From Fake to Forever (6 page)

Enough was enough. He’d said six. It was six-oh-seven and Meredith
had
given him a key. And all the clothes he’d brought were heavy. If he didn’t let himself in, they’d be late to the gala, and it would be more difficult to enter separately, keeping up the ruse that they didn’t know each other.

But what if she was in the shower or blow-drying her hair in a little satin robe? One or the other was the most likely reason she hadn’t heard his many knocks.

That decided it.

It would serve her right to gain an audience if she was naked in the bathroom. A guy could hope.

Bobbling the garment bags until his fingers closed around the card key in his pocket, he cleared the threshold and dumped his cargo on the bed. His wife strolled from the bathroom at the same moment, clad in nothing but a skimpy towel, revealing miles and miles of legs and toned arms.

All that bare skin seared his retinas. The full force of her slammed into the backs of his knees, weakening them dangerously. It was one thing to barge into a hotel room on the possible assumption the female occupant might be undressed; it was another to get his wish.

His tongue went numb and every drop of blood in his body drained into the instant bulge in his pants.

How could he have walked away from
that
in Vegas? He couldn’t tear his gaze from her and a half whimper, half growl crawled out of his throat before he could stop it.

She didn’t even have the grace to look startled or embarrassed.

“Hey, you,” she called and pulled some frothy concoction of lace from her suitcase without censor, like men appeared in her bedroom unannounced on a regular basis.

Maybe they did. He frowned. Why did that thought make the back of his throat feel as if it was on fire?

“Uh, hey.” He cleared his throat as she slid a foot into the sexy panties.

Instantly, he whirled to face the window. Apparently she intended to get dressed as if he wasn’t even here. And what had he expected when he’d cavalierly charged into her room?

“Surely you’re not shy all of a sudden. You’ve seen everything I’ve got and then some.”

He could hear the smile in her voice. “It’s the ‘and then some’ that’s the problem,” he muttered.

This was ridiculous. The thought of his wife with another man made him want to claw the paint off the walls, yet she wasn’t really his wife and they were not going to repeat the craziness of the first round of their relationship. They
had
no relationship. And that’s how it was going to stay.

She laughed. “You’re wearing a tux. Are you going, too?”

“Yeah. You don’t think I expect you to do this all on your own, do you?”

Of course, the plan to accompany her had formed well before she’d reminded him what happened when they spent more than five seconds in a room together. Abrupt loss of focus. Instant desire to do nothing more than spend several hours in bed, with Meredith’s soft laugh and softer skin against his.

The woman turned him stupid instantly.

“What, you don’t trust me?” she asked coquettishly. “I’m dressed. You can stop pretending to have some misguided sense of modesty.”

“I’m not pretending. Just because we’re married doesn’t mean I should get a free show.”

He turned to face the interior of the room and got an eyeful of Meredith’s idea of
dressed
—a bra-and-panty set skimpy enough that it should be illegal. God, she was going to kill him.

The freaking bath towel had covered more flesh. Her smile said she knew exactly what she was doing to him.

“Honey, you can fantasize about keeping this platonic to your heart’s content. Just don’t hold it against me if I give you something else to fantasize about.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively. “What did you bring me?”

A hard-on the size of a subway train, apparently. “Clothes. I don’t remember what.”

She huffed out a sigh. “I’ll check it out myself, then.”

This heightened sense of awareness was merely the product of the close confines and distinct lack of sex over the past few months. Maybe if he could get a dress on her, and they got the hell out of this very private hotel room, he could breathe again.

Obviously, he had more in common with his hormonally driven father than Jason would have liked.

She unzipped the garment bag on top of the pile and squealed. “Oh, Jason.”

His name in her throaty come-and-get-me voice washed over him, tightening the already massive erection he probably wasn’t hiding as well as he hoped.

Who was he kidding? It didn’t matter if they left the hotel room; this evening was going to suck regardless because he couldn’t think about anything
but
sex where Meredith was concerned.

He put some steel in his spine and pulled the glittery dress from the hanger. “It’s one of Allo’s.
Vogue
revealed it in a spread last week, but it’s not in stores yet. I thought you might like to be the first woman to wear it out.”

