by Bella Andre
“What will happen if you’re late?”
His hands roamed from her hips to her breasts—and the already slick flesh between her thighs.
“My first graders will worry that something happened to me.”
His hands paused on their trip across her erogenous zones. “Those kids owe me big time for this.” When she didn’t immediately move away, he said, “You’d better go before I change my mind, sweetheart.”
Her body throbbing with unsatisfied desire, she had to force herself to step out of the shower and grab a towel.
She was surprised when he emerged sixty seconds later, threw on some clothes, and picked up his keys. “Ready whenever you are.”
“Wait a minute. If you work on Sundays, shouldn’t you get today off?”
“Most guys do, but as defensive captain I need to look at game tapes while it’s still fresh.” He leaned against the door, twirling the keys around one finger as he watched her put on her shoes. “So, where am I taking you?”
She looked up at him in surprise. “You don’t have to take me to school. I usually take the bus.”
His grin made her heart beat faster. “Not too many bus stops in this neighborhood.”
She frowned. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
Clearly. Of course, not having a plan to get to her job on Monday morning was only one of a hundred things she hadn’t given any thought to when she’d agreed to marry Cole in Las Vegas on Friday night.
“You saw my office, Anna. Now I’d like to see yours.”
He called his grandmother from the car’s built-in speakers to check on her, and this time Anna said a quick hello, too. She smiled all the way through town, right until they turned the corner to her school.
“Sorry, Grandma. I’ll have to call you back later.” Clicking off the phone, he said, “Damn it. They shouldn’t be here.”
Anna craned her neck. “Who’s here?”
“The press.”
She put her hands in her still damp hair. “I look horrible.”
“No way. You’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
A fake husband didn’t have to say things like that to his fake wife. Just as he didn’t have to touch her the way he did, or give her so much pleasure that just thinking about all the things he’d done could have heated her up in a snowstorm.
Knowing she was blushing from his compliment, she clarified. “While I know they want pictures of you, not me, I’m really afraid I’ll be late if we have to run into them now. There’s a back entrance, just around that corner.”
He frowned, but made a quick right turn before they were seen. “I don’t like dropping you off on a street corner.”
His clear concern was very sweet, and definitely deserved a kiss. “You’re a very sweet man, Cole.”
“Good thing my boss doesn’t agree with you,” he grumbled against her mouth, but she knew he appreciated her words by the gentle way he kissed her back.
Working to catch her breath, she was grabbing her bag and clicking the door open when she felt his hand on hers.
“What time should I pick you up?”
Warmed by the fact that he wanted to go out of his way to come get her—her school was on the opposite side of town from both his house and the stadium—she said, “Again, very sweet. But on Mondays, after I meet with the other K through 2 teachers, my friend Virginia usually gives me a ride. I should be home no later than six.”
Seeing the way his eyes warmed at the way she’d naturally called his house home, hope swelled inside her chest again. Maybe their fake marriage could turn into a real one in the not so distant future. She went out on a limb by giving him another kiss.
“I had a great weekend with you, Cole.”
“Only great?” He nipped at her lips, teasing her as much with his mouth as he did with the question.
“No,” she said softly. “It was phenomenal.”
And as she jogged away from the car toward the elementary school campus, making it just in time for the bell, she realized she still couldn’t stop smiling.
Because of Cole.
* * *
“Miss Davis, my mommy said we should call you Mrs. Taylor now. Why did you have to change your name?”
“What’s it like to be famous?”
“Can you have Cole sign this for me and my big brother?”
Anna was suddenly hard-pressed to keep smiling. Okay, so she was getting slightly more comfortable with the fact that she’d fallen head over heels for a man she hadn’t known last Thursday. But everything that came with him...frankly, she wasn’t sure when she’d get used to it.
Some people were made for fame. Some definitely weren’t.
It was pretty darn clear which check box her mark belonged in.
Knowing it was perfectly natural for her students to be excited about the news of her marriage, she carefully answered each and every one of their questions. Somehow it got to be recess. After she let her kids out to play for fifteen minutes, in lieu of her usual cup of coffee in the teacher’s lounge, she was about to close the classroom door when a well-manicured hand pulled it open.
“Anna. Congratulations.”
Biting back a sigh that she wasn’t going to get the tiny bit of quiet time she desperately needed to get her head on straight, Anna accepted her principal’s congratulations.
“I’ve been thinking,” Celeste Manning began, and Anna forced herself to keep smiling, even as her gut told her to be wary. “As you know, we’ve really had some trouble getting the community to contribute to our fundraiser this year, what with the current economic climate. But, that was before I found out we have a celebrity in the Cougar school family.”
Anna couldn’t imagine Cole at one of their little school fundraisers.
“I’m sure my husband would really love to help the school out, but—”
Celeste’s clapping hands cut Anna off mid-sentence. “Wonderful. I have to hurry back to my desk to let not only our parents, but also everyone in the city know that we will be auctioning off a special dinner with Cole Taylor.”
