Once Upon a Bride

by Jenny Holiday

  Jesus Christ, she looked amazing. He took a big drink of the wine she handed him. She flopped down on the sofa next to him, and his fingers practically vibrated from want.

  She turned her head toward him—just her head as she was still sprawled against the back of the sofa—and grinned. “My father is writing me out of the will.”

  He almost choked on his next sip. Her happy expression was so at odds with her pronouncement. “Don’t look so broken up about it.”

  She shrugged. “I was thinking about what you said a while ago, about intergenerational transfer of wealth. I haven’t done anything to earn that money. Hell, he didn’t do anything to earn that money. His grandfather was the guy who made it all—my father just maintains it.”

  “That’s how the world works. The rich stay rich.”

  “Well, aren’t you a radical accountant?” she teased.

  He liked it too much when she teased him, so he bit back a smile and shrugged. What he’d said was true. A lot of his work was about helping rich people make sure their kids stayed rich after they were gone. About protecting assets. Which was why he was so devoted to the firm’s philanthropic efforts.

  “Well,” she declared. “I want to earn my money.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Which isn’t to say I’m not scared shitless.” Her voice had gone kind of shaky, which had the effect of prodding at the same protective instinct inside him that had made him want to punch her father the last time he’d been here. “I’ve always had a safety net, you know?”

  “What does your brother have to say about all this?” Elise seemed to have a good relationship with her brother, Andy, but didn’t the guy bear some responsibility here? How could he just sit back and be the recipient of such stunningly inequitable treatment?

  She snickered. “He says he’ll give me half of everything when our parents croak.”

  Okay, then. Jay lowered his metaphorical weapons. He wasn’t going to have to track down this Andy dude and give him a talking to, after all.

  “But whatever. Inheritances are nice, but I’m not sure you should plan your life around them.”

  “I wish my clients were as smart as you.”

  She bit her lip like she was trying not to smile. “You think I’m smart?”

  “I do.”

  She looked down, all embarrassed suddenly, and it did something to him. “What?” he said gently, nudging her shoulder with his.

  “No one has ever said that to me before.”

  Well, that pissed him right off. “What about this gaggle of girlfriends you keep telling me about?”

  “Well, yeah, they’re great, but we go so far back, it’s automatic loyalty from them, you know? They’re biased. If you asked them to make a list of my qualities, they’d be all smart, creative, beautiful—”

  “That’s true.” Shit. That had just popped out.

  She’d been rattling off her list of adjectives in a jokey, self-deprecating way, but when he interrupted her, she stopped talking, and her eyes widened.

  He was so mixed up. He wanted to kiss her. Hell, he wanted to bend her over the beige sofa that had been the source of so many jokes. But he also wanted to warm her hands up. And give her father a piece of his mind.

  And play Battleship. And Scrabble and Boggle…and everything.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, to block her out. He couldn’t think with her right there. He needed to get his addled brain back under control. He needed her not to be so goddamn compelling. He needed her not to—

  Kiss him?

  Oh, shit.

  That’s what he got for closing his eyes against Elise Maxwell.

  He was nearly undone when her soft, almost hesitant lips came down on his with a shaky little puff of breath.

  He’d been making a list of things he didn’t need, but suddenly those things were mere wisps of memory. They were so small, so insignificant, compared to the need barrelling down on him.

  For a few seconds, he kept his eyes closed and allowed it to happen. Made his hands into tight fists by his side and let her lips move over his. Let her hair fall against his face—she was half kneeling over him—a honey curtain that smelled like goddamned lemons.

  She was only touching him with her lips, but it was like all the crazy colors of her—of her sofa cushions and her clothing and her—were assaulting him, every part of him all at once. It was too much and not enough at the same time.

  Then she sighed a little. Her tongue touched the seam of his lips, and this was going to be it. He had already compromised his principles by being here at all. Now he was going to move beyond compromising them and throw them out the goddamn window. So much for a lifetime of careful discipline. This was how little it took to prove what kind of man he was.

  But just as he groaned in surrender, she laid a palm against his cheek. In addition to being too soft for his stubbly face, it was cold. It delivered whatever was the opposite of a burn.

  It shocked him back to his senses.

  He grabbed it and pulled it down, then gently levered her away from him.

  “Oh my God. I’m sorry.” She tried to pull her hand from his, but he held fast. “I misread this. I’m so sorry.” She closed her eyes against him, like he’d done with her a few moments ago, but in his case, it had been to try to stem the tide of lust. She, by contrast, was embarrassed. Mortified, even, he’d venture, given how red her face had turned.

  He hated that. So he decided to tell her the truth. It wasn’t like it could make things any more awkward than they currently were.

  “No. No, you didn’t misread.”

  Those pretty hazel eyes flew open, then they darted down to their still clasped hands.

  He could feel his own face heating to match hers as he let go of her hands. “I mean, why else am I at the home of my interior designer on Friday night drinking wine and getting all cozy on the sofa?” He smirked, trying to lighten the bombshell confession he’d made. “The beige sofa?”

  She pressed her lips together, doing that thing where she tried to suppress a smile. “Because you wanted to look at my samples?”

