Fake Marriage (Contemporary Romance Box Set)

by Ajme Williams

  He nodded and leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Next time.” And then he kissed me.

  Ready to read ALL the books in this series?

  Get the FAKE MARRIAGE BOX SET here.

  Read on for a sneak peek to Our Last Chance featuring Nick and Mia. This is a standalone second chance romance from my HEART OF HOPE series, and I think you are going to swoon over Nick.

  Book Two - Accidental Baby

  Prologue

  Trina

  I’ve gone mad. That was the only way to explain my current predicament. Up until a few days ago, I’d been a sane, reasonable person who did everything according to plan. Somehow, I’d gone completely off my rocker and was now in bed in Ryder Simms’ house. Not in his bed, but still, in a bed in his house instead of my own bed in my own apartment. The only explanation was that I’d gone nuts. Around the bend. Coocoo for cocoa puffs.

  Everything that man did was infuriating. The latest annoyance was his recent shower. Who took a shower in the middle of the day? Ryder, apparently. Hopefully, he’d get dressed and leave the house so I could have peace and quiet. Sundays were my self-care days, which, among many pampering activities, included a nap. Just when I’d laid down, he’d turned on the shower. The pipes groaned and rattled until the water settled into a steady stream.

  Just as I got used to the sound of shower, he started to sing. I thought singing in the shower was just a saying, but no. Ryder actually sang as he lathered up his … well, no, I wasn’t going to think about his hard, lean body that was infuriatingly perfect.

  When the water went off, I thanked the lord and turned over to enjoy my nap. I could feel sleep shimmering at the edge of consciousness. I was nearing bliss when the twang of a guitar being tuned made me wince. Seriously? Now? Again? Did he ever stop plucking that old thing? I pulled the pillow over my head, trying some deep breathing to calm me down and lull me to sleep.

  He strummed the guitar and began to sing.

  Good God! Not that his singing was bad, because it wasn’t, but come on, grow up Ryder. Stop pretending to be a rockstar and get a real life.

  Unable to stand it any longer, I jumped out of bed and stomped down the hall to his bedroom. I didn’t bother to knock as I barged in, prepared to give him the what for.

  “Do you always have to play that blasted—” The rest of my sentence caught in the back of my throat as I realized Ryder was stark naked. He was standing, holding his guitar, but it didn’t cover much. It didn’t cover any of his … assets.

  Don’t look, I chanted in my head, but of course, my eyeballs had a mind all of their own as they drifted down his body, over the guitar slung across his belly, and lower.

  Holy hell, was his dick growing?

  “Is there something you need?”

  His words jerked my attention back up to his face. He had a knowing smirk as he waited for my response.

  “I … ah …” Jesus, what happened to my brain? It was completely short-circuiting.

  I’d always known Ryder was hot. I’d grown up with him as his twin sister’s best friend, so I’d seen him go from gawky boy to teen heartthrob to sexy man. But I’d never seen him naked, and while I was irked by it, I was also impressed. He was broad and firm through the chest. Lean and long through the hips. And his dick … oh God, it was growing.

  He set the guitar down and moved closer to me. I was in a stupor as he reached me.

  I blinked and finally managed, “Never mind,” and then turned and ran from the room like my hair was on fire. It had to be if the heat flushing my skin was any indication.

  I reached my room, rushing in and slamming the door. I tried to lock it, but it was an old house with ancient door knobs that required a key to lock. Of course, the key was nowhere to be found. How this house was still standing I had no idea, as everything was old, tired and worn.

  For a second, I leaned against the door, wondering for the umpteenth time what I was doing there, living with a man who irked me to no end. A man I now knew had the body of a Michelangelo sculpture. Good lord, he was sexy hot. No, don't think of him like that. He’s annoying, remember?

  There was a knock on the door behind me, making me jump and move into the center of the room. I stayed quiet, hoping he’d go away. Of course, this was Ryder we were talking about. He lived to irk me.

