The Accidental Bride: A BWWM Billionaire Romance

by Tiana Cole

  As he considered that, room service arrived with their breakfasts.

  James signed for the food and closed the door. As he turned back to face Deja, she took a sip of coffee, then leveled her gaze at him. “James, while you are working through the many ideas and fears you are dealing with, please keep in mind that you aren’t the only one whose life was changed by what we did last night. I got married too, and that turned my world upside down. Just because you have money, marrying you didn’t necessarily improve my life. It didn’t solve my problems or help me realize my goals.”

  “It might cost me a major deal.”

  “Yes, you’ve said that. You got a business deal screwed up, and I am honestly sorry that happened. I had no idea of any of that. But even though I am not doing a business deal, you aren’t the only one waking up in a haze this morning and trying to put the pieces together to find out where you are. I had a life that was a work in progress before we met, you know. I was dealing with issues that are important to me, James Andrews. I am a real person with feelings and a life that is every bit as important as yours.”

  “Damn. You have a feisty streak.”

  “With you dumping on me all the time, I think I need to show some attitude just to keep my head above water.”

  The phone rang and James answered it.

  “Hey, buddy, it’s Alan. I’m downstairs in the coffee shop. Want to grab some breakfast?”

  “I think I do.”

  When he hung up, he looked at Deja. “I’m still sorting things out too. I guess I was short with you and I apologize. Truth is I’m rattled. Not only have I never been married before, but I’ve never lost memories. That was Alan.”

  Right on cue. He’d want to see that things had gone according to plan. His plan.

  “Oh, that’s your friend, the one I met last night.”

  “Right. He wants to meet me for breakfast in the coffee shop. I’d like it if you stayed here and ate breakfast while I go have a talk with him.”

  “So I eat alone while you get more advice from friends about dealing with the new wife?” She put more bite into the question than she’d intended. It made her sound hurt, and that was dishonest.

  “I want to see if he can shed light on last night.”

  “Because I’m lying?”

  “Because he’ll have a much different perspective, okay? Last night is a mess in my head and I’m trying to sort out what happened. I need to get some clarity.”

  “Staying sober would’ve provided that.”

  Seeing the hurt that clouded his face, she regretted that too.

  “True. Look, we both need time to think about what happened, and me more than you, but only because you remember things more clearly, and not because I’m more important. You’ve had some time to take it all in and I’m just learning about it.”

  His anguished tone cut through her heart. No matter why, she had hurt this man. “Okay.”

  “When I come back, we can talk. Really talk over things and see where we are.”

  “If we can do that, it would be nice,” she said.

  As he dressed, he glanced at her. Damn but she was incredibly sexy, even in morning light, even under circumstances that scared the crap out of him. Now that he was sober, hearing her, he could tell she was a lot more than sexy. She was smart. Wicked smart, he suspected. That could be either good or bad, but it meant she couldn’t be played. She had that attitude that said she wasn’t going to stand for being talked down to. He liked that. In business, he won most often by finding out what the other side wanted and finding a way to give them as much of it as he could while getting what he wanted.

  Kieran had been right about that.

  If he was going to come out of this adventure whole, he’d need to figure out what made Deja Fontaine tick, learn what she wanted. If she was what she seemed to be, it would be complicated no matter what. Sorting it out meant talking to her like a person who mattered. He could do that. His concern was that she did matter—too much. He couldn’t ignore her attraction. Letting himself feel it could mess everything up.

  * * * *

  When he met Alan in the coffee shop, they sat in a booth. “Two Bloody Marys for now,” Alan told the waitress. “We’ll order breakfast in a bit.” Then he smiled at James. “You look a bit worse for the wear. Have a rough night?”

  James noted his friend’s puffy face. “It doesn’t look like you made an early night of it yourself. You’ve looked prettier.”

  He wiped his hand over his face. “I earned this look. I don’t mind telling you that I had one hell of a fucking night. Or a hell of a night fucking. It works either way. That woman I picked up was a wildcat.”

  James tried to remember what she looked like, but couldn’t manage more than an image of a blonde with a slinky body. “I remember her. So you got lucky?”

  “Lucky?” He laughed. “I’m not sure what luck had to do with it, unless you mean I was lucky enough to be able to afford her.”

  “She was a pro?”

  “Absolutely. A genuine professional girlfriend, available by the night, or week if you can afford her. She made that quite clear when she read me the rather rich menu and richer pricing.”

  “You knew that when you took her up to your room?”

  “Sure. I prefer hookers to making commitments. They provide a high level of sexual pleasure along with the simplest form of relationship the world has ever known—commercial congress. It’s so uncomplicated. You tell her what you want and she tells you the price. It isn’t love, but it’s reliable.”

  “I didn’t know she was a hooker.” He started to say she didn’t look like one, and then remember his thoughts about Deja. What did a hooker look like?

  “Wasn’t yours? I figured that’s why she was so eager to dance with you even though you were drunk.”

  The idea of talking to Alan and getting information didn’t seem so promising now. Now that he was here, facing the man across the table, things were coming back to him that made James wonder how much to tell Alan. It had been a long time since they’d hung out together, which was why running into him here had seemed so crazy.

