The Decoy Bride

by Lizzie Shane

  “It isn’t the same thing. We’re protecting our client—”

  “By lying to her fiancé? By lying to everyone?”

  “That’s what you do! You pretend to be Maggie. You lie.”

  “Well, I don’t want to do it anymore!” she shouted at him. “I am done, all right? Done with the illusions. I can’t anymore. This has gone far enough. I’m not going to let her use me to hurt Demarco.”

  “She’s sorry—”

  “Because she got caught! And now instead of being honest, she’s trying to foist it off on me. Aren’t you the one who can’t even talk to your mother because she lied about your father’s affair?”

  “Don’t bring my family into this,” he growled.

  “I’m sorry.” She knew his father was a sensitive spot for him, a low blow, but it was hard to think rationally with her thoughts scrambled by everything that was happening. “You have to see this is wrong—”

  “I did at first,” he admitted. “But if you think about it—yes, it’s wrong, but it’s a small wrong that could solve a lot of problems—”

  She frowned, her brain catching on the way he said it. “What do you mean ‘at first’? When did you find out about Maggie’s plan?”

  He grimaced and she knew she was going to hate his answer. “On the plane. Mel made me promise not to say anything. Maggie wanted to tell you—”

  “Maggie wanted to blindside me! Maggie wanted to pressure me into saying yes before I could think it through! Maggie wanted to use me and you knew it and you helped her!”

  She’d known. She’d known if it ever came down to a question between Elite Protection and her, she would lose. She just hadn’t expected being proven right to sting quite so much.

  She knew he needed success like he needed oxygen and she didn’t represent success, but this feeling, this betrayal, choked her. She’d loved him. How stupid was she?

  “How much?”

  The words seemed to fall between them, incomprehensible even in their simplicity. She frowned, confused. “What?”

  “You know I have the money. And I know you need it. How much for your cooperation?”

  She stared at him. He wanted to pay her to lie. Just to make the client happy. Just to make the problem disappear. “Fuck you.”

  She tucked Cecil against her chest and stalked past him back toward the house, the little dog growling as if he sensed her anger. She no longer cared about avoiding Maggie. She just wanted to get her things and get the fuck out of here.

  Cross chased after her. “Bree. Be practical.”

  “No.” She whirled to face him at the top step, glowering down at him. “Fuck practical. That isn’t me. None of this is me. I know you want some perfect, practical Stepford girlfriend who will do anything to help you succeed, but this is wrong, Cross. And if you can’t see that, what blinded you? The money? The power? The celebrity? Do those things really matter to you so much? Do they really make you happy? Is anyone in this entire fucking mess happy if I lie? Is Maggie, married to Demarco and knowing he only took her back because she lied to him? Are you? Knowing you gave up your integrity for a freaking job?”

  His expression darkened. “We can’t all be as righteous as you.”

  “It isn’t righteous. I’ve just been on the other side. And so have you.” But he wasn’t listening to her now. He was stuck in trying to save his own ass, not hearing a word she said, and she couldn’t do this anymore. “Use my name,” she said. “Tell the press I said whatever the hell you want me to say. Put words into my mouth. I won’t contest whatever story you put out, but I’m done. I’m out. I’m not doing this anymore. Tell her she can sue me if she wants to. It’s not like I have any savings for her to take anyway.”

  Bree turned to stalk back through the door and straight up the stairs to collect her things. There were no footsteps behind her and she refused to turn back, refused to look to see if he was happy to have won. Because she definitely felt like she’d lost.

  *

  “Max. We may have a problem.”

  “One second.” Cross heard a muffled sound, like his boss murmuring to someone with the phone covered and a door closing. “I assume this is the Maggie Tate situation?”

  Cross glanced at his watch, belated realizing it was nearly one in the morning. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was so late.” His body was still on island time and the combination of the floodlights and everyone being so awake at Maggie’s place had screwed with his time sense even more.

