“Yeah—unless she’s nosy and loyal to old Siggy Seagram and figures out Mr. and Mrs. Hyatt are sleeping in separate beds and runs off and tells her boss. Then you and your charade are up a creek.” Tory’s eyes crinkled. “Luckily, there’s an easy fix for that—sleep in the same room. In the same bed.”
Not. Nothing about that suggestion would be easy or a fix.
Chapter Twenty-One
Josh tugged back the door on the Student Center and stepped out of the wind. It was coming up salty from the ocean today. He’d better grab what he needed from the bookstore and get home to eat before work—
“Well, if it isn’t Joshua Hyatt.” A woman’s voice stopped him before his eyes had adjusted to the indoors—and unpleasant voice.
Josh blinked and finally the face came into focus. “Claire. Hey. What are you doing in town?” She should be back in Portland.
“Oh, I brought my publishing job here, actually. I told you, remember? So Buster and I could spend more time together while we plan our wedding. I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other more often.”
Once was often enough. Claire had never been Josh’s favorite of Brielle’s friends. He didn’t have a polite response handy other than, “Yeah. Hey, good to see you. Gotta run.”
But she caught his sleeve. “Someone with your same name is parading around as the poster child for Starry Point’s biggest showboat and his weird little agenda. I bet people confuse you with him all the time. So glad it’s not you.”
Josh frowned and cleared his throat. His collar was getting hot.
“Drop the ruse, Josh. I saw it all on TV: the big house, the money, the Barbie doll.” Claire was standing too close to him, wearing far too much Chanel No. 5, and hissing her accusation. “You sold out Brielle Dupree for that?” The scoffing came next.
Josh’s mind split in two. The first half lurched to Morgan’s defense. She was innocent here, and a totally good person, and she didn’t deserve to be distilled that way. She was a smart woman with drive and ingenuity and hardworking instincts who had problems of her own that Claire knew nothing about. Morgan wasn’t some piece of plastic with Mattel stamped on her back.
But he bit all that back. The other half of him knew Claire was boiling mad, and there was no way she’d keep this information from Brielle.
“Have you talked to Brielle?” He tried to ask it casually, but it might have sounded strained. “Is she doing all right?”
Claire gripped Josh’s sleeve even tighter. “As soon as I tell to her about this, she won’t be.”
Josh exhaled. So Claire hadn’t spoken to her yet.
“Don’t look so relieved, sonny boy. I’ve tried six times a day to get in touch with her since all this crap about you went on the news over the weekend, and she’ll answer my texts or emails soon. And if she doesn’t, believe me, I’m taking the first plane to Dresden to tell her the truth about you and your cheating.”
“No. Don’t do that.” Josh’s throat went tight. It would be so much easier if he could just tell Claire the truth, throw cold water on all this anger and revenge and prevent Brielle from getting hurt by the appearance of what he’d done, even if it was a complete fake-out. “Someone could get hurt.”
“Yeah, you. Or are you more worried about that ditz you got hitched to? Because please say you’re not. She won’t have any problems worming her way into the favor of some other wealthy bachelor for her gold digging scams. What kills me is that you, of all people, are trotting out the trophy wife to get cash. A Hyatt, for mercy’s sake!” She gave a mirthless laugh. “The richest family in the whole state of Oregon, and their youngest son is off begging for money on television. What a joke.” Claire’s eyes narrowed. “Unless this is a big joke after all. I get it. You’re in cahoots with old Bronco Hyatt to torpedo Siggy Seagram by building him up, making him look like a hero, and then bam! You’ll explode his whole fantasy by doing something horrendous and shaming him in front of the world. Good for you, Josh. Ruthless, but brilliant. Care if I leak it through the tabloids, just for a little more fodder for them? You could get a lot of mileage if it started looking like a scam. Bronco might even bring you back into his good graces. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? A way to bring the family back together. I can see it all clearly.”