“What?” Her mouth gaped. “
Me?
You want me to wear a just-revealed dress designed by Allo to a
fashion-industry
event?”

Undisguised glee radiated from her expression and he forgot what he’d been about to say. Why did pleasing her make him feel as if
he’d
been given a gift?

“Put it on,” he said, his voice husky and foreign. He cleared his throat. “I want to see it on you.”

She complied, sliding her lithe legs through the opening at the top and gathering it into place against her torso. Then she presented her back, lifted her dark fall of gorgeous hair away and called over her shoulder, “Zip me up?”

Since his fingers were already straining for the zipper before she’d finished speaking, it seemed the answer was yes. He crossed to her and her heat reached out to engulf him. Slowly, he skated the zipper up its track, following the line of her bare flesh above it with his gaze.

Wrong way
, his brain screamed.
Unzip! Unzip!

He resisted. Barely. But his fingers wouldn’t let go of the zipper pull, even though the dress was as zipped as it could be. Meredith’s exotic perfume wrapped around him and somehow, his nose was nearly buried in her still-damp hair. It smelled like green apple. He sucked in a breath and the combination of scents and the essence of
her
wove through his senses.

She swayed, brushing his arousal with her shapely rear. He sought the curve of her waist, meaning to push her forward a step but instead rested his hands there as he drew her backward, flush with his body. Her head tipped back against his shoulder and she moaned so sexily, the answering spike of lust nearly blinded him.

So he shut his eyes and let his lips trail down her exposed throat. She tasted decadent and sinful and he wanted to sink into her.

“Jason,” she murmured and twisted in his arms to peer up at him, her gaze heavy with unconcealed desire.

The kiss they’d shared roared back on a wave of unsuppressed memory and he ached to lay his lips on hers again. Her face tipped up, bringing her mouth within centimeters of his and paradise was within his reach.

But then she murmured his name again and said, “I’m absolutely okay with being really late to the gala. But are you?”

Rationality swamped him and cooled his ardor in a snap. “Yeah, no. Not really.”

He stepped back. Meredith’s mystifying and infuriating pull on him hadn’t diminished, that was for sure. He didn’t like it when someone had that much leverage over him, especially when he couldn’t envision how she’d use it to her advantage.

Best-case scenario, she’d use it to get him into bed and leave it at that. He didn’t ever count on best-case scenarios and besides, she’d have to try a lot harder to break his will.

His subconscious dissolved into gales of laughter and then reminded him that
she’d
been the one to halt what had almost turned into an invigorating reintroduction to the pleasures of his wife’s body.

“All right, then.” She smiled softly and he ignored the slight hitch it put in his gut. “Stop being so sexy and we’ll have a much better shot of getting through the door.”

He rolled his eyes. “The rest of the clothes are for you, too. I heard a rumor that you made a faux pas by wearing Alexander Wang your first day on the job. Allo is jealous of him. He wanted that Balenciaga job that Wang landed.”

If Jason had known that weasel of a vice president in HR would stick Meredith with Allo, he’d have specified otherwise. Too late now. He couldn’t risk pulling any strings to get her reassigned or someone might get suspicious. But he could help her earn some points with her extremely difficult boss and the new clothes would accomplish that like nothing else. Allo was a narcissist to the core.

Meredith raised a brow. “Why, exactly, did you need me as a spy when you apparently already have plenty?”

“Nobody gossips about anything relevant to my merger plans.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Only what people are wearing. Welcome to the world of fashion. And now you have a wardrobe worthy of the design floor at Hurst House.”

The new wardrobe was also a bit of a thank-you, and he hoped she liked what he’d painstakingly picked out among the castoffs from Fashion Week.

“Wait, there’s more than this dress? I figured the other bags held backups in case this one didn’t fit.” Meredith dug through the garment bags and squealed some more over the geometric dresses, skirts and angular tops from Hurst’s newest line. None of it was available in stores yet, either.

“There you go insulting me again. You can try all of it on later,” Jason advised. “We should leave. I have an out-of-the-way place in mind for a quick dinner. I’m sorry I can’t take you to Nobu, or some place you might enjoy more, but we can’t chance being photographed together.”

