“Don’t call him that, Lance,” the brunette pleaded. For the first time since they’d been introduced into the conversation, she truly met my gaze, her expression a visual apology. Her face was also quite possibly the most flawless one I’d ever seen. She looked as though she’d stepped out of the pages of a magazine, without a single blemish in sight. Lightly tanned skin. High cheekbones. Impeccably arched, full eyebrows. And that was just her face. Her body? Made me think all kinds of things that I had no business thinking about a woman whose name I didn’t even know. She looked too good to be real, but damn if she wasn’t hot.
He ignored her, gesticulating so much he nearly whacked her in the face, which made me want to pick him up by the scruff of his neck and teach him a thing or two about how Neanderthals expected a man to treat a lady. I stayed put, though, and Lance was oblivious to anything but his own agenda. “He won’t work out. He doesn’t understand the pressure she’s under. The hooligan couldn’t even bother to get his hair cut before making an appearance. He’s exactly the opposite of the sort of man we need her to marry.”
My head snapped back upon hearing the word marry, and I pushed my chair away from the table. “Back the fuck up for a second,” I said. The movement unsettled my water, and the bottle fell over, rolled to the table’s edge, and dropped to the floor, narrowly missing my toes. “Who the hell said anything about getting married? I’m willing to do whatever you need me to do to make up for my perceived crimes—community outreach, volunteering, whatever—but how the fuck is getting married—”
“Which is precisely the point,” Mr. Jernigan cut in, his voice rising over mine. He arched an eyebrow in my direction, either daring me to interrupt or putting me back in my place, one of the two. “You’ll do whatever we need you to do—John assured us you would—and we need you to marry Tallulah. She’s gotten into a scrape. She needs a way out of it. You’re it, son. On top of that, she’s the best way to get the people here in Tulsa on your side.”
“How is marrying her supposed to help me make things up to all the people I pissed off?” I demanded.
“Would you please watch your language?” Mrs. Jernigan demanded, and I just about fell out of my chair. Of all the things to get worked up over, she was getting her panties in a twist over me uttering the words pissed off? How on earth was she going to handle being around a whole team of hockey players? It might be better if she was one of those hands-off team owners like we’d had in Portland, but so far it didn’t look like that would be the case.
She put her hands on her hips, prim, proper, and as incensed as I’d ever seen a woman. “Really, there’s no reason for all that foul stuff. Your mama should have taught you better than that.”
“Let’s leave his mama out of it, Sharon,” her husband said, never removing his gaze from me. No doubt he sensed that I was about to lose my shit, and he wanted to defuse the situation before I did something else I would regret. I might not like his wife, but so far he was okay. Well, except for the fact that he thought I needed to marry some random chick I’d never met before.
He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Here’s the deal, son.”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m not your son.”
He ignored me. “Tallulah won Miss Teen Oklahoma USA several years back, and then she won Miss Teen USA. She’s the reigning Miss Oklahoma USA, or she was until they stripped her of her crown last month because of a slight indiscretion. She was expecting to contend for Miss USA, and most likely Miss Universe after that. She’s been competing in and winning pageants for years, including some very high-profile ones. The fact is that Oklahomans love her. We adore her. But now her image has been tarnished, and she needs a husband so she can repair her image in the public eye. She fell down a few pegs when…well, never mind that. The point is that they want Tallulah to appear to be the role model they always assumed she was, and to do that, she needs to give the impression that she’s growing up, settling down, and doing the things they’ve expected of her all along.”
“Which is exactly why you can’t just shove her in with him,” the hand-waving man interrupted, pointing a finger in my direction so hard it seemed he might be attempting to jab me in the eye. “He’ll ruin her worse than she already is.”
Mr. Jernigan closed his eyes, shook his head, and sighed. “He’s not going to ruin her. They’ll rescue each other.”
