After shutting my door, she strides across the room and shoves a sheaf of papers at me. “These came in the mail for you.”
“Someday you’re going to bring me flowers instead of trouble.” I take the stack from her.
She looks pissed off, so at least no one’s died. “When were you going to tell me that you were married?”
I glance down at my present. “I’m not.”
“Those papers say you are. I needed to be informed of this. Did you sign a prenup? For the love of God, tell me you signed a prenup.”
I flip through the papers. The top one is a California marriage license. There’s some supporting documentation, including the scrap paper Peony and I fake-signed. Peony’s signature is round and loopy, sprawling outside the narrow space provided by the form.
“Explain.” Lake glares at me. It’s clear she thinks I’ve done this just to mess up her week.
“I went to that sex party Liam hosted.” I look down at the license in my hand. “The one that was held on the date of this license. I may have hooked up with someone and we may have been taking turns role-playing our sexual fantasies.”
Lake shakes her head. “And yours was getting married?”
“That was hers.”
The look Lake gives me makes it clear she thinks I’ve fallen into a really stupid trap. “And so you just trotted along to a minister with this hookup, said your vows, and thought it was all fine?”
“It was a game. Sexy role play.” I hate explaining. “We got ‘married’ by a ringmaster in a circus costume, Lake. I certainly didn’t think it was legally binding.”
“And in Nevada you can get married by a guy in a sequined jumpsuit.” She waves a hand, dismissing my argument. “You didn’t think it was legally binding, but what was Ms. Harding’s opinion on the matter?”
“You think Peony set me up?”
“It’s a possibility.” Lake’s mouth tightens.
“It was a spur-of-the-moment game. Fuck, it wasn’t even the point of the game. That was the wedding night—”
Lake raises her hand. “Stop. Did you tell the officiant that you wanted to get married?”
“Yes.”
“And then you said vows to each other in front of him?”
“Yes, but—”
“And you signed something?”
Okay. So I can see how this doesn’t look good. “Yes.”
“Is your bride at least eighteen?”
I realize I don’t know Peony’s actual age. For a brief second, I panic that I’ve done something completely unforgivable, but then my brain kicks back online, reminding me that based on the things she’s mentioned, she’s of legal age. She’s been to college. She’s held multiple jobs. She’s crisscrossed the country. That would be awfully ambitious for an under-eighteen. “Definitely?”
“Single?”
“Fuck, I hope so. We didn’t apply for a license,” I point out. “Or show ID. Don’t you have to flash a driver’s license for this?”
I don’t know much about family law, but I’m pretty sure that it requires paperwork. Yes, I scrawled my signature on a scrap of paper as part of our role-play, where we “signed the register,” but that seems like thin ground for a legal marriage.
“Walk me through the night. This could be a very expensive mistake, Mr. Valentine.”
Reluctantly, I share the details of our “wedding” with my lawyer. She has an excellent poker face, but it’s perfectly clear she can’t believe I did this on purpose. Or that I got off on doing it. She probably has a nice, vanilla, entirely boring sex life.
Lake blows out a breath. “Are you aware that California is a community property state? And that that means Ms. Harding could make a legal case that she is entitled to half of your earnings since your marriage approximately four months ago? Your marriage is of short duration, so it’s unlikely she could successfully argue for spousal maintenance, but it’s going to be more cost effective to settle with her.”
This bothers me less than I thought it would. I’ve always fought to protect my financial interests because I’ve worked hard for my money. It’s my castle and moat, my way of keeping the people I love safe, so I don’t view claims on it lightly. But this is Peony and I don’t mind keeping her safe.
Lake’s already moved on, however. After nailing down the more or less exact sequence of events she checks to see if there was copious amounts of alcohol or drugs involved—no—and then tackles the elephant in the room.
“Did you consummate the marriage?”
“Yeah.” This is not something I want to think about with Lake in the room.
“Did you live together afterward as man and wife?”
My brow furrows. “Not exactly? We dated. We hung out. We had sex. She spent nights at my place. That lasted about a month, and then she dumped me. I haven’t seen her since.”
Lake proceeds to reduce my weeks with Peony to a bunch of checkpoints on her yellow legal pad. How often did we see each other? Was there sex? Did Peony know about my net worth?
“Maybe she’s a quadrillionaire.” If she is, I’m definitely going to be mad about her decision to live in a derelict camper and to put up with shit jobs. Having a ton of money is partly about making sure you have choices, but mostly about exercising those choices.
Lake looks up from the pad where she’s just jotted something down with neat, precise strokes. I could read her handwriting upside down but I don’t. “Do you think that’s likely?”
“I don’t think she’s in this for the money.”
She sets her pen down and looks at me. “I hope not.”
Lake’s eminently practical about these things, so she keeps the rest of her opinions to herself. She would never go to a sex party or fake-marry a hot stranger, because it’s a legal liability. She reads every check twice in a restaurant before she signs it. It’s a contract, she told me once, when I was giving her shit about it—and before I took it away from her and paid. Peony didn’t hesitate before she “signed” our marriage license—she just jumped in and did it.
