by Kat Cantrell
She nodded and the mood lightened. The restaurant he’d selected featured a highly rated chef and the meal reflected that. They ate and conversed about innocuous subjects and he relaxed about halfway through dinner.
It wasn’t until he escorted Roz to the valet stand that he realized the tension hadn’t completely fled on her side. Her back felt stiff under his fingers. Okay, he’d royally screwed up earlier if she was still uptight over the third degree he’d given her. But why had she dropped it like everything was fine? Just like a woman to nurse a grudge and not bother to say anything about it. That wasn’t going to fly.
As he pointed the car in the direction of her loft, he glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “Silent treatment for my crimes?”
She stared out the window. “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t play little-girl games with men.”
He let that simmer for a few minutes as he put a tight rein on his temper before he did something like comment on big-girl games. Nothing in his experience had prepared him to do this kind of long-term thing with a woman. And they were getting married. For the first time, it occurred to him that maybe he wasn’t marriage material, that the reason he’d shied away from relationships wasn’t solely because of the pact he’d made with Warren and Jonas, but also because he sucked at navigating emotional land mines.
But like the promise he’d made to keep his hands off her, this conversation was just as much a measure of his character. It was worth it to him to figure this out, if for no other reason than to prove he could.
He pulled over into a shadowy parking lot and killed the engine, then turned to face her. “Talk to me, Roz. You’re obviously still upset.”
“You asked me on a date so we could get to know each other. But then when you had an opportunity to really lay it all out, you didn’t. At least have the courtesy to be honest with me. You don’t like me being friendly with your mom because I’m just a good-time girl you had to marry because we got caught up in a scandal. I’m not good enough to be a real wife.”
He shut his eyes for a blink, as that barb arrowed through his gut nice and deep. He had no excuse for not having seen that coming. Obviously she was playing back things she’d heard from others, and he’d unwittingly stepped right in the center of the land mines.
Yep. Not marriage material. This was why he stuck to sex, which he was good at, and shied away from anything that smacked of intimacy, which he was not good at.
“Roz, look at me.” She did, her eyes barely discernible in the dark as he fumbled his way through. “Don’t let your father’s pigheadedness color your opinion of yourself. No one here is judging you for your sins. The reason I got testy is solely because I’m a jerk who doesn’t like to share. My mom has been mine alone for a long time. We’re a unit. I didn’t want to lose that, or have that diluted somehow if you... Wow, this sounds really bad out loud.”
She smiled with the faintest stirrings of tenderness. “No, it sounds honest. Which I like.”
“This is me being honest,” he agreed. If that was all she was looking for, maybe he didn’t have to botch this too badly. “So you have to believe me when I say earlier was a combination of you in that dress and me being territorial. And maybe a bit of foot-in-mouth disease.”
Her laugh washed through him, dissolving a lot of the tension, and he had to fight the muscles in his hand so that he didn’t reach for her. The reasons he wanted to were totally mixed up and he didn’t fully understand this urge to connect himself with that laugh in a way that had nothing to do with sex.
“Honesty is the best policy. So I’ll return the favor. I don’t remember my mom from when she was healthy. I just remember her sick and in a hospital bed, dying. Today a woman I admire invited me to lunch for the first time in my adult life. The fact that she’s your mother didn’t even factor into why it meant so much to me. Are you starting to see why I got a little bent out of shape about you getting bent out of shape?”
Her tone walloped him, dredging through his gut with razor-sharp teeth. He’d behaved like a jackass and stabbed at Roz’s wounds at the same time. This wasn’t a run-of-the-mill fight, like what normal couples might go through. They were surfacing enormously difficult emotions that he shouldn’t want any part of.
But he was still here.
“If I say I’m sorry, will that help?”
Her smile widened. “Maybe.”
Hell, why was he fighting this insanely strong urge to touch her? He skimmed his fingertips down her jaw and feathered a thumb across her lips. “I’m sorry.”
She didn’t even blink, just leaned until her lips hit his, and then treated him to the longest, sweetest kiss of his experience. Everything fell away except her and he froze, letting her drive this to whatever completion she wished because this was about feeling her out, learning who she was besides the woman he’d had hot, dirty sex with in Vegas.
God, he’d needed this, needed her in ways he wouldn’t have guessed. The anticipation of getting her into his arms just like this flavored it so heavily that kissing her was nearly mind-altering. And this wasn’t even close to the kind of kiss he’d envisioned jumping into all night. This was something else.
She pulled back and tilted her forehead to his until they touched. “I’m sorry, too. For being difficult. But not for kissing you. You needed the reminder that we’re a unit. Peanut butter and jelly.”
Yes. That’s what it was. A solidifying of their union. No longer was this a marriage favor he was doing for his mother. He and Roz were becoming something. What, he wasn’t sure yet, but it was so much more real than what he’d envisioned.
No. That wasn’t what was happening here. Something lodged in his chest and he couldn’t breathe all at once. He couldn’t care about Roz, not like they were a couple. Not like there was any possibility of something deeper than a surface connection that started and ended with sex.
