The Decoy Bride

by Lizzie Shane

  “Top secret. But I promise I’ll tell you all about it after.”

  “Ooh, a mystery. I love it. Just be careful. There are a lot of crazy fans in the world,” Andi cautioned, the voice of experience after meeting some of Ty’s most zealous fans.

  “I’ll be fine,” Bree assured her. “She’s sending her security guy with me.”

  “The one you said was hot?”

  She could practically hear Andi perking up on the other end of the phone. “I never said he was hot.”

  Though he definitely was. In that Midwestern All-American way that reminded her entirely too much of her childhood.

  “Yes, you did. His name’s Cross, right? We were having margaritas and I distinctly remember something about Hot Cross’s Buns.”

  Bree felt her face flaming—damn fair complexion—and was grateful no one was there to see her turning scarlet. “I’m an artist. I’m trained to evaluate the male form. Like the David.”

  “Uh-huh. You just keep telling yourself that, sister. So you’re going off alone with Hot Cross and his buns?”

  Bree rolled her eyes. “One—Maggie Tate is never alone. There will be entourages and paparazzi and nothing remotely romantic about the entire experience. Two—Hot Cross and his buns have never said more than two sentences to me, and even if he did he’d be talking to Maggie, not to me. And three—when did you get so obsessed with my love life? You were never like this when we lived together.”

  “I’m in the love bubble. I feel the need to sow the seeds of romance wherever I go and inflict joy and happiness on others. Get used to it.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to sow your seeds elsewhere. I couldn’t be less interested in Hot Cross and his buns,” she insisted—though she really needed to stop lying to her best friend.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Aaron Cross Jr., a man once called the bane of wide receivers across the Pac-12 and AFC West, known for his lightning feet and hard hits, slammed onto the mat on his back and groaned.

  Candy, the five-foot-nothing bane of his existence, frowned down at him. “What are you moaning about? Did you hurt something?”

  He snorted. “Only my dignity.” He sprawled on his back as Candy wandered over to the edge of the mat to check her phone.

  “Dignity’s overrated.” She grabbed a towel off the bench beside the sparring mats and flung it at his chest. He caught it one handed, curling to sit up. “Though if it’s any comfort you’re a lot better than you were.”

  Better isn’t good enough. Only the best is good enough. Cross ignored the voice in his head—the one that always somehow sounded like his father even though he wasn’t sure he accurately remembered the sound of the man’s voice—and swiped at the sweat on the back of his neck. “I still can’t land a hit.”

  Which was frankly embarrassing. Cross had always been fast, but Candy had been dancing circles around him—literally—ever since the pocket ninja had agreed to help him with his hand-to-hand training when he started at Elite Protection. That was over three years ago and he still couldn’t score a freaking touch.

  “Yeah,” Candy agreed, “but that’s not because you’re slow and I can tell by the way you move that you know how I’m going to countermove.” She briskly wiped the sweat from their session off her arms and flicked her towel into her gym bag. “I have a theory about why you’ve plateaued.”

  “Oh yeah?” He looped his towel around the back of his neck, holding the ends. “Care to share?”

  “You’re too nice.”

  Cross snorted and levered himself to his feet. “That’s one I haven’t heard before.” Nice didn’t get you to the NFL.

  “Or too much of a gentleman,” Candy went on, speaking over him. “Deep down, I think you can’t stand the idea of hitting a girl.”

  “I promise I am genuinely trying to knock you on your ass every time you hand me mine.”

  She shook her head. “You probably think you are, but it’s so ingrained in you. Nice Midwestern boy, always the biggest and the strongest growing up—your whole life you’ve been conditioned to be careful of your strength so you wouldn’t hurt anyone, right?”

  “Except on the field,” he admitted. The football field was the one place where he could run as fast as he could and hit as hard as he could, never holding anything back. He’d loved that about the game—even if other parts had sucked, it had always felt amazing to push himself to the max.