  The door opened and he came in. At least he’d put on some athletic shorts, although his chest was still bare in all its beefy glory.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “Yes. How about we talk about how there should be locks on the door so people can’t just barge in?” I said, feeling relieved now that I’d found my voice.

  “You didn’t bother knocking when you came barging in my room,” he pointed out quite calmly. “You might have avoided seeing me naked if you’d taken the time to knock.”

  Crap. He was right.

  “We’re living together for the time being. Married, even. You can’t freak out just because you see my dick.” His brows narrowed. “You have seen a dick before, haven’t you?”

  Ugh! The man could be so annoying. “Is that what that was? I was worried you had a growth.”

  He gave me a wicked grin. “It was growing, all right.”

  Oh, for crying out loud. “This marriage is fake and that means no nudity.” It was time for me to lay down the laws of the land. We needed order. Rules. I needed Ryder to follow the rules.

  He smirked like he always did when I tried to set boundaries. “I like my version of this marriage better. It sounds more fun.”

  I had no doubt that his use of the word fun was to remind me how he and everyone else thought I was a stick in the mud. What was worse, my girlie parts agreed with him. They wanted to have fun. Fun with Ryder. Traitors.

  Annoyed at my reaction, I pushed him. “Get out.”

  His smile was amused, like I was some wild animal he was poking at. “This is my house.”

  “If we’re fake married, half of it is fake mine.”

  His eyes narrowed in question. “Have you noticed that this marriage is fake only when it benefits you?”

  “It’s all fake,” I said, wishing he’d leave before I traced my tongue along the contours of his chest. I pushed at him again to make sure I didn’t.

  He wrapped those long guitar-playing fingers around my arms and pulled me close to him. The heat of his body seared my skin.

  “This isn’t fake.” His thick dick pressed against my belly, making me drunk with arousal, damn him.

  I swallowed hard, knowing I was losing the battle. I was pissed that my hormones would betray me. Ryder was everything I didn’t want in a man. Unambitious. Lackadaisical about life. He didn’t take anything seriously, and instead lived like an eight-year-old boy in a twenty-eight-year-old body.

  He gave me another slow, knowing smile. “I think it's about time I taste my wife again.”

  My brain said no, but my body screamed, yes, yes, yes.

  “You fight me on everything, Katrina. How about for once, you just let go and live?”

  Dammit, I was powerless when he called me Katrina instead of Trina, like everyone else did.

  He dipped his head toward me and my traitorous body leaned toward him too. His lips pressed against mine, at first soft and tentative. Perhaps he was afraid I’d bite him. But when I didn’t, he turned up the intensity of the kiss. His lips were firm and thorough as he settled into the kiss, like he planned to be there all day.

  I moaned, partly in pleasure and partly in annoyance that I was helpless to do anything but accept his kiss. No, not just accept it, but fully participate in it. Ryder might be flippant about life, but he was serious when it came to kissing.

  His tongue slipped through the seam of my mouth, and tiny little rockets went off in my head as it swept through in long, delicious strokes.

  He groaned, and in an instant, he swung me up into his arms. I had a moment of self-consciousness about my round curves, but it was gone the minute he laid me on the bed.


  “You taste so fucking good, Katrina.” He settled over me, kissing me again until I couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t care. I could die like this and be perfectly content.

  He trailed his kisses lower, pulling my dress up, sucking on my nipple through the sheer lace of my bra.

  “Oh, God.” I arched, helpless to do anything but feel.

  He continued his journey, down over my belly, pushing my panties down my thighs. Somewhere, in the back of my brain, a warning bell was going on off, telling me I should stop. This shouldn’t be happening. Ryder was my best friend’s brother. He humiliated me in high school. He was a player. He had no ambition and nothing to offer me except annoyance and irritation. My hormones told my brain to shut up and enjoy the ride.

  He settled his shoulders between my thighs and slipped his hands underneath my backside, lifting my hips to his mouth.

