My Quickie Wedding (Heartbreak Hotel Book 3)

by Christie Ridgway

  “It’s not much, I know.” Jojo crossed her arms over her chest, then dropped them to her sides. She licked her lips again.

  Hmm. Nervous? Until now they’d had convenient barriers between them in the form of the many guests and Aunt June. Was Jojo afraid to once more be alone with him?

  He found he kind of liked the idea of her being unsettled in his presence.

  “It’s only for this single night, though,” Jojo said. “We’ve got Regina coming back early from helping her daughter since the unpacking went faster than expected and…more good news…she called a friend who will be coming tomorrow morning to help as well.”

  “That is good news.” Con dropped his suitcase to the floor and Jojo jumped at the loud thump.

  “Yes, yes. And my apologies again for the less-than-luxurious accommodations. You said you’ve done a lot of traveling. Maybe you expect—”

  “Jojo, it’s fine. That traveling I did meant trekking to some very remote places. I’ve slept in conditions much, much more primitive than this.”

  “Okay, then.” She spun around. “Would you like a beer? Something stronger?”

  “I’d like you to settle,” he said, coming up behind her. He positioned his hands lightly at her waist. “I’m not going to pounce.”

  “I know that.” She hastened away from his touch and toward the refrigerator. “Let’s have beer.”

  Bemused, he watched her skitter off and come back with a couple of cold brews. She handed him one, taking great pains that their fingers didn’t touch. But she clinked her bottle to his and smiled. “To our successful stint as hoteliers.”

  After a sip, she took a seat on a small sofa and directed him to an adjacent recliner. It appeared to be something left over from another era and moth-bitten to boot, but it was wide and comfortable and he kicked back in it, enjoying the opportunity to gaze on Jojo and her expressive face.

  “Did you like the travel?” she asked him now, kicking off her flip-flops then drawing up her legs.

  “Loved it. It suited me. Something new to look at every day.” But this sight before him was one he found as satisfying. Beautiful Jojo.

  “So what’s with the change of career then? And will you be happy sitting behind a desk most of the time?”

  He grimaced. Good questions. But he was determined to be the son his parents needed now, not the troublemaking teen or the ever-wandering twenty-something. “This is confidential, but my dad has been recently diagnosed with a heart condition. My sister doesn’t know, though I’m sure she will soon. It’s not terribly serious, but Dad wants to slow down some and I want to be the one who can help make that happen.”

  “You’re a good son.”

  He had to grin. “I wasn’t always. You can ask my mom.”

  “Is that why you’re unsure about being a good dad?”

  She’d caught that, huh? “I’m more afraid I might end up with a kid like I was. My parents would say it was divine retribution, anyway.”

  Jojo laughed and then took another sip of her beer. The overalls she wore today couldn’t disguise her appeal. God, the woman was sexy.

  And he’d married her. It still flabbergasted him at times, thinking on it. While he’d had plenty of sex over the years, he’d felt no interest in commitment. His schedule was too hectic, he moved around too much, no woman kept his attention for very long. When he’d decided to minimize the travel and get back to headquarters, he’d assumed even then he’d be too busy establishing himself in his new role to think of anything beyond work for quite some time.

  Then he’d managed to get himself married.

  Married!

  Jojo had said yes, even though she’d been married before and that hadn’t ended well, despite her claims of civility and conviviality.

  “What happened?” he said softly, unable to stifle his curiosity. “With your first marriage, I mean. Tell me about it.”

  She jumped up. “I need to change the linens on the bed in the loft. It’s a bigger mattress than down here and I think you’ll be more comfortable there.” Setting aside her beer, she made for the stairs.

  Con followed her, unwilling to drop the subject. He watched her ass move in the baggy overalls, enjoying the sight, then wondered what the hell had gotten into him. He thought her sexy in loose-fitting denim?

  In the loft, she switched on the lamp on the single bedside table then drew a stack of linens out of a built-in cupboard. In moments she’d stripped the bed and he moved into place to help her remake it with fresh sheets

  “There really isn’t much to tell,” she said, glancing over at him. “About my first marriage.”