I wasn’t in the mood to play knight in shining armor to anyone, even if she had legs for days and killer curves like this Tallulah chick did, and I’d be damned if I needed anyone to rescue me. I’d dug my own hole; I could damned well figure out a way to climb out of it myself. “I’m not marrying anyone,” I said, loud and clear enough to be heard over everyone else.
“You are.” This time it was John speaking.
I spun my head to glare at him. “You knew this was going on and you didn’t say a word about it?”
“Had to be sure you were going to show up,” he said, shrugging. Like this was no big deal. Like he wasn’t trying to tell me that my life as I had it planned was all being tossed out, and I was going to have to bend to someone else’s rules. Like I should have expected it since I’d been dumb enough to make an ass of myself, and this was my due penance. “We already discussed this. You’ve got to play by their rules, at least for a while. Things are different down here. You’re going to be living and playing in the Bible belt, and there are different expectations. Besides, it’s not forever,” he added sheepishly.
“You expect me to believe that a preacher”—I pointed in the general direction of the Jernigans—“is going to suggest a marriage that will end up in divorce in order to cover up some silly scandal.”
“Well, really, honey pie,” Mrs. Jernigan said. “It’ll be more like an annulment. It’s just for a year.”
“A year?” I scoffed. I didn’t know American marriage law very well, but this didn’t sound like the sort of thing a judge would consider appropriate annulment material. “And I’m not your honey pie. Either way, doesn’t matter since I’m not doing it.”
“Yes,” John said, more emphatically than before, “you are.”
I shot him a go-to-hell look. “No one can make me get fake married for a year. Not even you, and don’t fool yourself into thinking you can. Besides, that would mean I’d have to be celibate the whole damn time.” If the entire fucking state loved this Tallulah chick, the second I was seen with some other girl, hoping to scratch an itch, I’d be the bastard who cheated on Oklahoma’s sweetheart.
“Language!” Mrs. J shouted at me. The woman reminded me more and more of Effie Trinket from the Hunger Games movies, only minus the pink hair.
“Sorry if the mention of sex offends you,” I spouted off, and I didn’t even feel bad about the offended gasp she let out. The longer I was in this room, the shorter my fuse grew. I’d be lucky if I got out of here without them threatening to find a way to void my contract.
Hell, maybe I should really let loose. Maybe then they would try to void it, and then I could sign with some other team. Anything would be better than being stuck here and getting forced into some sham of a marriage.
“You wouldn’t…” Tallulah had spoken up again, drawing my attention, but she clammed up the second her mother and Lance shot looks in her direction.
“I wouldn’t what?” I asked, more out of curiosity than anything.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lance interjected. He reached across and put a hand over Tallulah’s, as though to prevent her from saying another word. The guy seriously needed a good throat-punching, and I was itching to be the one to have that honor. Not to rescue her. More to fuck with him because the half hour or so I’d spent in his company was more than anyone should have to bear in a lifetime. The guy was a serious ass. He met my glare. “No Neatherthals allowed near Tallulah Belle. Not now. Not ever.”
She tugged her hand free, and my esteem for her went up a few notches. She scowled at him before turning to me. “You wouldn’t necessarily have to be
celibate the whole time,” she said, staring straight at me. “I mean, I’m not sure I’d want to stay—”
“Tallulah Belle Roth!” her mother interrupted before turning her hateful glare on me. “There will be no hanky-panky, not with Tallulah or anyone else. Just enough hand-holding and light kisses for the cameras, but when you’re not putting on a show for the media, you’ll be keeping your hands to yourself and your little thing tucked away in your pants.”
“It ain’t little, sweetheart,” I said before I could think better of it.
“Well, I never.” She shut up after that, though, crossing her arms and turning her back to me.
Tallulah didn’t keep quiet. “Mama, you can’t speak to him like that. And it’s none of your business—”
“My daughter isn’t my business?”
“—what happens behind closed doors,” she continued, ignoring her mother’s interruption. “The fact is, we will be married. And soon.”
