by Kat Cantrell
Bride at the altar...unbridled in the bedroom
Billionaire Jonas Kim only needs one thing to become CEO of his family’s company: a smoothly executed business merger. And to get that, he needs a smoothly executed marriage of convenience. Enter Viviana Dawson, Jonas’s best friend, who agrees to become a contract bride until the deal is sealed. Viv has crushed on Jonas forever but the stubborn tycoon can’t see over the fortress he’s constructed around his heart. Yet when fake marital bliss leads to unparalleled bedroom ecstasy, Viv declares war on the love-shy bachelor—and she won’t settle for anything less than surrender!
Best Friend Bride is part of the In Name Only trilogy.
This was her one chance, the only time she had every right to put her lips on this man, and she wasn’t missing the opportunity.
The other people in the room vanished as she reached out and flattened her palms on Jonas’s lapels. He leaned in and put one hand on her jaw, guiding it upward. His warmth bled through her skin, enlivening it, and then her brain ceased to function as his mouth touched hers.
Instantly, that wasn’t enough and she pressed forward, seeking more of him. The kiss deepened as his lips aligned properly and, oh, yes, that was it.
Her crush exploded into a million little pieces as she tasted what it was like for Jonas to kiss her. That nice, safe attraction she had been so sure she could hide gained a whole lot of teeth, slicing through her midsection with sharp heat. The dimensions of sensation opened around her, giving her a tantalizing glimpse of how truly spectacular it would feel if he didn’t stop.
But he did stop, stepping back so quickly that Viv almost toppled over, but he caught her forearms and held her steady...though he looked none too steady himself, his gaze enigmatic and heated in a way she’d never witnessed before.
* * *
Best Friend Bride is part of the In Name Only trilogy:
“I do” should solve all their problems, but love has other plans...
Dear Reader,
Interconnected stories are my favorite, especially when they’re centered on the heroes. So when I started brainstorming for my next series, I got really excited as three best friends from college popped into my head. I couldn’t wait to find out what they had in common, what bonded them together and why they’d be tough nuts to crack in the romance department. Boy, did my guys surprise me! It turns out they share a deep, dark aversion to love due to a tragedy the three endured their senior year. As adults, they continue to avoid relationships, but luckily, three special ladies arrive on the scene to help them understand that love is not so easily dismissed.
Best Friend Bride stars our first hero, Jonas Kim, who needs a temporary wife but not the hassle of a relationship he doesn’t intend to prolong. Fortunately, he has a friend who fills the bill. Viviana Dawson is happy to do Jonas this favor for reasons of her own...namely that she has a huge secret crush on him! If he finds out, it’s all over. But it’s harder than either of them imagined to stay in the friend zone once they get behind closed doors. And how will the tragedy in Jonas’s past affect their burgeoning romance? Hint: a lot!
I hope you enjoy the In Name Only series! The next two books are coming to you soon. Find me online at katcantrell.com.
Kat Cantrell
Kat Cantrell
Best Friend Bride
USA TODAY bestselling author Kat Cantrell read her first Harlequin novel in third grade and has been scribbling in notebooks since she learned to spell. She’s a Harlequin So You Think You Can Write winner and a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart® Award finalist. Kat, her husband and their two boys live in north Texas.
Books by Kat Cantrell
Harlequin Desire
Marriage with Benefits
The Things She Says
The Baby Deal
Pregnant by Morning
The Princess and the Player
Triplets Under the Tree
The SEAL’s Secret Heirs
An Heir for the Billionaire
The Marriage Contract
Happily Ever After, Inc.
Matched to a Billionaire
Matched to a Prince
Matched to Her Rival
Love and Lipstick
The CEO’s Little Surprise
A Pregnancy Scandal
The Pregnancy Project
From Enemies to Expecting
In Name Only
Best Friend Bride
Visit her Author Profile page at Harlequin.com, or katcantrell.com, for more titles.
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Excerpt from Down Home Cowboy by Maisey Yates
One
Jonas Kim would typically describe himself as humble, but even he was impressed with the plan he’d conceived to outwit the smartest man he knew—his grandfather. Instead of marrying Sun, the nice woman from a prominent Korean family, a bride Grandfather had picked out, Jonas had proposed to Viviana Dawson. She was nice, too, but also his friend and, more importantly, someone he could trust not to contest the annulment when it came time to file it.
Not only was Viv amazing for agreeing to this ridiculous idea, she made excellent cupcakes. It was a win all the way around. Though he could have done without the bachelor party. So not his thing.
At least no strippers had shown up. Yet.
He and his two best buddies had flown to Vegas this morning and though Jonas had never been to the city of sin before, he was pretty sure it wouldn’t take much to have naked women draped all over the suite. He could think of little he’d like less. Except for marrying Sun. That he would hate, and not only because she’d been selected on his behalf. Sun was a disaster waiting to happen that would happen to someone else because Jonas was marrying Viv tomorrow in what would go down as the greatest favor one friend had ever done for another.
