The Decoy Bride

by Lizzie Shane

  That was the illusion of this place. That he knew her. That what they were doing here would matter when they got home. But the truth was, for all this concentrated time together, it was like one of those reality shows Bree had talked about. A reality distortion filter where everything seemed more important than it was.

  When they got back to the real world, his perspective would be back and the need to chase her down and make sure she knew he saw her and not Maggie wouldn’t seem quite so urgent. Making sure everything was okay between them wouldn’t feel like the most important thing in his life.

  He just needed space and the reality of their day to day lives. Then he wouldn’t need her like this.

  *

  “Andi? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here. Are you okay?”

  Bree sank down onto the vanity stool, staring blindly into the shower stall where steam was starting to rise from the water she’d cranked up to drown out the call. “I’m fine,” she insisted, though she still felt raw from the conversation with Cross downstairs. “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Nothing, I just…Ty was telling me I was being ridiculous, but I saw this picture today on the cover of a tabloid of you and Cross and I just…I don’t know. I wanted to call. You looked really…involved.”

  “I slept with him,” she blurted out, the admission coming out of its own volition, but it felt so damn good to have someone she could talk to she couldn’t regret the words, even when Andi groaned.

  “Oh honey.”

  “I know. I know it was stupid. We come from totally different worlds and he’s completely out of my league, but there’s this thing between us, this connection, and I couldn’t not do it.”

  Andi huffed. “Okay first off, that thing about him being out of your league is bullshit—”

  “You were the one who was all worried because he was a hot shot NLF star!”

  “Because they’re conditioned to be violent and have brain injuries! Not because he was too good for you. If anyone is too good for anyone—”

  “It’s the failed artist who’s never done anything with her life?”

  “Stop it. You’re amazing,” Andi snapped. “I would have fallen apart without you after my divorce. You put me back on my feet and let me heal and never stopped looking out for me. He should be so lucky as to have someone like you.”

  “He doesn’t want someone like me.” She grimaced, admitting, “He doesn’t think he wants anyone.”

  She could hear Andi’s frown. “What does that mean?”

  Bree closed her eyes, trying to find the words to fit the fears that had been whispering in the back of her head all morning. “He doesn’t think he’s capable of love. He’s…competitive. He doesn’t like being vulnerable or feeling out of control…”

  Andi groaned. “And there’s no less controlled feeling than loving someone.”

  “He won’t let himself,” Bree said, the words settling, hard and true, against her sternum. “He always has to be the best—and if it comes down to a choice between me and his job, he will always take the job. He will always want success more than he wants me.” And I’ve fallen in love with him.

  She couldn’t say the last words, but she knew Andi heard them when her next words were, “Is there anything I can do?”

  “You’re already doing it,” Bree murmured. It felt good to talk to someone, even if there was no solution. “I guess I don’t know whether I should retreat now or ride it out until it dies on its own.”

  “I know what I would do,” Andi said, sympathy rich in her voice. “But then, I was always the one who ran away. You were the brave one.”

  “Was I?” she asked weakly.

  “Honey. You moved to LA when you were nineteen with pennies in your pocket because you knew you were meant to be an artist. That’s brave.”

  “Or foolish.”

  “It takes a lot of bravery to be foolish. You should tell that to your Cross.”

  “He isn’t my Cross.”

  But he was her Aaron.

  Andi didn’t push it, that wasn’t her style, and they got off the phone a few minutes later with Bree feeling lighter, but no closer to knowing what she wanted to do.

  She turned off the water, her eyes itching from the steam, and she reached in the drawer for the contact case. She plucked out the contacts, dropping them into the saline and rubbing her eyelids at the relief.

  Cross wanted to see her eyes. She still hadn’t shown him their natural color, often forgetting to take the contacts out and sleeping in the uncomfortable things until she woke up with her eyes burning. Not that she’d been intentionally avoiding showing him her natural eye color, just that they had a tendency to get carried away and removing her contacts became a low priority.

  Well. That. And she’d been avoiding showing him her natural eye color.

  Her eyes weren’t special, and part of her worried that as soon as he saw them he’d realize she wasn’t special either.

  But she could be brave.

  Bree strode quickly out of the steam-filled bathroom before she could change her mind, through the master bedroom and onto the landing beyond. “Cross?”

  She didn’t know what she was going to say to him when she found him. She couldn’t even remember what she’d said to him when they’d argued in the fitness studio, only those awful words: Don’t get your hopes up.

  Was that what she was doing? Getting her hopes up? Setting herself up for failure?

  She ought to be used to it by now.

  He wasn’t in the outdoor living room or the pool deck. The fitness studio and the theatre room were both empty—and she was almost relieved because she would have had to be completely herself in either of those rooms and she wasn’t sure she was ready for that. He wasn’t on the beach or in any of the villa’s public areas. Starting to wonder if he’d gone off on some security mission as he’d gotten in the habit of doing since the paparazzi arrived on the island, she headed upstairs to try one last place.

