The Decoy Bride

by Lizzie Shane

  “Don’t worry, baby,” she promised him, “you don’t ever have to go on the fucking deathtrap ever again.”

  His yipping subsided with a little whimper—and Bree knew exactly how he felt. Yanked around from place to place with no control over his own life, forced to ride freaking helicopters against his will. Poor baby.

  Mel spoke with the pilots while Cross oversaw the porters loading the luggage onto the plane and Bree climbed onboard with her dog—useless and ornamental as ever.

  It might help if she had the first clue what the hell was going on.

  Had there been some kind of threat against Maggie? And if so, why was Mel running the show and not security-badass Cross? Was something wrong with the real Maggie?

  Bree had taken a minute to Google Maggie’s name for clues while she was putting on her make-up, but she hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing that would have caused Mel to go into full-on SWAT tactical exit mode.

  She sank down onto one of the seats on the plane—and the reality sank in that they were really leaving.

  She’d gone stir-crazy in the villa, but now that they were leaving, now that it was over her chest ached. She didn’t know where she stood with Cross after that last…whatever the hell that was in his bedroom. It felt like there were a thousand things unsaid between them, things that would never get said now that they were leaving the island.

  Everything was going to change.

  They took off within minutes and Bree wasted no time releasing Cecil from his carrier. The dog whimpered as he scrambled into her lap, shivering his displeasure at being airborne again. She stroked his silky ears, murmuring unintelligible words to comfort him—and herself—until Mel returned from speaking to the pilots and plopped down facing Bree and Cross.

  Cross had been looking out the window, but at Mel’s appearance he leaned forward in his chair, propping his elbows on his knees and demanding, “All right. What’s going on?”

  Mel’s face remained expressionless, the careful blankness of years of practice. “There’s another story.”

  Bree frowned. “What kind of story? I Googled and I didn’t see anything new.”

  “It hasn’t broken yet,” Mel explained. “The reporter contacted Maggie’s publicist for comment. It’ll be going live in the morning—just in time for all the morning shows. We’re going back to LA so we can get in front of it.”

  Something wasn’t adding up. “What kind of story needs us to go back to LA? Is it about me? Did they find out I’m—“

  Mel held up a hand. “We don’t know all the details yet, but we might need to reveal you as the decoy early. We’ll know more when we land in LA. Until then the best thing we can do is try to get some rest so we’re fresh to deal with this.”

  “To deal with what?” Cross asked. “You haven’t told us anything.”

  “All we know right now is that there are some questions about the timeline and who Maggie was with when.”

  “That’s it?”

  “We’ll know more in LA.” Mel shot her a stern look. “Don’t borrow trouble.”

  Cross frowned. “Can I have a word with you?” he asked Mel and the manager nodded, the two of them moving to another part of the plane to conspire with one another.

  Bree glared after them, curled up with Cecil.

  None of this made any sense. And she couldn’t even concentrate on all the what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-Maggie panic because she was too busy drowning in what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-Cross panic.

  He hadn’t looked straight at her since Mel had interrupted them—and yes, she knew he was in work mode, but she couldn’t help feeling that everything was over. Not just their time on the island, but them. Whatever story was about to break, it was hard for her to imagine a scenario in which Maggie would need her to continue to play lovers with Cross once they got to LA. Maggie might not need her at all—and if he wasn’t guarding her anymore, if she wasn’t Maggie…she didn’t know what that meant for them.

  She hated illusions, but she’d been living inside one for the last week and a half…and now it was gone. And she missed it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Cross and Mel were on their phones the entire flight—and their electronic focus only became more complete when they landed. It was late. Close to midnight in LA—which meant her body thought it was three in the morning—but Bree only managed to doze a little in the car ride from the airport, too nervous to really sleep.

  She knew they were heading to Maggie’s mansion and expected to find it dark and empty, but when they pulled into the driveway every light in the house was on and the outdoor floodlights showed an array of cars already parked in the driveway—including her Honda and Cross’s Lexus, as if she needed another reminder that their lives didn’t match.

