The Decoy Bride

by Lizzie Shane

  Then Cecil yelped to get his attention, shattering the moment, and Cross’s jaw shifted as he looked away. “I can’t do that here. I have a job to do.” He looked back to her, his gaze stern. “We both do.”

  “I’ll do my job,” she promised, not wilting under that stern gaze, still feeling the aftereffects of the moment that had strung between them. “But you can still be yourself with me. And I’ll be the same with you.” You’re the only one who makes me feel like me, she barely stopped herself from adding.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He shook his head, as if dispelling the last vestiges of temptation. “I think you should go inside.”

  “Does Maggie let you tell her what to do?” He looked at her sharply, his gaze almost angry, and she realized it was the reference to her “self” in third person. They were in the middle of a beach with no one in sight and only the sound of the ocean for company, but God forbid anyone overhear. She rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’m going.”

  She started up the beach, hoping he would call after her, not looking back. She felt as much as heard him fall into step a few feet behind her. Was she being too obedient again?

  She’d wondered that this afternoon, after they got back from their little jet-ski jaunt. If she should have let him whisk her back to the villa without protest. Would Maggie have done that? Bree had fallen back on her own instincts—biddable. Accommodating. But that wasn’t Maggie. Maggie was willful. Strong.

  Maybe she should be a little more like Maggie. Push back more. Play the diva card.

  Have that confidence.

  If she were the great Maggie Tate, he would have kissed her. Maggie would have settled for nothing less than exactly what she wanted. And Bree wanted to kiss him. The feeling had been coming on ever since he’d walked into Maggie’s dressing room back in LA.

  Bree turned when she reached the patio, pausing to dust the sand off her feet so she wouldn’t track it all into the house. They had a battalion of invisible maids who somehow kept the villa spotless without ever being underfoot, but no sense making their jobs harder than they had to be.

  Cross stopped at the edge of the patio as well, though he didn’t bend down to brush the sand off his feet. He simply frowned at her, as if he was trying to figure out some puzzle while Cecil scampered around their ankles.

  Bree studied his face in the low light. “Everything okay?”

  “Mel said something earlier…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Never mind.”

  “What?” Bree asked, suddenly dying of curiosity. What had Mel said? Something about her? About them? Something that might make him want to kiss her? Because now that she’d thought about kissing him, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking it.

  The shadows from the house kept her from seeing his face clearly, so she stepped closer to him, trying to read his expression. “Cross?”

  “It’s nothing.” He shook his head, bending to knock the sand off his feet. “It doesn’t matter.”

  She thought that was all he would say, that it would be the end of it, but then right when she was about to give up and go inside, he spoke.

  “Have you ever had a day where everything you were so sure of turns upside down?”

  “I’m never sure of anything,” she admitted.

  “I’m sure of everything.” He frowned. “I’m building a freaking field house. That’s how sure I was.”

  “A what?”

  He shook his head as he explained. “Sort of an athletic center. At my old high school. In the town where I grew up.”

  Her brow furrowed as she tried to follow, unsure what he was talking about. “That’s a nice thing to do for the town.”

  “I didn’t do it for the town. I did it for my father. I’m building a freaking monument to him.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  Cross laughed softly without humor. “I don’t know anymore. He died when I was five and I only have a few memories of him, but I spent my entire life being told how amazing he was and trying to live up to this icon of manhood. Big Aaron. Pride of Harris. I have been chasing a ghost my entire life and tonight I found out he wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t the personification of everything good. He was just a football player who cheated on his wife and had a kid with someone else. A sister I never knew about.”

  “Whoa,” she whispered. “That must be hard, learning that about someone you idolized.”

  “It’s not that. It’s my mother. It’s the lies. For years, she never told me I had a half-sister. For decades, she knew the truth and she let me worship him. Let me build my life around trying to be like him. Let me think he was some saint. And build a monument to him. I’m so fucking angry. And when I’m not pissed, I feel like a fool.”

  “I’m sorry.” Bree gazed through the darkness at this man, an overachiever who had spent his life competing with a memory. She didn’t know much about that, but she knew about lies. The big ones. The ones that made your entire world feel like it was tilting on its axis. “I moved out to LA because of a lie,” she said before her brain caught up with the words. “I needed someone to believe in me and this guy online told me I was good. That I could make it as an artist. He promised me a show at his gallery, told me he wanted to launch me into the art world. A bright new talent. That’s what he said. Except he didn’t have a gallery. Or a show. Or any of the contacts to launch me anywhere. He’d just lied. And I felt so stupid for believing him. I felt like the foundation I wanted to build my life on had turned out to be made of mist—and that wasn’t even my mother. I can’t imagine what you must be feeling.”

  He looked at her, dark eyes seeming even darker in the low light. “Then why is it I feel like you are the only one who can?”

  Her heart stuttered—and his gaze dropped to her lips.

  He wasn’t going to kiss her. She knew he wasn’t. He was too freaking good. Too freaking noble. Too freaking controlled.

  He always did what he was supposed to do and he was supposed to stay far away from her—but Bree had never been good at doing what she was supposed to do. She hated repression. She hated caution and good sense.

