by Sierra Rose
He always assumed it was so anyone who entered the home knew at once that it was hers, that Dane Cates was hers (despite her infidelities). For the holidays, instead of a nice check from his dad, Brandon opened a tailor’s box with a navy blazer inside, monogrammed at the breast pocket like a prep school boy’s uniform. He had done his best to seem appreciative but it was appalling. For his birthday, monogrammed pajamas (again, no check, no tickets for a ski trip) and the following Christmas, cufflinks.
It wasn’t her impersonal gifts, her seeming obsession with monogramming anything that stood still long enough for unnecessary stitchery. It was her overpowering sense of tangible entitlement. Even if she hadn’t been practically peeing in the corners to mark her territory, it would have been obvious. Not one stick of furniture remained in his father’s mansion from the time when he was married to the first wife. It was all donated so things could be refurbished. Including the blue chintz armchair that his mother used to love. It had sat by the window in her bedroom, and she used to sit there to read to Brandon when he was a child before she got sick. When he found out the chair was gone, that she’d never thought to ask him if he wanted anything that had been his mother’s, he had broken things. Things newly purchased and displayed, and made by Lalique and Wedgwood.
He had hated Lena from that day on. Even though she wasn’t that much older than him, even though she should have been less secure about her position than he, Lena had slapped his face. When he broke the crystal swan, she cracked him right across the mouth with her palm. Brandon, who had never been hit outside of the occasional schoolyard scuffle, had stopped immediately, horrified that he’d been struck in the face.
She had to have known that he wasn’t the sort to hit her back, to tell his father what she had done and why he was angry. He knew his father would have been annoyed with them both for it, and he would have taken a petty enjoyment from making her partake in his father’s displeasure, but he hadn’t tattled. At sixteen, he hadn’t wanted to admit he’d lost his temper or that he’d been smacked. So he put up with the punishment of having to mow the lawn—and the lawn at the Cates Manor was substantial—and help the gardeners to earn back the cost of the china and crystal figures he broke ‘by accident’.
It had been the second shittiest summer of his life. First, was obviously the one when he was nine and his mom died. His sixteenth, though, was spent in that house, knocking his elbows on unfamiliar furniture that seemed to be rearranged constantly, trying to stay out of her way. Feeling like a stranger in his own home and missing his mother so much it ached.
If he had managed to hold onto family feeling after his mother’s passing, if he had held on to an attachment to his distant workaholic father, Lena had managed to sever that. He stayed at school and took extra classes during the summer after that. He went on school-sponsored trips to Switzerland and Spain and once to South Africa. Brandon managed to avoid going home—or what he used to consider his home—over holidays.
When he graduated, his father insisted he come home. Brandon had asked, he had practically begged his dad to take him skiing or boating or anything rather than back to that house. He hadn’t mentioned Lena at the time. He hadn’t wanted to make trouble, but he knew his father suspected there was discord between them. He also knew his father had done fuck all to make sure he saw his own and only son despite her. It was only when he turned eighteen that his dad made an effort and by ‘effort’ that meant he issued a command. Brandon had gone, had stayed out of the house as much as possible—catching up with old friends, he had said by way of excuse.
And yet, apart from a ‘family dinner’ the night Brandon arrived, his dad made little attempt to see him. It had been another in a litany of disappointments. After college, Brandon had joined the family business at his father’s invitation, but they’d never grown closer. Seeing each other at the office and at occasional dinner meetings with other executives made up the bulk of their contact. No birthday celebrations, no holidays. At Christmas, Lena liked to go to ‘their’ home in St. Barth’s and invite friends. He had never been, nor was he likely to become, one of Lena Cates’ friends.
So here he was, marrying a complete stranger to cut Lena out. It seemed immature, vindictive. She got rid of all his mother’s things and slapped him; therefore, he would commit fraud to keep her from getting his dad’s business. He had the education and impressive resume to get a job anywhere in the world, and the trust fund to make sure he didn’t have to work if he didn’t like it. And yet, he was beating his head against the wall, had been for the last four years, to block the terms of his father’s will so he could keep Power Regions.
Brandon rubbed his hands over his face and shook his head. Everything felt thorny, too complicated, too fraught. He didn’t want to examine why exactly he needed to lay claim to his dad’s company, didn’t want to sit on a therapist’s couch and discuss his issues with his parents. He just wanted to forget. Since he couldn’t usually drink alcohol or numb out with drugs, there was no oblivion for him there. He paced the length of the sunken living room in his suite, restless.
When she appeared in the doorway of the bedroom wrapped in the white sheets, he wondered what in hell he’d done...and why he hadn’t done it sooner. She advanced toward him and dropped her sheet. Brandon opened his arms.
Chapter 10
Marj woke up in a king sized bed. Which was weird because her hotel room had a double. She was also butt naked with a sheet wrapped around her leg.
This was not her room.
Marj was completely hung over. How much did I drink? Obviously too much. Her head throbbed and her eyes burned.