  The door to his room was cracked open. She tapped on it and it swung soundlessly inward, revealing Cross sitting at the desk, his large body hunched forward over his laptop. He rocked back in his chair when the door opened, watching her, not smiling in greeting, waiting for her to set the tone—and she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to say—so she went on instinct.

  Crossing the room quickly, before she could lose her nerve, she climbed onto his lap, facing him, wedging her knees beside his hips in the rolling desk chair. “I’m sorry,” she said—not even sure what she was apologizing for, just knowing that she needed to make it right. Whatever it was, this thing between them that was out of balance, she needed to balance it. She needed to fix it. She needed him. No matter how dangerous that was to her heart.

  She followed the words with a kiss, framing his face with her hands, feeling his stubble against her palms as his arms closed around her—but the action was more automatic than impassioned and he was barely kissing her back.

  When she broke the kiss, he was frowning, his eyes on his hands on her waist. “I’m not sure this is a good—”

  No. She cut him off before he could get the words out, blocking them with another kiss, more aggressive this time, with tongue and arching her body against his and grinding closer, trying to make him lose his mind so he would forget the brush-off words she knew instinctively he’d been about to say. If she could just kiss him long enough, he would forget the distance he was trying to put between them. Their natural chemistry would kick in and he would devour her. If she could just kiss him long enough…

  But he set her away, murmuring, “Sweetheart…” and gazing into her eyes, his own so sympathetic it made her chest ache—

  He blinked, his gaze sharpening, hands coming up suddenly to frame her face as his spine straightened. He whispered, “Your eyes,” and the vise in her chest squeezed even tighter as he studied them without the contacts, his expression slowly softening. “They’re beautiful,” he breathed. “
You’re beautiful.”

  The vise didn’t loosen, if possible it tightened even more until she couldn’t breathe at all as she held his gaze.

  She felt like she was balancing on a high wire and any direction she stepped she could go plummeting back to earth—and she wanted to stay up in the heavens a little while longer. Even if at some point she would have to fall back to reality. She wanted to live in this moment when he was looking at her like she mattered. Like she was everything. Like she, Bree, was beautiful.

  He kissed her, his lips gentle and sweet against hers, and she closed her eyes against the flood of feeling pressing up in her chest. She held his shoulders for balance as the world seem to tilt slowly off its axis. His mouth moved over hers, more intent now, drawing her into the depths of him and she went willingly, boneless and helpless to resist him. She’d never be able to resist him. How could she want to?

  He lifted her, carrying her to the bed without breaking the kiss. He laid her on her back on the coverlet and she sank into the softness of the comforter as his weight pressed her down. On and on he kissed her and she never wanted this moment to end, scared of the reality that would intrude when it did. But when he lifted his head, it wasn’t to pull away. He brushed stray tendrils of hair away from her face, meeting her eyes, and shaking his head once—that movement as if in answer to some internal question she couldn’t interpret—and then he was kissing her again.

  Their sexual marathons weren’t always fast and frantic, but there was always a momentum to them, a force of building need that drove them inexorably forward—but this. This was different. They weren’t pushed by lust, thrown into the bonfire of need and consumed by it. This was a lure. A draw. A tether to something deep in her soul, pulling her down, pulling her toward him until she couldn’t feel where he ended and she began.

  Their clothing wasn’t torn away in a frantic rush; it was drawn off slowly, almost reluctantly, as if each of them knew that each inch of skin revealed was another barrier between them removed and those barriers were the only things keeping them from melting into one another entirely.

  She was breathless and terrified and holding him as close as she could, kissing him as hard as she could, hoping he wouldn’t see the truth in her eyes and pull away. That this was different. This was more. This was everything.

  Then he was there, condom in place, sliding into her, and she was trying not to cry, biting her lip, because nothing had ever felt so good…or so raw. So open and vulnerable. Like he could reach right out and snatch the heart out of her chest if he wanted to and there was nothing she could do to stop him because it was his. Everything she was was his.

  He whispered her name, her real name, against her temple, and then he was moving. Slow and hard.

  Everything felt different. The tension in her body, the vulnerability in her chest—it all tied together into one knot of emotion and she was scared of its release, pushing back against it, scared of what she would say and what he would do if he heard her say it. So she bit her lip. She closed her eyes. She turned her head to the side and tried not to feel, tried to concentrate on the physical sensations, on his body moving, slow and delicious, above her and his mouth teasing the sensitive spot at the side of her neck.

  But the feelings in her chest kept getting tangled up with the need, especially when he whispered her name, his voice thick and dark as he praised her. God, you feel good. Come on, baby. Look at me. Let me see those eyes. Come for me. She opened her eyes and he was there, his own nearly black with need, his face straining, so focused, so Cross, and her release came in an unexpected rush, flowing through her body, melting her down to nothing as he came the same way—slow and hard and groaning low.

  His weight pressed her down into the mattress, his breath heavy in her ear, and she held on tight—not wanting him to move. Not wanting reality to set in. When he slipped free of her body and rolled away to dispose of the condom, Bree curled on her side away from him, tugging the edge of the comforter over her, and when he came back he curved his body around hers, adjusting the blanket over both of them against the air-conditioned chill and spooning her as he often did after sex. Nothing was different, she told herself.