  He’d put his mistrust of coincidence out of his head last night, but this morning was different. Why had Alan called to have breakfast? If he’d had a wild night, he should have been getting room service.

  He knew that his desire to talk to Alan was because they’d shared history, come up together and had that in common even if they’d never been really close. But he didn’t have anyone else around to talk to. Kieran couldn’t be objective. Deja was wrong. It wasn’t his tone of voice irritating Kieran. He was big on family and resented that James had dumped his sister, even though it had been a mutual decision.

  Now he saw Alan was waiting for him to talk. “The girl I was dancing with wasn’t a hooker.” Suddenly he wondered if she might be. He’d assumed she wasn’t, but he didn’t know anything about her. As Kieran said, he needed to talk to her. “I wish she had been.”

  Alan rubbed his chin. “She was playing the innocent girl?”

  “Not innocent exactly. A girl looking for fun.”

  “I bet you screwed her. That’s just the type of sweet little brown piece you adore. I remember you falling in lust with a brown soul singer in that club in New Orleans. ‘That’s my dream girl,’ you said at the time. Not that you did shit about it.”

  He nodded, remembering, and surprised that Alan brought that up. The girl hadn’t been exactly his dream girl, but she was attractive. Was that why Alan pointed her out and suggested he ask her to dance? Not that he needed to. “I suppose she is something like that girl. That was a long time ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “The usual thing. After you left with your girl, we had a few more drinks, danced some more. Later we went…well, I don’t know where the fuck we went.” He paused. “After that, I guess things weren’t quite so usual.”

  “What then?”

  “The details are vague, but we wound up mar
ried.”

  Alan sat up straight. “Married?”

  “Seems so. That’s how it went, as best I can puzzle it out. I was drunk out of my head.”

  “Where is the girl now?”

  “In my room. In my bed, having breakfast.”

  “What happens now?”

  “I’m not quite sure. It’s been a rough morning and I’m just starting to get the use of my brain back.”

  “If you were drunk, does the marriage count? Is it legal?”

  “It’s legal, but we’ll see if it sticks.”

  “You need to talk to a lawyer.”

  “I did.”

  “Your brain is working better than you let on. What’d he say?”

  “He’s checking. He’s a California lawyer and has to check Nevada law, but he thinks I can get it annulled. I’d have to prove to a judge that I was too drunk to know what I was doing.”

  “I can testify to your drinking, although you were getting around pretty well.”

  “How much I drank isn’t an issue. I have to prove I was drunk when I signed the papers.”

  “Is there a rush?”

  “For what?”

  “I heard that you have ten days to get an annulment.”

  “Apparently, I have all the time I need.”

  Alan’s look of disappointment surprised him. “Oh. That’s interesting. Do you think this is some kind of a con?”

  In his gut, he did, but what kind eluded him at the moment and he wasn’t going to share his uncertainty with Alan, who seemed to be doing more probing than offering advice. “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe she knows that, about how you can get an annulment if you were drunk. Maybe she married you thinking that you’d need her to sign something saying you were plastered at the time. She could hold you up and ask for money to agree to an annulment.”

  “You mean that she married me so she could demand cash to go along with it being annulled? I suppose that’s possible. So far she hasn’t suggested anything.” He laughed. “I almost get the impression she is happy being married, that she’s in no rush to do anything.”

  Alan sipped his drink and raised a hand to summon the waitress. “All this thinking worked up my appetite.” James ordered toast and coffee. His stomach was still churning. The ebullient Alan ordered biscuits and gravy. “And lots of black coffee.” Then he sat back. “If it is the kind of con I’m thinking of, it assumes she knew who you were and that you had money. How would she know that?”

  “Before I asked her to dance? I don’t know. I barely remember dancing.”

  “So maybe she had her sights set on you.”

  “Or she recognized me later on and, seeing the condition I was in, decided to see where she could take that.” He smirked. “It isn’t that I’m vain, Alan, but I know I don’t have a low profile. So there are many possibilities.”

  “Either way, the way it goes down is that when you and I walk in, there she is, shaking that booty. You get hot and aren’t thinking too clear so you let her take the lead. That would sound right.”

  “I remember that you pointed her out to me when we went in. You even suggested I ask her to dance.”

  The observation made Alan shift uncomfortably in his seat. “Just because I know the kind woman you like, and she sure looked right. You needed to blow off some steam.”

  “I guess I managed that okay.”

  “So you wander over and, like you said, maybe she recognizes you and can tell you’ve drifted a couple of meters onto the uninhibited side of things. She sees she’s exciting you, and makes a point of rubbing up against you when you dance with her. That’s what my little hooker did. Not that I’m complaining. The girls do it because it works. Hell, after just a little of that she can let your physiology do the hard work for her. We guys are easy marks once a woman turns on the charm. They get us hard and then lead us around by our pricks.”

  “And what about the girl you went off with?”

  He laughed. “That one definitely led me around by my prick, and used it to pry open my wallet. The lady knows her stuff. Why? Do you want her number?”