She sat up, pushing her tangled hair out of her eyes and looking around. Her clothes were not readily visible. The bed was empty except for herself. She must’ve come here with someone, some guy she picked up after six or seven drinks. She rubbed her eyes and her hands came away smeared with eyeliner. She had to find her stuff and get out of here before whoever he was came back. She didn’t want to deal with some random hookup. Especially not when she had nothing on.
Nothing except a very suspicious new diamond ring on a crucial finger.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit,” she muttered, looking accusatorily at the offending jewelry.
Whoever she picked up couldn’t be filed away in the one-night stand category. It looked perilously as if he was going to occupy the brief and unexpected position of First Husband. Soon to be Ex-Husband, as soon as she could find her damn underwear and get out of here.
She jerked at the sheet to cover herself, for a wrap until she could locate her clothes from the previous night. Her head was pounding. Her heart was pounding. Surely she’d worn clothes last night. She couldn’t quite remember what they looked like, but surely she must’ve had something on. She pulled on the stubborn sheet again, unable to get it loose. Glancing toward the foot of the rumpled bed, she saw that it wasn’t tucked in to the mattress. So it was stuck on something.
She yanked again, and still it didn’t come free. She crawled across the bed and looked over the edge. Well, that made sense. The sheet was stuck under the naked man on the floor. She winced, dragged on the sheet again, and then screamed with frustration. The admittedly handsome form stirred and turned its face toward her, blinking sleepily.
He was hot. That sheet was stuck on a hot naked guy. This made things ever so slightly more complicated. She had gotten drunken, gotten married, gotten laid by what was probably the best looking man she’d ever seen. When he rolled over, she wondered fleetingly if he was bionic or something because there was a wire and a round bandage thing on his stomach. Was he electronic? A.I.? A bomb? She scooted away from the edge. Everything was fuzzy.
“Morning,” he said, evidently much less troubled by their unconventional situation and obvious nudity than Marj was.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.
“Is that any way to greet your husband, Mrs. Cates?” he said with a lazy smile, levering himself up onto the bed.
/> His persistent nakedness was very disconcerting. She wished he’d cover up but the damn sheet was still on the floor. She leaned over the other side of the bed, grabbed a pillow and placed it in front of herself. So, at least, one of them was covered modestly enough for the conversation that clearly needed to take place very quickly.
“I told your colleagues you were okay,” he said. “So they wouldn’t worry because you never came home.”
She ran a hand through her hair. “Thanks. So I guess, uh, we had a one night stand.”
“It’ll be more like a ‘one year’ stand when we’re done. Because that’s how long you signed on for.”
“We’re not married. This is a prank. You’re on some reality show where you play tricks on stupid, drunk women. Show me where the cameras are,” she said, her voice high and crazy, eyes darting around the room.
“No cameras unless you count my phone, and you were the last one to use that feature. You took a picture of the cake. The wedding cake.”
“Oh, quit it! There was no wedding. That’s stupid. That only happens in sitcoms and really bad chick flicks. I want my clothes and your name and—and your driver’s license number! So when I call my lawyer I know who to tell him we’re suing.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. My legal team—that is OUR legal team can take care of any litigation you need to pursue. Besides, I don’t have a driver’s license. I have a driver. You remember Rafael. He drove us to the jeweler and the chapel and back to the hotel last night.”
“Nope. No clue,” she insisted, “which is another reason I’m sure this is a set-up. I don’t get blackout drunk. I’m not sick enough with a hangover to have downed enough to get married and forget about it. I’m not that stupid.”
He smirked. “I hate to be the one to say this, my wife, but you are, in fact, that stupid.”
He vaulted off the bed, giving her a fantastic view of his fantastic ass, and went into another room. He returned brandishing a sheet of paper. A notarized sheet of paper with their signatures on it and a declaration from the great state of Nevada that two had become one in the eyes of the law.
“Well. Shit,” she said flatly.
She shut one eye, scrutinizing the document at a squint. It looked pretty damning.
Chapter 11
Marj stared at the marriage certificate. “Brandon Cates. Why does that sound familiar?”
“Uh, you married me.”
“No, not that! Who are you? I mean how would I know you besides obviously the shitfaced and stupid part?”
“CEO of Power Regions?”
“Double shit. You’re my new boss! I have GOT to call Britt!”
“What?”
“My best friend. She inadvertently screwed her boss a while back, and I gave her hell for being so dumb...and now I owe her a laugh at my expense,” she said, “I’ve screwed and married my new boss within, probably, a few hours of meeting him. Did I know you were my boss?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, then it’s even stupider. She, at least, had no idea. And it was technically her boss’s son. Well, our boss’s son at the time. The boss died—natural causes, don’t worry. But, I can’t even claim ignorance,” she shook her head, “what could I have been thinking? I mean obviously, you’re....”
“I’m what?”
“You know what you are.”
“What am I?” he asked disingenuously.
“You’re hot. Mega hot. However, I’ve never run down the aisle for a hot guy or any other. Looks wouldn’t be enough.”
