A Game Of Brides (Montana Born Brides)

by Megan Crane

  Exactly how many ways are you planning to be a complete idiot today?

  “You all right?”

  Griffin’s voice was mild and perfect and too much to bear, and Emmy took her time turning her head to find him in the doorway to the bedroom, tucking the sort of button down shirt she’d have thought he abhorred into a pair of trousers much nicer than his usual jeans. She could smell his soap from across the room. She could see the dampness in his black hair.

  And there was no reason at all she should feel like crying.

  She told herself it was this tornado inside of her instead. It was tearing everything up and flinging what it didn’t destroy back down and she had no idea how to go about putting herself back together.

  “My sister pointed out to me that I’ve been acting like a little brat for the past two weeks,” she said. Possibly with more aggression than necessary, she thought, when Griffin’s green eyes narrowed.

  But his voice was as calm as it had been before. “Surely that particular pot is way blacker than any kettle could ever be.”

  “Only if you think it’s reasonable for a maid of honor to storm around muttering and rolling her eyes and generally being a big old raincloud over the proceedings,” she retorted, which was, she was still ashamed to admit, a fairly adequate description of her behavior in and around the wedding festivities since she’d arrived in Montana. “When she’s not running off to have sex with the next door neighbor, that is.”

  He eyed her for a moment. “Why do I feel like there’s no way for me to participate in this conversation without it becoming my fault?”

  “It’s already your fault.” She hadn’t moved from her position in front of the door and she curled her toes into the floor beneath her, not caring if he could see her do it because of the pedicure-friendly flip-flops she was wearing, because she couldn’t let herself drift over to him the way she wanted. He was worse than alcohol, all blackouts and bad behavior and regret. And she craved him far more than she’d ever wanted a drink. “I quit my job.”

  His smile was like light and Emmy didn’t want light. She wanted darkness and brooding. She wanted this raging thing in her to cause damage, to the two of them most of all. Maybe then she’d find a way to make sense of it.

  “Good for you,” he said.

  “How is that good for me?” She took a step toward him and stopped herself, cursing at her own weakness. At the magnetic compulsion that made it impossible to keep her distance from him. How was she going to leave him on Monday? “I’m not rich. I’m not the widely celebrated creator of a lifestyle brand that everyone wants a piece of. I write stupid commercials about fucking allergies and I don’t even enjoy it anymore. But it’s the life I built. It’s safe and it’s solid and it’s careful and peaceful and mine. And I threw a hand grenade in the middle of it for absolutely no reason except a single conversation with you.”

  It was only when she stopped that she realized she’d been yelling. Her last boyfriend had hated it when she did that. He’d pulled himself up into the very picture of offended dignity and had walked away from her, saying things like, why don’t you tell me when we can discuss this like adults, Emmy. Your volume is inappropriate.

  But Griffin’s green eyes gleamed. He propped a shoulder against the doorjamb, crossed his arms over his chest, and laughed at her. Like all the yelling in the world wouldn’t bother him at all, and wasn’t there something wrong with her that she found that so attractive?

  “I didn’t tell you to go kamikaze on your job, Bug. That was all you. I hope you asked for a decent severance package.”

  “Yes,” she said, and her voice sounded far away then, even to her own ears, because the tornado was spinning too fast and ripping her apart, and maybe she should have been a little more careful what she’d wished for, because this hurt. “As a matter of fact, I did. And my boss was only too happy to give it to me, because she hates my guts and was thrilled to get me out of there.”

  “Sounds like you should be thanking me, then,” he pointed out, still leaning there, looking powerful and beautiful and not in the least bit intimidated by her volume or her anger. Her attitude. If anything, that heat in his green gaze made her think he liked it. “I can think of a few ways you can go about that.”

  Emmy sniffed. It was such an excellent rendition of Margery’s patented sniff of pure, snooty dismissal that Griffin’s brows arched up, and Emmy couldn’t help but smile herself. Which completely ruined the temper tantrum she was trying to have.