Anna gripped her boss’s wrist before she got away. “Celeste, you don’t understand. He’s very busy.”
“He couldn’t possibly be too busy for his wife. Besides, our phone lines have been clogged all day with calls from the press. At least now I’ll have something to say to them that will benefit our school.” Celeste glanced down at her wrist and Anna released her. “Although I do have to say, we all feel rather taken by surprise. You should have let us know you were engaged. We would have thrown you a party with cake.”
Cake.
They would have fed her cake.
Anna could barely hold in her laughter until she got the door closed. And if it was slightly tinged with hysteria, well then, at least she had the rest of recess to get ahold of herself.
* * *
Before he went to the tape room, Cole stepped into Julie’s on-site PR office, knowing she often started her day at the stadium before moving to her office across from the Bay Bridge.
“We have a problem.”
Julie frowned as he told her about the paps waiting outside Anna’s school. “Fortunately, Cole, they aren’t legally allowed on a school campus.”
“She feels trapped.” And he hated seeing that fear come back into Anna’s pretty eyes.
“Of course she does. Marrying an Outlaw is definitely not for the fainthearted.” Julie pinned him with one of her trademark no-bullshit gazes, always a little strange on such a classically attractive face. “Look, Cole, I know you wanted to keep your relationship private, but the fact is, if you want them off your back, you’re going to have to give them something.”
The thought of exposing Anna, his sweet, innocent Anna, to the craziness of fame made his gut churn. “No.”
“I’m not talking about a press conference. One interview.” She held up her hand to stop him from telling her where to shove her suggestion. “I’ll handpick the journalist. Trust me, she’ll be
thrilled to get the scoop on the surprise marriage of the season.”
“Anna never asked for this.”
“Speaking from personal experience, loving an Outlaw has always been worth the price that sometimes needs to be paid.”
Cole knew he hadn’t done a damn thing in his life to deserve a good, sweet woman like Anna—especially with the bonus that she’d turned out to be a wildcat in bed. But despite the way he couldn’t stop thinking about her, couldn’t stop touching her—despite how good just being with her made him feel—he had to keep reminding himself that there was no way she was going to fall in love with him.
Unlike Julie, who was willing to make sacrifices in the name of love for her husband, Anna wasn’t in love with the man who’d tricked her into marrying him. She didn’t know about his past, about the fact that while he might be acting sweet around her now, he’d been anything but sweet before.
Anna didn’t deserve to pay any price at all.
Unfortunately, none of that made a damn lick of difference to their current situation. A situation that was entirely his fault.
“Should I make the call?” Julie held up her phone, her eyebrows raised.
“Make the damn call.”
He’d hit the tape room later. First, he needed to beat the crap out of some tackling dummies.
* * *
Anna couldn’t believe the way her day had gone. If she’d been smart, she would have gone with Cole’s suggestion to have the school get a substitute—and stayed in his bed all day.
Instead, she’d naively walked into a situation so far beyond her control, she didn’t have the first clue about how to get it back in line. She’d never seen so many parents come to pick their kids up, especially the fathers of girls and boys who usually took the bus. By the time the last of them cleared out, it felt like she’d been smiling that pasted-on smile for hours.
After hiding out in her classroom at lunch, her colleagues weren’t any better when she got to her weekly planning session. Between the squeals over the size of her ring to the not-so-veiled questions about what it was like to be married to a big, strapping Outlaw—they didn’t care about the married part, just the marital relations part—Anna’s budding headache turned into a biting migraine.
Only her friend Virginia acted like a normal human being. Feeling much as she had with her mother, as soon as they were in the car, Anna said, “I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you about Cole.”
“You don’t need to apologize for anything, Anna. I can see exactly why you felt you had to keep your relationship private.” Virginia snorted. “I’ve never seen people act so crazy.” Then she smiled. “You look different today.”
Anna had to laugh at an assessment that was all too accurate. “You mean because my hair is standing up on end and my eyes are bloodshot?”
“No. You look happy. Happier than I’ve ever seen you.” Anna shot her a surprised look as Virginia added, “Almost like you’re glowing.”
Glowing? She could actually glow after the day she’d had?
The thing was, despite her exhaustion, just thinking about Cole had a smile moving to her face—and heat coursing through her veins.
He’s worth all of this.
“Anna, can I ask you something?”
Virginia’s hesitant words had caution riding her again. “Sure.” She forced herself to add, “Anything.”
“I remember seeing a picture of Cole in a magazine a couple of weeks ago and—” Her friend grimaced, shook her head. “Never mind.”
But Anna wasn’t stupid. She knew without being told that her new husband was a lady-killer of serious proportions.
“He was with another woman, wasn’t he?”
For a moment she thought Virginia was going to cry. “You’re married now. You’re happy. I shouldn’t have said anything, but you’re one of my closest friends. And I can’t stand it if he hasn’t been honest with you.”