  She wanted real. She wanted truth. She wanted the honest, raw, piercing emotion beneath the surface.

  She wanted to erupt with him.

  He was never going to kiss her.

  So she kissed him.

  *

  He wasn’t expecting it. Wasn’t expecting the distance between them to vanish from one second to the next and for Bree to go up onto her toes, framing his face with her hands, and press her lips to his on a rush of beautiful impulse.

  He wasn’t expecting it, but he got on board fast.

  He closed his arms around her, bending so the discrepancy in their heights was erased. She made a soft, breathless noise against his lips and her arms curled around his neck, arching into him.

  He shouldn’t be kissing her. He knew he shouldn’t be kissing her. He should have pushed her away as soon as he realized her intention, but they were in the shadows, shielded on nearly all sides by the house and the heavy pillars that supported the massive balcony above. It would take a miracle for someone to spot them here.

  At least that’s what he told himself. Because he wasn’t going to stop.

  She’d startled him, but when her lips had settled, soft and warm and firm and a little wild against his, he’d had the sharp, clear thought that he shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d always sensed the impulsiveness in her, this restless wildness, caged inside her Maggie persona. She’d done her job, she’d been good, but she could only restrain herself so long before the fire inside her needed to get out. And for that fire to ignite him…

  He groaned, gathering her against him. He couldn’t straighten all the way, not without lifting her off her feet, but somehow the fact that he was curved over her, his body her shield, felt incredibly natural. Incredibly right. He parted his lips—and she was right there with him, stroking her tongue against his, teasing and tempting, this wild, frantic, butterfly of
a woman.

  She arched her body into his, going up on her tiptoes, stretching into him, the feel of her intoxicating—

  Cecil barked, high and shrill, and Bree startled in his arms, jerking back enough to break the kiss, both of them breathing hard. The dog was at the door to the house, whining to be let in, and Cross stared at Bree’s face, so close to his in the darkness, trying to find some coherent thought.

  “So that happened…” Bree whispered.

  A startled laugh slipped past his lips. It shouldn’t have happened—but he framed her face with his hands, ignoring the dog and all his good sense. For the first time all goddamn day, something felt right. Something felt real.

  “You are so goddamn beautiful.” It was too dark to see her face very well, but he knew the lines of it by heart. Knew her lips would be glistening from his kiss, her eyes—those incredible eyes—looking up at him like she saw right past the face he presented to the world to the truth of him, somehow understanding him without even trying. “Your eyes…” he whispered. “You have the most incredible eyes.”

  Bree went stiff in his arms, her hands suddenly between them, braced on his chest. “What does that mean?”

  “What?” He released her instantly when she pressed against him. His arms suddenly empty, he peered into the heavy shadows of the patio as she put a rocking chair between them.

  “Who were you kissing? Me? Or her?”

  It took him a moment to realize what she was accusing him of, and then irritation flared. “You think I can’t tell the difference?”

  Though he had wondered, earlier, when they were down on the beach, if she really was Maggie. If this was some kind of game she was playing. Her way of seducing him.

  Something of his thoughts must have shown on his face, because she reacted as if she’d read his thoughts. “I’m not her,” she snapped.

  “I know that.”

  But she was already through the door, back inside the house, leaving him wondering what the hell had just happened.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  He’d been kissing Maggie.

  Bree raced up the stairs, flying into the master suite. Only the thought of waking Mel—and having to explain to her why she was slamming doors—kept her from flinging the door shut behind her. She forced herself to close it gently—though she took vicious satisfaction in snicking the deadbolt into place.

  She couldn’t believe the asshole had only kissed her because he wanted to kiss Maggie Tate.

  Talking about her eyes. Her stupid freaking turquoise eyes. Her damn Maggie eyes.

  She stalked over to the open bottle of champagne she’d left chilling in the bucket earlier. The bubbles had likely all gone flat and the ice had all melted, leaving the bottle sitting in a bucket of cold water that dripped all over the carpet as she poured a glass all the way up to the brim—easier to do now that there were no bubbles taking up space.

  How dare he?

  Though, yes, okay, fine, she was the one who had kissed him and he’d merely responded to the all-you-can-kiss buffet she’d laid out for him, but really, did he have to be thinking of another woman? Even if it was another woman she was paid to impersonate.

  She downed a hefty swallow of champagne, choking a bit when the bubbles—more of which remained than she’d anticipated—hit the back of her throat. She coughed, shaking her head—then took another swig, just as large in defiance of the damn bubbles. In defiance of everything.

  The man had ruined a perfectly good kiss.

  A perfectly amazing kiss, if she was honest. Quite possibly the best kiss she could ever recall having. Though, if she was honest, it had been a while since she’d had anything to compare it to.

  She didn’t really date. Which had something to do with the fact that most of the men she met in the art world were either gay or married or both, but it wasn’t entirely due to that.