  But he felt gratified that she wasn’t trying to run from the topic anymore. “We can make it like a game,” he offered. “I’ll ask questions and you can tell me if I’m right or wrong.”

  Before she had a chance to agree or disagree, he cleared his throat and ventured a guess. “You met in college. You were nineteen and he asked to borrow your notes from a lecture on…dark matter.”

  She laughed. “The only dark matter that Timothée’s interested in is black pudding or espagnole sauce.”

  “You met him in a restaurant. He plied you with cosmos and bellinis.”

  “I did meet him in a restaurant. He was the chef and I was…I was trying to keep busy while in my last year of college. So I had a job waiting tables.”

  “He swept you off your feet by telling you nothing in life would taste sweet without you beside him.”

  Her eyebrows rose. Where had that thought come from? Con wondered. It was the kind of romantic stuff that would never cross his mind nor cross his lips. Shit, he hoped he wasn’t coming down with something. Or blushing.

  Jojo picked up a folded pillowcase and snapped it straight with a flick of her wrist. “He told me he needed a green card and in exchange for marrying him he’d make me fresh croissants every morning.”

  “That lasted seventeen days,” he guessed.

  “Eleven. But still he was a genius in the kitchen as he couldn’t help but remind me, and also that genius shouldn’t be hindered by obligatory tasks.”

  Had she loved him? She recited all this with such cool irony in her voice that he couldn’t believe it. But even if she hadn’t loved the man, the circumstances could still have wounded her pride.

  “How did the other woman come into the picture?”

  She didn’t say anything for a minute.

  A game, he remembered. He’d suggested a game and it seemed to make it easier for her to confide in him when he treated it like that.

  “He wanted to open up a restaurant and the lady in question was the loan officer at the bank,” he supposed.

  Her smile was thin. “Not too bad. He did open up a restaurant. I managed the front of the house. She was his sauce chef, or his saucy saucier as I like to think of her. Suzanne. We had space in our house and she lived with us the last year of the marriage.”

  “He slept with her even before she moved in.”

  Jojo pointed a forefinger at him. “Got it 100 percent right that time.”

  What damage had been done to her by that experience? She seemed so resilient, fun-loving, charming, sexy as hell, but he kept sensing a deep vulnerability inside her that called to him. Usually he was your fun-loving, surface guy who didn’t want to dive deep into a woman’s head, but something about her called to him. He wanted to know what hurt her. He wanted to know what she was trying so hard to hide all the time.

  Her expression had gone distant and he could see she’d retreated inside herself. Someplace he couldn’t reach, and damn, he wanted in! Because…because…

  Oh fuck.

  Everything inside of Con stilled. Breath, heart, blood.

  Oh, fuck, but yes, it had to be.

  This impulse, these urges, the blatant need to know her in all ways meant one thing and one thing only.

  Connor Montgomery was in love. He was in love with Jojo, his new wife.

  Jesus!

  His gut had s
teered him right. Once he’d seen her, it had spurred him to sew her tight to himself. To keep her as close as possible. It explained everything, including his determination not to divorce.

  Because Jojo was his.

  But if he was to have her permanently in his life, he had to get beyond her beautiful shell and that disarming, breezy manner she used to deflect people from knowing what was going on inside her soul. He had to find his way through those tricky alleys and around those one-way cutoffs leading to the heart of her.

  He must.

  As she tossed the last pillow onto the head of the bed, he skirted the perimeter of the mattress and came to her. When she straightened, he was there, and she looked up at him, her dark eyes widening.

  He loved her. God.

  Cupping her face in his hands, he hoped he had the right words to gain her trust. “Jojo,” he whispered. “Tell me more. Tell me what’s going on inside that beautiful head of yours and what’s happening here.” He let one hand drift down to touch the center of her chest.

  She stared up at him for a long, breathless moment and he could feel his blood chugging through his veins and his pulse pounding in his ears. Anticipation dried his mouth.

  He swallowed. “Jojo?”

  “Poopie,” she said.

  Game over.

