The Decoy Bride

by Lizzie Shane

  “I don’t know. That’d definitely be better.” He studied her for a moment. “We have a lot in common, you and I.”

  She arched a brow. “And here I was just thinking how different we are.”

  He didn’t see her when he looked at her. He saw perfect, polished Maggie or he wouldn’t be saying that. He wouldn’t be so interested.

  “You’re from the Midwest, right?” he asked.

  “Minnesota,” she acknowledged. “A small town where I never really fit in.” Because I was never good at being what people wanted me to be. Because I’m not “normal” enough to date the hot jocks. She needed him to know she wasn’t anything like Maggie.

  “Me too.”

  Bree arched a wry brow. “You didn’t fit in?” she asked, not bothering to hide her skepticism.

  “Small town.”

  “Yeah, I have a feeling our experiences were pretty different. I wasn’t the football star.”

  He met her gaze directly, mirroring her droll eyebrow lift. “You think my life was perfect just because I played ball?”

  She flushed, ashamed by the assumption. She had thought that. She’d put him in the hot-jock-with-a-perfect-life box the second she met him and had ignored any information about him that didn’t feed into that stereotype—because it was easier to think of him that way than to acknowledge he might be real. He was already sexy enough. If he was sexy and real, how was she supposed to resist that?

  When he’d told her that stuff about his father, she’d ambush-kissed him. What would she do if he started talking about his childhood?

  “I shouldn’t have assumed. I always seem to say the wrong thing. That stuff about your mom—”

  “That wasn’t you. That was me. You didn’t say anything wrong. I just—” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I don’t like not knowing things. It’s been driving me crazy not knowing whether it was you or Maggie I’ve been guarding all these years and that was nothing. This…”

  “Isn’t it better to know the truth now?” she murmured. “To know who your father really was? He had feet of clay, sure, but that also means he was real, not some fantasy that someone dreamed up. Isn’t that better?”

  “But how do I know which parts were real and which were bullshit?”

  She grimaced. That was the tricky part about lies. They made you question everything you’d ever believed to be true. “Do you remember him at all?”

  Cross grimaced. “Only the memories that people tell you about—half my memories are stories. Remember how Big Aaron used to carry you around on his shoulders after the games? Remember how Big Aaron taught you how to throw your first football? Things like that. Things I’m not sure if I remember or if I’ve just been told so many times I built the memory from the stories. None of it feels real. I was five. I remember my mom shaking, crying in the bathroom after the funeral when she thought I couldn’t see her. That felt real. Because it scared the shit out of me. I’d never seen her shake like that. Like she was breaking apart.”

  “It was just the two of you after that?”

  “My grandparents helped some. We moved back to Iowa—he’d been playing for the Broncos and I have vague memories of a big house with all the rooms done in white and a pool, but after he died, yeah, it was just us. Well, us and the ghost. The legend of Big Aaron. She never dated again, because no man could compete with the myth of my father—and now I find out she’s been lying to me for twenty-five years about who he was.”

  “Are you sure that’s what happened?”

  “She admitted it. After my half-sister sent me a letter asking to meet me, my mother admitted it was true. That she’d known.”

  Bitterness was tight in his voice and Bree didn’t know what to do to ease it. “Have you reached out to your sister?” she asked instead.

  “Not yet. She left her phone number, but I haven’t…What would I even say to her after all this time?”

  “Hello? Nice to meet you?”

  He grimaced and shook his head, clearly not ready to go there yet. “I just need to focus on this. On getting through this job. And on not murdering Mayor Mike when he won’t stop nagging me about the damn field house.”

  Bree tried not to take offense that the job with her was something he needed to get through. “That’s the dedication your mother didn’t want to go to? The field house you’re giving the town?”

  “My father’s field house. Hell, I’m not sure I want to go to the dedication anymore.”

  “Yes, you do. You built it. You’re giving it to the town. Not your father. The way you feel about him may be changing but you’re still doing something good. You accomplished that. Wouldn’t you regret it if you didn’t see it through?”

  Cross studied her, frowning, and she was certain she’d said the wrong thing again, crossed some line. Then he said, “How do you do that?”

  She swallowed at the intensity in his gaze. “Do what?”

  “See right through the bullshit to the heart of things?”

  “It’s easier to see from the outside—when you’re not in it emotionally.”

  “I don’t think that’s it. You’re a remarkably intuitive person—has anyone ever told you that? I bet you’d be amazing at two truths and a lie.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a game—and a great way of getting to know one another and testing how well you’re able to read someone. Each person takes a turn telling the other three things about themselves—two of which are true, and one of which is a lie. Then the other person has to figure out which is which.”

  She shook her head, already feeling like Cross saw too much of her. “I don’t really like tests.”

  “It’s not a test. It’s a game. And you’d be great at it.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.”

  “You need to have more confidence in yourself.”

  “Truth. You’re good at this game.”

  He chuckled. “That isn’t how it works.”

  “Two truths and a lie?” She pretended to think it over before holding up a single finger, “I’m being paid a ridiculous sum of money to sit around and do nothing on a tropical island and I can’t even do that without getting caught kissing the wrong guy.”