  The tornado raged on inside of her, but she found that the longer she looked at him, the more she could ignore it. The more it felt like only a little storm after all, a dance of thunder and a shake of rain, and no need for all the theatrics.

  “I’m a lady,” she said primly, which made them both grin. “Why don’t you take me out to dinner first, for a change? Put a little work into it.”

  He straightened then. “I’d like to do that. But I can’t.” He shook his head. “There’s a dinner for the wedding contest finalists tonight. I’d blow it off, but Gran Martha might take that as a challenge and nobody wants that. So I’m going to go and corner the woman running this whole thing and stop this at the source.”

  And a kind of hush fell between them. Emmy didn’t know what it meant. She was covered in massage lotion, wearing nothing but yoga pants and a sweatshirt with her hair scraped back into a messy knot, and yet when his gaze moved over her she felt beautiful. Elegant beyond measure. Warm and flushed and entirely his. Like nothing existed in all the world but the two of them, or ever would.

  It would only be a few more days, she reminded herself, dazed. So what was the point of pretending? Of testing her resolve when she had none? She wanted to spend every last second of it with him. She wanted to hoard every single memory of him, of this, that she could cram into her brain and imprint on her body. And she’d worry about whether or not she should feel shame for that later.

  “Is there a reason you’re not inviting me?” she asked. She dropped her bag on the floor beside her and started toward him, watching the fire flicker in his gaze, feeling her body ready itself for him that easily. By the time she made it across the great room to stand in front of him, her nipples were tight and she could feel the heat between her legs. “Because the more time I spend on my own, Griffin, the less inventively thankful I’m likely to feel.”

  He laughed as hauled her up against him, tipping her breasts into his chest and running his hands down her back to cup her bottom. It was so easy now. So slick and perfect, the way they came together. Like they’d been doing this for years, not weeks.

  “I would,” he said, “but they’re going to think you’re Celia. And I’m pretty sure that’s a great way to make certain you never touch me again. Which is not in the plan.”

  Emmy wrapped her arms around his neck and then surged up toward him. He lifted her or she jumped or maybe it was both, and then he was holding her there against him as she wrapped her legs around his hips. He took her mouth, hard, and she dug her hands into all that marvelous raw silk that was his hair, and when they came up for air he was bearing her down into the bed and settling himself on top of her.

  And it was perfect. It was always so devastatingly perfect.

  Maybe it was the fire that only burned brighter the more time she spent with him. Maybe she really had lost her mind today. Maybe the only way through the next few days was to simply burn as bright as possible before the inevitable dark that would follow. Emmy didn’t know.

  “I can be Celia for a few hours,” she said. It wouldn’t kill her. She didn’t think.

  Griffin looked startled. Then he let out a bark of laughter.

  “No, you really can’t. Thank God.”

  “Obviously I meant that I can play her for one night while you try to extricate yourself from a Gran Scheme,” Emmy said loftily. “Or allow people to think I’m her, whatever. How hard can it be? From what you’ve said, all it takes is being kind of mean to you and then leaving.”


  Griffin eyed her like he couldn’t decide whether to take offense at that or laugh, and Emmy probably should have cared about that more than she did. But instead she courted the edge of it, the sharpness. Like she was digging her fingers deep into a nearly healed scrape. It hurt as much as it felt good.

  “Watch yourself, Bug,” he said, but she could feel him, hard and heavy between her legs, pressing into her. “You have a tendency to let your mouth write checks your body can’t cash. You’re lucky I think that’s cute.”

  And she knew he felt what she did. The immensity and the fear. The fire and the knot in her chest when she drew breath that she suspected meant all kinds of things she’d have nothing but time to brood about later.

  Next week, when this was over and she was back in Atlanta and jobless. Next week, when she’d be alone again in what remained of the safety and security she’d spent all these years building in reaction to exactly this ten years ago. None of which was the least bit appealing to her at the moment. Looking up into those green eyes of his, Emmy could hardly remember who she’d been before he’d picked her up in the airport. She didn’t want to remember.