Soon? I was about to speak up again, but the other man—the one who, so far, had kept his mouth shut and merely looked on, mildly amused by the proceedings—leaned forward and locked his gaze on me. “Saturday, actually,” he said, answering my unasked question. “And I’ve already got the prenup lined out. I’ll just need you and my Tallie to drop by my office later this afternoon to go over it so we can get it finalized.”
I pressed my fingers to my eyes, wishing I could push hard enough that my whole head would explode like the dude on Game of Thrones. My head hurt enough that it might explode from the internal pressure without any outside forces.
“Not him,” Lance tossed in. “We’ll find someone else.”
“By Saturday?” Mrs. Jernigan asked. “Everything’s already in place for this weekend, and we’ve already wasted too much time. They’re hounding Tallulah everywhere she goes.”
“Find someone else,” I ground out.
“There is no one else,” the father insisted at the same time as John said, “Whether you want to do this or not, you’re going to have to.”
“Why?” I roared. “Why this? What the hell is this supposed to do that couldn’t be accomplished some way that doesn’t involve fucking getting married?”
Tallulah stood up, planting both hands on her hips and drawing my eye exactly there. “Now you look here,” she said, suddenly turning sassy in a way that turned me on despite my better judgment—further proof that hormones had nothing to do with the part of the brain that processed thought. “I’m not any happier about this than you are, and clearly my mama and Lance don’t think you’re up to snuff, but they’re right about this one part. Whether you want to hear it or not, they’re right. The two of us getting married—at least long enough for all of this to blow over—is the best solution for both of our problems. So we’re going to do it. We’re getting married on Saturday, so you’d better just accept the fact that it’s happening. And you should probably call your mama. They don’t like finding these things out after the fact.”
Well, holy hell. Even Tallulah wanted to go along with it. Apparently, Tulsa wasn’t just hell; it was also the Twilight Zone, only the people I was surrounded by didn’t realize it.
FOR WHATEVER REASON, he said he would go along with it. I was still dumbfounded that Mama and Mrs. Jernigan had come up with the idea of us getting married to begin with, and I wasn’t positive that I was fully on board, but Hunter Fielding had agreed to marry me, and now everything was moving at the speed of light. I needed to make up my mind, once and for all, before it was too late. Yes, Mama and Lance insisted that I had no choice and was going to have to marry someone, but I was a grown woman. An adult. I had choices. And marriage? That was a big decision to make, even if it was essentially to be in name only and would have an expiration date.
The meeting with the Thunderbirds brass took place on Tuesday morning. That afternoon, Daddy and I sat down in his office with Hunter and his agent and hammered out the details for the prenuptial agreement.
“You’ll live together as husband and wife for one year,” Daddy explained to the other men. He’d already gone over all of it with me, Mama, and Lance well before now. He and I were seated on one side of the long board table at Roth & Rainier, the law firm where he was one of the two primary partners, while Hunter and John sat across from us. “All money and possessions that started out being Hunter’s will remain Hunter’s. The same will go for Tallie. Upon your divorce, everything that she comes into the marriage with will leave the marriage as hers. You’ll maintain a single residence but separate bank accounts.”
“Who will own the house?” the agent asked.
“Hunter buys a house,” Daddy answered before I could interject. “He’ll need one to live in after this all washes over, anyway, since he’ll still be on the team. You’ll live in it together to give the impression of being as completely head-over-heels in love as possible. What happens inside that house with the doors closed is your business and yours only, no matter what her mother and that ass Lance may have to say on that matter.”
Heat raced to my cheeks as I remembered what I’d said earlier about not necessarily remaining celibate. The fact was, Hunter was hot. Seriously gorgeous. He was about half a foot taller than me and solid muscle. His dark hair was too long and curled a little where it hit his shoulders, and he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, with a bit of scruff lining his square jaw. Everything about him screamed Man, with a capital M, from the defined muscles of his forearms to the deep, gravelly sound of his voice. He’d been wreaking havoc on my girly parts since the moment he’d walked into the Thunderbirds offices earlier, and I couldn’t seem to get my hormones under control. At least not while he was staring at me like he was right now. Something told me he was remembering what I’d impetuously said, as well.
