The Decoy Bride

by Lizzie Shane

  It had to be a scam.

  He didn’t get targeted for many cons—he hadn’t been in the NFL long enough to get a very big target on his back—but he’d seen his fair share and this definitely smelled like that. Though it was pretty amateurish. No fabricated details. No doctored photos. No fake birth certificates with his father’s name on them. Really, it was almost insulting how little effort this woman had gone to.

  It would be so easy to debunk and brush aside.

  Cross called his mother’s house, the ridiculous letter held loosely in one hand.

  “Hello?” she answered.

  “You won’t believe the letter I just got.”

  A long silence greeted the words—so long he glanced at his cell to make sure it hadn’t dropped the call. Then, finally, “A letter?”

  Her voice was thready. Weak. Cross frowned. “Are you all right?”

  “What kind of letter?”

  “It’s a paternity claim. For dad. Some woman in Colorado.”

  “What does she want?”

  “She says she just wants to meet me—her ‘brother’—but I’m sure if I met her there would be a request for money in it somewhere.” Another lingering silence made him frown. “Mom?”

  “I wondered why she was contacting you,” his mother said slowly. “When I saw the return address on the envelope.”

  A high ringing began in his ears and his fingers tightened automatically on the paper in his hands as the implications of his mother’s words penetrated. She’d recognized the name on the envelope. She knew the name on the envelope. Rachel Leigh Persopoulos.

  Holy shit.

  “It’s true.”

  His mother said nothing—she didn’t deny it.

  “You knew.” Shock shuddered through him, hard and fast. “You knew about her.”

  “We kept it quiet,” his mother admitted softly.

  “So quiet you never told me I have a sister? How old is she? Why didn’t you—” He broke off, too many questions crowding for space.

  “I never meant to keep it from you—”

  “But you did. That’s exactly what you did.”

  “You have to understand—”

  He cut her off with the only question that mattered. “How long have you known?”

  Silence stretched and he knew the answer was going to be bad. “Since she was born,” she finally admitted—and Cross didn’t need to hear anything else.

  “I have to go.”

  “Aaron, you have to understand—”

  “Not right now I don’t.”

  He’d never hung up on his mother in his life. Never snapped at her. But he knew if he stayed on the phone another minute he was going to say something he would regret.

  She’d lied. For decades. His father had been dead for twenty-five years. She’d known. She’d known he had a sister. But it wasn’t only that. She’d known all along that the legend of his father was a lie.

  The legend Cross had spent his life chasing.

  All of it a lie.

  He stalked out of the bedroom without any idea where he was going, instinct driving him toward the beach. Sunset splashed across the water, painting everything in vibrant shades of pink and orange. It was gorgeous. Breathtaking. And he couldn’t see it. His feet sank into the sand and all he could see were the lies.

  Thirty years of chasing a ghost. Thirty years of always feeling like he had to do more, as if nothing he could do could ever live up—and it was bullshit. All of it.

  Had his grandparents known? They’d only passed on in the last few years, until then living in Harris, feeding the myth. How many people had known the truth? How many people had hidden this from him?

  He’d spent his entire childhood trying to live up to the legend of Big Aaron—not only was his father the best football player who would ever come out of Harris, Iowa, he was the best man. The best father—though Cross barely remembered him. The best friend—though few who claimed so had actually known him. The best husband—though apparently he’d cheated on the love of his life.

  Big Aaron. The Saint of Harris.

  When Aaron Cross Senior made it to the NFL, the entire town had celebrated as if they’d won the Superbowl. When Aaron Cross Junior got drafted, the reaction was well, what do you expect from Big Aaron’s kid? He’s got the genes. As if it was entirely genetic. As if it was expected.

  Coaches had all wanted him to play his father’s position, to chase all his father’s state records, but he’d been determined not to be a wide receiver, but a defensive back—the one chasing the wide receivers down. Always chasing that fucking ghost.

  He’d been to the NFL. Played two years longer than his father had—though whenever the stats were brought up there was always an asterisk on his father’s NFL career. What he would have accomplished if he’d lived. It wasn’t enough to compare Cross to what his father had done, he had to spend his entire life being compared to who his father would have been.

  Even if the people doing the comparing had no fucking idea.

  The legacy had been a legend. Due in large part to his mother. She’d told the stories. She’d kept the legend alive. She’d played her part as the grieving widow who never dated again because no man could ever compare to Big Aaron.

  And all the time she’d been hiding the fact that he had cheated. That he had another child no one ever spoke of.

  Rachel.

  Who was she? What did she want? Cross hadn’t given the letter much thought when he first read it. He’d been so certain it was ridiculous. So sure it was a hoax. But now…

  He had a sister.

  He closed his eyes, centering himself, breathing deep. Instinctively, he began going through the motions of the kata Candy had taught him. After a few minutes, he toed off his shoes and began moving faster, fighting invisible foes until his skin began to heat and sweat began to itch along his spine. He paused only long enough to strip off his shirt, tossing it on top of his shoes, and continued to move, his thoughts racing as his body moved.

  What did she look like? What was she like? Why hadn’t his mother told him?

