by Joss Wood
He might not be able to save Arnott’s reputation but he sure as hell could save Emily. If, after fighting back with an intense PR campaign and having one-on-one meetings with every client of Arnott’s, they still lost the company and their reputation, he was wealthy enough to keep Davy in Brook Village and to support her dad.
He didn’t care about the money: Emily was all that he could think about.
Matt still didn’t know if she loved him—she’d asked for his help but hadn’t said anything else—and, frankly, it didn’t matter. He loved her; she was all that was important. Her happiness, her security, was his ultimate goal; she was his to protect. His heart was hers, whether she wanted it or not.
But to move on, he had to find her! And God, how was he going to do that in a city of more than three million, excluding the tourists?
Matt felt the vibration of his phone and had it to his ear before it could ring. “Vee, anything?”
“I went back through his expense reports from when he was at MJR, padded I’ll have you know, and on them I found three payments to the same hotel. I also found more receipts from a bar within the hotel—it’s all I could find.”
It was, at least, a place to start. And hopefully Nico was a creature of habit and had returned to the hotel he was familiar with.
“I’ve sent you the address of the hotel,” Vee told him and Matt heard the ping of an incoming message.
“Are there any wedding chapels close to the hotel?” Matt asked, opening her message. He quickly plugged the address into his mapping app and tried to get his bearings. He switched his phone on to loudspeaker as he squinted at the map. It wasn’t, thank God, far away.
Matt heard Vee typing and held his breath, waiting for her answer. “Yeah, there’s one, just around the corner from the entrance of the hotel.”
Matt grinned. “Thanks, Vee, you are an angel.”
“I am very much not but that description certainly fits Emily Arnott.”
Matt turned around and started heading north, thinking it was quicker to walk than take a taxi in the heavily congested traffic. “She hates being called angelic and it really doesn’t suit her. She’s obstinate and feisty and too independent by half.”
“But you still love her.”
He did. “I do. And I always will.”
“Then I suggest you run not walk, Matteo Velez.”
That was a damn good idea. Matt tucked his phone into the back pocket of his pants and started to sprint, refusing to consider what he’d do if she wasn’t in the chapel, if they weren’t registered at the hotel.
He would find her because losing her wasn’t an option.
* * *
Emily, dressed in a stupid white lace dress Nico insisted they buy at the hotel boutique, sat on the pew in the surprisingly pretty chapel and stared at her shaking hands. The synthetic smell wafting from the fake floral bouquets dotted around the chapel made her want to throw up and a headache threatened to split her head apart.
Could her day possibly get any worse?
Emily stared down at her hands, wishing she was carrying her phone instead of this stupid bunch of white roses. But Nico, jerk that he was, had confiscated her phone and she had no idea where it was. Besides, who should she call? She’d left a message with Matt but she doubted he’d gotten it; she assumed that he seldom checked his phone at work because he was busy running MJR Investing. Her dad? Well, he’d made it very clear that the company and its reputation, and his mental health, were more important than her happiness. Her mom? Funny.
Emily untied the ribbon wound around the stems of the bouquet, allowing the silk to flow between her fingers. It was a pretty bouquet but it represented fear, stress and anguish. Emily ran her finger over the soft petal of the center rose, before methodically stripping the rose of everything that made it luscious and lovely. With every petal that fell, Emily felt like she was losing a little bit of herself, and when the rose was denuded, she promised herself she’d never wear white again.
Ever.
God, what was she going to do? Emily allowed the last of the petals to flutter to the floor and, dropping the bouquet, wrapped her arms around her waist, gently rocking back and forth. She was so tired, emotionally whipped and, for the first time since she was fourteen, ready to give up.
Emily watched a tear plop onto the toe of her shoe, then another. She didn’t bother trying to curtail her tears; she’d earned her right to bawl her eyes out.
Everything was ruined...