  “If I wanted a lecture on financial security I’d talk to my soon-to-be brother-in-law,” she told him, moving her hips against his and laughing when he groaned. “As he’s the King of Money and most of Chicago besides.”

  “Fine,” he said, his hands moving to take their own kind of vengeance against her slippery, lotioned skin, in the best possible way. “If you insist, you can pretend to be my ex-girlfriend.”

  “Ex-fiancée,” she corrected him with what little breath she had left.

  “Whatever,” Griffin muttered, and then he grinned up at her as his hands got more serious. “You realize that it might be hard to keep this a secret if you’re parading around pretending to be mine.”

  She liked the way he said that. Mine. She wished she was. Oh, how she wished she was.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, though her voice was a little too rough and she could see all the things she felt, the tornado inside her and the words she wouldn’t say out loud, reflected in his green gaze. “I’m just helping you. What are friends for?”

  “Yeah,” he said, dropping his mouth to her neck, with a rumble in his voice that made her shiver. “Friends are exactly what we are.”

  And then he made them very late for dinner.

  The Finalists’ Dinner was a cheerful affair in the Italian restaurant in town, filled with representatives from the Graff Hotel, a reporter from the local paper, and all the members of the Chamber of Commerce who had helped bring the Great Wedding Contest into being. Griffin didn’t introduce Emmy as Celia, he simply let the people he greeted draw their own conclusions, and Emmy thought she was perfectly fine with that until she sat down at a table and found herself flanked by the last two people she wanted to see tonight.

  The Grans.

  Who she adored, but who would see far more than she wanted them to see. Emmy steeled herself.

  “Lovely party,” Gran Harriet murmured from the left. She was dressed as she always was, in a selection of scarves that brought out the sparkle in her eyes and her good pair of boots, her long white hair arranged in one of the complicated buns she favored that Emmy had always thought made her look like a rodeo queen.

  “It surely is,” Gran Martha agreed. She wore her white hair short, preferred chunky jewelry to scarves, and kept her hands folded in her lap as if she weren’t evil, her green gaze on the crowd and a smile on her lips. “There isn’t much better than celebrating true love, is there?”

  “Everyone loves a wedding,” Gran Harriet agreed.

  “Hi guys,” Emmy said brightly. Foolishly. “Great party, isn’t it? Did you see all those pastries waiting on the dessert table? That new bakery in town is pretty amazing.”

  Gran Harriet shook her head as if that pained her, while on her other side, Gran Martha sighed, and Emmy supposed she couldn’t blame them. She felt about the same. She scanned the crowd for Griffin, but he was nowhere to be seen. There were all the other happy couples, holding hands and glowing and looking adorable, and Emmy told herself that had nothing to do with how tight her jaw felt.

  “A dinner party for engaged couples competing for an all-expense paid wedding here in Marietta seems like a strange first date,” Gran Harriet observed after a moment.

  “I’m not on a date. Griffin and I aren’t dating.”

  But Emmy’s voice squeaked the way it had when her grandmother had—literally—caught her with both her hands deep in the cookie jar back when she was a kid, and she felt herself flush as both women smiled.

  “That would be ridiculous,” she gritted out, wishing her cheeks didn’t feel like a red-hot grill the Grans could toast their smug little smiles on. “We’re friends. Griffin has been nice enough to let me stay in the cabin with him, that’s all.”

  “That’s my grandson,” Gran Martha murmured, her tone dry. “He’s renowned the world over for being nice. A credit to the family.”

  “This is like a nightmare,” Griffin said from the other side of the table. His gaze was dark, though amusement glittered there, and he shook his head as he regarded the three of them. “Come here, Emmy. Quickly. You can ignore Scylla and Charybdis. They’re all bark and no bite.”

  “Then I’ve been doing it all wrong all these years,” his grandmother said.