  Chapter 6

  Jojo needed to build walls. Not real ones—the interior of the Tower was too small and it wouldn’t be necessary after tomorrow when she and Connor would part forever. But tonight, tonight she needed to create some solid obstacles between them.

  Somehow.

  “You should go downstairs and look for a quilt in the closet under the stairs,” she told him. “You’ll need more covers up here than just a top sheet.”

  When he obeyed, his footsteps clattering on the wooden stairs, she drew in calming breaths. Discussion of her first marriage needed to be squashed. At best, it made her look foolish and naïve. Worse, talk of it might veer too close to other topics she didn’t want to share.

  Her silence on those kept her weaknesses safely stored away.

  Long minutes passed without a return of Con. Wondering what he’d found to occupy him, she ventured down the stairs. A folded crazy quilt hung over the rail at the bottom. The man himself was nowhere to be found.

  Puzzled, she poked her head around the open bathroom door. Empty. She spun, trying to figure out his disappearing act, until she spied the curve of a superb masculine ass. Con’s.

  He was bent over so he could fit beneath the low doorjamb of the closet under the stairs. “You have some great DVDs in here,” he called out, his voice slightly muffled. “Movies I haven’t thought about in years.”

  “When my family came to visit Aunt June when we were kids, we stayed in the Tower. I suppose they could be leftovers from our stays.”

  “What about this?” he asked, and over his shoulder shot a stuffed object. Reflexively, Jojo caught it against her chest and immediately recognized the bedraggled animal.

  “Mr. Fee!”

  Her old stuffed cat looked none the worse for wear after having been abandoned for something like fifteen years—meaning he looked just like he had the last time she’d seen him, missing half his whiskers and one ear.

  She couldn’t help herself from hugging the soft old thing. “When he went missing I was sure my brothers had done something unspeakable to him.”

  Brothers. Dismayed by her slipup, she glanced over to see if Con had noticed. The man had emerged from the closet with a box in his arms. His smile for her seemed…affectionate and her stomach swooped.

  Why did she like that so much?

  She tossed the toy away as if it didn’t matter, but promised herself she’d liberate it from the Tower and take it back with her.

  Con was still smiling at her. Her stomach dipped again. “What?” she demanded.

  He shrugged. “I like imagining you as a little girl with your Mr. Fee.”

  “Yes. Well.” Embarrassed because the remark pleased her so, she gestured toward the box in his hands. “What do you have there?”

  “Those DVDs I told you about. I saw the player set up by the TV. We could spend the night watching movies.”

  “Uh, maybe.” She’d hoped he’d retire to the loft and she’d crawl into bed down here and pull the blankets over her head. That way she could pretend she wasn’t within range of the man she had to keep her distance from.

  He set the box down on the low coffee table and began rummaging through its contents. “There’s some classics, perfect for our isolated location.” His big hand held up a DVD. “Haunting on a Hill.”

  “Ugh. No.” Jojo remembered that one. The type of movie designed to get a girl in a guy’s lap, terrorized by the incessant moaning and the sound of chains coming from a spooky attic.

  “No?” He cocked his head. “How about Sorority Spring Break?”

  “What?” she squawked. Where had that come from? “I’m definitely not watching what surely must be X-rated with you.”

  “Pity,” he said, grinning, and dropped the DVD to go back to rummaging. “But that’s all right, there’s always Blood Bath 7: The Final Curtain.”

  He displayed yet another DVD, its case appearing to be dipped in blood, the title words dripping from the pool of red. Jojo’s gaze riveted on it and she went cold, hot, cold. The color seemed to expand, taking over the room, great splashes of it on the wall, at her feet, rolling down Con in a wave of sticky crimson.

  “God. Kitten.” From far away, she heard Con’s voice. Then she felt his arms come around her, and he drew her head against his chest, keeping her near his beating, very-alive heart. She found herself clinging to him.

  “I’m sorry, baby, so sorry.” His mouth was against her hair. “I forgot your aversion to blood.”

  “It’s stupid,” she muttered.

  “It’s not stupid.” He walked her over to the couch and drew her down to the cushions, the two of them practically cuddling.