“You may have to offer her a settlement.”
“That’s fine.” I sort of like the idea that I’m legally entitled to half of her and she gets half of me. It wasn’t what I intended, obviously, but it doesn’t feel wrong, either. If she takes my money, she’ll be safe and she won’t have to live in a shitty camper anymore. That’s definitely a plus.
Lake stares into the distance, thinking. “Okay. So I’ll get the team on this. The real question is whether or not you’re legally married. Do you know how to contact Ms. Harding?”
“No,” I admit.
Lake nods. Her face is perfectly composed, but I’ll bet she’s totally judging me inside her head. I had careless, random sex with a stranger with whom I may have accidentally entered into a binding legal contract. And on the surface, that’s exactly what happened. I think the Jax in that version of events was pretty stupid, too. But what came afterward didn’t feel careless at all. I don’t explain that to Lake, though. How do people go to therapists and dig up all their fears and worries? This totally sucks.
“I’ll find her?” This comes out as a question, which is also out of character for me, and Lake’s head shoots up from her stupid legal pad.
“I’ll do that,” she says. “Whatever reason the two of you split up, get past it. It will be easier if we can approach her and make an offer.” She taps her pen against the pad. “But don’t approach her. Anything you say or do with her could be used as leverage by her legal team. I’ll get our PI service on it. They can look into her background, as well.”
I don’t tell her no, even though Peony would hate having someone digging around in her life. No matter what Lake finds, if Peony didn’t share it with me, it’s not my business. I don’t want to turn our sex life into an arms race where each of us tries to dig up dirt on the
other and weaponize it. Let Lake do her thing, though. I don’t have to read the report or to look at any pictures she commissions or even go to see Peony once I know where she’s run off to. I just need a mailing address and a way to communicate with her.
I nod and we exchange the usual brief goodbyes before Lake exits my office and heads off to pry into Peony’s past. I know Lake is just doing her job, which is to protect my legal interests, but it feels all wrong.
I find myself staring out my office window at all the people in the street below hurrying to work or to home or to some other place they need to be. A siren blares nearby, but no one looks. For the first time in what feels like forever, I’m not sure what to think or to do. I’ve avoided relationships and focused on making money instead. I’m as good at the latter as I’m bad at the former.
I don’t know what I’m doing here because I’ve never done it before. Maybe I didn’t look as hard for her as I could have because she scared me a little. I’ve always been a fighter, so I don’t like to admit that.
But it’s true.
She cracked me open and made me feel things. And the worst part of it is, I’m not sure she realized what she was doing. I haven’t been able to walk away from her once, I realize. Not since I pulled her asshole boss off her, not since she wandered up the beach and met me for tacos. She’s the one who ended things, otherwise I would probably still be...
Something.
I’m not sure what and I hate that.
Except it would be something with her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jax
TODAY IS THE kind of work day that’s earned me my reputation as a take-no-prisoners barbarian. After learning that I might be married, I spent the rest of yesterday sealing my acquisition of Hotly. I arrive at their front door to start kicking their collective asses up the mountain of profitability. It’s as close to raiding and pillaging as I’m legally allowed to get, plus I get the added fun of putting the pieces back together better after I’ve finished knocking things to bits. Hotly has no idea what’s coming.
The startup’s in San Francisco’s Mission District. The rents tend to be cheaper here than in the financial district or SOMA because the neighborhood is grittier. It’s also colorful and the food’s amazing. Brightly painted Queen Annes line the streets and there’s a cheerful cacophony of languages, people and pigeons. The Mexican markets bustle with weekday shoppers, and vendors with pushcarts sell agua fresca and bags of fiery snacks.
I park my bike in front of an old warehouse located three blocks off the main drag. The city’s full of these slick, repurposed spaces and I know exactly what I’ll find inside: exposed brick, soaring ceilings and enough open space to give an agoraphobic a heart attack. According to the lease, this one is a historic 1865 brick number that’s housed any number of businesses since its maritime origins. Fortunately, it’s not on any historic registers because that would complicate my job.
The receptionist’s eyes widen comically when I identify myself. I decline the offer of an escort party in favor of prowling around my new playground on my own. I have to decide which of my toys I’m keeping and which I’m breaking.
Although it’s already past lunchtime, two of the key engineers have not yet showed up; one is passed out at his desk, and since his last code commit has a timestamp of 6:00 a.m., I bypass his sleeping form for now. Hotly keeps the hours of a zoo: officially open for business from eight to five, but the animals are clearly nocturnal.
My solitude doesn’t last. It never does. I’m the big, bad boss, so there’re plenty of people who decide they’ll kiss up to me. Some do it as insurance, some like being near the throne, and others just don’t know what to do with themselves unless I tell them.
One of the many VPs of Something Something—they proliferate faster than fruit flies in a kitchen—joins me, launching into what I’m sure he thinks is an amusing story about how my warehouse was a historic place.
I cut him off. “I’m not interested in the past.”