  He wasn’t sure if she’d meant that as a double entendre or if he just had a dirty mind. Screw it, he was going to go with the dirty version. “I do want to look at your samples. Jesus Christ, Elise, I want to do more than look at them.”

  Wary but interested, her eyes moved over his face like she was reading a book. “Why do I sense a but coming?”

  He nodded and ran his fingers through his hair. “But you’re working for me. I hired you to do a job.”

  “Is this why you keep asking me how long until the project is over?”

  “It is.”

  She laughed—hard—as she flopped back down next to him on the sofa. “Well…” She stretched the single syllable out like she did sometimes. It drove him mad. “I can report that the Designers and Decorators Association of Canada has an extensive code of ethics, including a section about interacting with clients. It’s all about protecting client information, not agreeing to things you’re not qualified to do, how to handle disputes.” She spread the fingers of one hand and used the pointer finger from the other to tick off the ethics violations as she listed them. When she was done, she lifted both palms into the air and said, triumphantly, “Nowhere does it say anything about…” Her hands came down and sort of fanned the space between them.

  “About what?” He knew exactly what she meant, of course, but he wanted to hear what she would say.

  “About wanting to jump your clients.” She grinned. “Or about actually jumping them.”

  Well, hot damn. “Are you saying you want to jump me?”

  “Why is it so easy to be honest with you?”

  “I don’t know. I am known for my low bullshit threshold,” he said.

  “I’m not usually like this.”

  “You mean you don’t usually proposition your employers over Battleship?”

  “Okay, you’re not my employer, but we’
ll argue about that later.”

  He got a little thrill—an actual physical shiver—at the prospect that she was planning to mount a defense against his stance that they couldn’t hook up until they were done working together.

  “And, no, I don’t usually proposition anyone, over Battleship or anything else. I’m usually kind of…passive.”

  “Says the woman who turned her back on everything that’s been given to her in favor of charting her own path. The woman who marched into my lobby and insulted the hell out of it.”

  She nodded. “I think that answers my question about why it’s easy to be honest with you, even though in some ways it feels like that’s unusual for me. Everyone else in my life knows me from way back. You met me just as I was becoming someone else.”

  It made sense, but he did take issue with her terminology. “I don’t think you’re becoming someone else. I think you’re just becoming more yourself.”

  She smiled. She liked that analysis. “So you’re really not going to…look at my samples?”

  He sighed. “Look, I know it sounds overly rigid, but I just think it’s suspect. Maybe I’m not technically your boss, but I hired you. I can fire you. You’re at a delicate point in the life of your business, so I should keep my hands to myself for the time being.”

  “That’s very…responsible.”

  “I notice you’re not rushing to agree with me.”

  “I don’t agree with you.”

  He chuckled. “I know, it sounds uptight. I’m known for my low bullshit threshold, as I said, but I also get called uptight a lot. I’ll own that.”

  “It doesn’t sound uptight.” She heaved a big sigh. He loved how heavy with disappointment it was. “It sounds…disciplined. Smart.” She rolled her eyes like she was disgusted with her own conclusion. “So what do we do?”

  “We sublimate until the job is done.” He opened the Battleship box. “And you get ready to have your armada sunk.”

  Chapter 4

  The next week was the longest of Elise’s life. Also the happiest. And it wasn’t just do to with Jay. As his office and lobby neared completion, a growing sense of pride in her work took root. She’d gotten two additional jobs in the building as a result of her work on the Cohen & Smith project, and Jay swore up and down that he hadn’t put anyone up to it, that her work sold itself.

  But okay, it was mostly to do with Jay. It was a strange position they were in. They had basically admitted that they were going to have sex. Just not yet. Which made for a…heated dynamic. He kept calling himself uptight, but honestly, it was sexy as hell, both the waiting itself and watching him exercise such relentless discipline over himself. Because she would have crumbled the moment he crooked his finger.

  There was just something so incredibly hot about that kind of control. It literally made her feel weak in the knees sometimes.

  “How many more days?” he asked gruffly, turning from where he’d been standing by his door. They’d just received delivery of the guest chairs, and he’d been seeing the delivery guys out. “You said two months, and it’s been two months.”

  She sighed. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. She thought about telling him the rugs didn’t matter, that the project was as good as done, but she had tried variations on this argument all week, and she knew he wouldn’t go for it. “The area rugs are slightly delayed. They’re supposed to come in Friday”—that was two days from now—“and then you can…”

  “Then I can what?”

  She swallowed hard. “Then you can sign off on everything.”

  He leveled the intensity look at her—the sexy-intense look had returned since their little chat at her apartment—and she thought he was going to call her on the fact that “you can sign off on everything” wasn’t how she’d intended to end that sentence. He didn’t, though. He merely walked over to the sitting area in his office—which was looking really good if she did say so herself—and said, “Scrabble?”

  She laughed. “Yes.” If she couldn’t do what she really wanted to do, Scrabble was the perfect consolation prize.