“Sure you wanna do this?” Warren asked as he popped open the bottle of champagne.
Also a bachelor party staple that Jonas could have done without, but his friends would just laugh and make jokes about how Jonas needed to loosen up, despite being well aware that he had been raised in an ultraconservative family. Grandfather had a lot of traditional ideas about how a CEO should act, and Jonas hadn’t landed that job, not yet. Besides, there was nothing wrong with having a sense of propriety.
“Which part?” Jonas shot back. “The bachelor party or inviting you morons along?”
Hendrix, the other moron, grinned and took his glass of champagne from Warren. “You can’t get married without a bachelor party. That would be sad.”
“It’s not a real wedding. Therefore, one would assume that the traditions don’t really have to be observed.”
Warren shook his head. “It is a real wedding. You’re going to marry this woman simply to get out of having a different bride. Hence my question. Are you sure this is the only way? I don’t get why you can’t just tell your grandfather thanks but no thanks. Don’t let him push you around.”
They’d literally been having the exact same
argument for two weeks. Grandfather still held the reins of the Kim empire closely to his chest. In Korea. If Jonas had any hope of Grandfather passing those reins to him so he could move the entire operation to North Carolina, he had to watch his step. Marrying a Korean woman from a powerful family would only solidify Jonas’s ties to a country that he did not consider his home.
“I respect my elders,” Jonas reminded Warren mildly. “And I also respect that Sun’s grandfather and my grandfather are lifelong friends. I can’t expose her or it might disrupt everything.”
Sun had been thrilled with the idea of marrying Jonas; she had a secret—and highly unsuitable—lover she didn’t want anyone to find out about and she’d pounced on the idea of a husband to mask her affair. Meanwhile, their grandfathers were cackling over their proposed business merger once the two families were united in marriage.
Jonas wanted no part of any of that. Better to solve the problem on his own terms. If he was already married, no one could expect him to honor his grandfather’s agreement. And once the merger had gone through, he and Viv could annul their marriage and go on with Jonas’s integrity intact.
It was brilliant. Viv was the most awesome person on the planet for saving his butt from being burned in this deal. Tomorrow, they’d say some words, sign a piece of paper and poof. No more problems.
“Can you guys just be happy that you got a trip to Vegas out of this and shut up?” Jonas asked, and clinked glasses with the two men he’d bonded with freshman year at Duke University.
Jonas Kim, Hendrix Harris and Warren Garinger had become instant friends when they’d been assigned to the same project group along with Marcus Powell. The four teenagers had raised a lot of hell together—most of which Jonas had watched from the sidelines—and propped each other up through everything the college experience could throw at them. Until Marcus had fallen head over heels for a cheerleader who didn’t return his love. The aftermath of that still affected the surviving three members of their quartet to this day.
“Can’t. You said no strippers,” Hendrix grumbled, and downed his champagne in one practiced swallow. “Really don’t see the point of a bachelor party in Las Vegas if you’re not going to take full advantage of what’s readily available.”
Jonas rolled his eyes. “Like you don’t have a wide array of women back in Raleigh who would get naked for you on demand.”
“Yeah, but I’ve already seen them,” he argued with a wink. “There are thousands of women whose breasts I’ve yet to ogle and I’ve been on my best behavior at home. What happens in Vegas doesn’t affect my mom’s campaign, right?”
Hendrix’s mom was running for governor of North Carolina and had made him swear on a stack of Bibles that he would not do anything to jeopardize her chances. For Hendrix, that meant a complete overhaul of his social life, and he was feeling the pinch. So far, his uncanny ability to get photographed with scantily clad women hadn’t surfaced, but he’d just begun his vow of chastity, so there was plenty of opportunity to cause a scandal if he really put his mind to it.
“Maybe we could focus on the matter at hand?” Warren suggested, and ran his fingers through his wavy brown hair as he plopped down on the love seat near the floor-to-ceiling glass wall of the Sky Suite they’d booked at the Aria. The dizzying lights of Vegas spread out in a panoramic view sixty stories below.
“Which is?”
Warren pointed his glass at Jonas. “You’re getting married. Despite the pact.”
The pact.
After the cheerleader had thoroughly eviscerated Marcus, he’d faded further and further away until eventually, he’d opted to end his pain permanently. In the aftermath of his death, the three friends had sworn to never let love destroy them as it had Marcus. The reminder sobered them all.
“Hey, man. The pact is sacred,” Jonas said with a scowl. “But we never vowed to remain single the rest of our lives. Just that we’d never let a woman take us down like that. Love is the problem, not marriage.”
Once a year, the three of them dropped whatever they were doing and spent the evening honoring the memory of their late friend. It was part homage, part reiteration of the pact. The profoundly painful incident had affected them in different ways, but no one would argue that Warren had taken his roommate’s suicide harder than anyone save Marcus’s mother.