She didn’t think there was something bigger than a marriage of convenience happening here. Did she? Had he messed up her expectations with all the talk of dates and getting to know each other? Had he screwed up his own expectations?
Surely not. Maybe some things had gotten a little out of whack, strictly due to the rules she’d laid down. The solution was to marry her and get to the place where he could block all that out with lots of hot sex, obviously. The lack of it was throwing them both off, that was all. He’d been forced into this pseudo-intimacy because of the scandal and now that he’d proven he wasn’t a sex addict, it was time to move on to the next level. Once things were on familiar ground, he could fix all their fights with orgasms and then no one had to apologize for anything.
“We’ve got to get a wedding date on the calendar and you in a dress,” he muttered.
The sooner the better.
Six
Somehow, Hendrix pulled off a miracle and got the wedding planned in record time, even down to the last place-setting. Roz wasn’t confused about his motivation. She’d thrown down a gauntlet that they couldn’t have sex until the wedding and had unwittingly created an environment that meant they’d be tense and irritable around each other.
Frankly, she was a little tired of it, too. They didn’t have anything in common other than blind lust and a desire to fix the scandal. She got that. Their one disastrous attempt at a date had ended with solid reminders that her skill set didn’t extend to forming connections with people, especially not with men—because she was good at having sex with them, but nothing else. Hendrix was no exception.
After her patient attempt to work through his unexpected freak-out over what should have been a simple announcement that she’d had lunch with Helene, his response? Let’s get you in a wedding dress so I can finally get what I came for.
Fine. They weren’t a real unit. Not like Hendrix and Helene, and the reminder had been brutal. Maybe she’d started to feel a little mushy about t
he idea of being part of something, but it had been nothing but a mirage.
They were getting married for reasons that had nothing to do with peanut butter and jelly and she’d agreed to that. It was smart. Not romantic, and that was a good thing. Less painful in the long run.
She liked orgasms as much as the next girl, so there was really no downside. Except for the niggling feeling that she and Hendrix had been on the verge of something special in the car and then it had vanished.
Her life was spiraling out of her control faster than she could grab on to it. She combated that by sticking her fingers in her ears and pretending there was no wedding planning going on. Hendrix handled it all, finally getting the message after his fourth attempt to include her in the decisions. Except for the flowers she’d already picked out, she really didn’t care.
None of it mattered. They’d be undoing it all in a matter of months. The wedding music would dwindle from everyone’s memory the moment the last note faded. Who cared what the piece was called?
The morning of the wedding dawned clear and beautiful, a rare day in Raleigh when the humidity wasn’t oppressive. Figured. It was a perfect scenario to wear her hair down, but the pearl-encrusted bodice of her dress required her hair to be up. She dragged herself out of bed and got started on enjoying her wedding day—likely the only one she’d ever get. If nothing else, by the end of it, she and Hendrix would be past the weirdness that had sprung up since their date.
Lora picked her up at nine to take her to the spa, where they’d planned to spend the morning pampering themselves, but Roz couldn’t get into the spirit. Hell, what kind of spirit was she supposed to be in on the day of a wedding that was basically an arranged marriage? She’d moved a few things into Hendrix’s mansion in Oakwood yesterday and they planned to live together for a few months, at least until the election, at which point they’d agreed to reevaluate. Everything was on track.
The spa did not relax her. The masseur had ham hands, the girl who did Roz’s bikini wax burned herself—not badly, but she’d had to find someone else to finish the job—and the facial left Roz’s skin feeling raw and slightly dry, so her makeup wouldn’t apply correctly. Gah, she’d been putting on foundation for fifteen-plus years. Why did her face suddenly look like the Grand Canyon in miniature?
Nerves. So much was riding on this marriage. Her reputation. Clown-Around. Helene’s campaign. Her father’s political ambitions. And maybe deep inside, she hoped that saying I do would magically shift things between her and her father. It wasn’t a crime to hope.
But neither was any shifting likely. So far, he’d stayed on script, expressing nonverbal disapproval in the usual ways while tossing out backhanded comments about getting chummy with Helene. It had soured her lunch dates with Hendrix’s mom to the point where she had canceled the last one. It had killed her to lose that one-on-one time with Helene but Hendrix had been so weird about it that Roz figured it was better not to get too attached. Her response was mostly self-preservation at this point.
As she leaned into the mirror to work on her eyeliner, her hand started to shake.
Lora glanced over from her spot next to the bride. “You okay? You’ve been jumpy since this morning.”
Dang it. If Lora had noticed, Hendrix would, too. Maybe she could sneak a glass of white wine from the reception before walking down the aisle. Just to settle things inside. “Brides are allowed to be jumpy.”
Her friend eyed her. “But this isn’t a real wedding. You’ve been so calm and collected this whole time. It’s kind of a shock to see you having this strong of a reaction.”
“It is a real wedding,” she corrected, fielding a little shock of her own that Lora had classified it any other way. “And a real marriage. I’m taking his name. We’ll be sleeping in the same bed. Can’t get much more real than that.”
That started tonight. Holy hell. That was a lot of reality, orgasms notwithstanding. She’d be an honest-to-God wife who could legally sign her name Mrs. Harris. It suddenly felt like a huge gamble with no guarantee of a payoff.
