The Decoy Bride

by Lizzie Shane

  She was Maggie for the next three weeks. She couldn’t exactly have a fling with her bodyguard when she was supposed to planning her wedding.

  Though they wouldn’t always be in the public eye, would they?

  And her bodyguard was definitely appealing.

  Kind of a control freak, but undeniably hot. Serious. The kind of guy who would probably think she was silly. Flighty. She didn’t know his first name, but Cross suited him. It was firm. Commanding. He was definitely a take-charge kind of person—and in Bree’s experience take-charge men didn’t always know what to do with her go-with-the-flow ways. But she was intrigued, in spite of herself.

  Though at the moment, the feeling didn’t appear to be mutual. He was focused completely on his task, seeming to have lost interest in her. She tried to stifle her disappointment at the thought.

  He’d probably thought she was coming on to him. Probably trying to let her down easy. Should she say something? Assure him that she could be professional?

  “I didn’t mean to flirt earlier, not with intent,” she blurted and his gaze snapped toward her—right as the door opened and Mel appeared.

  “There you are,” the manager said, her gaze moving between Bree and Cross as she let the door close gently behind her.

  Bree froze, feeling her face flame like a teenager caught with a boy in her room—even as she reminded herself that she was a grown woman on the far side of thirty and she hadn’t done anything to deserve a reprimand.

  “Cross was just sweeping for bugs,” she said too quickly, defensively, as Cecil Two darted into the room, his long ears flapping as he yelp-barked and raced toward her.

  “You about done?” Mel aimed her question at Cross, who frowned at the device in his hands.

  “Nearly. Nothing yet, but I’ll keep scanning periodically.”

  The knowledge that no one was listening—and she had no idea how long that would last—had words tumbling out of Bree’s mouth. “Do you really think this will work?” she asked Mel as Cross stepped out onto the balcony to work his magic out there. “You think the paparazzi will go to all the expense of flying to a tiny island in the Caribbean just to get pictures of me planning a wedding?”

  Mel arched a brow, one side of her mouth lifting sardonically. “Honey, if it meant a payday they’d fly to Antarctica for pictures of Maggie Tate. When the Instagram post of the engagement ring goes live tonight, the media are going to go into a feeding frenzy. They’re probably already bribing everyone they can think of to try to get our flight plan. For a sneak peek at the wedding of the century? Trust me. The pictures will be worth much more than the expense. They’ll come. Which is exactly what we want them to do.”

  Bree’s stomach churned at the thought. She’d known that celebrities had to deal with that degree of insanity, had known it was Maggie’s reality, but it was different when it was happening to her in real time. “Do I need to be posting pictures while I’m here? Of wedding stuff or the beach?”

  “You don’t need to worry about any of that. Maggie almost never touches her own social media. If you want to pose with a veil and have Kaydee snap a pic and post it, that’ll be in character, but otherwise, just leave your online presence to me.”

  “You’re the expert.”

  Mel’s smile was wry. “Even Maggie doesn’t know her brand as well as I do.” She tilted her head. “Do you need anything else? Those videos good?”

  She’d been chafing under Mel’s management, but the other woman wanted her to succeed as much as Bree did. She needed to remember that Mel was an ally and a resource, not the principal waiting to send her to detention if she didn’t behave properly. “They’re great. Thank you.”

  Cross reentered and gave them both a nod before exiting the suite, which Mel took as her own cue to depart.

  “I’ll have dinner sent up when it arrives,” she said, retreating to the door. “Try to get some rest. Busy day tomorrow.”

  Bree’s stomach knotted nervously at the reminder.

  Tomorrow she had to sell the lie.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The house was too quiet.

  By the time dinner arrived, Cross had already set up the additional equipment Candy had sent along—motion sensors and cameras tied to his phone so he would get alerts whenever someone approached the villa—which may drive him crazy with all the staff coming and going, but no one would ever accuse him of slacking on the job.