Hating herself for being the dishonest one, Anna said, “Thank you for being my friend.”
She wanted so desperately to come clean to someone. And she hated lying to such a close friend, one who cared enough about her to risk their friendship by warning her about possible trouble with her husband.
“Honestly, Cole and I are doing great. And I know that this is going to sound really strange, but if you see any other pictures—” She was a hundred and ten percent positive Virginia would. “—please remember that appearances can be deceiving.”
Finally, Anna thought, she’d said something true.
Chapter Fifteen
Virginia followed her into Cole’s huge house. “Smells great. Does he have a cook?”
Anna made a sound that she hoped could be construed as either a yes or no, depending on what the right answer turned out to be. But when they turned the corner to the kitchen, she had to stop and brace her suddenly weak legs.
Was there anything sexier than a man who knew how to cook?
Cole’s back was to them as he stirred food in several pans, then leaned over to check the oven. Anna was starting to realize how much money her husband had. He didn’t need to cook to feed himself. And he certainly didn’t need to do a damn thing—like cooking dinner—to try and charm himself into her pants. One hot look was all it ever took.
He was picking up a knife and turning to his cutting board on the kitchen island when he saw them. “Anna, sweetheart, you’re home.”
Her name on his lips—along with the endearment and the intense heat in his eyes as he drank her in—made thrill bumps run all along her skin.
“Hi.”
She suddenly felt shy, but Virginia was going to get suspicious pretty soon if she didn’t act a heck of a lot more comfortable with her husband than this.
“Honeybuns,” she said brightly, “this is my friend Virginia.”
His mouth quirked up into that wonderful half-smile she couldn’t get enough of. After turning down the burners on the gas stove, he moved forward with his hand outstretched.
“I really appreciate you bringing Anna home, Virginia.” He reached out to Anna and threaded his fingers through hers as he pulled her close and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “There’s plenty of food. Stay for dinner. I’d love to get to know one of Anna’s friends.”
Virginia looked between the two of them. “Thanks. And everything smells great, but I don’t want to interrupt your plans.”
Selfishly, Anna was desperate to be alone with Cole. How, she suddenly wondered, had she gone so many hours without touching him? Without kissing him? Without being held against his heat? Without breathing in his clean, masculine scent?
But at the same time, the dinner invitation felt so normal. Like he was really her husband.
And she was really his wife.
Hope was carving out another notch inside her chest as she said, “We’d love for you to stay, Virginia.”
“Well, if you’re sure, then I’d love to.”
As they set the dining table and helped plate and carry in food, Anna loved the way Cole made Virginia so comfortable. And she was surprised to find out that her friend was a pretty big football fan. But although he could have easily kept the conversation all about him, he was truly interested in getting to know Virginia better. How had she not known that Virginia had lived in France for several years after college?
From the way people talked about Cole and the part of the game she’d seen on Sunday, Anna understood that Cole was a great football player, but every moment she spent with him made it clear to her that he was so much more than just a spectacular athlete.
He was a great person, period.
As she all but licked her plate clean, she had to laugh at herself. He could have won her love on dinner alone.
“I can’t believe you made this,” she said for approximately the hundredth time as she debated taking thirds of the salmon and scalloped potatoes.
“Anything for you, sweetheart, although pretty soon Virginia is going to think I’ve never cooked for you before.
” His smile was indulgent, tinged with a warning only she could see.
He was right. She needed to do a better job of playing her part. “Oh, of course you have. It’s just that this is so darn good.” Really trying to play it up, she added, “In fact, this meal is worlds better than the last dinner you made for me.”
Anna almost groaned as she saw Cole’s eyebrows go up at her back-handed “compliment,” his lips quirking up before he forced them flat again.
After Virginia excused herself from the table to find the powder room, he softly said, “Remind me to paddle your ass for that last comment after your friend goes home.”
Anna flushed hot at the thought of Cole’s hands on her bottom. Liking the thought far more than she thought she should, she ignored his comment.
“You’ve been so great tonight. Thanks for being so nice to my friend.”
He did just as good a job of ignoring the change in subject. “You don’t think I’m serious about spanking that sweet ass of yours, do you?”
“But you’ve never made me dinner before,” she protested. “I was just trying to make it sound like we’ve done this before. It’s not fair for you to—” She had to stop and breathe to get it out. “—to spank me.”
His sensual grin stole her breath. “You want me to. That makes it fair.”
She shook her head, but couldn’t get the word no past her lips. Not when she was suddenly feeling all tingly. Not when she suddenly realized that she did want to see what being spanked felt like.
But only with Cole.
Standing quickly, Anna began to clear the table. He didn’t take his eyes from her as he pushed his own chair back and stacked plates in the sink. They were done by the time Virginia walked back into the room.
“Thank you so much for dinner, Cole. It was really nice to meet you.”