Emily heard the door to the chapel open and, not bothering to turn around, thought she should vacate the room; the happy couple walking in wouldn’t want their marriage ceremony to be witnessed by a weepy woman with a mangled bouquet and a bleak outlook on marriage.
She wanted to leave, she did, but her legs and arms were heavy, and she was dreading the future. Emily slammed her eyes shut, thinking that she just wanted to stay here for the next few minutes, hours, maybe for the rest of her life.
“Okay, you’re married. Don’t panic—we can sort this out.”
Emily opened her eyes to see Matt sitting down beside her on the pew, his normally olive skin pale in the subdued light of the chapel. Emily looked into his luscious eyes and read worry and concern within those dark depths.
Matt took her trembling hands and lifted both sets of knuckles to his lips. “I’ll sort this out, Em, I will. You can ask for an annulment, file for divorce—I’ve already briefed my lawyers and they are waiting for your call.”
Emily, not able to believe that he was here, stared at him, unable to get her brain to work. “Matt? How did you find me?”
“I’ll explain later,” Matt told her, looking around. “Where’s the dipstick?”
“Uh...” Emily blinked, trying to get her brain to work, completely nonplussed by Matt’s appearance. He looked a little sweaty, completely harassed and very stressed. To Emily, he’d never looked as gorgeous as he did right then.
“Em, concentrate. Where is Morris?” Matt demanded, giving her a little shake.
“Uh, up in the room,” Emily replied, lifting her hand to touch his cheek, needing to check that he wasn’t a figment of her imagination. “You’re really here.”
“I’m really here.” Matt turned his head to drop a kiss into her palm. “I know that you have had a completely shitty day, sweetheart, but we need to work out the quickest and easiest way to get you out of this marriage.”
Emily blinked at him, his words not making sense. She looked down at her bare ring finger of her left hand just to check. “I didn’t marry him, Matt.”
Matt’s mouth dropped open and he stared at her, his face reflecting his confusion. “What?”
Emily lifted her shoulders and dropped them again. “I couldn’t do it. I mean, I was going to, up until the preacher started saying love and cherish and in sickness and in health and I just couldn’t. I told Nico to take his chances, that I wasn’t going to marry him. He lost his temper and started screaming and yelling and then the preacher person told him to leave.” Emily bit her bottom lip. “He’s probably up in the room, sending the photograph and his press release to news outlets.”
A muscle started to tick in Matt’s cheek and his eyes turned cold and hard. “How long ago did this happen?”
It felt like years had passed but it couldn’t be any more than ten minutes, as Emily informed Matt. “What’s the room number?” Matt demanded.
Emily told him and when Matt leaped to his feet, Emily knew that he was headed upstairs. While she appreciated his gesture, there was nothing he could do. Nico, because he was a self-serving, malicious bastard, would’ve already played his cards. Emily grabbed Matt’s arm.
“It’s too late. It’s over and I have to live with the consequences. We’ll be okay, if Arnott’s is destroyed. I’ll make a plan. I always do.”
Matt stared down at her, shaking his head. “Yeah, that’s th
e problem—it’s always you trying to make it work, by yourself. I told you that I’d stand in your corner with you—when are you going to realize that you are no longer alone?”
“I’m not?” Emily asked, hope piercing holes in her despair.
Matt dropped a quick, hard kiss on her lips. “No, dammit, you’re not. I’m going to go now but I want you to go back to the hotel and wait in the lobby for me—I promise I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”
“But...where are you going?” Emily demanded as he started to walk away.
Matt turned and one corner of his mouth lifted. “I’m going to beat the crap out of Morris. I thought that was self-explanatory.”
Emily watched Matt stride away and, after a minute of trying to make sense of the last five minutes, jumped up to follow him. She hadn’t bailed out of marrying Morris, risking everything she loved to see Matt in jail on assault charges.
And if he did punch Nico, she’d punch him too because if Matt was going to jail, she’d be there beside him. She loved him and they were, apparently, a team. Where he went, so did she.