  Anything worth doing is worth doing one hundred and ten percent. He’d always hated that phrase—the idea that anyone could give more than their most was a sports-ism that had always annoyed him, but the words still echoed in his mind in his father’s voice. Be the best. Push the hardest. Do the most. Always. The words pushed into the back of his mind and refused to quiet.

  He hadn’t found a single bug—which wasn’t surprising. He’d expected nothing less. The only people who’d known they were coming to this villa were the hotel staff. The real games would begin once the paparazzi hit the island, but tonight all was well.

  And it was driving him crazy.

  After he’d finished the security preparations, Cross had picked a bedroom close to the master suite so he’d be able to get to Bree quickly in case of emergency and began to unpack. His room was just as lavish as the master, only on a smaller scale. Instead of an entire sitting room, he had an arm chair. There was a built in desk off to one side—as if people came to the Caribbean to work—but it looked out over a smaller version of the master balcony.

  Dominique had explained as Mel was ushering her out that a butler would be available at their convenience to unpack for them, but Cross didn’t like the idea of anyone else handling his things. He’d unpacked quickly, setting up his surveillance console and throwing the envelope with the Harris bills into one drawer of the desk, before roaming the house under the pretense of a security sweep.

  His body was still on Pacific time—which he knew would suck when he had to wake up at dawn the next morning, but right now he was too restless to sleep.

  Deciding to burn off some energy in the fitness studio, he first walked a circuit of the house, registering the sound of a television from one of the other upstairs bedrooms before he made his way downstairs. The sound of the treadmill whirring greeted him before he reached the door and he paused with his hand on the knob, eyeing the light seeping beneath the crack.

  He told himself his hesitation was because he didn’t want to intrude, but if he was honest, there was something else at play. Bree was…distracting. And he couldn’t afford to be distracted.

  But still he opened the door.

  He didn’t know why he’d been so sure it would be her. It could easily have been Mel or Kaydee on the treadmill, but somehow he’d known who he would see—a slim figure with a blonde ponytail swinging in time to her steps.

  Between the sports bra and the snug workout pants that ended below her knees, her outfit left little to the imagination—and showed exactly how similar her body was to the one the entire world had seen on the silver screen. Sweat glistened on her shoulders and down the line of her back, proving she’d been keeping up the bruising pace on the treadmill for some time already.

  Her focus was locked on the tablet propped on the treadmill console, a pair of noise-cancelling headphones covering her ears.

  She hadn’t noticed him yet. He could slip out and no one would be the wiser. Wasn’t discretion the better part of valor? The last thing he needed was to be noticing her ass or the taut line of her stomach.

  Even if she hadn’t been off limits for the next three weeks while she was playing Maggie Tate, he wasn’t looking for a relationship—and now wasn’t the time for a fling. No, it was better if he walked away before he got any closer to Bree…

  But then, as if she’d sensed him there, she turned her head, catching sight of him in the mirror, and his opportunity to retreat gracefully vanished.

  She reached up, tugging off the headphones with one hand while the other went to the treadmill c
ontrols, lowering the speed to a walk. “Hey. Everything okay?”

  He came more completely into the room, letting the door fall shut behind him. “I was going to ask you the same thing. You all right?”

  “Couldn’t sleep.” She hit another button and the treadmill slowed to a stop as she hooked the headphones over one of the hand-bars. “Nervous energy,” she admitted with a grimace—an expression that was so incredibly Bree it was hard to imagine anyone could mistake her for Maggie.

  The fitness center was windowless and the door was closed. They weren’t likely to be more private than this for the next few weeks, so he let himself speak to Bree candidly, rather than through the filter of Maggie. “You’ll be fine,” he assured her. “I’ve stood right next to you for years and never known the difference.”

  “Yeah, but not for three weeks straight. Trying to fool everyone. Trying to be her. Doesn’t it feel different this time?” She waved at their surroundings, taking in the entire villa. “This isn’t exactly a stroll down Rodeo Drive.”