  But everything felt different.

  She was in love with him.

  Completely, stupidly in love with him.

  And she wasn’t stupid enough to think he felt the same way. She knew he didn’t want this. Knew how all those sentences she hadn’t let him finish ended. He didn’t want her getting hurt. He didn’t want her getting her hopes up. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  She knew that. And her stupid heart loved him anyway.

  So what was she supposed to do with that?

  Heavy footsteps thundering up the stairs interrupted her train of thought. Cross lifted his head, his body still curled protectively around hers, as they heard a heavy pounding on the door to the master suite next door and Mel’s voice calling out. “Maggie? Cross?”

  He rolled away from her, collecting his clothes. She was sitting up in her nest of covers, but Cross was fully dressed again and halfway to the door when Mel banged on it. He opened it, using his body to block her view of Bree on the bed—as if Mel didn’t know they’d been sleeping together for days.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

  Mel’s gaze flicked past him, taking in Bree’s comforter-wrapped presence without a flicker of an eyelash. “Pack your things,” she told them both. “We’re going back to LA.”

  “What?” Bree said, brilliantly, as Cross asked, “When?”

  Mel’s gaze turned back to him, the next word hard. “Now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  What the fuck just happened?

  He’d been working, focusing on the job and trying not to think about Bree and the fact that he needed to nip this thing with her in the bud before it got any more complicated—and then she’d waltzed into his room, straddled his lap, and the nip-it-in-the-bud plan had been losing traction even before he’d seen her eyes.

  He’d never realized before how eye color could completely change a person’s face. Or maybe it was just Bree.

  Maggie’s eyes were her signature—bright, shocking aqua blue. Bree’s eyes were so different. A pale grey with a hint of blue and spokes of yellow, right around the iris when he looked closely—and he had looked closely. He’d fallen into her eyes. And then the rest of it had sort of happened. Whatever that was.

  He didn’t have time to dwell on it now. He had a job to do.

  Mel hadn’t said what the emergency was, only that they were needed back in LA yesterday and she would explain on the plane. The manager had hustled Bree back to her room so she could become Maggie again, and was now on the phone arranging their flight plans. A battalion of staff from the resort were due any second to pack Maggie’s things for her, but no one was packing Candy’s precious equipment but him, so he needed to get his ass in gear so nothing got left behind.

  Candy would kill him if a single gadget was lost or damaged. He jogged through the house, collecting the extra security devices he’d put in place with Cecil yipping excitedly at his heels, delighted by the game. He packed his own things quickly and added his bags to the pile the swarms of staff were building by the front door when Maggie emerged from the bedroom.

  And it was Maggie.

  Massive sunglasses covered her eyes, but he didn’t need to see them to know they would be turquoise. Her hair was tucked beneath the giant floppy hat—the same damn hat she’d worn when they first arrived. Her posture was Maggie’s posture—arched to show off her assets to best advantage—and she crouched, cooing at Cecil and picking him up to cuddle him into her arms as a maid trotted at her side with his carrier.

  Pure Maggie. No trace of the woman he’d made come all over the bed upstairs.

  Mel rushed into the room then, hurrying them all out the door as the bellboys loaded their bags onto the parade of golf-carts that would take them and their belongings to the helipad. Cross hopped into the g
olf cart with Maggie/Bree and Mel and they were rolling, the villa disappearing as the cart zipped down the path.

  *

  It all happened so fast, Bree was grabbing for Cross’s hand on the helicopter before it hit her that it was really over.

  She had no idea what had happened to send them fleeing back to LA, no idea if she was even supposed to still be pretending to be in love with Cross, but either way, right now she needed his hand in hers as the helicopter swooped into the air and the contents of her stomach swooped up toward her tonsils.

  She tried closing her eyes, but that only made it worse, so she stared at their hands instead, his strong fingers wrapped solidly around hers. Cross would never let anything happen to her. She believed that. Unfortunately, even Cross couldn’t change the laws of physics and if something went wrong while they were in the air he couldn’t exactly save the day like a freaking X-Man.

  She knew she was squeezing his hand too hard—she could see the white impressions her fingers were leaving on his skin—but she couldn’t help it. She hated this feeling. Like she could plummet to her death at any moment and there was nothing she could do about it.

  Just like falling in love. A hysterical laugh tried to bubble up her throat and she swallowed it down.

  God, she was such an idiot. What was she doing with him? She knew it wasn’t going to end well. What kind of girl threw her heart at a man who told her right off the bat that he wasn’t looking for a relationship? Who did that?

  The helicopter touched down near the airstrip and Bree’s death-panic eased enough for her to focus on the present. She climbed out of the helicopter, clinging to her hat with one hand and Cecil’s carrier with the other. He’d gone nuts the second he heard the helicopter blades and had tried to climb into Bree’s hair, scratching all the way until they could get him shoved inside his carrier. She hadn’t been able to hear him on the flight, but he was still yipping hysterically as Bree followed Mel away from the damn machine as quickly as her sky-high heels would allow.