  “You’re fine,” Max assured him, as sharp and businesslike as if he was always pulled out of bed in the middle of the night. “What’s going on?”

  “We may be in breach.” He braced himself for his boss’s reaction, ready to hear any number of words. Fired. Suspended. Demoted.

  “Is this still about the photos of you kissing that girl? Because Candy brought me up to speed when she and Pretty Boy got back tonight and it sounds like Maggie Tate may not have a very good case for claiming you negatively impacted her reputation since she apparently did plenty of that on her own. Unless it was the decoy who kissed those men.”

  “No, it was Maggie. But she wanted Bree to say she did it. She’s threatening everything she can think of to make that happen.”

  “And the decoy’s refusing?”

  Cross opened his mouth to tell Max the truth, but the same thing happened to his voice that had happened when he was talking to Maggie and Mel after Bree drove off in her Honda. Instead of telling them all that Bree had essentially told them to use her name but keep her out of it, he said, “Yeah, she said no. No way.”

  “Good for her.”

  Cross blinked at Max’s blasé tone. “Maggie’s pissed. She’s threatening to sue everyone.”

  Max snorted. “She isn’t going to sue. It would only drag the whole situation into the light and make her look even worse. All she’s likely to do is talk shit about us to her famous friends.”

  “Which could kill our business.”

  “Well, it won’t be good for it,” Max said dryly. “But it also won’t be the first time we’ve had someone who thinks they’re a god gunning for us. Did you ever meet Hank the Hammer?”

  “The wrestling guy?”

  “He hired us to upgrade the security on his house and thought Candy should be one of the perks. It’s a minor miracle she never handed him his testicles on a silver platter, but in the end we handed him off to another company and he talked shit about us all over town. And we’re still going strong.”

  “That’s Hank the Hammer. This is Maggie Tate. Are you seriously saying you’re not worried at all?”

  “About Maggie? Nah. She’ll calm down. You okay?”

  I asked a woman I care about to lie about sleeping with other men and when she said no I offered her money to do it. I’m just peachy. “I’m good.”

  “This thing with the decoy—”

  “It’s over. You don’t need to worry about me being distracted.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “I’m back and ready to focus on work one hundred percent.” He would make up for the last couple weeks. He would be flawless.

  A long pause met those words, and, finally, “Okay.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “I can’t believe you made it!”

  It was definitely a sign of what a horrible human being she was becoming that Bree had completely forgotten it was Andi’s birthday when she drove straight from Maggie’s house to Ty and Andi’s place in the middle of the night.

  “And you brought a dog…” Andi went on, eyeing the Cavalier King Charles spaniel clutched in her arms.

  “This is Cecil. Cecil Two. My decoy dog,” she blurted. “I’m sorry to come so late.”

  “You’re here. You can be as late as you want.” Andi reached through the open doorway, pulling her into the house, which was still brightly lit, music softly playing from the living room. “You know Ty—he hates to let a party end, but Jade’s asleep upstairs so we’re pretending we’re
all responsible adults down here. God, it’s good to see you.”

  Standing in the foyer, Andi hauled her into her arms and Bree squeezed back—maybe hanging on a little too long and a little too tight because Cecil whimpered in protest at being squished and Andi leaned back in her arms, searching her face. “Are you okay?”

  “I…” She tried to answer, tried to play it cool, but tears welled in her eyes.

  “Come here.” Andi grabbed her hand, leading her away from the party and up the stairs. Bree leaned back against her grip.

  “Your guests…”

  “They’ve seen plenty of me. I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

  Bree stopped resisting and let her best friend pull her upstairs, needing her too much to let her guilt over taking Andi away from her birthday party make more than a token appearance.

  Andi led her to the sitting room attached to the bedroom she shared with Ty and softly closed the door behind them. None of the voices from downstairs carried this far, leaving them perfectly alone. Andi put her back to the door and crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay, what happened?”