  “I’ve wanted you like this forever,” he said roughly. He buried his face in my pussy. I cried out as pleasure whipped up in a frenzy. He groaned, the vibration of it sending shock waves through my entire body. Every neuron inside me was firing. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I never wanted it to stop.

  1

  Ryder—One Week Earlier

  During weeknights, the bar was busy, but not crowded like it was on weekends. Mostly, it was regulars stopping in after work for a little drink to unwind before heading home. Having grown up in Salvation, I was acquainted with nearly everyone who walked through the door. I knew their family history, life story, current woes, and their go-to drink.

  The trio walking in now, I knew better than most. My sister, Sinclair, my best buddy, now brother-in-law, Wyatt, and my sister’s friend Trina I’d known for as long as I could remember. I took a moment to watch them, or more accurately, Trina, as they approached.

  Trina was easily the most stunning woman in town. She was a man’s wet dream come true. At least for me. She had thick wavy red hair, which my fingers threaded through whenever I had a dirty fantasy of her. Her smart, assessing gray eyes seemed to take in everything. She had a sharp tongue that could slash a man to pieces, and that I longed to silence with my fevered kiss. Her body was soft and round in all the right places. I’d been getting off to thoughts of her since I’d first started self-pleasuring myself in high school. Recently, my dirty thoughts veered towards fucking those magnificent tits of hers.

  “It’s the three musketeers,” I said as they reached the bar. “Will it be whiskey or beer tonight?”

  “Beer for me,” Wyatt said.

  “Me too,” Sinclair nodded.

  “Me three.” Trina took a seat next to Sinclair. As I poured the beer, I glanced over at Trina. While my lust for Trina started in high school, she, on the other hand, thought I was lower than pond scum. She treated me like a gnat, she wished she could squash and make go away.

  It hadn’t always been like that. There was a time when we were younger that she was nice to me. For a short time, I thought maybe she liked me too. And then, something happened in our senior year of high school that turned her against me. For ten years, I’d been trying to figure out what happened or at least change her opinion of me. It was my life’s work to solve the puzzle of Katrina Lados.

  “Tough day at the office?” I asked, putting their beers in front of them.

  “The usual,” Sinclair said. “But we just had a successful meeting about reintegrating 4-H into the schools.”

  “As if there was any question about that.” I said. “You took down Stark. Re-starting a club should be nothing to you.”

  Sinclair laughed and I was thrilled to see her so happy. To see her happy with Wyatt. When I’d learned she was pregnant at eighteen with his baby, I was shocked and scared for her. I didn’t know if it was because we were twins or simply siblings that we were so close, but I did everything I could to help her through losing Wyatt, who’d run off without a word, and having a baby while attending college. In my mind, she was a superhero to have achieved all that. I knew most people felt the same about her.

  It was a stark contrast to what they felt about me. I never went to college. When I got out of high school, I got a job at the Salvation Station waiting tables to support my dream of making it big in my band. Ten years later, I was still working in Salvation Station, now as the bartender, and while my band played regularly, we’d given up on dreams of fame and riches. Not that I was complaining. Truth be told, I was perfectly content. I was well-liked, Trina notwithstanding, and enjoyed my life. Well, except my love life. In ten years, I still hadn’t been able to convince Trina to give me a try.

  “You should have seen Wyatt and Sinclair,” Trina said. “You could see why Stark never stood a chance against those two.”

  Wyatt shrugged, putting his beer down after a sip. “Sinclair is a force.”

  “You two make a great team,” I said. They weren’t just words either. Now that they were on the same page, they were the town’s it-couple. They re-energized the farming community, pulled the entire town together against Stark, and were doing it while running a cattle ranch, my sister working as deputy mayor, and raising their nine-year-old daughter. My mother suspected that Sinclair got all the ambition genes and I had to concur. Me, I got all the affable ones. Sinclair, like Trina, didn’t suffer fools much. Me? I figured life was too short to let fuckheads bring you down. Not much bothered me. If people were happy and not hurting anyone, I didn’t care what they did.

