by Kasey Krane
“I’ll send someone to go get that stuff for you when we’re there,” he replied.
It was like he had already taken possession and control of my senses. It was getting harder and harder to come up with excuses to walk out of that door. And maybe there was a big part of me that didn’t want to walk out.
I wanted to be there with him. I wanted a glimpse of how he lived. His apartment and room, his life and family.
“But you should know that I’m going to have some very busy days coming up. I’m not going to be able to show you around much,” he continued.
“I’ve been in New York before. I don’t need to be babysat.”
“Good.”
“Good,” I repeated and we smiled at each other.
Before I could say anything else, Colin came up to me and put his hands on my butt and pulled me to him.
“The last thing I imagined was returning home after this weekend with a wife in tow.”
I tried to laugh but my voice caught in my throat.
“We don’t have to do this if you’ve changed your mind,” I tried. But then he started kissing my neck, stroking my back with his big warm hands.
I was drowning again, and he was the only one who could save me. All he had to do was look into my eyes the way he did and I felt like I would explode.
I didn’t have an explanation for why he commanded that kind of control over me.
“No, I want to do this. You’re right. It would be easier for everyone if you were in New York until everything is finalized. We are legally married right now and it would be stupid to waste the time.”
He lifted me up in his arms and I wrapped my legs around him as we kissed deeply.
If this was what our fake marriage was going to look like; I was all for it. I surrendered to the kiss because I couldn’t help myself, but I knew it could all change in a matter of minutes if he figured out who I really was.
Sixteen
Colin
When we joined my brothers in the lobby of the hotel, they all stared at Marley like she was from outer space.
“Remember when you said we don’t have to tell my family about us?” I whispered in her ear as we walked towards my brothers. Marley was close to me and I could sense she was nervous.
Who wouldn’t be when faced with the entire Doherty tribe? We were an intimidating bunch.
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” I added.
Aidan stepped towards us, his brows furrowed.
“Hey man, are you about ready to go? We’ve been waiting,” he said, exchanging quick glances with Marley who tried her best to smile.
“Yeah, ready. Killian going with Nolan and Tristan?” I asked.
“Yeah, Brendan and I are with you. You said you’d drive to the airport.”
“And I will.”
Aidan looked at Marley again. He was obviously confused about why she was still there.
I looked past Aidan at the rest of them who were openly staring at Marley, clearly demanding an explanation too. This weekend wasn’t supposed to be about chicks, and yet, there I was with one.
My bad.
“This is Marley. She’s coming back to New York with us,” I said.
I caught them exchanging looks. When I looked at Marley, she was burning up. She hadn’t said a word yet.
“You’re from New York too?” Aidan finally addressed her directly.
“No, I’m not,” she replied.
“You wanna tell us what’s going on?” Killian asked, stepping up to us now.
Brendan, Nolan and Tristan hung back. They were the ones who were more suspicious of Marley and the situation.
“She’s going to be staying with me for a while, it’s as simple as that,” I replied.
Killian clenched his jaws tightly. Obviously, he didn’t trust her. He didn’t fuckin’ trust anybody. He didn’t even trust Reese when they first met, and now he was marrying her.
“You got yourself a girlfriend this weekend?” Nolan asked. Tristan smirked while Brendan glared at me.
“No, I got myself a wife.”
There was complete silence amongst them. Even Aidan, who knew the story, had nothing to say. This wasn’t the kind of stuff they expected from me. I was the levelheaded one usually. Although, that seemed like past history now since I met Marley.
“We got drunk and ended up getting married. It doesn’t actually mean anything, we’re just having fun,” Marley spoke up. She felt like she owed them an explanation, even though she didn’t.
All eyes turned to her.
She had her chin thrust up. I knew this wasn’t easy for her. It wouldn’t have been easy for anybody. She was outnumbered by intimidating strangers.
“Why didn’t you just say so?” Brendan declared.
That broke the ice. The others cheered and laughed. Killian thumped my back and Nolan congratulated us.
“So you beat me to it,” Killian remarked, throwing an arm around my shoulder. “You are the first of us to settle down!”
And that got everyone else roaring with laughter.
Marley sat in the front seat with me, while Brendan and Aidan took the back.
Music played loudly while Aidan had an arm hanging out the window with a cigarette between his fingers. Brendan and Marley were talking.
I didn’t expect them to get along.
I didn’t expect any of them to even accept her. Oddly enough, my brothers were being generous towards her. Maybe it was a quality she possessed.
An ability to make everyone warm to her, whether they wanted to or not.
She told Brendan about all the spots she knew in New York City. Apparently, the last time she was there was when she was in college.
It didn’t seem like she was intimidated by my brothers anymore. She didn’t have any reason to be. They’d accepted her.
“So, what is the plan with you guys?” Aidan asked, catching my eyes in the rearview mirror.
“I’m going to get Micky Horner to look into the annulment,” I said.