  “Nothing,” Bree protested, knowing her tone sounded more defensive than believable. Andi arched her brow skeptically and Bree tried again. “It’s your birthday.”

  “Technically it’s after midnight and yesterday was my birthday, but even if it was, who cares? You were there for me three hundred and sixty-five days a year when I needed you. Now I’m here for you. So tell me what’s wrong.”

  It wasn’t the words so much as Andi’s calm, steady presence, her certainty that they could deal with this, whatever it was, that made Bree choke up again, tears welling in her eyes. “I love you, you know that?”

  “Okay, now I’m really worried,” Andi teased gently, putting a hand on her arm and guiding her toward the nearest chair. When they were both seated—Bree deflated into her chair with Cecil cuddled close and Andi perched on the edge of hers, leaning forward, ready to help—she gently prompted, “Bree?”

  She’d come here to tell Andi everything, but now she opened her mouth and couldn’t find the words.

  “Did you kidnap the dog?”

  Bree laughed, tears leaking out with the sound, the dam holding back her feelings cracking. “I’m pretty sure he’s actually my dog. Maggie gave him to me.”

  And then the entire story came pouring out. All of it. The decoy job and Maggie’s plans to marry Demarco. The stupid, impulsive kiss with Cross that had tilted everything on its axis. Maggie calling them back and demanding Bree take credit for hooking up with half of Maggie’s exes. Cross taking Maggie’s side and Bree walking out…without the money. She stroked Cecil’s silky ears as she spoke, trying to absorb comfort from his soft, warm weight.

  “And now I’m right back where I started,” she concluded, sniffling pathetically. “With nothing—only now a movie star might want to sue me or paint me in the tabloids as some kind of psycho stalker who ran around pretending to be her and hooking up with all her exes.”

  Cecil put his paws on her chest, his tiny rough tongue licking the salty wetness from her cheeks. Andi had come out of her chair, toeing off her heels and kneeling at Bree’s feet, both of her hands wrapped around one of Bree’s.

  “Honey…” She may have glossed over that whole falling in love with Cross thing a little, but from the look in her friend’s eyes she wasn’t fooling Andi. “I know it feels horrible right now, but you don’t have nothing. You have your friends. Your family. Your art. Olivia Hwang gave you a show at her gallery—”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “What?” Andi frowned, confused.

  “I lied about the show. I just didn’t want to tell you that Olivia Hwang thought I was a talentless hack.”

  “Don’t say that—”

  “I thought if I could do this one job for Maggie I wouldn’t have to worry about money for a while and I could buy myself a little more time to get my big break.”

  Guilt flickered in Andi’s eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me you had money problems? I never wanted to leave you in the lurch by moving out—”

  “Don’t you dare apologize to me for being happy and having a good life you want to live with people you love.”

  “But if I hadn’t moved out…”

  “We could both be miserable?”

  Andi’s eyes glittered worriedly. “Are you miserable?”

  “Of course not,” Bree insisted, though she couldn’t have said at that moment whether the words were true or false. “Though I may have to move back to Clement and live in my parents’ basement, like all self-respecting thirty-somethings.”

  She groaned, dropping her forehead on top of Cecil’s silky head. He wriggled in her arms, trying to lick any patch of skin he could reach. “Maybe I should have done it. Just said whatever they wanted me to say. I told Cross to go ahead and do whatever they wanted anyway. At least if I’d stayed I would have the money—and I’d know what they were planning.” She lifted her head, meeting Andi’s eyes. “Do you think I’m an idiot? Should I have played along?”

  “You have to listen to your gut—and stories like these have a way of following you around.”

  Andi should know—she’d been part of Ty’s social media & PR team when they first met. She’d seen the business of fame from every angle. “It wasn’t my reputation I was worried about,” Bree admitted. “It was the lying. Not just to the press, but to Demarco. And the people who thought they were going to get to host a Maggie Tate wedding. And everyone who got so excited to meet me because they love Maggie Tate. I started to feel sick with all the lies.”

