Two Nights with His Bride (19 page)

“It’s nothing.” Molly waved away his question. “Drink?”

He turned to Gabriel, the one man he could always count on to tell him exactly how big a dick he’d been. He didn’t have to wait long.

“I think you’ll find Molly’s not
normal
,” Gabriel said. “She’s extraordinary.”

“Of course she is.” She truly was, and Wyatt regretted stepping on a nerve
he hadn’t known was exposed. “Sorry, Molly. I never meant to insult you. Our family’s lucky you want to join us.”

“Thanks, Wyatt.” Her voice held more sincerity and less hurt this time, easing some of the guilt from his shoulders.

He turned to Gabriel. “I don’t have much time, but I wanted to know if you’ve found any land yet.”

“Haven’t started looking. I need to save up first so I’m in a position
to make an offer when I see the right place.”

Perfect.
Wyatt’s heartbeat sped up as he prepared to betray his promise to Nancy. “What if I told you I have some land you could use for free?”

*

Nancy stared at
the nightmare standing outside her door, shock gripping her by the throat. “What are you doing here?”

Holding out his arms as if to say
Who,
me?
Jared replied, “I came to pass on my condolences on your untimely demise.
Verity’s
untimely demise, that is. And from leprosy?” He tisked. “So young. So tragic. So gross.”

He tried to take a step into the room, but his not-so-cryptic comment made her creep-o-meter shoot sky high. She blocked him, her gaze darting around for one of the security guards, someone from the crew, anyone with a
pulse.

“You can’t come in here.”

He laughed. “Ah, Bunny, of course I can. I pay for this set. It’s mine. You can leave if you want, but I think you’ll be interested in what I have to say.”

“You think wrong, Jared. I couldn’t be less interested.” Nor could she be more worried.

“Really? Even if I’m willing to spare your career?”

There it was again, that rancid, dangly carrot. But she wasn’t
an idiot. She’d seen more sides of his personality than she’d ever wanted to, and she wouldn’t ignore her instincts again. “Get Mike in here too, and I’ll talk.”

“This is personal business, Bunny.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. There’s nothing personal between us anymore. Everything that’s left is professional.”

He stepped into the room, crowding her until she had no option but to step back or
try to tackle him. Since he would probably see that as an invitation to put his hands on her, she backed away. Nudging the door closed with his foot, he smirked. “Will you look at that? You let me in.”

She bit the insides of her cheeks so hard she tasted blood through the thin skin. She kept her phone behind her back. He hadn’t seemed to notice she was holding it, and she swiped her fingers across
the screen. It usually locked itself after thirty seconds, but just below the keypad for entering her password was an emergency dialer. She’d accidentally pressed it once when she was tipsy at an awards ceremony after-party, and the damn thing had called 911.

Please let me hit the right spot.

He leaned against the closed door, blocking her only exit, and smiled. “Let’s get down to business,
then. I have a proposition for you.”

I bet you do.
“You already threatened to sue me if I didn’t come back and shoot these scenes.”

He frowned. “There you go again, twisting my words. Honestly, I don’t know where you get these things from. I offered to cancel your million-dollar debt to me if you shoot these scenes. The fact you’re still under contract here should show you how generous I’m being.”

“What do you want, Jared?”

His brows shot up. “Want? I want to be in Mauritius right now, sunning myself on a beach with my loving wife at my side, flipping through photos of us frolicking on the beach and deciding together which one we’ll accidentally leak to the press. I want to be planning when and how I’ll launch my political career, knowing there’s no hint of scandal blackening my name.
But I’m not going to get what I want, am I? The problem is, Nancy, I
always
get what I want.”

Nerves tightened in her belly. She gripped the phone harder, and his gaze slid down her arm.

“What’s behind your back?”

“My phone, and it’s connected to the cops, so you better not threaten me again.”

He grabbed her wrist, shooting pain through it as he yanked the phone out of her hand. Giving it
a confused look, he held it up and showed it to her.

It was still on the password screen, with the message:
Password failed. SIM card blocked. Please try again in a few hours.

“You tried to call the cops?”

“No,” she lied.

He shook his head. “See, this is why you need me. You can’t even do the simplest of things.”

Her temper boiled. “What’s your proposition, Jared?”

“I’m not sure I want to
offer it to you now.”

If she’d learned one thing from him, it was how much he loved to humble-brag. Maybe she could lead him away from the dangerous path she’d stumbled down and onto safer ground. She let her shoulders deflate, her posture reflecting all the dejection she could muster. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I was worried about why you would come here, and I jumped to the wrong conclusion.
I blew it again, didn’t I?”

His face softened, and he trailed his fingertips up her arm. “This is why I love you. You can recognize when you’re wrong.”

Yeah, I can—too late.

He tossed her phone onto the couch, cutting off her ability to do anything other than scream for help and hope someone heard. “Tell you what. I’ll give you another chance. I assume Mike explained how tough it’ll be for
you to get any work, right?”

“Yes.”

He bent down, getting all up in her face with puppy-dog eyes. “I want you back, Bunny. We’re good together. You know we are. And I’m willing to overlook your momentary lapse of judgment. So here’s what we’ll do. You’ll check into a special hospital—more like a country club, really—and spend a few weeks relaxing, maybe even learn how to play golf. I’ll issue
a press release that shows my concern for your mental health. I’ve already started planting those seeds. Then, when you’re out, we’ll be seen in public together a few times before you issue a release saying how sorry you are about breaking our engagement, you weren’t in your right mind,
et cetera
. We’ll have a whirlwind wedding and show everyone how crazy we are about each other. Then you can
get back to work. No leprosy scenes. No career suicide. Brilliant, right?”

