by Rachel Lacey
Speaking of gossip headlines, she tabbed back over to the HeadTalker alert to finish skimming.
“the assistant to pop star Katherine Hayes…”
The phrase jumped out at her, and for a moment, she just stared. Her feet rooted to the pavement. Someone jostled her from behind, flipping her off as he passed her on the sidewalk. She clicked on the link the alert had provided and found herself staring at a grainy photo of her and Cole beneath the lighted arch on Luca Cay.
And her mind went blank.
Colton Nix Gets Hitched! the headline screamed, and there was her name right next to his and photos from their romantic honeymoon in the Bahamas, including one of her in his arms—right after her infamous “a fish touched my leg” leap—but it looked awfully damn romantic and intimate with this camera angle.
God fucking dammit.
Not only had someone leaked their farce of a wedding to the tabloids, but they’d invented a whole fake honeymoon too. And—as she continued to scan the article—reports of a whirlwind romance while Kate and Cole recorded their duet. Never mind that neither Jenn or Kate had even met Cole in person before their arrival in the Bahamas. Duets were almost always recorded in separate sound studios. Didn’t these people know anything about showbiz? (Jenn already knew the answer to that question.)
Well, this was a disaster. She typed Cole’s name into her phone’s browser, and a half-dozen reports of his wedding pulled in, all showing the same photos of him with her beneath the lighted arch and canoodling in the ocean during filming for the music video. And there went their hush-hush annulment.
Now the whole world would know that she’d been Colton Nix’s wife for a few short days, which was just friggin’ fantastic. Marrying a popular rock star was pretty much a guarantee of a shit storm to come. She’d known there was a chance of this happening, although she’d tried her damnedest to prevent it.
But money spoke loudest. Always.
She and Cole obviously needed to have a conversation to decide how they were going to handle this, which sucked because she hadn’t planned on speaking to him again, unless it was at a public event with Kate and she needed to talk to him as Kate’s assistant. To that end, she hadn’t even gotten his number, which she now realized had been an oversight fueled by her own stupid pride. She had Jorja’s number, but to have to call his assistant felt so…well, embarrassing.
As stupid as it was, Cole was her husband, and she felt really freaking dumb having to call her husband’s assistant to get his number. Her phone rang, changing the screen from wedding pictures to her sister’s smiling face. Of course Sophie would be the first to see the news…
“Is it true?” Sophie asked breathlessly as Jenn connected the call.
There was no point in playing dumb. “Yes.”
“Oh my God!” her sister screeched into the phone. “You married Colton friggin’ Nix! Why in the world did I not know about this ahead of time? Mom and Dad are going to have a fit when they find out.”
Jenn pressed a hand over her eyes. She was going to have to tell her parents. This was a nightmare. “The whole thing happened really fast, and to be perfectly honest, it was a bit of a drunken mistake.”
“A what?” Her sister sounded confused. “But that’s not something you would do.”
“And yet…I did.” Jenn reached Forty-Eighth Street and turned right, headed for the subway. Forget reading at the library. Her carefree mood was ruined, and she had shit to do now. Damage control. That was something she was supposed to do for Kate, not herself.
“What happened?”
Reluctantly, she gave Sophie an unconvincing rundown of her “whirlwind romance” with Cole, resulting in their drunken vows on the beach. The story was farfetched, even to her own ears. As Sophie had said, this was just not something Jenn would do.
“Wow. Well, I guess you were due for your wild-child moment,” Sophie said with laughter in her voice. “Lord knows I had enough for the both of us in high school.”
It was true. Sophie had gotten into enough trouble in her teens to drive both of their parents prematurely gray (might have had something to do with genetics too). But she’d settled down once she reached adulthood and was now a happily married mother of two. Jenn had been the quiet, studious one, had always gotten good grades, and since being an aspiring songwriter didn’t pay the bills, she’d done the next best thing and gotten herself hired out of college as Katherine Hayes’s personal assistant to learn the business from the inside out.
And now, just as she was poised to take her career to the next level, she’d made her first colossal fuckup. Wasn’t that the way life always went?
“I’ve got to let you go. I’m getting on the subway,” Jenn told Sophie as she headed down the steps at the corner of Sixth Avenue.
“Call me later with an update,” Sophie said.
“Will do.” Right now, she just wanted to go home and figure out how to get this mess sorted out as quickly and painlessly as possible. She hopped on the B train and rode it to 96th Street. Her apartment was a studio on the third floor of an old brick building. Ironically, it had once been Kate’s husband Josh’s place. After he’d moved in with Kate, he’d sublet the apartment to Jenn at a fraction of what a place like this would have cost her anywhere else, which had worked out perfectly for her. It was full of all those little quirks that made the older buildings in New York so unique: intricate crown molding, parquet floors, and this bizarre little nook behind the bed where she kept books and other knickknacks.
As she climbed the steps from the subway back to street level, her cell phone rang with an unknown New York exchange. Automatically, she brought it to her ear. “Jennifer MacDonald.”
“It’s Cole.” Those two words, in his deep, rich voice, had goose bumps rising up and down her arms.