“You know that’s not what’s going on here, Claire, and you know I’d never do anything to hurt Brielle. She’s the love—” He nearly said the love of my life but stopped himself in time. A thousand memories of the first year of dating Brielle flashed into his mind: skiing in Tahoe, the family retreat in Aspen (where Bronco and Brielle got in a tiff, but Brielle stood up to him like no one else), the film festival in Austin. She’d been so in love with him then, and it had been mutual, but she didn’t bail when Bronco incinerated Josh’s finances, either, and that was when Josh knew she really loved him for himself. Brielle was one in a million, but no one, not anyone, could know this whole thing with Morgan wasn’t a hundred percent sincere. His innards twisted. “She was my first love.”
It came out weak and sad, and Claire loosed her grip on his sweater, her vitriol subsiding a little.
“You don’t know how to love, Josh Hyatt. You’re nothing but a spoiled, heartless pig. If you ever did have an ounce of caring in you, it’s clearly dead, and you don’t deserve Brielle. You never did, but now it’s clear for the whole world to see. I’m glad she made that lucky escape from you, and I won’t stop until she knows it, even if I have to tell the world about her and you and this whole rebound marriage drama. If I can’t find her, the paparazzi will. That’s guaranteed.”
“Claire, really.” Josh winced. One word from him, and Claire would take all the ammo out of her guns. This whole global crisis would be averted. The tabloids didn’t need to know about Brielle’s apparently getting jilted—and Josh had been off their radar for over a year as the un-favored son of the Hyatt fortune. No sense putting himself—or Brielle, or Morgan—in their crosshairs.
One word from him and this whole bomb could defuse.
He opened his mouth to speak— “The truth is—”
Claire interrupted him, sucking all the wind out of his sails. “The truth is when I saw your wife this morning, she played all nicey-nice, and she’s definitely the type to pull the wool over a guy’s eyes.”
Claire and Morgan had spoken? Josh felt sick. Not that Morgan couldn’t hold her own, but this was not her fight. She shouldn’t have to be within the radius of its blows.
“I can see how you got sucked into her fakery, but there’s no excuse for going to the extent of marrying her. I’ll tell you what I didn’t have time to tell her: I have Paulie Bumgartner’s number on speed dial, and unless you get me a satisfactory explanation, in writing, for what’s going on by the end of the week, I’m calling him and telling him all the permutations of my suspicions.”
Paulie Bumgartner was the most notorious tabloid photographer in the Portland area. He’d harassed Josh’s family within an inch of their lives over the past decade, nearly causing his mother a nervous breakdown. In fact, Josh wondered if all the pressure of the press was what put her in a weakened condition and sped her too-early death. Claire couldn’t be that cruel or heartless.
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh, wouldn’t I? Brielle is like a sister to me. Closer. And I’m not going to stand by and watch what’s hers get co-opted by some brainless interloper with beauty salon eyelashes and dental veneers.” With that threat lingering, Claire turned on her heel and walked away, leaving Josh boiling mad and worried for Morgan at the same time. Oh, right, and worried for Brielle. She could get hurt, too.
“A real friend would never do that to Brielle,” he called after her, and she stopped and turned back.
“What do you know about being a real friend? Or boyfriend?” Her voice ticked upward in pitch. She was getting really mad now, and her neck matched the red of her hair.
A real boyfriend would never marry some other girl for money, even as a mean
s to an end. Claire was right. But he still couldn’t tell her anything about what was really going on, no matter how close he’d come to it a moment ago before she slapped him with a threat. He’d feel a lot worse about the situation if he weren’t so flaming angry at this irrational woman. If there was one thing he’d learned by being a Hyatt, it was to never deal with blackmailers. He wasn’t going to give Claire so much as an inch.
“Don’t hold your breath for that written explanation.” He measured his words. “You’re Brielle’s friend. You wouldn’t do that to her.”
“Oh, no?” She was coming at him again. He stood his ground. “I wouldn’t push me if I were you.”
“Stop this. Right now.”
Claire got her cell phone out of her purse and brandished it like a weapon. “I’m not the type you want to push. The deadline just moved up. Explain now or face the consequences.”