  The gate closed behind them, sealing out the rest of the world—though Bree hadn’t noticed any paparazzi on their drive in. Maybe they hadn’t caught on to the fact that “Maggie” was no longer in the Caribbean.

  She climbed out of the car, Cecil Two snoring softly in the carrier in her arms, and trudged toward the house, trying to quell the feeling that she was walking toward the guillotine. Until she knew more, there was no sense borrowing trouble, like Mel had said, but she had an uneasy feeling the others knew more than they were telling her.

  Especially when she stepped in the front door and the first voice she heard was Maggie’s.

  “Maggie’s back too?” Bree turned to frown at Mel, but the manager was ushering her deeper into the house. “What’s going on?” she demanded, digging in her heels.

  “Damage control,” Mel said flatly, putting a hand on her back and gently shoving her back into motion.

  But that didn’t make any sense. Maggie had been in Fiji. The flight was longer. She shouldn’t have been able to get back before Bree unless they’d left their island hours before Bree’d left hers.

  Mel ushered her into the library—but Maggie’s raised voice carried easily through the open doors.

  “I love you! You know I love you!”

  “Do I?” Demarco’s answer was clear as day and Bree cringed at hearing the evidently intimate conversation, even if they were shouting. She stood perfectly still—as if that would make the eavesdropping less egregious—and held Cecil Two’s carrier to her chest.

  “I would have married you in the rain,” Demarco declared. “You were the one who needed more than you and me and a ring. Now I see why.”

  “But it wasn’t me! Baby, it wasn’t me. It was the decoy!”

  “I know it was you, Maggie!”

  “Demarco!” Maggie’s last wounded shout was accompanied by the slamming of a door—and another shrieking, “Demarco!”

  Cecil Two startled awake at the sound, releasing a shrill yelp. Bree sucked in a breath, trying to be invisible, but the divine Miss Tate had heard the dog and appeared in the doorway a moment later, with her own Cecil at her heels.

  She looked magnificent. And tragic. Like the heroine of a Shakespearean drama in the last act when everyone started dying.

  Tears glistened on her cheeks, but her head was held high, her eyes blazing as they locked on Mel. “I told you not to fire her.”

  Kaydee. Shit.

  Now was clearly the time to keep her mouth shut, but Bree had spent the last six hours wondering and she had to know. “What happened?”

  With a sharp, humorless laugh, Maggie flung a hand at the table. “Don’t you read?”

  Bree hadn’t noticed the print-out lying on the table, but now she set down Cecil’s carrier and sank down on an ottoman, gathering up the papers that looked like they’d been thrown there. They were out of order, but it didn’t take her long to get the gist. The article’s title was The Many Men of Maggie Tate. And there were photos. Not just of her and Cross. Of Maggie with several other men who were most certainly not her fiancé, including several of her exes—but that was nothing alarming. There was no reason to think the pictures were recent.


  Until she read the article.

  Apparently there were “witnesses” claiming at least two of the photos had been taken since Maggie started dating Demarco—one of them only two weeks ago at a club in LA, only days before they’d flown to Fiji. Which certainly explained why Demarco wasn’t feeling the love tonight.

  A pair of crystal-studded Louboutin sandals stopped in front of her and Bree looked up into Maggie’s tragic, noble face—a face that somehow managed to be even more radiant with tear tracks streaking down her cheeks.

  “I need you to say it was you,” she said.

  Bree blinked as she suddenly realized what Mel meant by damage control. “What?”

  *

  Cross had thought the plan was doomed to failure the second Mel had told him about it on the plane. He’d wanted to tell Bree, to warn her of what was coming, but Mel had insisted it was vitally important to Maggie that she be the one to ask Bree for this “personal favor” in person. When he’d pushed back, she’d reminded him that the client was always right.