  She’d dated in high school, and even had a few pretty darn good kisses, even if she was considered something of an oddity in rural Minnesota. Her angsty teenage artiste phase had been indulgently acknowledged by the people of her town, but never really accepted. If she hadn’t also been “pretty” in the classical sense, she probably never would have gotten a date to prom. And she had wanted a date to prom—even if she wanted to buck the system and take down the patriarchy, she still wanted to be accepted. To be wanted. To be loved.

  Three things she seemed to have spent her life singularly failing at.

  She’d never really felt that way in Clement. Accepted. Understood. Her parents, her friends—they loved her, but no one got her. When she’d gone to college, she’d thought that would be it, the moment when people saw the value in her, but that hadn’t quite gone the way she’d thought it would and she’d found herself a college dropout driving her beat-up car across country toward the promise of Venice. The promise of acceptance. The promise of Zander and all his stupid lies.

  She couldn’t believe she’d told Cross about that. But he’d been so open after his own confession, and the words had just popped out.

  Kind of like that impulse kiss. Another in a long line of impulses that hadn’t turned out as planned.

  Her arrival in California hadn’t ended quite how she’d envisioned either, but she had ultimately found what she was looking for in Venice. A sense of community. Of shared purpose. And the promise that if she could just make a name for herself in the art world there, she would finally be accepted for exactly who she was.

  She’d dated occasionally, from time to time over the years, but nothing serious. It was easy to avoid any sort of serious emotional attachment. All she had to say was that she was focusing on her work—which was true, but it wasn’t the whole story.

  If she was entirely honest, she wanted to make something of herself. To prove to all those people who thought she was a little too different, a little too odd to really fit in, that she really did have a place. That she did have worth. And that she was worthy of love.

  Part of her had always thought that when she finally hit it big her love life would simply fall into place. Like the universe would acknowledge that she was enough of a catch to deserve love. She’d be good enough. If she could just make it.

  It had never really surprised her, when her dates didn’t want to turn into boyfriends. The subtext beneath all those perfectly painless breakups had been clear. She was fun, but she wasn’t worth the commitment. Not yet.

  And there was Cross, telling her the same thing all over again. Accepting her kiss—because why not? But seeing Maggie when he looked at her. Maggie and her freaking turquoise eyes.

  Bree downed the rest of the champagne and stormed to the bathroom, yanking open the drawer where the contact lens case was hidden.

  She popped out the lenses, dropping them into the saline-filled cups, blinking rapidly. Her eyes hurt more now than they had when she’d put the lenses in for the first time, raw and scratchy. Tears gathered at the sting, clinging to her lashes, and she glared defiantly into a reflection that still looked entirely too much like Maggie Tate, even with the wrong colored eyes.

  She wanted the hot pink streaks in her hair, the funky pixie haircut, the clothes that felt like hers and not the silky designer bathrobe that probably cost as much as her freaking car.

  This was undoubtedly the world’s stupidest tantrum—the girl who was angry to be trapped in a movie star’s life—but she hadn’t expected the experience to make her feel like the person she was when she wasn’t Maggie Tate was so…worthless.

  She stared into her reflection, the moisture in her eyes—from the contacts, damn it—sliding down her cheeks. This was who she was. The girl looking out of someone else’s eyes, begging to be seen.

  She itched for her camera, itched to be able to show people what she saw, but even if she had it, would she be able to? Or was she, as Olivia Hwang had so casually condemned her, just another beautiful and boring thing?

  *

  He’d screwed up.

  Cross knew it as he tossed
and turned that night—tormented by a hurricane of questions and doubts about his mother…his sister…and Bree. He arrived in the fitness studio at the crack of dawn the next morning, needing to talk to her, needing to explain, but Bree wasn’t there.

  He shouldn’t have let that kiss happen. Shouldn’t have kissed her back. And he sure as hell shouldn’t have said all that about his family and the freaking field house. His only excuse was the cumulative effect of the day, the freaking emotional hangover.

  It was dark. It was intimate. They were together, trapped inside this crazy bubble where the regular rules didn’t apply and he’d forgotten for a second that he had one job—keep her safe and keep his hands to himself. Where had his freaking professionalism gone?

  In the light of day, he couldn’t imagine why he’d wondered, even for a second, if she was really Maggie. Mel hadn’t been trying to give him a message. The two women were so different it was obvious—and Candy was with the real Maggie.

  He should let it go and be grateful that Bree had pulled away when she did, before things could go too far, but it bothered him that she thought he only wanted Maggie Tate when Bree was so much more.

  He knew he should be professional. He wanted to be professional.

  But he also wanted her to know that he hadn’t been kissing Maggie Tate last night. He’d been kissing her.

  Which was probably the last thing he should tell her because it couldn’t happen again. Cross didn’t operate on the happily-ever-after spectrum. Even if the job hadn’t been in the way, he wasn’t looking for another relationship. He wasn’t built that way. His marriage had proven that.

  But Bree was strong. She was smart. If he explained that he couldn’t get emotionally involved, she would understand. They could keep things light. Casual. As long as they were careful and none of it spilled over onto Maggie, what could the harm be?

  The door to the fitness studio opened and Cross came to attention—but it was Mel, not Bree, who poked her head inside.