Twinkling up at her was a huge, flawless princess-cut diamond set in platinum with a fleet of smaller diamonds flanking it.
It was, indeed, absolute perfection.
She hated everything about it.
“What is this?”
“Exactly what you think it is.” Wes sounded grim.
Vivienne had wasted enough youthful dreams pondering this moment, and to have them acted out in this macabre pantomime felt cruel.
“You cannot be serious. If you think I’m going to marry you because of a couple of glorious orgasms then—”
“Eight.” Her would-be fiancé glared at her. “You had eight glorious orgasms, but we don’t have time to go over our highlight reel right now. City Hall closes at five.”
“This is ridiculous.” Vivienne snapped the box shut on the sham of a ring and held it in his direction. “I’m not marrying you.”
Wes remained completely still. “Yes, Viv. You are.”
The deadly seriousness of him finally penetrated her shock, centered her. Something was very, very wrong. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because the less you know the better!” His words were harsh, but there was something tortured about them, as well. Like he no more wanted to be saying them than she wanted to hear them. “Hell, the less I know the better. Something bad is coming, and after what you did to help me, what you gave up...” Wes raked a frustrated hand through his hair.
“A week ago, it wouldn’t have mattered. But we don’t have attorney-client privilege going forward. And now I know things that can hurt you.”
I’m the one who hacked Max’s company, okay? I know you didn’t do it, because it was me.
Her foolish confession pulsed hot in her brain. Shame burned through as she came to grips with what an untenable situation she’d put them both in.
“But you know things that might be able to help me figure this out. And now that they’ve let me go, the investigation is...pursuing new leads.”
Oh, God. Her knees shook as she read between the lines. At the realization she was in the crosshairs.
“Now we need to improvise. The faster the better. Get your purse.”
She couldn’t drag him any further into this than she already had. Not when spousal privilege was black-and-white, and his plan was soaked in so much gray. Vivienne shook her head, trying to make him understand. “This will never hold up in court if it comes down to it. There are a million ways to poke holes in what each of us knew and when we knew it. It won’t keep either of us safe for long.”
She could see she wasn’t getting through to him. That his mind was set.
“We were together for two years,” he countered. “We lived together, and we broke up when you got accepted to Yale. Now work has thrown us back in each other’s lives, and old feelings have resurfaced. Just stick to the salient facts. Let people assume the rest.”
Hearing her inner feelings laid bare made Vivienne tremble. She tried to make him see the truth wasn’t enough.
“If they have the kind of evidence that would send you to Tiffany’s before knocking on my door, then things are too far gone to fix. I’m guilty of what they think I am, Wes. Best-case scenario is that this buys a little extra time while they figure out how to prove our marriage is a sham designed to keep us from testifying against each other.”
“Time is exactly what I need to figure out who did this to you. Why the blackmailer targeted you to get to me. How it all fits together. And I will do whatever it takes. I swear it. I will get us both out of this, but I need your help to make it work.”
Her breath shuddered from her lungs, as though it was filled with razor-sharp ice crystals. Not exactly the “I need you,” she used to dream of when she’d been sure Wes’s proposal was inevitable. The fun house–mirror version of it sat like a rock in her gut.
“You’ve got two choices here.”
Vivienne dropped her gaze to the ring box.
“It’s me, or prison. And orange isn’t your color.”
He stepped close, and his finger was warm against her chin as he tipped her head up, blue eyes boring into hers. “Let me protect you this time, Viv.”
The shift of it prickled through her veins, mixing past memories with present in a way that warmed her blood, that made her want impossible things.
Wes’s fingers brushed hers as he gently tugged the forgotten ring box from her grasp. He opened it and held it between them, a silent offer, not of love, but of momentary safety.
It wasn’t nearly enough, and yet it was so much more than she deserved.
With a trembling breath, she pulled the ostentatious solitaire out of the ring box and slid it on her finger, ignoring the way his shoulders loosened when she did. Because this was going to be painful enough without letting emotions and foolish what-ifs into the mix.
Vivienne dumped the Tiffany packaging on the table beside the door before grabbing her purse. “We should get going.”
Wes nodded, pulling the door open for her.
“And for the record,” she rallied, squaring her shoulders as she stepped into the hallway, “I look great in orange.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE PROCESS OF procuring a marriage license seemed absurdly easy, Vivienne thought, strangling her purse with sweaty palms as they sat on a bench outside the room where she would become Vivienne Brennan. Just as soon as the ceremony scheduled before theirs was finished.
A couple of signatures and a few dollars was all it took to change your life irreparably. That and the possibility of a prison sentence.
“We should have a contingency plan.”
Wes looked up from his phone at the sound of her voice. Calm and cool as ever.
How he could be so blasé about this was beyond her.
“What are you talking about?”
“Divorce papers, in case I end up going