She should probably be terrified, but that stubborn little voice her dad had reminded her of just whispered in her ear,
how sad.

But she also wasn’t going to hang around and discuss it with him. After all, he was a controlling, manipulative son of a bitch.

“Tell you what, Jared. I need some time to think about it. I
don’t want to be hasty.”

He grinned. “That’s right. Look what that’s gotten you.”

Yeah—Wyatt.
She forced herself to smile and tried to reconnect with all the joy she’d felt in Wyatt’s embrace so it could shine from her eyes. “Let me shoot this morning’s scenes, where Verity’s not feeling well. If I decide to go with your plan, you can use them as a setup to explain my absence while I’m in the
hospital.”

He laid his hand on her hair and radiated pride. “See? This is why we make such a good team. You think just like I do.”

She barely repressed a shudder.

“Okay, I’ll come back around three and we can talk again. I think you know the right thing to do, though. You’re a smart girl.”

I’m twenty-nine years old. Not a girl, you patronizing ass.
She smiled. “See you at three.”

He left,
and she dove for her phone. But before she could call Wyatt, the makeup artist knocked and entered. “We’re behind schedule already, so Mr. Lovell told me not to waste any time.”

Nancy tried to unlock her phone, but the SIM was still locked from her earlier fumbling. Her fight to reclaim her life started here—and she would be doing it on her own.

‡

“We have the greatest prenuptial agreement in the world. It’s called love.”

—Gene Perret

N
ancy worked throughout
the morning, spending her time between takes saying goodbye to the friends she’d made over the past five years. They’d become her family, and several of them had been at the wedding-that-wasn’t. She intercepted
dozens of curious looks from people who couldn’t understand why she would dump a prize like Jared Lovell. No one asked her outright, though, so she focused on doing the best work she could.

As usual, she’d left her cell phone in her dressing room while shooting so it wouldn’t ring and interrupt any of the takes, but at lunch she decided to sneak away to see if she could finally unlock it. Faye
was standing at one of the craft services tables, so Nancy grabbed her arm and kept walking. “Hey, I want to show you something.”

Faye didn’t even blink as she grabbed a second cookie and walked alongside her. When they were out of the sound stage, Faye said, “What’s up?”

“Nothing. You’re my protection. Jared paid me a visit earlier.”

Faye stopped dead in her tracks. “You’re shitting me.”

“Nope. Come on.”

Faye rushed to catch up. “What did he do? I swear, if he touched you—”

“He didn’t. His threats were all verbal.”

“That doesn’t make them any better.”

“I know. That’s why I’m not going anywhere without a witness.”

“I’d rather be a deterrent than a witness.”

“Yeah, I’d prefer that, too. Let’s hope that’s the way this goes down.” Nancy unlocked her dressing room door and stepped
inside, glancing all around for evidence that Jared might’ve returned. “Okay, we’re safe.”

Faye flipped the lock on the door and sat down hard at the dressing table. “This is such bullshit, Nancy. You shouldn’t have to do this.”

“I don’t want to do it, but I want to get him out of my life, and this is the only way I can see of doing it.”

“You’ve worked your ass off to get where you are. It’s
not fair that he can just torpedo your career.”

No, it wasn’t. But a funny thing had happened throughout the morning as she’d shot scenes of Verity feeling unwell but pretending everything was fine as she delayed a visit to the doctor. Nancy had felt the character start slipping away from her. Verity was dying, and so was Nancy’s career. The process of shooting her final scenes was providing
a catharsis she hadn’t expected. She could say goodbye to Verity along with all the cast and crew who had come to mean so much to her.

“You know,” she said, sitting on the couch, “I remember the first character I ever played. I was probably eight or nine. It was Thanksgiving, and things had gotten really bad. Mom had survived all her treatments, but they wrecked her for a long time, and she couldn’t
work. We’d lost our house and moved into the trailer on the ranch. I just remember feeling constantly hungry, and reading was the only thing that made the hunger go away. One afternoon, Wyatt knocked on the door with a box of used clothes and canned goods that a charity in town had collected for us.”

Heat swept up her neck as the memory took on a life of its own, becoming almost as tangible as
the couch she sat on. “I couldn’t face the fact that we were one of those families, the kind people whispered about and pitied. The kind people saw as a way of getting rid of all their random impulse buys. Cans of water chestnuts. Dried onions. Anchovy paste. Garfield sweatshirts. Hats with their company logos. Someone even thought it was appropriate to give us a T-shirt that said, ‘I’m not a gynecologist,
but I’ll take a look.’ Can you imagine?”

She swallowed hard, gripping her hands in her lap. “And for Wyatt to show up with that box? He had to have been fourteen at least, and I thought he was a god. I was so humiliated. Something broke inside me. It was like I was outside myself, and I heard myself tell him, ‘Thank you. The orphans will be really grateful.’”

“Orphans?”

“That was his reaction.
And I gave him my haughtiest look, as if I couldn’t believe he would be so dense, and I said in this horrible English accent, ‘Yes, the orphans at the orphan house. Surely that’s why you’re dropping these off.’ I was so young I didn’t even know the word for the places where orphans live. How sad is that?” Her feet shifted with nervous energy. She’d never told anyone this story before, not even
her therapist, and the experience was even more excruciating than she’d imagined. “Wyatt just stood there for a second, and I was so scared he would call my bluff or tell me I was crazy. But then he gave me this little smile and said, ‘Tell the orphans to let me know if they ever want to go fishing.’ And he left.”