  He passed out the tiles, and as she assessed hers, she had to laugh again. Did she dare lay down the word that was jumping out at her? Well, hell, why not? They’d basically spent the week eye fucking each other anyway as they rode the job out, adhering to his letter-of-the-law no-sex-while-working-together hang-up.

  So, trying not to blush—and judging by the rising temperature of her cheeks, failing—she laid down CLIT.

  Then she lifted her gaze to him. He was already looking at her, eyebrows raised like she was a naughty school girl.

  “What?” She batted her eyelashes. “It was my best option.”

  He did not speak, but his nostrils flared. He looked down at his tiles for a moment. Then, slowly, he got up and walked to the door. Was he going to leave? Crap, maybe she’d gone too far. She should have been more sensitive about respecting his boundaries. She should have—

  Click.

  The sound of him locking the door was, objectively, not very loud. But its reverberations echoed through her suddenly aching body like it had been a bomb.

  He stared at her as he walked back—still at the same measured pace—to the sofa. She felt like she was being stalked. Like they were in a nature documentary where the predator’s approach was being shown in slow motion. Except instead of getting killed, she was going to …get her comeuppance.

  In a really good way.

  She exhaled a shaky breath.

  Once seated, he kept his attention half on her, half on the board as slowly, so slowly, building off her L, he laid down three of his tiles: LICK.

  She gasped, which was silly because she had started this.

  He was back to looking at her with that maddening, seemingly calm expression. But the nostril flaring was back too, in a big way.

  Well, hell, if she was in, she was all in. So she looked directly at him and said, “Yes, please, if you don’t mind.”

  She should have been embarrassed to be so bold. She’d never outright asked for anything like that before, but suddenly the idea of him with his head between her legs had lodged itself in her brain, and she was pretty sure it was going to stick there for a good long time.

  “Not only do I not mind, I insist.” He smoldered at her. Smoldered. It was the only word for it. “The rugs will be here Friday, you say?”

  Well, crap. She’d thought for a moment there, with the door locking, that he was going to give in. But no, he was still hung up on the rugs. “Give or take. You can, ah, let me know when they arrive and I’ll clear my schedule.”

  He nodded, the picture of seriousness. But then his voice lowered an octave from where it had been as he asked, “And then I can lick your clit?”

  A strangled cry erupted from her throat as she slumped back against the sofa. “So actually hooking up with me contravenes your personal code of ethics, but somehow talking about licking my clit is allowable professional behavior?”

  She’d been kidding, but his brow furrowed. Deeply. “Shit. You’re right. This is sexual harassment territory.”

  She held her hands up. “No! I was kidding! I’m the one who started this! Harass me!” He still looked unconvinced. She could practically see him beating himself up. She did not want him to get spooked and shut down the sexy talk. It was all she had to hang onto until those damn rugs arrived.

  So she said the first suggestive thing that popped into her head, aiming to get them back on track. “But you’re going to fuck me too, right, not just go down on me?” She shocked herself.

  She liked that she had shocked herself, though. It was reassuring, in a weird way, to be this far outside her comfort zone. If they’d been all moony and romantic with each other, she would have started to panic. That would have been too much like boyfriend territory.

  She must have shocked him, too, because he inhaled sharply. “Elise,” he said, all low and irritated, kind of like he was talking to a kid. But also not.

 
“What?” She feigned innocent confusion. “You don’t want to fuck me?”

  “I want what you want,” he said, speaking through his hands, which had come up to cradle his face, like the world was too much—or maybe she was too much. It made her feel powerful.

  “I want what you want.” Because she did, suddenly. She had the distinct sense that putting herself in Jay’s capable hands would be…severely rewarding.

  He looked up sharply at that, his eyes practically sparking. He liked that. Suddenly she could imagine all that control and discipline he exerted over his life flaring up in…other contexts. She squeezed her thighs together against the throbbing that had started between them. “You like being in charge, don’t you?”

  “I’ve been known to get a little…bossy.”

  “Hmm.” She shifted in her seat and reached for her tiles. If she wanted to keep up with the apparently dirty turn the game was taking, all she had was COY. She had a random mess of letters—two Ys, an O, an E and very few useful consonants. But COY could work. She took her time laying down the word, trying to embody it. “Bossy sounds just fine to me.”

  His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “And yet, you don’t seem like the type who follows the path laid out for her.”

  “Are you talking about my rift with my family?” He nodded. “Because that’s completely different.”

  “Oh, so you just smile and good-naturedly take orders in other contexts?”

  She leveled her own stare at him. “Depends who I’m taking orders from.”

  But then she suddenly realized that he might not be teasing. It might be that he’d paid attention. That he knew about and respected her quest to remake her life. And that was the key word, wasn’t it? Respect. But she was pretty sure the gentlemanly side of Jay, the part that was making them wait until she was officially not working for him anymore, was somehow worried that he was going to accidentally oppress her in the style of her father or something.

  “Jay,” she said, dropping all teasing. “I’m really excited to have sex with you. I’m not going to lie—part of that excitement is about the fact that what you’re calling your ‘bossiness’ turns me on. A lot. But don’t make this into some big psychological thing that it isn’t. Context is everything.”