  Her words called to mind the first time he’d guarded her. Maggie had been trying to attend a family funeral without being hassled by the press. Candy had tucked herself invisibly into Maggie’s retinue for the funeral while Cross had taken the decoy out to entertain the press on Rodeo Drive.

  He’d felt noble at the time, protecting a grieving family from the paparazzi by taking a lookalike shopping in Beverly Hills, but now he found himself wondering about Bree. If she had been as nervous that day as she was now.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve been wondering all day how many times I was with you when I thought I was with her. You’re that good. It’s disorienting. Especially when I don’t know anything about you.”

  “It’s weird, isn’t it? Having spent all this time together without ever being properly introduced.” She thrust out her hand. “I’m Bree. Bree Davies.”

  “Aaron Cross.”

  Her hand was small in his—and he only realized he was still expecting Maggie’s perfectly moisturized hands when he felt the slight roughness and callouses on Bree’s. Did she work with her hands?

  “I don’t think I ever knew your first name,” she commented, her head tilted inquisitively. “Does everyone call you Cross?”

  “Aaron was my father’s name too,” he explained. “Cross felt more like mine.”

  Why had he told her that? He didn’t talk about his father. Big Aaron. A legend larger than life. A shadow he could never get out of.

  “Well, it’s nice to finally meet you, Cross,” she said—and he realized he was still holding her hand. He dropped it, rocking back on his heels.

  “How long have you been Maggie’s decoy?” he asked, moving past her to inspect the free weights.

  “Not quite three years.”

  He went still. That was the entire time he’d been working for Maggie. He could have been guarding the decoy the entire time. “You’re an actress?”

  “Artist, actually. Or trying to be.” She grimaced—the self-deprecating expression so un-Maggie-like it was almost jarring on the actress’s face.

  “So why…?” Why pretend to be someone she wasn’t? What did she get out of it? Just the chance to play celebrity for a little while?

  Bree shrugged one shoulder, avoiding his gaze. “It’s a job.”

  Her body language was totally different. Less sultry. More unsure. She could be so convincing as the movie star and then a heartbeat later she would be someone else entirely. Even her voice was different, not as high pitched, with the slightest Midwestern twinge of an accent. She could have been from his home town. “How did you learn to do it?” he asked. “To be Maggie.”

  “She taught me. Trained me. It was fascinating, actually. To her it was all about the details. How to hold her head to get the best angles. How to smile. How to laugh. Everything she does is choreographed and it was incredible to see the way she saw herself. How controlled she was, for someone who seems so effortless, you know?” She wrinkled her nose. “Of course it helped that I had teams of stylists to make me look exactly like her. I’ll have to do all that myself here. And sound like her. That’s the hard part. That and keeping it up twenty-four seven.”

  “If you ever need a break, the theatre room and this one are good places to hide out. No windows.”

  “I’m just afraid I’m going to say the wrong thing to the wrong person and ruin everything.”

  “Relax. You’ve got this.” Movement on the tablet she’d been watching caught his attention and he saw a clip of Maggie being interviewed on the screen. “Studying?”

  She made a face. “Psyching myself out is more like it.”

  He studied her face, the tight lines around her mouth, the nervous tension in her eyes. “Why agree to do it if you’re so nervous?”

  She grimaced. “The money. And because I genuinely like Maggie. Her life is an insane zoo, but everyone deserves a dose of normal now and then and if I can help her with that, I will.”

  The answer, instead of enabling him to put her into an easily quantifiable box, only stirred up more questions. Who was she? This woman who pretended to be Maggie? She seemed so open, so matter-of-fact, but she had to be an amazing liar to pull off her job. It was a strange sort of contradiction. “How did you start doing this?”