He set his jaw and refused to be bullied, much as he knew her demands were in his own best interest—and Brielle’s, and their whole future together. But this crazy woman was pushing too hard.
“Trust me, you don’t want to do that. There’s nothing to be gained by it, and no reason for it either, believe me.” It was saying too much and betraying Morgan to even let that one sentence slip out, and he cursed himself for it. He couldn’t endanger Morgan and expose her to the legal ramifications of being outed for fraud. “I married Morgan Clark, and that’s all there is to it. None of your threats are going to change what’s been done.”
There. He’d finalized the conversation. Josh expected the brandished cell phone to slip quietly back into Claire’s purse and for her to walk away with her tail between her legs. No such luck. The phone went to her ear instead.
“Dial Paulie Bumgartner.”
“Stop, Claire. Just quit it. You’ll be hurting Brielle much more than you’ll be hurting me. I’m the one who married someone else.”
“Paulie? I’ve got an inside line on a scandal in the Hyatt Holdings family. You want it all now, or you want to meet for dinner? Can you drive out to Starry Point? Great.”
Josh’s stomach collapsed like he’d been roundhouse kicked—by Chuck Norris.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Josh drove his Explorer into the garage with a bowling ball in the pit of his stomach. He may have just ruined Morgan’s life, besides wrecking any future with Brielle. But Brielle was ten thousand miles and ten months away, and he would have to deal with the mess he caused Morgan first, especially because she was the most innocent victim in this war. Brielle was partly culpable here for hanging onto a sycophantic, vengeful friend like Claire.
When he stepped in the door, the smell of meat grilling hit his nose, and he almost forgot the weight of the bowling ball. “Morgan? You here?”
From the sitting room off the front entryway, Josh heard soft sounds of a piano playing and went toward it. Who could be—? He pressed the door open and saw Morgan sitting at the keys, plinking out an old standard, one he knew Dean Martin had sung—the one where Dino compares love to getting kicked in the head, and where he gets roped into an engagement to a girl who has picked out a king-sized bed and the guy would only be happier if he was sick. She sang on, not noticing him yet. She had a pretty good alto.
Somehow, it resembled his life. Except, was Josh unhappy? Having a gorgeous blonde with a not-bad voice and a pretty good sense of rhythm on the piano sitting in his living room singing—Josh couldn’t exactly start complaining. So instead, he started singing along.
“Like the sailor said, quote, ain’t that a hole in the boat?”
Morgan looked up as Josh walked over. She missed a beat, but only one, before she continued on about her head spinning and her mouth grinning. Josh joined in, and by the end, the two of them were singing harmony of the final line of the chorus about the kick in the head again.
Morgan plinked out a flourish on the final chord. Then she turned to him and started to laugh, and it was infectious, so Josh joined in. “Not bad, Morg. I didn’t know you were so good on the piano.” Somehow he’d figured she couldn’t have afforded lessons as a kid. She said they struggled a lot financially.
“Oh, I try, mostly by ear.”
By ear! Not bad—at all. “I love Dean Martin. Know any more?”
“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amoré.” Morgan played the chords for the song, and Josh sang the next line. Then the two of them sang the third line together, and Josh figured out the harmony. It was pretty fun. They finished this song, followed by Dino’s version of “Blue Moon,” easily the coolest version ever recorded.
“You know your Dean.”
“I love me some Dean.” Morgan looked like she meant it, and an irrational pang of jealousy toward the late Italian crooner surged in Josh. “We don’t blend too badly, you and I.”
“Not badly at all.” Josh looked at Morgan’s fingers, the ruby ring, the delicacy of her hands on the keys as she moved them up and down the ivory. Self-taught! She was kind of amazing. “We’ll have to do this again sometime. Whatever’s cooking in the kitchen, though, is making me ravenous.”
“Oh, that. I almost forgot. This piano is so gorgeous, and I was waiting for you. I couldn’t stand to let the hamburger in the fridge go bad, and there was no more room in the freezer. I usually wouldn’t make straight up hamburgers. I’d turn this much meat into something that would make it go further like tacos or spaghetti sauce, but there was just so much of it.” She said all this as they moved back to the kitchen, where she tied an apron around her narrow waist and pulled a cover off a tray of cooked burgers.