  “You really need to sharpen your teeth, Martha,” Gran Harriet murmured. “What’s the point of being a matriarch if you can’t rule with fear?”

  Emmy shot to her feet and rounded the table and came up maybe a little too hard against Griffin’s side. She was keenly aware that both of the Grans watched his arm come around her with an ease that said things, then the way she balanced herself with a far too familiar hand on his abdomen, and for a moment they were all frozen in place, smiling blandly at each other.

  “Remind me, Harriet,” Gran Martha said after a moment, her green gaze a lot like her grandson’s as she directed it straight at him. “When we were roommates, lo these many decades ago, did we attend dinner parties with our arms wrapped tightly around each other?”

  “We did not.”

  Emmy tried to ease back from Griffin but he only tightened his grip, and she let him. She told herself it was that or struggle right there in front of the entire Chamber of Commerce and half of Marietta, but she knew better. She’d do anything to touch him, even here. Even while being called out for it.

  And Gran Martha was still talking, still smiling in that too-knowing way of hers. “Did we snuggle up against each other in public places?”

  “Only if it was cold, I’d imagine. Remember? Those Boston winters were murder.”

  Gran Martha nodded sagely. “And to your recollection, was there ever a time that we pretended to be a romantic couple, for any reason?”

  “Certainly not.” Gran Harriet’s smile was worse, Emmy thought, because it was directed straight at her. “Those were different times, of course. But friendship is friendship. Roommates are roommates. And this—”

  “Is none of your business,” Griffin said firmly. “This conversation is over.”

  “Whatever you say, dear,” Gran Martha replied.

  “Darling boy,” Gran Harriet cooed.

  Like the sweet old things they most assuredly were not.

  Griffin steered Emmy away from the table, back into the crowd, and she couldn’t seem to do anything but shake her head at him. “You realize you just made that worse, don’t you?”

  He laughed. “You say that like there was any possibility it wasn’t always going to go down exactly like that. You know better.”

  “This is terrible.”

  “It is.”

  Emmy felt faint.

  “My entire extended family and a good portion of yours are descending on Marietta as we speak. We have the Grans’ family dinner tomorrow night and the rehearsal dinner the next and the whole wedding on Saturday and Griffin, you might as well have stood up and ma
de an announcement at each and every one of those occasions that we’re sleeping together.”

  “Breathe, Bug.” He smiled down at her, and the room fell away, as it always did. He was so beautiful it made her eyes sting, or that’s what she told herself was the reason. It wasn’t that she’d stopped hating that nickname and come to love it instead, despite herself. It wasn’t that tender look in his green eyes that she wanted so badly to believe meant things. Of course not. “Would it really be the end of the world if this wasn’t a secret?”

  Griffin discovered he was holding his breath while Emmy considered her answer.

  He shouldn’t have asked, he knew. But he was already having trouble letting her go. He hadn’t liked that she’d been out of his sight while he’d tried to nail down the wedding contest’s organizer, the always-on-the-move Jane Weiss. He’d tracked the woman back and forth across the restaurant, one eye on Jane’s black bob as she moved in and out of various groups and was always too busy to talk to him, and the other searching for Emmy like he was afraid she’d already bolted.

  It felt too much like the real thing, coming at him like a train, that no amount of loaded questions could change.

  “No,” she said softly, her dark eyes luminous as they met his, and something so much like shy it made his heart somersault inside his chest. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

  He didn’t know he was moving, but he took both her hands in his and he thought it was possible he could spend the rest of his life just like this. Her hair was down for once, tumbling to her shoulders and glossy in the overhead lights. She was wearing a cute little wrap dress that flirted with her lean curves and made him want nothing more than to unwrap it and reveal her. Then taste every inch of her like this fire between them was new.

  You’re still such a dumb fuck, he told himself. You can’t even do this right.

  “Emmy,” he said then, because he couldn’t help himself and he wasn’t certain he’d want to if he could. “I have to ask you something.”