  “It makes sense,” Andi said softly. “After what happened with Zander.”

  Bree pulled a face. “This isn’t about him. He doesn’t affect me.”

  Andi’s eyebrows arched skeptically, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.

  Okay, yes, maybe she had a little bit of baggage about liars. Who didn’t? Lies hurt people and she couldn’t be part of that anymore. It wasn’t a harmless little impersonation anymore. It was wrong.

  “I just can’t believe Cross asked me to do it,” she whispered.

  That had been the betrayal. She’d expected it of Maggie, who had so many people telling her whatever she wanted was right that she couldn’t possibly have any idea of right or wrong anymore. She’d even expected it of Mel, who always did whatever was best for Maggie. Always.

  But Cross…

  “When did you fall in love with him?”

  She looked at Andi—who evidently hadn’t been fooled for a second—and grimaced, resting her chin on Cecil’s head, who gave a comforting little whimper. “Does it matter?”

  Andi shrugged, reaching out to scratch Cecil Two under the chin. “I didn’t think you liked dogs.”

  “He grew on me,” she murmured—and she wasn’t only talking about Cecil Two. Cross had snuck in under her defenses when she wasn’t looking and then there she’d been. Hopelessly, stupidly in love with someone who would never love her back. “I knew better,” she murmured. “He’s so freaking obsessed with winning. He has to be perfect all the time—he’d never be with someone who makes mistakes. Who’s impulsive and reckless and tempts him to make mistakes. Even if he wanted someone—which he doesn’t. He’s totally focused on his career. On being the best at it.” She shook her head at her own stupidity. “He even told me that he doesn’t think he knows how to love someone.”

  “Men are bastards,” Andi declared. “Don’t they know a woman can’t be expected to resist a man who needs her to teach him how to love?”

  Bree snorted, not quite managing a laugh. She felt hollowed out, her insides scraped empty of everything that made her feel. “I knew it wouldn’t work, but I really, really wanted to be wrong, you know?”

  “You want me to have Ty beat him up? He’s a lover, not a fighter, but he really likes you. I bet he’d be down.”

  Bree sniffled through a laugh. “No offense, but I think Cross can probably take him. He’
s trained in all sorts of scary shit.”

  Andi squeezed her hands. “You know you’re staying here, right? As long as you want.”

  “You barely have space for the four of you.”

  Ty might be a television star, but he was a superstitious one and he still lived in the house he’d had when he got his big break—only now he lived there with Andi, his daughter Jade, and his daughter’s aunt on her mother’s side. The public areas may have been renovated to a modern shine, but the house wasn’t large and Bree refused to impose.

  “We’ll make the space,” Andi insisted, but Bree was already shaking her head.

  “I think…I think it may be time to…” Emotion welled up in a rush at the words she couldn’t quite get out. “I’m not making it, Andi,” she whispered. “I think it might be time to give up.” The last two words were choked out.

  “You don’t mean that. You can’t even say it without crying,” Andi said.

  But she did mean it. She just hated it. And she couldn’t seem to stop crying long enough to explain. She didn’t want to give up on her dream, simply saying the words out loud felt like it had broken something inside her. Her art was her identity. But how long could she fail before she accepted that she would never succeed?

  She’d told herself a thousand times that she just had to keep trying a little longer, that her big break was coming, any day now—but how many times could she be expected to pick herself up after yet another rejection, yet another failure, yet another sign that she was wrong and she didn’t have what it took?

  Maybe Billy hadn’t been cruel when he’d kicked her out of that class. Maybe he’d simply been trying to spare her the pain of working for a decade only to discover she didn’t have what it took.

  She’d wanted this for so long she didn’t know how to want anything else, but was it time to be practical? Was it time to find another dream? One that wouldn’t leave her taking any job she could find to support herself so she could keep on failing?