Those lawyers, she thought, hurrying to catch up to Matt, were going to be working overtime.
* * *
Nico opened the door to his room and Matt didn’t hesitate, he just grabbed his shirt and flung Morris into the nearest wall. Matt watched as his head bounced off a picture frame and smiled with satisfaction. That had to have hurt.
Surprisingly, Morris came back swinging but Matt ducked, plowed his fist into his sternum and followed that up with another punch to his nose. Nico yelped, covered his face with his hands and Matt used the opportunity to pin Morris to the wall by placing his forearm across his throat.
Nico’s pale blue eyes bulged in fear. “What do you want, Velez?”
“Many things, Nico, many things,” Matt softly told him, “but top of the list would be seeing your useless ass in jail.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Morris said, with as much certainty as he could.
Matt pushed his arm harder into his throat. “Now, the SEC might feel differently.”
“You have no proof!”
Matt raised his eyebrows. “You wiped your desktop before you left MJR but not before Vee did a backup. I have a mile-long list of emails detailing your involvement in insider trading.”
Morris’s white face turned whiter. He tried to struggle but then he slumped and his knees gave out.
“Matt, please... Don’t. Don’t send me to jail.”
Matt stepped away from him, disgusted by his whining.
“I haven’t sent those photos yet, nobody else has seen them but Emily and Leonard,” Nico desperately added.
Matt stepped away from Nico and looked around the room, spying Nico’s laptop on the desk in the corner.
Matt hurried over to the computer, frowning when he saw his email program. Matt quickly moved the mouse, clicked on the Sent box and scanned the emails he’d recently sent. When he realized that Morris was telling the truth and that nothing had been sent since last night and specifically nothing about Emily, Matt finally pulled in a breath.
Matt glanced over at Nico, saw that he was still struggling for air, his shirt front nicely saturated with blood from his broken nose, and went back to the home screen. He looked for a program, opened it and pulled his phone from his back pocket.
“Vee, here’s the number to remote access his laptop,” Matt instructed, rattling off the number to give Vee complete access to Morris’s computer. “Are you positive you can wipe it clean, including any cloud accounts?”
Matt heard and ignored Morris’s mumbled protest and listened to his exceptional assistant instead. “Matteo, have some faith.”
Matt stood back and watched as a ghost arrow floated over the screen and then the screen went black, to be replaced with code running across it. While he waited for Vee to run her magic, Matt calmly opened Nico’s briefcase and went through his papers, removing anything with reference to Emily and Arnott’s, including the hard copies of the photographs and the copy of the press release. He also grabbed Emily’s cell phone and tucked it into the back pocket of his pants.
Matt looked over to Nico, who was leaning back against the wall. “Unless you want me to call Sokolov and tell him how you were using him to blackmail Emily, I suggest that you stand up and walk your pitiful ass out of this room. And if I ever see you in Falling Brook, if I even hear your name, I will find you and finish what I started. Got it?”
Nico nodded and stood up slowly, covering his nose with his hand. Matt walked over to him and, keeping the laptop and the papers he’d found, handed Nico his briefcase. “Get the hell out of here, Morris, you worm.”
Nico walked slowly to the open door and when he reached it, Emily flew into the room, nearly knocking him over. She stopped in her tracks and grimaced. Matt caught her eye and frowned at her. “I thought I told you to wait downstairs in the lobby.”
Emily narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not good at listening to orders.”
“I noticed.” Matt jerked his head. “Come here, Em.”
He didn’t want her anywhere near Morris; the thought made him want to punch someone, preferably Morris, again. Emily inched her way around Nico and hurried across the room to him, then stepped into his open arms and snuggled in close.
“Close the door behind you, Morris,” Matt said, and when the door clicked shut, Emily tipped her head up to look at him, her eyes filled with questions.
“Is it done?”
Matt looked down at the completely normal-looking screen and remembered that Vee was still on the other side of the open line. He lifted the receiver to his ear. “Are you finished?”
