Best Friend Bride

by Kat Cantrell

  She shivered as her gorgeous husband loosened his tie and threw himself onto the bed with a groan. Shivered. What was that but a commentary on this whole situation?

  “Bad day, sweetie?” she deadpanned, carefully keeping her voice light. But holy cow, Jonas was so sexy with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his bare feet crossed at the ankle as he tossed an elbow over his eyes.

  “That was one of the most difficult dinners I’ve ever endured,” he confessed, as if there was nothing odd about being in a bedroom together with the door closed, while he lounged on the bed looking like a commercial for something sensual and expensive.

  “Your family is great.” She eased onto the bed because she wanted to and she could. It wasn’t like there were a ton of other seats in the cute little bedroom. Well, except for the matching chairs near the bay window that flanked an inlaid end table. But she didn’t want to sit way over there when the centerpiece of the room lay on the bed.

  As the mattress shifted under her weight, he peeked out from beneath his elbow, his dark eyes seeking hers. “You’re only saying that to be nice. You should stage a fight and go home. It would serve me right to have to stay here and field questions about the stability of our marriage.”

  As if she’d ever do that when the best part of this fake marriage had just started. She was sharing a bedroom with Jonas Kim and he was her husband and the night was rife with possibilities.

  There came the shiver again and it was delicious.

  Careful.

  This was the part where she always messed up with men by seeming too eager. Messing up with Jonas was not happening. There was no do-over.

  Of course, scoring with Jonas had its issues, too. Like the fact that she couldn’t keep him. This was just practice, she reminded herself. That was the only way she could get it together.

  “I’m not staging a fight.” She shook her head and risked reaching out to stroke Jonas’s hair in a totally casual gesture meant to soothe him, because after all, he did seem pretty stressed. “What would we fight about? Money?”

  “I don’t know. No.” The elbow came off his face and he let his eyes drift closed as she ran her fingers over his temples. “That feels nice. You don’t have to do that.”

  Oh, yes. She did. This was her chance to touch Jonas in a totally innocuous way and study her husband’s body while he wasn’t aware.

  “It’s possible for me to do something because I want to instead of out of a sense of obligation, you know.”

  He chuckled. “Point taken. I’m entirely too sensitive to how big a favor this is and how difficult navigating my family can be.”

  Stroking his hair might go down as one of the greatest pleasures of her life. It was soft and silky and thick. The inky strands slid across her fingertips as she buried them deep and rubbed lightly against his scalp, which earned her a groan that was amazingly sexy.

  “Relax,” she murmured, and was only half talking to herself as her insides contracted. “I don’t find your family difficult. Your mom is great and I don’t know if you know this or not, but your grandfather does not in fact breathe fire.”

  “He gave us a house.” His eyes popped open and he glanced over at her, shrinking the slight distance between them. “There are all sorts of underlying expectations associated with that, not the least of which is how upset he’s going to be when I have to give it back.”

  She shrugged, pretending like it wasn’t difficult to get air into her lungs when he focused on her so intently. “Don’t give it back. Keep it and we’ll go visit, like we promised.”

  “Viv.” He sat up, taking his beautiful body out of reach, which was a shame. “You’re being entirely too accommodating. Were you not listening to the conversation at dinner? This is only going to get more complicated the longer we drag it out. And we are going to be dragging it out apparently.”

  Normally, this would be where she threw herself prostrate at a man’s feet and wept with joy over the fact that he wasn’t calling things off. But she wasn’t clingy anymore. Newly Minted Independent Viv needed to play this a whole different way if she wanted to get to a place where she had a man slavishly devoted to her. And she would not apologize for wishing for a man who loved her so much that he would never dream of calling the duration of their marriage “dragging it out.”

  “You say that like being married to me is a chore,” she scolded lightly. “I was listening at dinner. I heard the words CEO and Jonas in the same sentence. Did you? Because that sounded good to me.”

  “It is good. For me. Not you. I’m now essentially in the position of using you to further my career goals for an extended period of time. Not just until the merger happens. But until my grandfather retires and fully transitions the role of CEO to me. That could take months. A year.”

  Oh, God. A whole year of living with Jonas in his amazing loft and being his wife? That was a lot of practicing for something that would never be real. How could she possibly hide her feelings for Jonas that long? Worse, they’d probably grow stronger the longer she stayed in his orbit. How fair was it to keep torturing herself like this?

  On the flip side, she’d promised to do this for Jonas as a favor. As a friend. He wasn’t interested in more or he’d have told her. Practice was all she could reasonably expect from this experience. It had to be enough.

  “That’s a significant development, no doubt. But I don’t feel used. And I’m not going anywhere.”

  Jonas scowled instead of overflowing with gratitude. “I can’t figure out what you’re getting out of this. It was already a huge sacrifice, even when it was only for a few weeks until my grandfather got his deal going with Park. Now this. Are you dying of cancer or something?”