  “Yeah, but we aren’t on the field,” Candy argued. “You’re on a sparring mat with someone your gentlemanly instincts are telling you is a dainty little female and you don’t want to actually land a hit because you know your big ole fists could do some serious damage if you did. Am I right?”

  He picked up his gym bag, looping the strap over his shoulder. “You’re saying I could kick your ass if you looked like Tank?”

  “I don’t know about that—I’d be pretty badass if I had Tank’s reach—but you could definitely kick Tank’s ass any day of the week. You train a helluva lot harder than he does.”

  You have to train the hardest to be the best. Cross ignored the ghost voice. “You saying we don’t need to train anymore?”

  “Do you need to? Nah. You’re a beast, Cross. You’ve got this. You can probably take down anyone in the company except me and maybe Pretty Boy. But I still like sparring with you if you want to keep it up.” She grinned at him. “You’re a challenge now.”

  “Thanks.” Being called a challenge by Candy was probably one of the best compliments he’d ever received, but all Cross could hear was that he still couldn’t take down her or Pretty Boy. Even if Candy and her former-model fiancé had both been studying martial arts their entire lives and he’d only started when he joined EP, he wanted to be on that level. To be the best. “You heading out?”

  Candy slung her bag over her shoulder, shaking her head. “Max wants me to go over the background checks for the new applicants before I go. Though he’d probably appreciate it if I showered first. Smell me. On a scale of one to ten, how rank am I?”

  She raised her arm to wave her armpit at him and he backed away, hands raised defensively. “I’m not going to smell you. Where’s Pretty Boy? Isn’t that his job?”

  “He’s packing the gear for our early honeymoon.”

  Cross snorted at Candy’s description of the trip. She and her fiancé Ren, whom she’d dubbed Pretty Boy when the former male model joined EP, would be handling the security detail on the real Maggie while Cross was putting on a show with the decoy. A natural chameleon, Candy excelled at the kind of protection duties that involved blending in. Most of the Elite Protection personal security work was for celebrities who wanted a bodyguard who was visibly intimidating—and eye-catching in their own right. That was part of the Elite Protection luxury brand—the sexiest personal protection money could buy. But this time Maggie didn’t want her bodyguard to draw attention, so Candy had been called up, with Pretty Boy backing her up.

  “You two thinking of making it a double wedding?”

  “Nah. I keep trying to convince Pretty Boy to elope, but he seems to think my parents will never speak to us again if we do. Not that that’s a deterrent, necessarily. And at this rate if we don’t elope we’ll never get married. Who has time to plan a wedding with everything that’s going on here? We haven’t even had a chance to take a day off in over a year. Remind me to send you a thank you note for the vacation, by the way. Three weeks in Fiji? Maybe I’ll go nuts and send you a fruit basket in a fit of gratitude.”

  Candy might call it a vacation, but Cross knew no one took their job more seriously than she did. “No fruit baskets necessary. I already owe you for all the training.”

  “My guidance is a priceless gift,” Candy agreed with exaggerated humility. “But you would have been fine even without my wisdom. Your overachiever syndrome would allow nothing less.”

  He frowned. “You make it sound like a disease.”

  “Do I?” she asked innocently, then her gaze turned speculative. �
�I admit I am curious why I didn’t see your name on the list of candidates for the new position.”

  Elite Protection had been expanding rapidly in the last year to keep up with increased demand for their services. Max Dewitt, the founder and head badass of EP, had hired four more bodyguards, an in-house accountant, an admin assistant, and a full-time IT person to assist Candy in the last six months alone, but now with his wife seven months pregnant, their boss wanted to have a right-hand man in an executive position to take over some of his own duties. Hence the job hunt for a partner.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t put your own hat in the ring,” Cross countered. “You’ll be giving up your second-in-command status.”

  “Nah, I like what I do. If I had to do all the businessy crap, I wouldn’t get nearly as much time to play with my toys.” Candy was their resident tech expert, keeping EP current on all the latest security gadgets. “But you forget I did your background check. I know you have an MBA.”

  Another voice woke up in his head, but this one was definitely his ex-wife’s dulcet tones. No one wants a dumb jock giving them business advice, Aaron.