“Speaking of Lance,” Hunter said. There was a surly, grumbly tone to his words that shot straight through me and made my temperature rise again. “Who the hell is that guy and what does he have to do with anything?”
I blinked, but Daddy didn’t say anything to answer him. I supposed that meant it was going to be on me to explain. Daddy and Lance had never gotten along. The sooner he could get Lance out of my life, the better. I was almost positive that was why, out of everyone involved, Daddy was the least upset about my mishap in Cancun and the most receptive to the idea of me getting married. No more pageants. He assumed that would mean no more Lance. I wasn’t so positive about that, considering the way Mama was pulling Lance along to participate in every aspect of the aftermath.
“Lance Benton. He’s my pageant guru,” I said feebly. Anyone who’d been involved in the pageant world would understand in a heartbeat, but to the rest of the world, a guru was sort of a mystery. Mama had hired him when I was still just a baby and too young to voice an opinion on the matter, and she’d kept him regardless of whatever complaints I might have about him because he was the best. He got results, and he was the reason I’d succeeded. That was what Mama said, at least.
Sure enough, Hunter just raised a brow in question, his sexy-as-sin face a mass of confusion.
I sighed. “He oversees everything for me, training me in every aspect of my presentation and supervising all of the people who help out—my designer, my hair and makeup people. He runs the show.” Whether I liked it or not, and for a great many years now I’d been leaning toward the side of not. Hunter still didn’t look like he followed, so I added, “He’s kind of like my coach, I guess.”
“Your coach?” Hunter scoffed.
I nodded.
“For pageants? You need a coach for a beauty pageant?” He raised and lowered his gaze, giving me a thorough and disbelieving once-over.
“They’re about a lot more than just physical appearances,” I groused, sick to death of having to explain pageants to people who weren’t part of this community.
He narrowed his eyes at me, seeming to analyze every minuscule bit of my appearance. “Mm-hmm,” he said, making me feel all of an inch tall. “So what the fuck does he h
ave to do with any of this?” he asked, scowling and waving an arm across Daddy’s desk and the papers littered all over it. “This is a marriage, sweetheart. It isn’t a pageant. The guru stays out of it.”
There was no masking the grin that swallowed up Daddy’s face. “You know, son, I think I’m going to like you. I think I’m going to like you a hell of a lot.”
“I might be marrying your daughter, Mr. Roth, but I’m not your son, and you and everyone else around here had better get that through your thick fucking skulls.”
Daddy just chuckled and sifted through the stack of papers to find another one to go over. “Got it. Noted. Not my son.” He winked at me. I had no clue how he could be laughing and winking at a time like this. My whole world was changing. Everything I’d known my whole life had been ripped out from under me the day I’d returned from a summer vacation with my sorority sisters and had to face the scandal of being stripped of my crown.
Hunter met my gaze from across the table, almost staring through me. “You understand what I said about Lance? He has no place in our marriage. At all. Not ever, regardless of how short or long this marriage may be.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” I readily agreed.
I didn’t mention the fact that a wedding was not a marriage, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that I could convince Mama that Lance couldn’t be involved in the planning for the ceremony. He had already started working on it, and she would have a serious conniption fit if I tried to put down my foot about it. The fit that Lance would throw would be big enough to cause the Gulf of Mexico to swell up so far it would cover the entire state of Oklahoma. Whether I was happy about it or not, and no matter what Hunter thought on the matter, Lance’s fingerprints would be all over the wedding and reception. Heck, he’d already made the executive decision that I would be walking down the aisle in my competition ball gown, despite the fact that it wasn’t even close to being appropriate for a wedding. It was white, there wasn’t time to get something else more wedding appropriate made, and it would look stunning on camera, especially after they added some more pizzazz to it. Those were all the reasons he needed to lay down that particular law.
[Tulsa Thunderbirds 01.0] Bury the Hatchet Page 2