  “No. I was wondering if they were together when we met them.”

  Alan frowned thoughtfully. “Oh, like a conspiracy of some kind. Not as far as I know. Matter of fact, I remember that mine showed up while you were dancing with…what’s her name?”

  “Deja.”

  “Deja, wow. I wonder if that’s a real name. Now I see where you are going with this, you think maybe it’s a tag team—they divide and conquer. Maybe yours has the same intention of making a straight appeal to the wallet, but then she recognizes you and decides that being your hot wife for life might be a real upgrade from being your girlfriend for the night.”

  “I don’t know. That’s more thought out than where I was going.”

  “Maybe. Or it could be two independent operators and the same result. You and this Deja were already dancing when mine showed up. I was sitting at the table, staring at the hot girls when she came slithering up to me and pointing out that I shouldn’t be sitting alone watching you two.

  We had a drink and then joined you two on the dance floor. She gave me the same magic treatment but then suggested we head for my room via the ATM machine. That was sounding pretty damn good to me at the time, so we said good night.” He grinned. “Mine didn’t even mention a marriage option.”

  James watched Alan’s face closely. His words were sympathetic but his voice betrayed something else. “I get the feeling you are enjoying my predicament. You look like you are gloating.”

  Alan picked up a biscuit and buttered it slowly. “Well, whatever went down, I’ll confess that there is a bit of me that’s happy I got the better deal for a change. I had a good time, and the affair was neat and clean and over in the morning. Apparently you had a night with pleasures that keeps on giving.”

  Alan was losing control of his expression, and it was clear that the man was almost beside himself with some sort of glee at James’s predicament. “Well, I’ll sort it out.”

  Alan popped the biscuit in his mouth. “You do that, buddy. Best done quickly.”

  “Why? I told you there isn’t any deadline for filing paperwork.”

  “Well, a man in your position doesn’t want it to get out that he parties late into the night, drinks until he’s blown out of his head, and then stumbles into marriage. I don’t think it would make for good public relations. And, as you said, you don’t exactly have a low profile. People will know your name as well as your face. If they see you with her, if they figure out what happened, it might affect whatever pitch you are making while you’re in town.”

  It struck him that Alan was too close to the truth. He had to know something—much more than he was telling. It was true that time wasn’t his friend. Liang would be back in Vegas tomorrow and he needed to be ready if the man found out about his very liberal evening on the town.

  He tried to imagine what was on that video, and it made him ill. How could he have been such an ass? He’d created two distinct problems for himself: the threat that Shen Liang might learn how he’d behaved in public, and the legal problem that came from marrying someone he didn’t know, a woman who might have some agenda that could cause him additional problems. Whether she had married him for some purpose of her own or just because he’d asked her to, ultimately didn’t matter. That didn’t change the need to resolve their status.

  From what Kieran said, the deal was really the pressing matter. He had time to resolve things with Deja, and it wasn’t likely that how he handled that would have any effect on the deal. It just had to be handled.

  But that video! If someone brought the debacle to Liang’s attention, he would be disappointed and it would make him wonder if James was what he seemed to be. There wasn’t anything he could say or do that would change that. And apparently there was no way he could suppress the video. It was already out there. All he could do was hope the man didn’t hear about it.

  Looking at
Alan wash his biscuit down with coffee, he wished he knew why he’d come to Las Vegas. Part of him was afraid he knew exactly why Alan was there, why he’d wanted to go out drinking, and why his friendly smile and chatter seemed to have a knife edge hidden in it.

  * * * *

  Alan ate his breakfast slowly. He took his time because of the pleasure he was getting from watching James, enjoying how much the events had him off his game. It was fun to needle the pompous bastard, watch him squirm. He wasn’t going to pass up the chance. Last night he’d been so smug, so sure he had the deal with Shen Liang in the bag. And he had been close to closing it. James had the credentials, the reputation. Until now. Until the fucking morning after hit him with both barrels. And the best part was that apparently James still didn’t know he’d been had. It would be lovely when he found out, and letting him discover it was far better than telling him.

  Payback is going to be a motherfucker, James.

  When James gave up on eating and went back up to his room, back to his new wife and his troubles, Alan felt better than he had in a long time. He didn’t understand James at all, not the way he avoided becoming some celebrity.

  Fame made people want to do business with you, hoping your cachet would make anything you touched successful, and them rich. It made women want you. If he had the money James did, he’d be damned if he’d settle for a girl like the one he’d pointed James to. But to each his own. If he liked chocolate pussy, more power to him. She might be a nice roll in the sack, but for his part, Alan preferred sleek, pale blondes. The one he’d had last night was perfect and there were more just like her available with a simple phone call.

  Just like he’d told James, Alan never understood why he’d want to buy when he could rent. A girl who was being paid to please him did exactly that, with no fuss, no bother.

  When he closed this deal, well, he’d leverage it into a lot more. Shen Liang had a lot of business in the States. Properly managed, they’d make Alan richer than he’d ever managed, and by properly managed, he meant milked dry.