”

This was the kind of stuff he’d imagined going over with Meiling and reaching a civil agreement about how their life would go. The less change, the better. Meredith ignored him when he tried to explain that the vanity wasn’t a catchall for her cosmetics. Actually, that conversation hadn’t even made it past the opening argument because she’d dropped her towel with a provocative arch of her eyebrow.

“So?”

Meredith swished into the black granite and stainless-steel kitchen that he’d have sworn was masculine two weeks ago. With his wife in it, the sharp angles softened and the hard glass took on a feminine sheen he’d never noticed before. It was like everything else in the condo; Meredith changed whatever she touched, looked at, breathed on.

Including him. He couldn’t keep letting that happen or he’d wake up one day and realize he’d turned into his father overnight. “Someone might trip over them.”

She shot him a look over her shoulder as she put some kind of wrapped meat in the refrigerator. “Like the elves that come in during the night?”

He bit back a smile. He didn’t want to laugh. This was serious.

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking about. The elven OSHA union,” he shot back before he could stop himself.

She giggled and the sound washed over him. He loved her laugh. The condo had been hushed and quiet before she moved in. He’d assumed that was best. Now he wasn’t so sure.

Before he could move, she flowed into the living room and climbed into his lap, straddling him like she’d done in the car and his pulse scattered. This was his favorite position, his favorite way to watch her, his favorite way to lose himself in her.

“You should probably punish me, then,” she murmured and her hands slipped under his shirt to drive him insane with her touch.

“Meredith.” Somehow he had the presence of mind to grab her hands and drag them away from his skin. And then he forgot why he’d been so certain he needed her to stop.

“Yeah, baby?” Then she twisted and crossed her arms behind her back, taking his with them. Her breasts were flush against his chest, exciting them both if the hardness of her nipples was any indication, and his arms were holding her captive. With her mouth inches apart from his, her energy and vibrancy spilled down his throat, and all he could think about was kissing her.

“So is this how it’s going to be from now on?” he muttered and sucked in a breath as she shifted deeper into his lap. “I try to have a serious conversation and you distract me with sex?”