  Actually cuddling.

  She told herself to sit up, move away, find some excuse to go out for a long walk.

  In the dark. Alone.

  Shuddering, she found herself burrowing closer to Con’s heat.

  “There, there,” he said, sliding his hand over her hair. “I’ve got you.”

  Exactly what she didn’t want. But she let herself enjoy his heat and the steady beat of his heart for thirty more seconds. Then she forced herself to straighten her spine and put some inches between them.

  He released a short sigh that had her frowning, but he didn’t say anything but, “We can look at what else I found.”

  From the box, he drew an old photograph album. Jojo didn’t recall seeing it before. Heavy cardboard, tattered at the edges, bound black sheets of thick paper.

  “Oh, wow,” she said, as he opened the book. Black-and-white photos, some faded, some fuzzy, were tucked into little tabs glued to the pages. People were captured holding fishing poles, or beside Dust Bowl-era trucks, or arm-in-arm in large groups. Handwritten dates were scrawled below many of them, along with names she didn’t recognize but that had a distinctly old-timey feel. Hortense. Gladys. Raymond. Wallace.

  “I wonder if these were guests, maybe, or some extended family I’m not familiar with.” They paged through the entire album, Jojo now shoulder-to-shoulder with Con as they tried deciphering the spidery handwriting.

  She sighed as they turned the last page. “That’s cool.”

  “There’s another,” Con said, his hand diving into the box again. The album he pulled out was obviously more contemporary and she presumed it was some keepsakes put together by Aunt June. As he flipped open the cover, she stilled.

  Yes, very likely this was Aunt June’s. Because there the woman was, front and center, surrounded by Jojo’s parents, Jojo herself, approximately aged seven, and her big brothers Alec and Simon.

  Without thinking, her forefinger reached out to stroke the features of her oldest brother. The boys could have been twins if not fo
r the difference in height and the dimple in Simon’s chin. He’d hated when they teased him about it.

  “I recognize June, of course, and your mom and dad,” Con said. “There’s you, as cute as I imagined, and Alec. But who is that?”

  She had suspected Con didn’t know about Simon. Her parents’ anniversary celebration week in Santa Barbara had included the showing of a film mash-up of old video and still photographs from their family life, but Con hadn’t arrived until the following day. It wasn’t something she brought up if she could help it. When people asked if she had siblings, she said “yes” but didn’t elaborate.

  “That’s Simon,” she said now, hoping the lump in her throat wouldn’t strangle her.

  “A…cousin?”

  “My oldest brother Simon.”

  “Oh.” But already she could hear the careful tone to Con’s voice. He sensed something was up. His hand reached out to snag her cold fingers. “I didn’t meet him.”

  “You won’t.” She licked her lips. “You can’t.”

  “All right.”

  Still that cautious note. She glanced over and saw the stillness of his expression, the steadiness of his gaze on her face. He was waiting, patiently, and she knew there wasn’t going to be any dodging of this personal truth.

  “Five years ago, he was killed coming home late at night from a study session. He was in med school.” She said it as fast as she could, hoping to avoid the barbs that wanted to sink into her skin. “A drunk was driving the wrong way on the freeway.”

  “Good God.” Con’s fingers squeezed hers. “Kitten.”

  “Yeah. It was bad, as you can imagine.” The words didn’t get any easier. “Simon was such…such a great guy. So many friends. So much potential. Pretty much ripped the family to pieces.”

  For a moment he said nothing, and just looked at her with compassion written all over his handsome face. Then he cupped her cheek with his free hand. “How’s everyone doing now?”

  “Alec became a workaholic, as if drowning himself in numbers might help. I think Lilly’s giving him reason to get out from behind his desk and start smelling roses again. My dad experienced his own wake-up call, but almost right away. He’d always been more absent than father and in the last five years he’s tried to change that. It’s kind of remarkable.” She hauled in a breath. “Our mom…it was really, really bad for Mom. She retreated to a very dark place and we didn’t know if we’d ever see her smile again or even breathe without pain. But now she’s doing much better and we are so grateful for that.”