She gave him an indecipherable look. “You don’t have to take me to dinner at all. We’re not dating. Just married.”

“Which is why I should take you to dinner. Don’t you think a wife should be treated better than a woman I’m simply dating?”

“Well...yeah.” She tossed the four-hundred-dollar V-neck silk blouse on the bed. “But I thought you were Mr. No-Romance. Marriage is a tool, you said. I’m here to help you get a boring executive’s job so you’ll sign the divorce papers.”

Romance?
Dinner wasn’t a precursor to seduction. Why was he torturing himself like this again? He threw up his hands. “Fine. Don’t eat, then. We’ll go to the gala and I’ll shove you out of the car three blocks away so you can walk. Sound like a plan?”

“Good thing for you new clothes put me in a forgiving mood. So I’ll overlook your bad attitude.” As she stepped into a pair of sky-high stilettos—Miu Miu unless he missed his guess—she shot him a sunny smile. “And I would love to go to dinner. Thank you for asking.”

Point taken. He groaned. “Meredith, would you like to go to dinner?”

She crossed to him and patted his cheek. “Maybe you should take some husband lessons if you hope to marry someone for real. Because, honey, you’re obviously out of practice. For someone who thinks of marriage as a tool, you sure haven’t figured out how to use it yet.”

Her husky voice put plenty of innuendo in the statement, making it crystal clear she thought he was a moron for not taking advantage of what she was offering.

He followed her out of the hotel room and prayed her next suggestion wasn’t an offer to be his tutor. Because he had the horrible feeling he might accept.

* * *

The third glass of champagne disappeared much more quickly than the second, and Meredith forced herself not to reach for a fourth. Avery Lynhurst still hadn’t made an appearance and if Meredith was forced to watch another supermodel hit on Jason, she couldn’t be held responsible for her actions.

It was bad enough that she couldn’t keep her eyes off him. And worse, he didn’t seem to be similarly afflicted. It was as if she didn’t exist.

Meredith smiled at the buyer for Nordstrom who’d been chatting her up for ten minutes. Some of the most powerful people in the New York fashion scene milled about in the Grand Ballroom of the iconic Plaza hotel and it was a bit dizzying to be in the midst of it.

Everyone in attendance dazzled in top-tier labels, and she voraciously soaked in the visual panorama. One lucky woman had somehow scored a Galinda Gennings gown adorned with real diamonds.

A hush fell on Meredith’s right, but she didn’t think anything of it until the crowd parted and Allo appeared on a tide of arrogance and condescending flair. She stifled a groan. Wasn’t it bad enough that she had to spend eight hours a day being chastised? She deserved a night off.

“You.” The designer waved his hand in Meredith’s direction. “You’re fired. See HR in the morning to get your exit papers.”

What had she done now? A cold skitter went down her spine. Had someone seen her get out of Jason’s car? They’d been so careful, separating on 58th Street a full two blocks from the hotel.

Allo’s entourage tittered meanly and waited for the next round of fireworks with expectant expressions.

“Why?” Meredith narrowed one eye. “I did a great job working for you today. If you didn’t think so, why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“Non.”
Allo pursed his lips and muttered something in French that sounded uncomplimentary. “You have stolen my dress. You are a thief. That is the reason for your termination.”

Meredith glanced down at the glittery dress Jason had given her. “This? You think I stole it?”

Crap.
Why hadn’t she and Jason discussed a good cover story? Of course a designer’s brand-new assistant wouldn’t have access to a dress that wasn’t in stores yet. The photographers outside the ballroom had gone wild when Meredith hit the red carpet and she’d reveled in it a bit more than she probably should have. It had lulled her into a false sense of belonging that she clearly hadn’t earned yet.

Meredith shook her head, thoughts racing. If she got fired, she couldn’t be Jason’s spy and there went her divorce. He’d never sign the papers if she screwed up this fast.

“I would never insult you like that, Allo,” she countered smoothly.
Thank you, Miss Texas pageant, for training me how to brazen it out under the worst sort of pressure.
“I begged, uh...Samantha for this dress. It was on the rack in the...”