Josh drifted over to the stove and saw an array of spice jars on the counter—salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic salt, ginger, season salt… “It smells really good.” His mouth watered. “You having friends over?”
“Just you,” she said, and then her eyes snapped to his as though she’d said something amiss. Those blue eyes double-blinked, and he thought he could fall into them. “You’re my friend, right?”
He cleared his throat. “Right.” It’d been amazing to sit by her at the piano, friends, just singing together. He’d felt some friendly feelings—but also a few more than friendly feelings, if he were honest with himself. Several of them were distinctly more than friends type inclinations, especially when he considered what a difference his life would be if this whole Morgan-as-his-wife scenario were his reality and not just his pretense.
Then he remembered: he wasn’t exactly her friend—not with the mess he’d created for her today with the tabloids. It was only a matter of time before they circled like piranhas ready to chew all the creamy skin off her lovely bones. But that wasn’t the only bad thing that would be coming at her, thanks to him. She had other flesh-eaters lying in wait, and he’d have to tell her eventually. Might as well be now. “We had a visitor today, and I have something to ask you.”
Morgan winced. “I saw her handiwork.” She set down the knife she was using to butter the flat side of a hamburger bun. “We’re more than lucky. But I’m going to have to be careful about where I leave my bathrobe and things.”
It took Josh a second to process what she was saying, but then he remembered that there had been more than one visitor at the Campus House that day—Svetlana the maid being the first. Josh had been thinking about Claire, but there was also Bronco as well. What a parade of unwelcome faces.
Morgan went on. “Tory was here. She said the housekeeper will figure us out based on which beds she has to make.”
Josh nodded. Morgan was right. “We’ll have to be careful about more than just bathrobes. You should start sleeping in the master bedroom, and I’ll just be really careful about making my bed. Hospital corners, and stuff. For now, she might just think we’re checking out all the rooms like newlyweds would do. As long as we’re careful it’s going to be fine.”
“I’m not sleeping in the master.” Morgan gave a visible shudder. Huh, maybe that photograph was a little much for her, too. Interesting.
“Okay, then we’ll both just be careful. Make the beds like pros. We can watch a YouTube video on how to do it exactly right.” He was trying to make her feel less stressed about it, but she was right. There was reason for high caution. Speaking of caution, “My father came, too.”
“Bronco? Was he upset? He won’t be angry with Mr. Seagram, will he? I sense there is no love lost between them.” Morgan looked worried, but also very beautiful at the same time. She had on a sweater that matched the color of her eyes perfectly, and an even better pair of jeans than yesterday hugged her hips. She was super hot, no question. He’d scored in his choice of fake wife. “I don’t want to hurt Mr. Seagram. He’s been so generous to us.”
Hurt Seagram? The words came like a slap in the face. Josh hadn’t considered that as a risk. Morgan was right, Seagram had been generous. “Right.” Man, she was really a nice person to be thinking of that. He might as well broach the far worse subject while things were bad, “I heard you ran into one of Brielle’s friends.” He might as well dive in. “I don’t know what she said, but I apologize for it. I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant.”
Morgan put the bread on the grill. “How did you find out about that?”
“You weren’t going to tell me, I guess.”
“I couldn’t think what good it would do. She can’t do anything to us. It’s not like she knows the truth.”
No, but Josh cringed when he considered how close he’d been to spilling the truth to that viper. “I wish that were the case.”
“She knows?” Morgan gasped. “You can’t go around telling people about our arrangement, Josh, not even Brielle’s friends. We agreed. We could get into so much trouble.” Her body tensed, and Josh put a hand on her shoulder to calm her down.
“No, no. It’s not that. She is convinced we’re married and all that goes with it.” Josh watched as Morgan visibly relaxed at this news. “But it’s not as easy as that. She went all fangs and claws on me and threatened to call the tabloids.”
Legally in Love Boxed Set 1 Page 18