  Which was bullshit. In security, the client was only right when their opinion didn’t compromise their safety—but in this case there was no safety concern at risk so he was forced to keep his mouth shut and focus on his phone for the entire damn flight because if he looked at Bree he knew he would say something he was going to regret.

  Telling Bree that Maggie wanted her to take credit for all of her affairs wasn’t his job and he needed to focus on doing his job—even if keeping it from her felt like a shitty thing to do.

  He’d gotten too caught up in Bree at the villa. It was time refocus his priorities.

  So he kept his face carefully blank and tried not to notice the horrified shock in Bree’s eyes as Maggie went on.

  “You’ll come out as my decoy, confess you were the one who made out with Cross, and then also admit that it was you in these photos with Alec and Franklin.”

  “But it wasn’t,” Bree said, sounding a little dazed, and Cross resisted the urge to go to her.

  “But it could have been.” Maggie knelt in front of her, taking her hands as Bree shook her head. “Bree. I need you to do this for me. Demarco doesn’t believe me. He thinks it was me. He’s refusing to marry me.” Her eyes glistened, pleading—and Cross realized that it wasn’t her looks or her talent alone that made her so successful, but some combination of the two that enabled her to be breathtakingly gorgeous and utterly vulnerable at the same time. When most humans were ravaged by emotion, Maggie was somehow elevated by it.

  “It was you though,” Bree reminded her. “You cheated on him and now you want me to lie to him so he’ll marry you?”

  “It was Alec!” Maggie pleaded, tears trembling on her lashes. “I can never say no to Alec.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t be marrying Demarco!”

  Maggie stood abruptly, stalking across the room in her four-inch heels. “You think this is funny? You think my life is a joke?” she snapped. “That I just exist to provide tabloid stories for your entertainment? You think I don’t know that you’re all laughing at me?”

  “No one is laughing, but if you were making out with Alec two weeks ago, what makes you think you’re ready to marry Demarco today?”

  “I love him! I’m not a doll in a show. I have feelings!”

  “I know you do,” Bree raised her voice, the two Maggies facing off across the room. “But so does Demarco. So do I.” When Maggie didn’t react, she threw out her arms. “So does Alec! And he can tell everyone that I’m lying.”

  Both Cecils yapped excitedly.

  “We’ll say he didn’t know. You were pretending to be me—and I didn’t know either.”

  “So now I’m the sociopath who runs around pretending to be you?”

  “You always pretend to be me. How is this different?”

  “That’s a job! This is…” She released a frustrated breath, shaking her head. “I don’t want to be famous, Maggie. Especially not as the girl who impersonated Maggie Tate so she could hook up with her exes. That’s crazy. And that story will follow me around forever. It will be attached to my name.”

  “So it’s fine as long as you’re attaching scandal to my name, but not the other way around?”

  Neither of them looked at him, but Cross could feel their sudden awareness of him in the room with them. He and Bree had attached a scandal to her name. They’d been caught together when they both had a job to do. He’d almost screwed things up—not just for Maggie’s reputation or his own, but for EP as well.

  He could have lost his job. His reputation. His potential to be a partner at Elite Protection. It wasn’t the same thing to Bree. It was just money. She was an artist doing this as a side gig, but for him, this was who he was and he’d let the romance of the island mess with his freaking mind until he nearly lost sight of that.

  He didn’t make mistakes like that. He was the best. He worked the hardest. He never lost focus. Never.

  She was a play-it-by-ear, live-by-impulse kind of woman and he’d almost let the temptation of her ruin his career.

  “I won’t pay you.” Maggie’s words were stark in the silence that had fallen in the den. “Not a penny. Not unless you say it was you.”

  Bree’s mouth fell open, her eyes wide and hurt. “I did everything you asked. I gave up my life to be you—”

  “To suntan on a beach, boo hoo. And you couldn’t even do that right.” Maggie’s expression hardened. “You were in breach of contract the second those pictures of you kissing Cross hit the internet. I don’t owe you a dime and I don’t see why I should have to give you anything if you don’t say it was all you. All of it.”