  She forced a laugh but there was nothing funny about his assumptions. Or the fact that she didn’t have a good answer for why she didn’t hate the idea of sticking around as long as Jonas would have her. Maybe there was something wrong with that, but it was her business, not his. “What, like I’m trying to check off everything on my bucket list before I die and being married to Jonas Kim was in the top three? That’s a little arrogant, don’t you think?”

  When he flinched, she almost took it back, but that’s how Newly Minted Viv rolled. The last thing he needed to hear was that being married to him occupied the top spot on all her lists. And on that note, it was definitely time to put a few more logs on the pile before she set it on fire.

  “Running a cupcake business is hard,” she told him firmly. “You’ve built Kim Electronics from the ground up. You should know how it is. You work seventy hours a week and barely make a dent. Who has time for a relationship? But I get lonely, same as anyone. This deal is perfect for me because we can hang out with no pressure. I like you. Is that so hard to believe?”

  Good. Deflect. Give him just enough truth to make it plausible.

  His face relaxed into an easy grin. “Only a little. I owe you so much. Not sure my scintillating personality makes up for being stuck sharing a bedroom with me.”

  “Yeah, that part sucks, all right,” she murmured, and let her gaze trail down his body. What better way to “practice” being less clingy than to get good and needy and then force herself to walk away? “We should use this opportunity to get a little more comfortable with each other.”

  The atmosphere got intense as his expression darkened, and she could tell the idea intrigued him.

  “What? Why? We’ve already sold the coupledom story to my family. It’s a done deal and went way better than I was expecting. We don’t have to do the thing where we touch each other anymore.”

  Well, that stung. She’d had the distinct impression he liked touching her.

  “Oh, I wish that was true.” She stuck an extra tinge of dismay into her tone, just to be sure it was really clear that she wasn’t panting after him. Even though she was lying through her teeth. “But we sti
ll have all of tomorrow with your family. And you’re planning to meet mine, right? We have to sell that we’re hopelessly in love all over again. I’m really concerned about tongues wagging. After all, Joy’s husband knows everyone who’s anyone. The business world is small.”

  Jonas’s eyes went a little wide. “We just have to sell being married. No one said anything about love.”

  “But that’s why people get married, Jonas.” Something flickered through his expression that looked a lot like panic. And it set a bunch of gears in motion in her head. Maybe they should be using this time to get matters straight instead of doing a lot of touching. Because all at once, she was really curious about an important aspect of this deal that she’d thus far failed to question. “Don’t you think so?”

  “That people should only get married if they’re in love? I don’t know.” But he shifted his gaze away so quickly that it was obvious he had something going on inside. “I’ve never been married before.”

  That was a careful way to answer the question. Did that mean he had been in love but not enough to marry the girl? Or he’d never been in love? Maybe he was nursing a serious broken heart and it was too painful to discuss. “Your parents are married. Aren’t they in love?”

  “Sure. It’s just not something I’ve given a lot of thought to.”

  “So think about it.” She was pushing him, plain and simple, but this was important compatibility stuff that she’d never questioned. Everyone believed in love. Right? “I’m just wondering now why you needed a fake wife. Maybe you should have been looking for someone to fall in love with this whole time instead of taking me to lunch for a year.”

  He hadn’t been dating anyone, this she knew for a fact because she’d asked. Multiple times. Her curiosity on the matter might even be described as morbid.

  “Viv.” His voice had gone quiet and she liked the way he said her name with so much texture. “If I’d wanted to spend time with someone other than you over the last year, I would have. I like you. Is that so hard to believe?”

  Her mouth curved up before she could catch it. But why should she? Jonas made her smile, even when he was deflecting her question. Probably because he didn’t think about her “that way” no matter how hot the kiss outside her bedroom had been. One-sided then. They were friends. Period. And she should definitely not be sad about that. He was a wonderful, kind man who made not thinking wicked thoughts impossible the longer they sat on a bed together behind closed doors.

  Yeah, she could pretend she was practicing for a relationship with some other man all she wanted. Didn’t change the fact that deep in her heart Viv wished she could be the person Jonas would fall madly in love with.

  But she knew she couldn’t keep Jonas. At least she was in the right place to fix her relationship pitfalls.

  Now, how did one go about seducing a man while giving him the distinct impression she could take him or leave him?

  Five

  The bed in Jonas’s mother’s guest room must have razor blades sewn into the comforter. It was the only explanation for why his skin felt like it was on fire as he forced himself to lie there chatting with Viv as if they really were a real married couple having a debrief after his family’s third degree.

  They were a real married couple having a chat.

  If only she hadn’t brought up the L word. The one concept he had zero desire to talk about when it came to marriage. Surely Viv knew real married couples who didn’t love each other. It couldn’t be that huge of a departure, otherwise the divorce rate would be a lot lower.

  But they were a married couple, albeit not a traditional one behind closed doors. If they were a traditional married couple, Jonas would be sliding his fingers across the mattress and taking hold of Viv’s thigh so he could brace her for the exploration to come. His lips would fit so well in the hollow near her throat. So far, she hadn’t seemed to clue in that every muscle beneath his skin strained toward her, and he had no idea how she wasn’t as affected by the sizzling awareness as he was.