“Oh,” she said, uncharacteristically at a loss for words.
“You’ve seen the headlines?” he asked.
She blew out a breath. “I’ve seen them.”
“We need to talk.”
“Yeah, we do.” She could hate it all she wanted, but she couldn’t change what was already done.
“Where are you?”
Wait, he wanted to talk in person? She shook her head emphatically. “I’m on my way home. We can talk now…on the phone.”
“This isn’t a conversation to have on the phone,” he said, his voice sounding even richer and sexier over the phone than it did in person. “I’ve got a car waiting in front of your building. See you soon.”
“How did you—” she sputtered, but he was already gone. And anyway, she knew perfectly well how he’d tracked her down. She’d done the same thing for Kate too many times to count. But dammit, she much preferred to be the tracker than the trackee.
As she rounded the corner, sure enough, she spotted a black Lincoln Town Car parked out front. She drew herself up tall as she marched toward it.
5
A soft knock at the door brought Cole to his feet. Something deep inside his gut tightened at the prospect of seeing Jenn again, of having her here in his house, and it had absolutely nothing to do with business or headlines or marriage. It was every male part of him reacting to every female part of her.
He swung open the door to find her standing in his courtyard. She wore a blue fitted top and jeans, a cup of coffee and a white paper bag in one hand, her phone in the other. Her gorgeous red hair had been pulled back into a loose ponytail, and although she was scowling at him, he wondered if she might be fighting the same feelings he was.
Because the sight of her had reverberated through him like the caress of his fingers over the strings of his favorite Fender guitar, tightening his body as a warm hum of awareness vibrated through him. He stepped back, motioning her inside. “Hi.”
“Hello.” Her green eyes darted to his as she stepped into his entrance hall. “Since you so rudely interrupted my day, I hope you don’t mind if I eat my breakfast in front of you.” She held up the white paper bag.
“Not at all. Can
I get you anything to go with what you have?”
She shook her head as she showed herself into the living room, glancing around as she walked. “Beautiful place.”
“Thank you.” He couldn’t take any credit for that, of course. He’d had an interior designer outfit the whole place for him, but it was a killer space, with exposed brick on the walls and a private courtyard with a small pool where he could relax and enjoy some green space in privacy…a rarity in New York City.
“So what did you want to talk about?” she asked as she sat on his black leather couch, placing the white paper bag and coffee on the table in front of her.
“Our…marital situation.” He winced at his own words, walking to the window that faced the street.
“Our marital situation?” she repeated, amusement in her voice.
“Obviously, our hopes for a quiet annulment are out the window.”
“Yes, but other than that, our situation hasn’t changed,” she said slowly, turning to look at him.
“But it has. Just think about it. If we go through with the annulment now that the whole world knows we’re married, we just look like drunken fools.”
“You look like a drunken fool,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him as she sipped from her coffee. “No one will even remember my name by Friday.”
She was quick, and she was right. He was going to have to lay all his cards on the table. “To be perfectly honest, yes. The headlines today are the best press I’ve had in months…maybe a year. If we annul our marriage on the grounds it was never consummated, well, you know what they’re going to say.”
“That you can’t get it up.” Jenn’s gaze flicked to his crotch.
His dick stirred in his jeans as he nodded. “Those rumors will never end. It’ll be worse than ever, but if we pretended to be happily married for, say, six months or so, then we could cite irreconcilable differences and go our separate ways. I can take advantage of the good press, and I’ll make it up to you any way you want. Anything you want, just name it.”
“I don’t want your money,” she said, her tone gone flat.
“I didn’t mean money, necessarily. If I can help your career in any way, introduce you to the right people. You mentioned in the Bahamas that your dream is to be a songwriter. Let me help you, mentor you, do whatever I can to help jump-start your career.”
Her cheeks darkened. “I could ask Kate to do any of those things for me if I wanted that kind of help.”
“But you haven’t.”
“No, I haven’t.” She looked away. “And I don’t want my career to be tainted by our farce of a marriage.”
“Tainted is a strong word.” Temper snaked through him, mixed with the heat he felt just from being in the same room with her. “This may be hard for you to believe, but I like you, Jenn, despite the fact that you’re my wife. I wish I’d had more of a chance to get to know you in the Bahamas. I would very much have enjoyed becoming your friend and your lover. I never meant to become your husband, but apparently, you and I make crap decisions when we’re shit-faced, and now we have to deal with the fallout.”
She narrowed her eyes at him but said nothing.
“We can go through with the annulment—and my offer to mentor you still stands, by the way—but our friends, family, and, in my case, pretty much everyone else in the world will know about it. They’ll know we got drunk and did a stupid thing, and they’ll know we were so drunk that we never even had sex.”
“Look, I wanted to keep this private as much as you did, but it’s too late for that now,” she said. “At this point, everyone’s going to know our business no matter what we do.”
“But we still have the power to change the narrative. We can let them believe in our whirlwind romance in the Bahamas, let them believe that we’re madly in love, and in a few months, when we realize it was just lust, they’ll feel sad over our breakup, but they won’t laugh at us the way they would if they knew what really happened.”