“Your roommate moved out, and the rent is really expensive and so you can’t go to Starbucks. I remember that part.”
“No. This is impossible.”
“No, this is real.”
“Shit. Was the cake chocolate and espresso?”
“Yes.”
“I remember that! Dammit!”
“At least, you remember something about our wedding night, even if it is food,” he said with equanimity.
“It was really good. The cake, I mean. The rest, well, I’m sure that was fine, too. Oh my gosh! What have we done?”
“You don’t remember our first night together?”
She remembered his hot lips on hers, his sensual touch, the way he made her scream. She flushed. “Um, yeah. It’s all coming back.”
He winked. “Everything?”
“Yes! Everything. I think I screamed your name really, really loud.”
Now he grinned wider. “Well, I did that thing you liked and...”
She held her hand out. “Too much information.”
“I’m your husband.”
“You’re a stranger.”
“A stranger... Seriously? After all the things we did? Like...”
“Okay, that’s gotta stop. So, why did you marry me?”
“To secure my inheritance.”
“Oh.”
“Disappointed?”
“A girl likes to be married for her personality, her brains, at least her fine ass.”
“Your ass is especially fine, Mrs. Cates.”
She blushed. “Um, thanks. So I married you to help you out of a tough bind. Why did we have sex?”
“Because we couldn’t keep our hands off of one another.”
Passionate images of their lovemaking raced across her mind. Biting her lip, she gazed down. “Yes, I seem to remember that very well.”
“You were so beautiful and we had this connection, this spark.”
“I remember the crazy chemistry between us.”
“That kind of chemistry is very hard to find. When I find it, I don’t ever want to let it go.”
“At least for a year,” she mumbled.
He let out a long sigh. “What happened to fighting injustice and oppression? Together, we were going to conquer the Wicked Queen. You even promised me the keys back to my kingdom.”
She put her head in her hands. “Oh my gosh. I do remember saying that. Listen, I was really drunk. I must’ve sounded like an idiot. I’m so sorry.”
“How do you feel about monograms?” he asked.
“They’re stupid and stuffy and I refuse to own one.”
“Good answer,” he said, “so apart from the bit where you threatened to sue me and the part where you thought I was filming you for a reality show, we’re off to an excellent start.”
“Because I don’t like monograms, and I remember the cake?”
“It’s a start. Arranged marriages often have even less to go off of.”
“That’s hardly encouraging. Especially since we’re getting this annulled as soon as I find my pants.”
She stood and backed away from him with the pillow clutched to her front. She made her way walking backward through the doorway and looked behind her just in time to stop herself from plummeting down the three steps into the sunken living room. Her hasty stop and turn may have flashed him her bare ass, but it sure beat taking a grand piano to the back of the head which was the alternative.
“Why do they have a piano? People who can afford this kind of room don’t sit around playing the piano,” she grumbled.
“You can hire an accompanist through the hotel, have piano music during a cocktail gathering or so you can show off your operatic tenor.”
“Or do high-class karaoke? Think the accompanist knows any Lady Gaga? I can rock the shit out of Paparazzi.”
“Speaking of paparazzi, you should be prepared for the media coverage that’s going to surround us.”
Her jaw dropped.
“Don’t give me that look,” he said. “You signed up for this.”
“I have to give you that look because there is no ‘us.’ There is me and the new boss I very stupidly screwed and married.”
“You married me first,” he countered.
“How unusual for me. I hate to disillusion you, but I wasn’t a virgin.”
“Neither was I,” he said.
“Where the hell are my clothes?”
“Look over by the cake. O
ther side of the sofa,” he suggested.
“That’s not my underwear. Where’s my underwear?”
“I don’t know. I removed the lacy, silky material with my teeth, but I can’t answer for where it ended up,” he said with an insouciant shrug she found as infuriating as it was sexy.
Marj struggled into her clothes, hopping around with one stiletto on, in search of her discarded panties. Mind reeling, she wondered what her choices were. If she filed for an annulment...and how did you even DO that? Did you have to find a priest or the guy who did the ceremony? Was it something she could trust his/their legal team to handle or was this something she needed a lawyer for? Because she couldn’t afford a lawyer. And getting waitlisted at Legal Aid for a free lawyer to go up against rich boy and his team of thoroughbred attorneys wasn’t high on her list of optimistic possibilities. If she had to file for divorce, it would take longer and what if he contested it? He didn’t seem like he was panicked and in a rush to unload her and forget the whole sorry episode.
She straightened, pushing back her hair and giving up for the moment on retrieving the errant panties.
“Look, I’m sorry I reacted badly. We need to talk about this and what our options are,” she said in what she hoped was a friendly tone.
“There are no options. We’re married,” he said simply.
“Now, Brendan,” she began.
“Brandon,” he corrected.
“Right. Brandon. The thing is, I don’t want to be married.” Wait. Was she lying to him? She was kind of dreaming about it, but she didn’t think it’d actually happen for a few years. She always planned on a two year courtship. Not a two hour one!