  Cross grinned, shaking his head. “That doesn’t count. Besides, maybe I’m just irresistible.”

  He was that, but she grabbed a pillow and chucked it at his cocky face. He caught it, laughing, his dark eyes freaking twinkling in a way that was wholly unfair as he flicked it aside. “Want me to go first?” he asked.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to play at all, wasn’t sure it was a good idea to keep getting to know Cross because the more she did, the more he started to feel right to her in a way she knew he shouldn’t. But part of her also really wanted to play—the part that threw caution to the wind and ran headfirst into anything that made her heart race—and that part always won.

  “Yes.” She waved a hand at him. “Go.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Two truths and a lie. He didn’t know why he’d thought of it. He hadn’t played in years, but Cross was oddly excited about playing with Bree. He’d already told her more about himself than he ever confided to most people in his life, he realized as he ran through the options of which truths he could use.

  Maybe he’d start with an easy one. Something she already knew. He met her eyes and held up a single finger. “I grew up in a small town in Iowa where my father was worshiped as the local deity because he was the first person in Harris to ever make it big, so I spent the first twenty-six years of my life being compared to him and failing to live up to the legacy of Big Aaron Cross.”

  She frowned—as if trying to see if there was some shred of a lie mixed in with the truth as he raised a second finger and continued. “Everyone hunted where I grew up. I killed my first deer when I was seven and went on to compete in sharpshooter competitions starting when I was twelve—and I won all but two.”

  Her brow furrowed further as she concentrated and he li
fted a third finger. “I retired from football when I was twenty-six after I tore my ACL in the last game before the playoffs.” She sucked in a breath—as if the idea of him in pain pained her. And something about the look in her eyes made him add one extra truth. The one he’d never told anyone. “But I could have come back. The doctors told me I could make a full recovery, but I didn’t want to. I used that injury as my get out of jail free card.” He spread his hands wide. “So? Which lie did I tell?”

  She shook her head. “That’s easy. You couldn’t have come back. If you could have, you would have. You don’t know how to give up.”

  She was wrong, but not about him. Somehow she was right about him and wrong about the lie. “Actually, I never fired a gun until I was recruited to work at Elite Protection.”

  The certainty fell off her face. “Seriously?”

  He shrugged, as if it was nothing. As if giving up his entire football career had been a breeze. “Everyone thought I would do whatever it took to come back—and I did the rehab. But when it came time to play again, to run the combine and show my coaches that I was back up speed, I threw my tryout. I pretended my knee was hurting and I’d lost a step. And everyone was so sympathetic, so understanding. They’d all seen athletes try to come back and not have it—and the fact was I might not have had it even if I had given it my all, sometimes people just don’t come back, but I didn’t try. I didn’t want to.”

  She blinked, studying him. “How is that possible? You seem so…driven.”

  “I know.” He grinned. “That was why no one suspected I was faking. They couldn’t imagine I wouldn’t kill myself to win.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  He shrugged, but he wasn’t dismissing the question, just rolling his shoulders, trying to unknot the tension that had taken up residence there. “A lot of reasons. I’d spent my entire career—from the time I first started showing my speed in high school, all the way through college and into the pros—knowing that one bad hit could end it all. I’d had injuries—more injuries than I could count—but none of those moments where you’re carted off the field on a stretcher and all your teammates are down on their knees with their helmets off praying you’ll be able to walk again, let alone play—and thanking God that it isn’t them. It’s this ghost that hangs over you—the knowledge that it can all be gone in a blink, everything you’ve worked for your entire life vanishing like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And when it finally happened, after the pain and the shock, I realized there was something else underneath it—relief. The other shoe had finally dropped. I didn’t have to wait for it anymore. Everyone rallied around me during the months in recovery and rehab—so determined to keep my spirits up, telling me that I could do it, I could get my life back—and I realized I wasn’t sure I wanted it back.”

  “Why not?” she asked, hanging on his words.

  “I’d been told my entire life that I owed it to myself to use my talent. That I owed it to my father’s memory, to my town, to my mother, to my coaches. I’d bought into the idea that my life had one path—football. I dropped out of college for the draft—because of course I would. Nothing mattered more than playing in the NFL. But when my ACL was shredded, I started seriously thinking about what I would do if I couldn’t play ball anymore. And I had no fucking idea, but it sounded amazing.” He grimaced. “Sorry. Language.”

  “I don’t care if you swear. I’ve heard the words before.”

  “My mom hates it when I swear.” At the thought of his mother—of the Lie—his smile dimmed. “I’d always been told who I was—Little Aaron. Big Aaron’s kid. Big Aaron’s legacy. But when I got injured, for the first time I had to think about who I would be if that wasn’t who I was anymore. It was…freeing.”

  “Do you ever regret it? Not going back?”