  His cell phone pinged a warning, letting him know when the wedding planner left the villa, tripping the security sensors, but Cross didn’t stop moving even as he checked the screen, his breathing slow and even as his feet slid through the sand.

  The sun had set in spectacular style and now the moonlight blanketed the beach in calm. A calm he couldn’t feel, though he made sure his face revealed nothing when, fifteen minutes later, his phone pinged again and Mel started down the beach toward him.

  “It worked,” she called out when she was still ten feet away. “The first pictures are on the web.”

  Cross stopped moving, turning to face the manager. She was barefoot, having taken off her heels at the edge of the patio, but thanks to the slope of the beach he was still looking up at her. “Mission accomplished,” he said, hoping the conversation would end there.

  It didn’t.

  “A couple outlets have already reached out for comment on the photos.”

  “Oh?”

  “Mm-hmm.” She nodded, but she wasn’t smiling. “You know the first thing they asked? Not why is Maggie on the island or is this for a movie or even is that where the wedding is going to be. Can you guess?” He figured the question was rhetorical and waited her out. She didn’t make him wait long, her voice snapping sharply in the dark. “Who’s the guy? That’s what they all want to know.” She took another step closer, until he could see her eyes in the dark, and the irritation in them. “That isn’t the narrative we want to sell, Cross. You’re supposed to be invisible. I’m spinning it the best I can, but this—”

  She held up her tablet, showing him a photo of him and “Maggie.” He had his hand on her back, his body curved protectively around hers, and they were looking at one another…

  “This is entirely too intimate, Mr. Cross.”

  In the photo, they were standing at the bar. By the look on her face, it must have
been taken right before he ushered her back to the jet-ski. Cross frowned at the photo—though not for the reason Mel wanted him to.

  Irrational anger rose up at the memory of him rushing Bree down the beach, his hand on her back.

  He’d overreacted.

  He’d been too on edge. Things had felt…fuck, they’d felt personal today. And that had never happened to him on a job before.

  Mel wasn’t wrong. He hadn’t done his job well. He hadn’t handled Maggie—or Bree—well. He couldn’t even keep straight in his head how he was supposed to be thinking of her.

  “Look,” Mel said when he didn’t answer. “I know, all right? I understand that life with Maggie can be intoxicating. She’s a great actress and she has this aura about her that affects everyone around her. But I need to know that you won’t be sucked in, Cross.”

  He frowned, trying to read between the lines of the warning, unsure he understood exactly what she seemed to be trying to tell him with her eyes. She’d said Maggie had an aura. Maggie, not Bree. Life with Maggie was intoxicating. “I won’t,” he promised. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Good.” Mel opened her mouth, as if she would say more, but closed it after a moment with a nod. “Good,” she repeated. “Good night, Cross.”

  She turned back up the beach and Cross frowned after her, playing her words over in his mind, trying to figure out what she’d been trying to tell him.

  Why say life with Maggie? Was that just because someone could overhear them down on the beach? Or was there more to it? Had she been trying to send him a message? A hint of some kind?

  Had they pulled some kind of double switch?

  She was Maggie’s most trusted handler, the one who knew her best. But he was here with Bree. Wasn’t he?

  He’d never actually seen them in the same place at the same time. The only reason he knew there was a decoy was because he’d been told.

  There were differences though. The way she smiled. And her cup size, for one. The woman who ran on the treadmill was nowhere near as filled out up top as the star of the silver screen. But what if that was just padding and movie magic? Maggie Tate had never done a topless scene that he knew of.

  What if Bree was who Maggie was when she didn’t have to play the great Maggie Tate? Or even a character Maggie was playing, a persona she was trying out as she got ready for a role? He’d heard of actors doing stranger things.

  Was this entire trip a ruse?

  But why? Why go to all that trouble?

  He’d never seen Maggie with Demarco either, not even in the tabloids. It was only their names that had been linked. Was the wedding a sham too?

  Cross shook away the thought. He was seeing lies everywhere now. Making himself crazy. This entire day had him off balance.

  He turned back toward the ocean, breathing in and out with the waves, centering himself—

  And his phone buzzed in his back pocket, alerting him that someone had left the villa.

  The hairs raised on the back of his neck and he knew who he was going to see even before he pulled out his phone and checked the camera that had been activated by the motion sensors.

  Bree walked down the beach, like a freaking siren on her way to sing him to his doom. Or Maggie. Fuck, he didn’t know anymore.

  He bent and grabbed the shirt he’d tossed into the sand earlier, tugging it over his head before he turned to face her.

  The great Maggie Tate. Outlined in moonlight.

  He needed to stop meeting her in places like this.

  Balconies. Beaches. Moonlight and waves on the shore. It was like the setting had been designed to get his brain thinking the wrong damn thing—which was probably exactly what the resort had designed it for, but he was the bodyguard not the lover. As Mel had just reminded him.

  Even if Bree was Maggie. Either way, she was off limits.