“That’s all on you, Cole. The world won’t be laughing at me over this.”
“What about your family? Do you really want them to know you got so drunk you married a total stranger?”
She flattened her lips, staring down at her hands, which he took for a no.
“It’s just a couple of months so that we can regain control of the situation. I get some much-needed positive press that will hopefully end this fucking rumor about my dick once and for all. And, honest to God, that is worth more to me than you could possibly know. And you get, well, whatever you want. You said you didn’t want money, but as my wife, you’re fully entitled to some of it. I’ll buy you a place to live here in the city. I’ll let you take me home to meet the parents if you want, and I’ll be the most polite man you’ve ever brought home. When we stage our breakup, you can blame it all on me. Say anything you want about me.”
Her eyes rounded.
Shit. He held up a finger. “No, I take that back. You can paint me as a jerk or an asshole, but leave sex out of it. No rumors about our sex life or me cheating on you.”
“I would never do that,” she said emphatically.
“If you agree to this, I’ll do anything and everything I can to make this situation as beneficial for you as it is for me. I swear to God, I’m not trying to screw you over here, and I’ll sign a contract with you that says as much.”
“I believe you.” She leaned forward, hands on her knees. “And I feel for you, Cole. I do. But the reality is that this situation is a lot worse for you than it is for me, and as much as I want to help you out, I’m just not sure pretending to be your wife is in my best interest.”
He stalked toward her across the room, resting his hands on the back of the chair opposite her. “You wouldn’t have to pretend to be my wife. You are my wife.”
“On paper.” She sighed. “I don’t know. I guess…I need some time to think about it.”
“Unfortunately, time is something we don’t have.” He’d silenced his phone, but it vibrated constantly in his pocket. Already the paparazzi were gathering in the street outside, eager for a statement or a first picture of the newlyweds together here in the States.
Jenn held up her own phone, thumbing through her notifications. “You’re right. News of our nuptials has spread alarmingly fast. This seems to be blowing up even faster than when Kate and Josh eloped.” Her voice remained calm and professional, but her legs bounced restlessly, her shoulders hunched and rigid.
“Let’s face it together. Please?”
* * *
Jenn’s life was spiraling out of control right in front of her eyes. Her phone was flooded with messages from friends and family, and they all had very strong opinions about her surprise marriage.
“What will the people at church say?” her mother had said in an angry voice mail left while she was on the subway.
Not “Are you okay?” or “What happened?” As devout Catholics, the church was their community, their social network, their frame of reference for everything. And they weren’t going to like anything about this, not the fact that she’d gotten married outside the church, or the fact that they’d never even met her husband, or the end of her marriage, whenever and however that came about.
In the eyes of the Catholic church, a couple was still legally bound in the eyes of God even after divorce. Oh, she was so screwed.
Cole had dropped into the chair opposite the couch, looking as miserable as she felt. He’d offered to mentor her, to help jump-start her career. As dirty as that felt, coming in the context of their marriage, she believed he meant it from an honest place. And as much as she wanted to “make it on her own,” she knew that was all but impossible. For someone who wanted to write songs for other people, it was almost imperative that you have connections.
He could do that for her. He could guide her into the next chapter she’d been hoping for. He could get her started as a songwriter and buy her a place to live here in the city so that she could afford to stay once she no longer had he
r salary as Kate’s assistant to fall back on. He could give her everything she needed to take the next step in her life.
And she’d never admit it to him, but she liked him too. He might be an arrogant, self-absorbed rock star, but he was surprisingly earnest…and honest, as far as she could tell. He needed this marriage more than she did, and he owned that fact. He’d offered to mentor her even if she went through with the annulment.
And maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world if she let people believe she’d married him for the right reasons instead of all the wrong ones. The truth was embarrassing. Getting divorced after six months was embarrassing too, but probably less so than admitting she’d been so drunk, so stupid and sloppy she’d married a near stranger.
“I’m considering it,” she said finally. “But we have to agree on our terms first.”
His eyes lit, and he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Just tell me what you want. Anything.”
“No sex, not even fooling around with anyone else while we’re married.”
He nodded. “Not a problem. Cheating is a hard no for me.”
“And sex between us is not part of the contract either,” she said.
He sat back. “What?”
“I wouldn’t say it’s off the table, but it has to develop naturally between us. You don’t get to jump in the sack with me tonight because we’re playing the role of loving newlyweds for the press. Our contract will specify that this is purely a business proposal. We’re in this to help each other out professionally, not personally.”
“But…” His expression was so pained that she almost felt bad for him. Almost.
“I realize this means your yearlong drought might become an eighteen-month-long one. If that’s a deal breaker for you, you’d better speak up now.”
Cole blew out a long, slow breath. “Fine. Just hadn’t thought that part through yet.”
“And here I thought sex was the first thing on your mind.”
He leveled her with a smoldering gaze that made everything inside her go all warm and shivery. “It sure as hell has been since I met you.”