  “Maggie…” Mel said softly—but the movie star shot her a glare and she fell silent.

  Bree looked at Cross for the first time since Maggie had entered the room. Her eyes searched his, as if seeking out an ally, some hint of support, but he couldn’t move. She looked away from him, shaking her head bitterly. Her eyes glittered as her head turned back to Maggie. “I can’t do it. I can’t be you anymore, Maggie. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll sue,” Maggie threatened.

  Bree lifted her chin. “Do it,” she said defiantly. “I don’t care.”

  She turned on her heel and fled the room. Cross took an instinctive step after her before he stopped himself.

  It wasn’t his job to comfort her. He forced himself to turn back to Maggie and Mel—and found both women watching him.

  “Mr. Cross,” Maggie said, her voice cool and calm. “Mel tells me I can count on you. That you’re a team player.”

  He nodded, nervous at the look in her eyes.

  “I’m sure you can see which course of action would be better for Elite Protection,” Maggie went on with a distinct lack of the subtlety she was known for. “I need you to persuade Miss Davies to see reason.”

  Cross swallowed around the dread in his throat. Apparently it wasn’t his job to comfort Bree. It was his job to convince her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Bree made it as far as the driveway before she realized she didn’t have her car keys. All of her things were tucked away in the closet of an upstairs guest room, waiting for her to shed her Maggie persona and return to her real life.

  She would have to go inside to get them before she could escape, but right now the idea of going back into that house for any reason made her shudder. She wasn’t a person to them. She was a tool. A get-out-of-jail-free card for Maggie’s relationship. And if she did this now, who was to say Maggie wouldn’t ask her to do it again, who was to say she wouldn’t be the decoy, shopping on Rodeo Drive so Demarco didn’t know that Maggie was cheating on him with one of her exes. Who was to say she hadn’t already been used that way.

  It had seemed so harmless before. Helpful even. But now the wrongness of the lie suffocated her.

  And Cross hadn’t said a word.

  How could he stand there and go along with it, by his silence if not by any word or action? Mel was the one who had trie
d to speak on her behalf, but even she had fallen in line with Maggie’s demands. All of them asking her to do this.

  Not that she should be surprised. She should have known. Mel had always been Team Maggie first and foremost. She knew that. But she’d thought that Cross was different. That they were a team.

  The front door opened. Cross stepped out onto the landing, with Cecil Two cradled in his arms, and Bree nearly cried with the relief at seeing him. She did have an ally.

  Nothing had ever looked better than the tall, strong man in the simple, dark suit he’d changed into on the plane, with the tiny furball in his arms. It was bright as day beneath the floodlights that lit the driveway and she could clearly see the concern in his eyes as he strode down the steps toward her.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Can you believe this?” she asked, still having trouble wrapping her head about the last fifteen minutes. She reached for Cecil and Cross relinquished the silky soft comfort of the dog into her arms.

  “Is it really so different?”

  She took a step back so fast she nearly stumbled, holding Cecil up like a shield. “You’re on her side?”

  “It isn’t about sides.” His voice was so calm and soothing it made her want to scream. “Think about this. You’d get the money to support yourself while you’re doing your art and all you have to do is what you’ve always done. Be Maggie.”

  “When I was Maggie before it never involved hurting anyone! At least not that I knew about. But now she wants me to lie to her fiancé. That’s wrong, Cross. How can you not see that?”

  “Maggie’s powerful. She could sue you for damages.”

  And suddenly she realized why he was here. “She could sue Elite Protection, you mean. She could mess with your perfect career. With your shot at that promotion.”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “Isn’t it? You’re the one out here trying to talk me into lying to save Maggie’s ass.” She shook her head, backing away until her butt hit her car. “Why are you here, Cross? For Maggie? For Elite Protection? So you can win? What’s more important than the truth to you, because I thought the lying bothered you as much as it bothered me.”