  “I think Max would probably prefer someone who got their degree from Yale, rather than Online MBA dot com.”

  Lauren had hated those online classes, bitching about them constantly. But then, Lauren had hated any mention of a life after football. In retrospect, he shouldn’t have been surprised that his marriage had only lasted a few months longer than his career in the NFL. He could have put “torn ACL” instead of “irreconcilable differences” on the divorce paperwork.

  “I think Max would prefer someone he can trust who knows this business inside and out,” Candy argued, “but shouldn’t that be his call? Why won’t you tell him you’re interested?”

  Because Cross didn’t do failure.

  He could hear his father’s voice again, whispering in the back of his thoughts, you never get anything if you don’t go after it—and the old man wasn’t wrong. But you also had to know what you could go after and what was out of your reach.

  Elite Protection wasn’t the first successful company Max Dewitt had started. His father was Titus freaking Dewitt, for fuck’s sake, and everyone said Max had inherited his father’s Midas touch. He didn’t need business help from some meathead who’d gotten his degrees from an online college after dropping out of UCLA for the NFL draft.

  It went against the grain for Cross to walk away from a challenge. When something intimidated him, he ran right at it, pushing harder, bellowing over the fear until it was the other guy who was shitting himself. But this was different. He couldn’t power through this. He couldn’t train harder and longer, do more crunches, run more laps, until exhaustion silenced that damn voice in his head telling him only the best is good enough.

  “Is there a candidate from Yale?” he asked instead of answering Candy’s question.

  “Two,” she admitted. “Plus Wharton and Kellogg and all the other fancy-ass business schools. Doesn’t mean they’re any better for the job than you.”

  He glanced pointedly at the clock on the wall. “Shouldn’t you be going? You still have to talk to Max and you don’t want to be late picking up Maggie tonight.” The world waited for movie stars. Not the other way around.

  Candy grimaced at the reminder. “Any tips on handling the great Maggie Tate?”

  “No tips. Usually Mel does most of the handling—” At Candy’s puzzled look, he clarified. “Her manager. Melanie.” Though the one time he’d called her that she’d given him a look like she would remove his spleen with a carving knife if he ever did it again.

  “The tall one? Looks kind of like Brienne of Tarth?”

  “Who?”

  “Game of Thrones?” Candy shot him an incredulous look. “Seriously? Who doesn’t watch Game of Thrones?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been busy.”

  “For six years?” At his look, she rolled her eyes. “Fine, so Mel is my point person.”

  “She would be, but she’ll be with me and the decoy. You’re getting the assistant. Tera. She doesn’t talk much, but if you have a problem with Maggie, probably best to go through her.”

  Candy arched a brow. “You think we’re likely to have a problem with Maggie?”

  He shrugged. “She wants what she wants when she wants it and she wants you to be able to work miracles to make it safe to do whatever the hell she wants rather than listening to your advice about what would be safer.”

  “So pretty much every client we’ve ever had. Got it.” She cocked her head, studying him. “What’s the decoy like?”

  He shrugged. “Exactly like Maggie. I can’t even tell them apart. Unless they tell me which one I’m getting, I never know the difference.”

  “Really?” Candy’s voice lifted, intrigued. “Is she an actress?”

  “Didn’t you do her background check?”

  Candy made a face. “That doesn’t tell me what she’s like. Her hopes and dreams.”

  “She’s a job.”

  Candy had a tendency to change her appearance to get reactions out of people, so he shouldn’t be surprised that she was so fascinated by the idea of the lookalike, but he’d never really thought much about who the decoy was when she wasn’t Maggie. She was impressive, he knew that much. Her impersonation was note perfect, but that was as far as it went.

  Candy sighed dramatically. “Your lack of curiosity appalls me. Do you even know her real name?”

  “I’d still have to call her Maggie, regardless. If I called her the wrong thing in front of the wrong person I could put our real client at risk.”

  Candy lifted one brow, her lips quirking. “You have a history of calling women by other women’s names?”