And then I walk away. I don’t give a shit about their backstory. It’s not going to draw subscribers. Also, that VP is on my to-be-axed list. He’ll find out in an hour.
Hotly’s a weird kind of product. It was pitched to me as an internet TV channel that provides high-quality content to paid subscribers. There’s a huge potential upside, but there are also far too many people not pulling their weight. Since Hotly’s losing money at an unbelievable rate, my first job is to trim the payroll and fill in any holes in skill sets. My team has made recommendations, but I like to walk the floor first and get a sense for the personalities behind the fancy job titles. Sometimes there’s a winner who got hired on for the wrong job.
Hotly’s VP No. 10—I’ve decided to number them rather than learn their names—sidles up, rocking back and forth nervously. He’s wearing the standard tech-startup uniform of faded blue jeans, flip-flops and an open button-up over a T-shirt advertising a band I’ve never heard of. Because I have “ass-kicking” penciled into my planner from ten until noon, I’m wearing a custom-made suit from my personal tailor in London. Taking charge is even easier when I look the part, so I have a closet full of nine-thousand-dollar suits.
No. 10 clears his throat. “Start at the top or at the bottom?”
“Bottom.” Going desk to desk makes me feel like a lion hunting deer on the African savannah. They can run, but there’s nowhere for them to hide. When you bring someone into a conference room, you lose the element of surprise. Plus, the conference room here is tiny and fishbowl-like. The office-facing side is just a big sheet of glass, a nod to privacy and protecting the engineers coding away in the open floor space from overhearing crap that will take their minds off their next code check-in.
I’ll save the engineers for last. I’m mostly keeping them anyhow—they’re the brains of this place.
No. 10 points to a metal door beneath an exit sign. “The elevator doesn’t go to the basement.”
Four months of research, deep dives into code and competitor analysis, and so far Hotly’s more of a glorified stair-stepper than an investment. We slam down the stairs, push through another set of doors, and step into a dingy, poorly lit open space where they’ve hidden the quality assurance team, all one member of it. He’s safe, so I push on. It’s like a freaking dungeon down here, but without any of the fun, BDSM implications.
“Archives?” No. 10 points to a hand-lettered sign taped to a set of doors on the far side of the room.
“Sign” may be generous. It appears to be a piece of construction paper more appropriate to a kindergarten classroom than a successful company. Someone’s printed in all caps The Almighty Archives. The Librarian is IN. The “in” is an orange sticky note; the corresponding OUT note has drifted to the floor. Yeah. She or he is about to be out. Hotly is an internet channel; they don’t need a librarian to organize their archival materials.
Female voices filter through a door that’s propped partway open with a polar-bear-shaped doorstop. Since it’s a fire door, this is a major safety violation.
“He’s a bastard,” someone inside complains. The VP next to me freezes. “A really hot, completely insufferable prick. He always fires at least half of the staff on his first day.”
Well. This is going to be fun.
I slant No. 10 a look. “Shall we beard the lion in his den?”
I don’t wait for his response. It doesn’t matter. I push the door open and step in.
Rows of metal shelving line the room, each shelf filled with archival boxes. I’ll figure out later what Hotly’s decided should be stored in the basement of their goddamned building rather than in the cloud or offsite in a fireproof vault. A desk blocks access to the shelving. The desk holds a stack of books and a creepy-looking bobblehead of an old white guy in a dark suit.
My attention lasers in on the two women at the desk. The complainer wears an oversize men’s bl
ue Oxford that flaps around her as she waves her arms to underscore my hot bastardy as they continue to discuss the likelihood of my firing them—increasing—and when said firing would occur—imminently. The second female is wearing a bright orange Hotly T-shirt and blue jeans.
She nods in response to something Complainette has said and adds, “I don’t think we’re supposed to tie people up during company meetings.”
Holy FUCK. I shoot my VP sidekick a death glare and pad further into the room.
It’s only been three months—the longest twelve weeks of my life.
Given her move out, I’d sort of assumed that Peony had abandoned San Francisco. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear she’d moved states or countries even. Considering her behavior, an interstellar move to Mars wouldn’t have been a shock.
She looks amazing. Her brown hair is pulled up into a high ponytail that swings back and forth as she punctuates her BDSM-free workplace policy with gestures. Her eyes shine as she bounces up and down in her chair. She hasn’t learned how to sit still since I last saw her. I’m not sure if I want her to turn around and see me, or if I just want to stand here and look at her. The full curve of her lower lip, her delighted laugh that she covers with the palm of her hand, the way she leans in, so focused on the person talking with her—I feel like she just stepped out of my life yesterday.
I don’t think she feels the same way.
“Ménage is a lot of work. I’m not sure our big bastard boss would be worth the effort,” Peony says right as her companion spots us. “You don’t agree? It’s all the logistics that bother me. You have to figure out where to fit together multiple sets of arms and legs. Unless you were envisioning something more like a spectator sport?”
Harlequin Dare May 2021 Box Set Page 26