Lora shrugged and tossed her long blond hair over her shoulder, leaning into the mirror to apply her own cosmetics. “But you’re not in love. It’s not like he swept you off your feet with a romantic proposal that you couldn’t resist. I’m kind of surprised you’re going through with it, actually. You didn’t plan one tiny part of the ceremony. I had to force you to pick a dress.”
All of that was true. And sad all at once that such a cold recitation of facts so accurately described her wedding day. She tossed her head. “I never dreamed of my wedding or scrawled my future married name on stray pieces of paper growing up. I’m marrying a man with bedroom skills a gigolo would envy. My life will not suck. And when we get tired of each other, I get a no-fault divorce. It’s a business arrangement. It’s the perfect marriage for me.”
She’d keep telling herself that until she believed it too, and ignore the huge gap in her chest that she wished was filled with something special.
Grinning, Lora waved her mascara wand in Roz’s direction. “When you put it that way... Does he have a friend?”
“Sure. I’ll introduce you to Warren. You’ll like him.” Doubtful. Lora wouldn’t look twice at a man who accessorized with his cell phone 24/7. “Hendrix’s other friend is married.”
Jonas and Viv had come across as one of those couples who were really in love. You could just tell they both firmly believed they’d found their soul mate. Honestly, Roz thought she’d be exactly like that if she ever fell in love, which was why she hoped she never did. Her parents had been mad for each other and watching her father waste away alongside her dying mother had been a huge wake-up call. Love equaled pain. And then when it was gone, she envisioned being alone for the rest of her life, just like her father. Carpenters weren’t good at serial marriage.
The one she’d get with Hendrix Harris was perfect for her.
Hendrix sent a limo to pick up the bride and bridesmaid. Roz felt a little silly at the size of the vehicle when she spread out her white pearl-encrusted skirt on the spacious leather seat that could have held four people. But the fact of the matter was that she didn’t have a lot of friends that she would have asked to be in her wedding party. She had acquaintances. They’d all been invited to the social event of the season, though she didn’t fool herself for a moment that they were coming for any other reason than morbid curiosity.
All at once, the door to the chapel loomed and her feet carried her into the church’s vestibule without much conscious effort on her part. Her father waited for her inside as arranged, but she couldn’t quite shake the feeling of walking through a surreal dream.
“Roz,” her father called as he caught sight of her. “You’re looking well.”
Geez. Exactly what every bride dreams of hearing on her wedding day. “Thanks, Dad.”
He wasn’t effusive with his praise, never had been. But was it too much to ask for a little affection on a day when she was doing something that would benefit him?
Crooking his elbow in her direction, he stood where the coordinator directed him to and then it was Roz’s turn to get in line behind Lora, who was stunning in a pale pink column dress with a long skirt. It would have been more appropriate for an evening wedding, but that was one thing Roz had cared about picking out. She’d gotten the dress that looked good on Lora, not the one societal convention dictated.
She was still Rosalind Carpenter. For about thirty more minutes. Oh, God.
What if this was a huge mistake?
Music swelled from the interior of the chapel that Hendrix had insisted would lend validity to their union. That seemed be the litmus test for pretty much all of his wedding decisions—how legit the thing was. She’d never have pegged him as that much of a traditionalist but she got more than an eyeful of his idea of what a proper wedding looked like as the coordinator flung open th
e doors to the chapel, signaling their entrance.
Five hundred guests rose dutifully to their feet, heads craned toward Roz for their first glimpse of the bride. An explosion of color greeted her, from the bouquets at the end of each pew to the multiple stands holding baskets of blooms across the front. Hendrix had chosen pinks to complement Lora’s dress, but hadn’t seemed too inclined to stick with a flower theme. There were stargazer lilies she’d picked out at the florist, but also roses, baby’s breath, tulips, daisies, and something that might be a larkspur, but her father started down the aisle before she could verify.
Wow, was it hot in here. Every eye in the house was trained on her. Her spine stiffened and she let her own vision blur so she didn’t have to see whether they were quietly judging her or had a measure of compassion reflected on their faces. No way was it the latter. No one in attendance had a clue how difficult today was for the motherless bride.
Then her gaze drifted past all the flowers and landed on the star of the show. Hendrix. She stared into his pale hazel eyes as her father handed her off in the most traditional of exchanges. Her husband-to-be clasped her fingers and the five hundred people behind her vanished as she let Hendrix soak through her to the marrow.
“You’re so beautiful it hurts inside when I look at you,” he murmured.
Her knees turned to marshmallow and she tightened her grip on his hand.
That was the proper thing to say to a bride on her wedding day and she didn’t even try to squelch the bloom of gratitude that had just unfurled in her chest. “I bet you say that to all your brides.”
He grinned and faced the minister, guiding her through the ceremony like a pro when nerves erased her memory of the rehearsal from the night before. The space-time continuum bent double on itself and the ceremony wound to a close before she’d barely blinked once.
“You may kiss the bride,” the minister intoned and that’s when she realized the complete tactical error she’d made.