  They were on a bed. They were married. The door was closed. What did that equal? Easy math—and it was killing him that they were getting it so wrong. Why wasn’t he rolling his wife beneath him and getting frisky with breathless anticipation as they shushed each other before someone heard them through the walls?

  “Since we like each other so much, maybe we should talk about the actual sleeping arrangements,” she suggested. “There’s not really a good way to avoid sharing the bed and we’re keeping things platonic when no one’s around.”

  Oh, right, because this was an exercise in insanity, just like dinner. He really shouldn’t be picturing Viv sliding between cool sheets, naked of course, and peeking up at him from under her lashes as she clutched the pale blue fabric to her breasts.

  “I can sleep on the floor,” he croaked. She cocked a brow, eyeing him as if she could see right through his zipper to the hard-on he wasn’t hiding very well. “I insist. You’re doing me a favor. It’s the least I can do.”

  “I wasn’t expecting anyone to sleep on the floor. We’re friends. We can sleep in the same bed and keep our hands off each other. Right?” Then she blinked and something happened to her eyes. Her gaze deepened, elongating the moment, and heat teased along the edges of his nerve endings. “Unless you think it would be too much of a temptation.”

  He swallowed. Was she a mind reader now? How had she figured out that he had less than pure thoughts about sharing a bed with his wife? How easy it would be to reach out in the middle of the night, half-asleep, and pull her closer for a midnight kiss that wouldn’t have any daylight consequences because nothing counted in the dark.

  Except everything with Viv counted. That was the problem. They had a friendship he didn’t want to lose and he had taken a vow with Warren and Hendrix that he couldn’t violate.

  “No, of course not,” he blurted out without checking his emphatic delivery. “I mean, definitely it’ll be hard—” Dear God. “Nothing will be hard! Everything will be...” Not easy. Don’t say easy. “I have to go check on...something.”

  Before he could fully internalize how much of an ass he was making of himself, he bolted from the bed and fled the room, calling over his shoulder, “Feel free to use the bathroom. I’ll wait my turn.”

  Which was a shame because what he really needed was a cold shower. Prowling around the house like a cat burglar because he didn’t want to alert anyone he’d just kicked himself out of his own newlywed bedroom, Jonas poked around in his dad’s study but felt like he was intruding in the hallowed halls of academia.

  He and his dad were night and day. They loved each other, but Brian Kim wasn’t a businessman in any way, shape or form. It was like the entrepreneurial gene had skipped a generation. Put Brian in a lecture hall and he was in his element. In truth, the only reason Jonas had gone to Duke was because his father was on faculty and his parents had gotten a discount on tuition. They’d refused to take a dime of Grandfather’s money since Brian hadn’t filled a position at Kim Electronics.

  If his dad had taken a job at any other university, Jonas never would have met Warren, Hendrix and Marcus. His friendship with those guys had shaped his twenties, more so than he’d ever realized, until now.

  The funeral had been brutal. So hard to believe his friend was inside that casket. His mom had held his hand the entire time and even as a twenty-one-year-old junior in college who desperately wanted to be hip, he hadn’t let go once. Marcus had been down in the dumps for weeks, but they’d all shrugged it off. Typical male pride and bruised feelings. Who hadn’t been the victim of a woman’s fickle tastes?

  But Marcus had been spiraling down and none of them had seen it. That was the problem with love. It made you do crazy, out-of-character things. Like suicide.

  Jonas slid into his dad’s chair and swiveled it to face the window, letting the memory claw
through his gut as he stared blindly at the koi pond outside in the garden. There was no shame in having missed the signs. Everyone had. But that reassurance rang as hollow today as it had ten years ago. What could he have done? Talked sense into the guy? Obviously the pain had been too great, and the lesson for Jonas was clear: don’t let a woman get her hooks into you.

  That was why he couldn’t touch Viv anymore. The temptation wasn’t just too much. It was deadly. Besides, she was his friend. He’d already crossed a bunch of lines in the name of ensuring his family bought into the marriage, but it was all just an excuse to have his cake and eat Viv, too.

  Bad, bad thing to be thinking about. There was a part of him that couldn’t believe Viv would be dangerous to his mental state. But the risks were too great, especially to their friendship. They’d gone a whole year without being tempted. What was different now? Proximity? Awareness? The fact that he’d already kissed her and couldn’t undo the effect on his body every time he got within touching distance of her?

  That one.

  Sleeping with her in the bed was going to be torture. He really didn’t know if he had it in him. Probably the best thing to do was sleep on the couch in the living room and set an alarm for something ridiculous like 5:00 a.m. Then he could go for a jog and come back like he’d slept in Viv’s bed all night long. Of course he’d never jogged in his life...but he could start. Might burn off some of the awareness he couldn’t shake.

  That was the best plan. He headed back to the bedroom they shared to tell her.

  But when he eased open the door and slipped inside, she was still in the bathroom. He settled onto the bed to wait, next to her open suitcase. There was literally no reason for him to glance inside other than it was right there. Open. With a frothy bunch of racy lingerie laid out across the other clothes.