  “Chance?” She smiled wryly. “I dressed up as the Alien Adventuress for Halloween one year and a friend posted pictures of the party on his Instagram. Next thing I knew Mel had gotten my number and was asking if I was interested in working for the Great Maggie Tate. At first it seemed like this fantastic game—and the first time I did it…it was crazy. Everyone treats you differently when you’re famous.”

  He frowned, vaguely disappointed in spite of himself to hear her sounding like a Hollywood cliché. “So you wanted to be famous?”

  Bree laughed. “God, no. But I got to see people through the lens of fame. I got to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. To see, you know? Life is different as Maggie Tate. You wake up in this completely different reality with Gulfstreams and helicopters and crazy villas.” Her wave seemed to encompass not just the villa, but the entirety of Maggie’s world. “It isn’t about the wealth or the fame—it’s about… the view. About the chance to see how looking through someone else’s eyes could change you. Who wouldn’t want that?”

  Lots of people.

  Most people would have been all too eager to use the movie star to get ahead, but very few would have wanted to understand what her life was really like. He’d seen all too much of that, but Bree…she wasn’t what he’d expected. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. He hadn’t thought he had expectations, but she’d somehow defied them.

  “You’re going to be great tomorrow.”

  “You think?” Her voice was so soft, so vulnerable.

  Somehow he’d drifted back to her until they were separated by only a foot. Alone together in the quiet of the fitness studio, he looked down at her. She seemed so small, so fragile. Cross cleared his throat. “We should both get some sleep.”

  Her gaze shuttered. “Probably a good idea.” She reached for the towel hanging off the treadmill to dab at the sweat above her sports bra and he turned away from the sight. “Cross?” she said softly when he reached to open the door—his own plans for a workout forgotten.

  He turned back. “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.” She smiled, a slight, nervous curve of her lips. “I just needed to feel like me for a minute, you know?”

  He nodded, unsure why those words should make him feel so off-balance. “Good night, Bree.”

  She smiled. “Good night.”

  He exited the fitness studio and climbed the stairs quickly without looking back. Whatever that moment had been, he needed to forget it. He didn’t need the distraction from his goals. No matter how intriguing she was.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  By six o’clock the following evening, Bree was reasonably certain she was a horrible human being.

  On the plus sid
e, she’d forgotten her nerves about being found out. Now she almost wished they would discover her so this churning guilt would go away.

  She’d spent all day with the endlessly patient Dominique—a wedding planner who really ought to be sainted—while Mel and Kaydee helped her explain her “vision” for the ceremony. A vision which changed approximately every ten minutes.

  She’d gushed about sunset weddings and brunch weddings and weddings where the beach was lit by two hundred candles and moonlight. She waxed poetic about an old Hollywood theme, and a basketball theme, and blending them into an old Hollywood/basketball theme to please all their celebrity friends. She’d namedropped shamelessly—Ed Sheeran would be singing, Vera Wang would be designing her dress by hand, and an Oscar-winning director friend was just dying to officiate. But it would be an intimate little affair. Private. Just the two of them. And perhaps two or three hundred friends.

  She’d requested a red carpet of rose petals and a trellis arch woven out of tropical flowers—then promptly turned around and professed her love for all things minimalist. She’d played Maggie at her most dramatic and indecisive—and every time she’d told another lie, she’d felt like a worse person.

  Bree didn’t like lies. She didn’t like the idea of conning all these people. She didn’t like using them. And it didn’t make her feel any better that it hadn’t been her idea, her plan—it just made her feel weak for going along with it.

  Now, back in one of the few rooms where she could be herself, her feet pounded on the treadmill as she tried to outpace her guilt, to run it into exhaustion. And, yes, she was also hoping that Cross would come down here as he had last night because she needed to talk to someone, needed him to tell her that what they were doing was for the greater good. Because right now she just felt slimy.

  And she had to do it all over again tomorrow.

  No one had ever been hurt by the deception before. When she played Maggie on Rodeo Drive, the shop clerks got commissions they wouldn’t have gotten if “Maggie” hadn’t appeared that day, but this…