  “Not that I know of,” he said calmly, unoffended by her delight in giving him shit.

  “It would be understandable. I know you ball players get around. It must be hard to keep the ladies straight.”

  “I was married when I played ball. Which I believe you know.”

  She shrugged. “Doesn’t mean you didn’t play around.”

  “Yes. It does.”

  Candy cocked her head, studying him for so long he frowned at her. “What?”

  “You’re just such a good guy. I was trying to think if I have any single friends to hook you up with, but I don’t really hang out with women. Maybe Parv knows somebody good for you,” she said, referring to their boss’s very pregnant wife. “Or Elena. She was on that reality show. Some of those girls must still be single.”

  “I do not need to be hooked up with a woman from a reality dating show,” he insisted. “Or anyone else.” The last thing he needed was to become the company project. Tank’s wife already seemed determined to introduce him to a “nice girl”—he didn’t need Dylan and Max’s spouses getting in on the action. “I like being single.”

  Looking back on it, it was hard to remember why he’d thought getting married was a good idea in the first place. He certainly hadn’t missed marriage since his divorce. The last five years had been peaceful. He’d been able to focus on the things that mattered to him, finally the master of his own life.

  “I really like being single,” he repeated. He liked not feeling like he was disappointing someone all the time. He liked not having anyone else rely on his emotions.

  Candy wrinkled her nose at him—which she would have hated knowing made her look adorable. “I’m siccing Parv on you. She has a huge family. I bet she has a hot cousin.”

  “Tragically, I’ll be on a tropical island for the next three weeks and won’t be able to date anyone’s hot cousins,” he said, moving toward the door to the changing rooms in an attempt to cut off the conversation.

  “You have to come back sometime,” Candy said.

  “That sounds like a threat.” Which was about right if she was trying to get him married again.

  She still hadn’t moved toward Max’s office, her head cocked to one side. “Pretty Boy used to date this girl he knew from his modeling
days. I wonder if she’s still single.”

  And now she was trying to set him up with her fiancé’s exes. “Not everyone has to pair off to be happy.”

  “Are you happy?”

  Define happy. Cross kept walking, inexplicably annoyed by the question. Candy gave him shit, but she usually stayed away from the personal stuff, keeping it light. It was one of the things he liked about their friendship. “Elia’s single. Why don’t you inflict your matchmaking on him?”

  “Elia’s doing fine on his own.”

  And I’m not? He liked being single, damn it.

  His cell rang and he fished it out of his pocket. “Oh, look, I’ve got to take this.”

  “You can run but you can’t hide!” Candy shouted at his back.

  He shook his head, not turning as he moved steadily toward the outer door.

  He was happy Candy and Pretty Boy were finally officially on after years of on-again-off-again bullshit, but if she was going to suddenly start matchmaking he could almost wish things would have stayed rocky. Tank had been married to the same woman since he and Cross had been teammates in the NFL, but the last few years had seen an epidemic of marriage proposals at EP. Dylan and Elena. Max and Parv. Candy and Pretty Boy.

  Candy seemed to think he was next, but Cross would rather pin that particular target to someone else’s back. Maybe someday down the road he would decide he wanted that again—far down the road—but right now he had other priorities. Like being the best damn bodyguard EP had ever had.

  He glanced at the name on the screen and another priority sprang to the front of his mind. Building his father’s legacy.

  He connected the call before it could go to voicemail. “Hey, Mike.”

  “Aaron Junior! I’m glad I caught you. We have a little situation with the equipment deliveries,” the man known as Mayor Mike to all of Harris, Iowa began—and Cross could feel his wallet lightening by the second. “It’s the six man blocking sled we picked out—turns out it’s backordered. Now, we might be able to get it here in time for the beginning of the football season, but I know how important it was to you to have all the equipment in place and ready to go when we have the Aaron Cross Senior Field House dedication next month, so we have a solution. It’s the deluxe sled. Now, mind you, it is an extra twelve hundred dollars, which would put us farther over our equipment budget, but we can get that baby here in two weeks and I know—”