“Sure am,” Vee replied. “I wiped out his cloud accounts. Please tell me you had the good sense to confiscate his laptop because nothing is ever completely erased.”
“I did.”
“Good boy,” Vee replied, as if he wasn’t in his thirties and she didn’t work for him. “Now, sort out your personal life, Matteo.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Matt disconnected the call and when he looked down at his screen, he saw at least a dozen missed calls from Leonard. He showed Emily the screen and watched a frown appear between her eyes.
“He’s worried sick,” Matt explained. “He didn’t mean to throw you to the wolves—he tried to call you back.”
He saw a little of her anguish diminish but a lot of hurt remained. “I can’t talk to him just yet, Matt. I need some time.”
Matt nodded. “Let me quickly send him a text message so he can stop worrying.”
Matt, his arms still around her, typed a quick text to her father before tossing the phone onto the sofa. Gathering her close, he held her tightly, resting his head on her bright hair, thankful to have her in his arms, safe and, yeah, unmarried.
It was over and they could relax.
Matt lifted his hands up to cradle her face and slowly lowered his mouth to hers.
* * *
So much had happened today that Emily wasn’t sure whether she was coming or going, but Matt’s hot kisses and his clever hands on her body she understood. Emily wound her arms around his back, holding on tight, content to follow his lead as he dropped lazy kisses on her lips and along her jaw.
Needing to feel his bare skin under her hands, to ground herself, Emily pulled his shirt out of the back of his pants and slid her hands up and under the fabric, digging her fingertips into his warm, masculine skin. Needing more, she lifted one hand, held his jaw and turned it back so that he could kiss her, giving her the long, deep and drugging kisses she so badly needed.
Nothing about today made sense but being in Matt’s arms did.
“Let me love you, imp,” Matt murmured the words against her lips. “Let me take you to bed and let me love you with nothing between us.”
Em knew what he was saying, that
this was a new start for both of them, a blank page. She wasn’t Nico’s fiancée and they didn’t need to hide—they could be who they were, honestly and openly. She wanted that...no, she needed a new start, a fresh beginning.
Emily stepped back and held out her hand to Matt. When his fingers gripped hers, she tugged him toward the bedroom, then opened the door to a huge bed covered in white linen. Through the open drapes she had a view of downtown Las Vegas, but she wasn’t interested in what lay outside her window—Matt held all her attention.
Standing next to the bed, Emily turned her back to Matt and pulled her hair off her shoulders. “Unzip me, please—I can’t wait to get out of this dress.”
Matt eased the zipper down and Emily released her breath when his lips kissed the bumps of her spine. She felt his hands on her shoulders, easing the dress down her arms until it pooled at her feet. Emily kicked it into the corner of the room with the toe of her white stiletto.
Emily tried to turn but his hands on her hips kept her facing forward, and he buried his face in her neck, breathing deeply. “Your scent drives me wild.”
Emily smiled—his scent had always done the same to her, as she breathlessly told him.
“I should have taken you up on your offer six years ago, Em—we’ve wasted so much time.”
This wasn’t the time for talking, not yet. Right now, she just wanted to feel and to be with this amazing man. Emily spun around and placed her hands on his broad shoulders, looking up into his messy hair and still-shadowed eyes. “Later, we’ll talk later. Right now I need you to love me. We need a new start, a fresh start.”
Matt nodded before dropping his mouth to cover hers. Bending his knees, he wound his arms around the backs of her thighs and easily boosted her up his body, urging her to encircle his hips with her legs, allowing her shoes to drop to the floor. Emily, only dressed in her bra and panties, pushed her aching breasts into his chest. “You have too many clothes on, Matteo.”
“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you,” Matt replied, his free hand sliding behind her back, quickly unsnapping her bra. Emily leaned back in his arms and pulled the garment off, reveling in the passion in Matt’s eyes as he stared down at her chest.