That was the only reason Jonas gave him a pass for the insult. Jonas had followed the pact to the letter, which was easier than he’d ever let on. First of all, a promise meant something to him.
Second, Jonas never got near a woman he could envision falling in love with. That kind of loss of control...the concept made his skin crawl. Jonas had too much to lose to let a woman destroy everything he’d worked for.
Warren didn’t look convinced. “Marriage is the gateway, my friend. You can’t put a ring on a woman’s finger and expect that she won’t start dreaming of romantic garbage.”
“Ah, but I can,” Jonas corrected as he let Hendrix top off his champagne. “That’s why this plan is so great. Viv knows the score. We talked about exactly what was going to happen. She’s got her cupcake business and has no room for a boyfriend, let alone a permanent husband. I wouldn’t have asked her to do this for me if she wasn’t a good friend.”
A friend who wasn’t interested in taking things deeper. That was the key and the only reason Jonas had continued their friendship for so long. If there was even a possibility of getting emotional about her, he’d have axed their association immediately, just like he had with every other woman who posed a threat to the tight rein he held on his heart.
Hendrix drank straight from the champagne bottle to get the last few drops, his nearly colorless hazel eyes narrowed in contemplation as he set the empty bottle on the coffee table. “If she’s such a good friend, how come we haven’t met her?”
“Really? It’s confusing to you why I’d want to keep her away from the man voted most likely to corrupt a nun four years in a row?”
With a grin, Hendrix jerked his head at Warren. “So Straight and Narrow over there should get the thumbs-up. Yet she’s not allowed to meet him either?”
Jonas shrugged. “I’ll introduce you at the ceremony tomorrow.”
When it would be unavoidable. How was he supposed to explain that Viv was special to a couple of knuckleheads like his friends? From the first moment he’d met her, he’d been drawn to her sunny smile and generosity.
The little bakery near the Kim Building called Cupcaked had come highly recommended by Jonas’s admin, so he’d stopped in to pick up a thank-you for his staff. As he’d stood in the surprisingly long line to place his order, a pretty brown-haired woman had exited from the back. She’d have captured his interest regardless, but when she’d stepped outside to slip a cupcake to a kid on the street who’d been standing nose pressed to her window for the better part of fifteen minutes, Jonas couldn’t resist talking to her.
He’d been dropping in to get her amazing lemon cupcakes for almost a year now. Sometimes Viv let him take her for coffee to someplace where she didn’t have to jump behind the counter on the fly, and occasionally she dropped by the Kim Building to take Jonas to lunch.
It was an easy, no-pressure friendship that he valued because there was no danger of him falling in too deep when she so clearly wasn’t interested in more. They weren’t sleeping together, and that kind of relationship wouldn’t compute to his friends.
Didn’t matter. He was happy with the status quo. Viv was doing him a favor and in return, he’d make it up to her with free business consulting advice for the rest of her life. After all, Jonas had singlehandedly launched Kim Electronics in the American market and had grown revenue to the tune of $4.7 billion last year. She could do worse than to have his undivided attention on her balance sheet whenever she asked, which he’d gladly make time for.
All he had to do was get her name on a marriag
e certificate and lie low until his grandfather’s merger went through. Then Viv could go back to her single cupcake-baker status and Jonas could celebrate dodging the bullet.
Warren’s point about marriage giving a girl ideas about love and romance was pure baloney. Jonas wasn’t worried about sticking to the pact. Honor was his moral compass, as it was his grandfather’s. Love represented a loss of control that other men might fall prey to, but not Jonas. He would never betray his friends or the memory of the one they’d lost.
All he had to do was marry a woman who had no romantic feelings for him.
* * *
Viviana Dawson had dreamed about her wedding day a bunch of times and not once had she imagined the swirl in her gut, which could only be described as a cocktail of nerves and holy crap.
Jonas was going to be her husband in a few short minutes and the anticipation of what if was killing her.
Jonas Kim had asked her to marry him. Jonas. The man who had kept Viv dateless for almost a year because who could measure up to perfection? Nobody.
Oh, sure, he’d framed it all as a favor and she’d accepted under the premise that they’d be filing for annulment ASAP. But still. She’d be Mrs. Kim for as long as it lasted.
Which might be short indeed if he figured out she had a huge crush on him.
He wasn’t going to figure it out. Because oh, my God. If he did find out...
Well, he couldn’t. It would ruin their friendship for one. And also? She had no business getting into a serious relationship, not until she figured out how to do and be whatever the opposite was of what she’d been doing and being with men thus far in her adult dating life.
Her sisters called it clingy. She called it committed. Men called it quits.
Jonas was the antidote to all that.
The cheesy chapel wasn’t anything close to the venue of her fantasies, but she’d have married Jonas in a wastewater treatment plant if he’d asked her to. She pushed open the door, alone and not too happy about it. In retrospect, she should have insisted one of her sisters come to Vegas with her. Maybe to act as her maid of honor.