  “Sometimes.” He couldn’t believe he’d admitted that to her, but Bree somehow knew exactly which questions to ask to make him want to tell her everything. “I wish I could say no, that I never looked back, but that’s bullshit.” He grimaced, propping his forearms on his knees. “I don’t really watch football anymore. Every time I do, I see a play and I think I can do it better. Which might be bullshit. I think I could have come back. That I could have been just as fast, just as lethal on the field, but I’ll never know for sure and sometimes that competitive instinct rises up and I want to prove that I can. Still, that injury, it was like a giant flashing neon exit sign had popped up in my life and if I didn’t take it I might never get another chance.” He shook his head, looking up and meeting her eyes. “I’ve never admitted that to anyone.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Really?”

  “Not even Tank—Julian Tancreado. My friend who got me the job at EP.” He snorted. “Hell, not even my mother. She would not have understood.”

  “Wow.” A flush rose to her cheeks and her eyes shuttered.

  She was such a contradiction—impulsive and shy by turns, bold and hesitant, and just so real. There was something about her, something about this place. He wanted to know everything about her.

  “Your turn.”

  *

  Oh shit.

  He’d told her something real. And now she felt like she owed him the same, but the idea of revealing herself to this man was suddenly terrifying. “I…”

  “Two truths and a lie,” he reminded her. “Anything you want.”

  She opened her mouth, probably looking like a gaping fish, but the pressure to open up to him was making her choke. Why did they have to get to know one another anyway? But he’d been so honest, she felt like he deserved nothing less from her—even if the idea of exposing her truth to this man scared her shitless. She wasn’t usually afraid to be herself—she was who she was and the rest of the world could take it or leave it—but something about the fact that it was him—his approval mattered. Even if she didn’t want it to. Even if she told herself he was just some dumb jock.

  He was so much more than that. Somewhere in the last few days he’d started to matter in a way that made her incredibly nervous.

  Two truths and a lie.

  She swallowed and held up a single finger. “I dropped out of college and moved to Venice to try to make it as an artist when I was nineteen—and I’ve been struggling ever since.” That was true enough. She held up a second finger, reaching for something he wouldn’t believe. “I was a cheerleader in high school.” His eyebrows flew up, but he didn’t interrupt. “Full on pom-poms and ponytails. And I was good. High kicks, splits, you name it.” Cross grinned, clearly trying to restrain his reaction as Bree flicked up a third finger and tried to come up with a lie—somehow that was much harder than the truths had been. What was she supposed to lie about? “I’m an amazing painter. I win competitions—”

  “You already told me you don’t paint.”

  She grimaced. Okay, yeah, she had said that. So she needed a better lie. “Okay…my best friend thinks I date too much and I should swear off men for the foreseeable future.” At his look, she narrowed her eyes. “You told me one you’d already told me too.”

  “But you didn’t know if all the details were true. You realize you kind of already gave away which one of those was a lie?”

  “Fine.” She glared at him, bracing for his follow-up questions. She shouldn’t have asked so many; she’d opened the door for him to do the same. Now she wished she could retract all her curiosity and pretend it had never happened.

  “You were really a cheerleader?”

  “Just freshman year,” she admitted. “My mom really wanted me to fit in—and I did. It took me a while to realize that playing the part of the popular girl made me feel like I was putting on a show.” She grimaced. “And here I am again. Putting on a show as the popular girl.”

  “Or helping her, depending on how you look at it. What kind of artist are you?” he asked and she tried not to squirm.

  “Photography and mixed media.”

  “But no painting.”

  “No.” She scrunched her n
ose. “I’m not a painter.”

  He considered her across the distance between them. “There’s a story there.”

  How did he know that? How did he see through her so easily? She almost said let’s talk about how bangable I told my BFF you are instead—but that felt like cowardice. He’d told her about this huge turning point moment in his life—but he’d come out the other side stronger. Proud of who he was. She…well. She hadn’t.

  Bree swallowed. “Yeah. There’s a story.”

  How did she get here? Sitting in the theatre room telling him the defining stories of her life? How did this man, this typical jock fratboy man, slip so easily past years of defenses?

  But then she met his eyes—burnt umber and amber and so damn accepting, as if there was nothing she could say that would make him turn away from her, and suddenly she was talking.

  “My parents are not artistic.” She grimaced—talk about an understatement. “They insisted that if they were going to pay for school, I was going to get a practical, bankable degree. My mom was pushing for accounting, while my father was convinced I would make an excellent teacher—and both of them thought it was adorable when I talked about my art, as long as I knew that couldn’t be my career. Elementary school art teacher was about as close as we ever got to agreeing on my future.”

  Cross nodded, but didn’t speak, his gaze on her steady and dark.

  “I was undeclared, but there were a few art classes for non-majors and I took all of them my freshman year, telling my parents I needed the elective requirements anyway. There was this one…a beginning painting for non-majors class. It was everything.” She sighed, the memory of how she’d felt all those years ago incredibly vivid. “The professor was this energetic, charismatic man who wore paint-splattered Sketchers and jeans and told us to call him Billy and talked about how everyone had art in their soul. I worshipped him.” She swallowed thickly. “His class was the first time I really thought about trying to be an artist for real. He was so encouraging. I remember this group project at the end of freshman year where he told me he could tell I really loved to paint, that he could see my passion—and I thought that meant I was talented. I actually thought he was telling me to become an artist. Then sophomore year came.”