I wanted to make it clear to everyone present that this was just a temporary arrangement. Just because Marley was coming to New York with me, didn’t mean she was actually a part of my life now.
She was still a stranger to me.
Maybe I would have been more comfortable if my brothers were still suspicious of her? I definitely didn’t want my father to find out about the wedding.
“So you’re not going to give this marriage thing a shot?” Aidan added, taking a long drag of his cigarette.
“It’s not an actual marriage,” I grunted, meeting his eyes with a glare.
Marley turned her face away from me and stared out of the window. I didn’t mean to embarrass her, but these were the facts.
“Yeah, it’s not like you guys meant your vows or anything,” Brendan said with a laugh.
Marley also chuckled at that.
“I don’t even fuckin’ remember making them. I don’t remember a fuckin’ thing,” I said, snickering.
Marley looked over at me and I noticed how her eyes were burning.
Did I offend her? Did she remember the ceremony or the vows?
She licked her lips and tapped her fingers on the seat.
“Funny, because everyone else had tears in their eyes,” she said.
“What?” I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “You remember this? What did I say?”
I tried to catch her eye but Marley kept her face turned from me.
“You said you had never met anyone else like me before and that you wanted to spend the rest of your life proving yourself worthy of me,” she replied in a low hollow voice. I couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not.
Brendan burst out laughing in the backseat.
Maybe it sounded too fuckin’ ridiculous to him, but it didn’t seem far fetched to me.
She was pretty darn incredible.
It had been two hours of us in the car together. Brendan was dozing by now and Aidan had slipped low down in the sea
t as he spoke to Leah on the phone.
Marley had gone silent since she told us about the vows. I noticed she wasn’t being her usual chirpy self. But she was so close to me that I wanted to touch her, so I moved my hand over to her lap, gently grazing her thighs with my fingers.
She looked over at me and our eyes met.
“Are you okay?” I asked in a whisper. I didn’t suspect Aidan of overhearing our conversation—he seemed pretty involved in his chat with Leah.
Marley nodded. The look on her face seemed a little faraway.
“There’s something on your mind,” I remarked and she said nothing for a while.
“I’m just thinking about my life back in Las Vegas, you know?” she eventually admitted.
“Your job?”
She nodded. She’d been angry, confused, panicked before—but I hadn’t seen her like this yet. Looking sad.
I curled my hand over her knee and gave it a squeeze. She rewarded me with a smile.
“You don’t have to think about that for a while, not when you’re in New York.”
“And what happens after that?” she asked.
I didn’t know how to answer that question. I didn’t know what she wanted from me. I didn’t have anything to offer her.
She wasn’t actually my wife. She wasn’t my responsibility.
“You don’t have to answer that. It was rhetorical. I’m not expecting you to come up with a solution,” she said.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You just need a break,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m sure I will.”
Marley threw a look over her shoulder at my brothers in the back. Brendan was still asleep. Aidan wasn’t even looking at us while he spoke to Leah, but had a big silly grin on his face.
“You have a pretty cool family,” Marley said.
I kept my eyes on the road, but my hand was still on her legs, tracing the shape of her thighs. I liked it there.
“Yeah, they’re all right.”
“You don’t know how lucky you are?” she asked.
“Lucky about what?”
“To have brothers you’re so close with. To have a strong connection with your family. It’s pretty plain to me that you guys had a solid childhood together.”
I drew my hand away. She had no idea what we had to endure.
She didn’t know that our mother was murdered in our house while the rest of us slept. The only thing we had now was each other.
“Yeah, something like that,” I replied.
“Whoever you really end up marrying, sober, will be a lucky girl to be a part of this family,” she continued.
I didn’t want to look at her now. I didn’t want her to see how that fucked with my head.
She didn’t know that I wasn’t going to marry anybody else.
This was as close to a real marriage I was ever going to get.
Seventeen
Marley
Five hours after we left Las Vegas, we were in Colin’s bachelor pad.
There was no other phrase for it.
It was a loft-style apartment with absolutely minimum decor or furniture. It seemed to be a place where he crashed when he had nowhere else to go.
Hopefully, it was also a place where he kept his important documents because I was hoping to find them.
We’d dropped Brendan and Aidan off first to their respective homes, and now we were alone together.
“Your brothers seemed to take the news well,” I said, throwing myself into the big leather couch in the middle of the loft. As it turned out—it was pretty comfy.
Aidan grabbed two cans of beer from his fridge and threw one in my direction. I caught it and he gave me a victorious grin.
“Yeah, I was pretty surprised too. I guess they’re not really taking it seriously, which is for the best,” he said.
“They’re expecting me to hang around for a few days and then make a smooth exit from your life,” I added.
Colin sat down on the coffee table across from me. It was a sturdy glass-top table, but I was nervous about it cracking under his hefty muscular weight. I knew exactly what that body was capable of.