  “Who’d have guessed it since your fake marriage was anything but smooth sailing,” Trina said, of Wyatt and Sinclair’s re-start in life, which began with a fake marriage. The legal part of the marriage was real, but it was only done as part of a business deal on their part.

  “Fake marriage isn’t easy,” Wyatt said. “It was definitely harder than the real thing.”

  “Oh, come on.” Trina rolled her eyes. “How hard could it be? You two had the hots for each other.”

  “It was still two different lives with a truck load of baggage tossed together,” Sinclair argued, bringing her beer glass to her lips.

  Trina shook her head, clearly not buying it. “You’re making a big deal out of it. Seriously, how hard could it have been?”

  “Well, let’s see.” Sinclair held up a finger. “For one, we were lying to everyone in town.”

  “Including each other,” Wyatt added. “The only reason I did it was because I still loved Sinclair and I wanted her back, but didn’t tell her that.”

  Hmm, fake married to get the girl. I looked at Trina, wondering if she’d ever consider something like that. I quickly dismissed it. She was too practical and serious. I doubt she’d ever believed in love and fairy tales. No her Prince Charming had a five and ten year plan, and a fat portfolio, not because she cared about money, but because she cared about a guy who could plan that far in advance.

  “And I lied about Alyssa,” Sinclair said, of their daughter, whom Wyatt didn’t know he was the father of until a few months ago.

  “Okay, so you had some baggage that got in the way. But if it were two people who didn’t give a fig about each other, I bet it would be a cakewalk,” Trina said.

  Sinclair rolled her eyes. “Except the idea of a fake marriage is for people to think it’s real. People in love act like they love each other. It’s not easy to fake that.”

  Trina pursed her lips. “Sure, it is. Just make googly eyes at each other.” She looked at me and batted her eyes.

  I went along with it and pretended to swoon.

  She continued on, “Hold hands. Call each other pookie—”

  “Pookie?” I quirked a brow.

  She shrugged. “All I’m saying is that it wouldn’t be that hard to fake a marriage.”

  Personally, I was siding with Wyatt and Sinclair. I knew it wasn’t easy for either of them, although I suspected the fact that they were lying to each other—him about his feelings, and her about their daughter—played into it. Even so, I couldn’t imagine pretending to love someone that I didn’t have feelings for. />
  Even so, I decided to play along and see if I could manipulate the situation so that Trina would have to put her money where her mouth was. I could totally be fake married to Trina, because, of course, my feelings weren’t completely fake.

  “I agree. How hard could it be? Like roommates, really, right?” I wiped down the bar beside Trina as two regulars stepped up to the bar.

  Trina’s eyes widened in surprise that I’d agree with her. I wanted to remind her that she was the contrarian one, not me. The two men ordered beer, which I served.

  “If it would get you something you really wanted, it couldn’t be that hard to pretend to be a couple,” Trina said when I returned to them.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sinclair said, taking a large swallow of her drink.

  “I totally think it would be easy,” I said.

  “Seriously, how would you know how to fake a relationship? Have you ever been in one?” Wyatt asked.

  “Ouch,” I said jokingly, although I wasn’t totally joking. Yes, I knew about my reputation as being a player, but it wasn’t earned. I wasn’t a Lothario, despite my vast dating experience, which I blamed on Trina. It was all her fault. If I could stop liking her, I could move on. But each time I tried seeing another woman, I couldn’t stop thinking of Trina. It wasn’t fair to the woman to see them while pining for Trina. I always felt like a douchbag when I imagined Trina naked and calling my name to make myself come while I was fucking one of them.

  So after each failed attempt to move on, I’d have to end it. Last year, I gave up, and let me say, going without sex—real sex with a woman—wasn’t easy. If I couldn’t get Trina to change her mind about me, I was going to end up celibate and alone except for my hand and dirty thoughts about fucking her tits.

  I shrugged like the comment didn’t bother me. “I just think Trina is right in this case. But if it was hard for you when you were in love with my sister, and she clearly had the hots for you, well then, who am I to say otherwise?”