  “You should go inside,” he called out when she was within earshot, trying to force conviction into the words—but she kept walking, and for the third time that day, he had the disorienting feeling that he wasn’t in control.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Bree’s feet sank into the sand as she descended the slope of the beach, making her steps feel unsteady even though she’d only had a single glass of champagne in her suite. The resort had sent over a bottle of Maggie’s favorite brand with dinner and Mel had grudgingly agreed that it would be an insult to their hosts not to open it, though she’d sternly cautioned Bree against overindulging—lest her Maggie mask slip.

  She’d allowed herself one glass, the bubbles fizzing deliciously down her throat as she stood just inside the balcony doors where no one could see her and watched Cross moving like a ghost in the moonlight below.

  One glass of champagne was no excuse for the way she felt—drawn to him by instinct more than thought, but she could no more have stayed away from something that beautiful than she could have excised the piece of her soul that made her an artist.

  God, she’d missed her camera. It wouldn’t have been able to capture the motion, just allude to it, but not having the weight of it in her hands, lifting it to her eye, losing herself through the lens—it felt like she was missing a limb.

  She was losing herself inside the box of Maggie’s life and if she’d just been able to capture that shot maybe it would have satisfied the restlessness in her—but her camera was in LA. And Cross was here. So she made her way down the beach to see if he could make her feel like herself again. These last few days he’d been the only one who could.

  She’d had her lines planned out—composed in champagne courage. Fancy meeting you here. She’d pretend she was bumping into him. That she hadn’t been watching him from above. We really need to stop meeting like this. Like it was fate. And not just two restless people trapped in a small space. Trapped in a small life that seemed to be closing in around her.

  But when she got down to the beach, his first words were to shoo her away and she lost all desire to play flirtatious games.

  Cecil Two had escaped the house with her and scrambled over the sand as quickly as his short legs would allow, his tail wagging frantically as he rushed Cross with a little yip of excitement. Cross knelt to greet the dog, dusting the sand off Cecil’s silky ears where they had dragged along the ground. The spaniel gazed adoringly up at Cross and Bree felt an irrational surge of jealousy—and wasn’t even sure which one of them she was jealous of.

  “I think he likes you more than me,” she said. “Not that his affection for me sets the bar very high.”

  “He just wants attention,” Cross said as he continued to lavish affection on the dog. “Don’t you, Cecil?”

  As if in response, the dog flung himself onto his back, splaying all four legs and revealing his belly in a wildly undignified display—and Bree’s lips twitched helplessly at the sight. He really was an adorable little attention whore.

  Cross flicked a look at her that she couldn’t read in the darkness. “Mel just finished telling me to keep my distance from you. Apparently the press is getting the wrong idea.”

  “Me too,” she said, then stammered to clarify when she realized it sounded like she was getting the wrong idea too, “I mean, Mel talked to me. About the pictures.”

  He nodded, straightening—much to Cecil’s dismay. “You should go inside.” He glanced up the beach, toward the brush that made it feel so secluded, blocking them from the rest of the VIP side of the resort. He met her gaze. “It isn’t safe out here.”

  Did he mean because the paparazzi were coming? Because anyone could see them? Or that it wasn’t safe for the two of them to be alone together? Because he was as tempted as she was to break the rules?

  Then he looked away and she realized what a reach that was. She had no indication that he felt anything for her other than professional obligation. Yes, he was perfectly nice to her when they bumped into one another in the fitness studio and, yes, he was incredibly diligent in his protection of her person, but that didn’t mean he felt any of the same siz
zling awareness beneath his skin that she felt beneath hers.

  Their relationship was professional. She could do professional.

  “I wanted to thank you for this afternoon,” she said. “I wasn’t scared at all.”

  “You didn’t know there was a gun in play.”

  She shook her head. “I knew you would protect me.” He still wasn’t looking at her, scanning the beach—once again in his default bodyguard mode, hyperaware of his surroundings and aware of her only in that she was the center of the sphere he cast. She didn’t know why she said it—maybe because in that moment she would have given anything for him to look at her, but she blurted, “You’re kind of hot when you’re in glorious protector mode. You know that?” Completely ruining her short-lived attempt at professionalism.

  He looked at her then—a victory in itself, until he murmured, “You should go inside.”

  “I know. It isn’t safe.” She studied his face in the low light. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a little too security conscious?”

  “It’s my job.”

  What if I don’t want to be your job? “What are you like when you aren’t on the job?”

  His jaw hardened at the question. “I’m always on the job.”

  And with those words, the truth that she hadn’t been aware of woke in her like a sunrise, the reason behind the instinct that had driven her to seek him out tonight suddenly as clear and bright as the moon above them.

  She wanted to see this man when he let loose. She wanted to show him how to unwind. To be his fun. His ease. His haven. She wanted to grab his hand and drag him into the silly parts of life, laughing all the way. He pulled at her. But all she could say was a soft, “You could unwind with me…”

  He met her eyes again and she felt temptation pull tight between them, that cord she’d felt between them growing more tangible, taut and breathless. He wanted her. The knowledge sent shivers down her arms and she caught a ragged breath, feeling like her breasts were swelling and pressing against her bra, like she was becoming more desirable the longer he held her gaze.