I felt a tug between my legs. We were alone again. We hadn’t made out in a couple of hours. I had withdrawal symptoms.
It was like I was addicted to him.
He watched me closely.
“Look, Marley, I don’t want to give you any false hopes. This is fun. I like having you around…” he said.
“You like fucking me.” I completed the sentence for him.
He smirked.
“Yeah, that’s what I meant.”
I popped open the can and took a big gulp. I definitely needed the drink.
“What you’re trying to say is that you don’t want me getting too comfortable here. I get it.”
Colin drank too.
“I don’t usually have chicks around here. I don’t bring them back to my place, and those who I do are asked to leave soon after.”
“Soon after sex?” I asked.
He didn’t reply, but I knew the answer.
“I know my place in your life, Colin. We made a silly drunken mistake, that is all. I’m not going to try and take over your life. I wouldn’t even have come with you to New York if I still had a job.”
I was lying through my teeth and my stomach hurt because of it.
Why did I hate lying to him?
How was I going to go through with my plan when I couldn’t even lie to him without falling apart? At some point, he’d go to prison if my plan worked. How was I going to survive that?
“So if you know your place here, what are you doing still fully clothed?” he asked, his eyes narrowing on me.
I shuddered when I heard the words. I shuddered with delight and desire.
I loved it when he took command of me.
So I gave him a striptease he would remember.
Colin kept his eyes on me while I stood up from the couch and slowly started taking all my clothes off.
The top came off. My jeans. My bra and panties. Until I was standing in nothing. His eyes glazed over. He put his can of beer down. His jaws were clenched tightly and the mood shifted in the room.
Neither of us cared about what happened outside these four walls. Once again, I slipped out of work-mode. I forgot who he really was.
Colin took off his shirt in a hurry.
He lunged at me like a wild animal attacking its prey. I almost fell back from the force, but he had his arms wrapped around me. I swung lightly as he kissed me, and he had no intention of letting go. His mouth opened wide over mine. His tongue pushed into my mouth. I tasted him, the beer on his breath, his desire for me…
His hands were all over me. Grabbing my ass, pushing me into him so I could feel how hard and big his cock was. He nibbled on my lower lip, then his tongue drew deep wet lines down my chin and neck.
His mouth covered my left nipple, sucking on it sloppily while he played with my right one. I lost my breath. The longer he sucked and licked my breasts, the more wet I got.
I grinded myself into him, thrusting my hips into his body.
“Colin…please…” I begged him groggily.
He was about to lift me up in his arms and probably carry me to his bed, but his phone rang first.
Colin cursed under his breath, releasing me from his arms.
“What?” he shouted into the phone. His eyes were still on me, his shoulders rising and falling.
I waited patiently, my face was flushed and I was growing impatient. We had come so close to having sex again. There was nothing else on my mind.
Colin listened to the voice on the phone. I couldn’t hear what was being said.
“He did what?” he growled. From how dark his eyes grew right then, I knew he had heard bad news.
“For fuck’s sake,” he said, ending the call.
I waited with my hands clasped together. I wanted to know what was going on.
Colin slipped his phone into the pocket of his
jeans and then reached for his shirt.
“I have to go. I have to take care of something,” he said without meeting my eyes.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
Colin was already at the door.
“You don’t have to worry your pretty little head about anything,” he said before leaving.
Colin was gone, leaving me all alone in his apartment.
I didn’t know it would happen this fast—I didn’t think I would have this opportunity so soon.
But first, I had to put some clothes on.
I hurriedly got dressed with my heart beating fast in my chest. I was in Colin Doherty’s apartment. All alone and free to do whatever I wanted.
I couldn’t believe he actually trusted me. Maybe I underestimated our relationship.
Relationship?
I almost laughed out loud at that. I wasn’t even wearing the ring. He wasn’t either. Our relationship meant nothing.
However, now was not the time to mull over pointless things.
Besides, how did it matter what our relationship meant to him? I was just about to root through all his personal stuff until I found something I could use against him.
Once dressed, and after I’d checked the windows and doors to make sure nobody was coming, I looked around all the rooms of the apartment.
I could hear my heart thumping in my ears. I was sure that if anyone else was in the apartment, they would have heard it too.
My hands shook as I pulled out drawers and went through pages and books. His underwear drawer, his medicine cabinet, under the bed and in his shoes, under rugs.
After I felt like I’d looked everywhere and found nothing, out of the corner of my eye I saw a long suit carrier hanging in his open wardrobe. It struck me as odd because Colin didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who wore suits often. If this was the only one he owned, I wanted to take a good look at it.
I lifted it out of the wardrobe and unzipped it. There was no suit inside but a big thick leather file.
I almost cried out with joy when I pulled it out.
There was no lock on the file, no secret code I had to use—I just unbuttoned it and tons of pages and documents slipped out on the floor.
