She didn’t realize her knee was vibrating with nerves until the heat from Wes’s palm seeped through her jeans, stilling her leg. But not her brain.
“Fraud might be better, actually. You could tell them that I—”
“Hey. Take a breath.”
He squeezed her thigh in silent acknowledgment as she took his advice.
“How about we get married before we worry about the divorce?”
She nodded jerkily. The bleakness of the situation stained her heart.
Then the doors beside them burst open, and a grinning band of revelers appeared. The bride was radiantly happy, and very pregnant, garbed in a silky white dress and birdcage veil, one hand full of fuchsia peonies, the other hand laced with her groom’s. He wore a vintage blue tux and a megawatt smile.
Viv’s stomach twisted at the happy scene, and she reflexively clenched the cotton of her T-shirt, her nails digging into her abdomen and the cold, empty feeling there.
What could have been was a knife to her heart.
Still, she couldn’t look away from them, her throat tight as the newlyweds kissed and giggled and oozed optimism all the way down the hall, surrounded by their merry entourage of friends and family.
“Wes and Vivienne? We’re ready for you now.”
They stood in unison, and the gray-haired justice of the peace introduced herself and the hired witness Wes had paid extra for, before warmly inviting them into the room where they would become man and wife.
But when Wes would have followed, Vivienne grabbed his forearm, stalling him on the threshold.
“I can’t do this. I can’t do this to you.”
“And I can’t do this without you.” Wes stepped close, lifted his hand to cradle her jaw. She leaned into the warmth of his palm, trying to steal just a little bit of his strength. “But we’re out of options here. So we’re going to have to do it together, okay?”
His lips brushed her hairline. “All you have to do is close your eyes and pretend with me, just a little longer.”
Pretend. Yes. Viv nodded. She could do that for him.
With a deep breath and her cold hand engulfed in Wes’s warm one, she followed him inside.
You may now kiss your bride.
He could still taste her on his mouth. The fake sweetness of whatever she’d used to make her lips glossy. Their kiss had been brief, little more than a chaste peck, punctuated by an unrelenting awkwardness that had caused the justice of the peace to clear her throat before hurrying them through the document signing and sending them on their way to register the union so that Los Angeles County could do their part in making everything legal and official. So he could keep her safe.
His bride.
His wife.
How surreal was that?
Not the title so much as the way it had all gone down. Nothing like either of them had thought when they were young and in love. When he’d thought marrying her was kind of a foregone conclusion—not an if, but a when.
Looked like he hadn’t been wrong on that front.
Vivienne was quiet in the passenger seat of his tricked-out Range Rover, staring contemplatively out the window as he navigated the start-and-stop traffic, toying with the gaudy ring on her finger. But he knew it was a temporary lull. That her brain was churning, looking for dots to connect, ways to fix things.
He wanted to kiss her again. A deep kiss that would make her forget, for just a second, that they were no closer to finding their puppet master. A slow kiss that would stop her brain from spinning in circles and remind her that she wasn’t in this alone.
She’d gotten him out of prison, and he intended to keep her out in return. To finish his quest for revenge on whoever had blackmailed her into this debacle in the first place. Because if he’d doubted for even a second that he was being framed for this, the fact that she’d been dragged into the fray let him know that this had been an intensely personal attack.
“Can I ask you something?”
She straightened in the black leather bucket seat at the sound of his voice, but it took another second before she tore her gaze from the window and shifted it to him.
“Why didn’t you come to me? When you got blackmailed?”
She stiffened like he’d hit her with a cattle prod and looked away from him, staring straight ahead.
He pushed again, even though her body language screamed at him to leave her alone. But he needed to understand. “I founded a cybersecurity firm. I could have helped.”
“It was my problem.” Her voice was as stiff as her spine.
The answer was so Vivienne that he almost smiled, despite the minor traffic jam that was messing with his attempt to get in the other lane. “You always were the most stubbornly independent woman I ever met.”
“We were broken up! And I wanted to take care of it on my own because I don’t need to run to a man every time something in my life goes wrong.”
“I meant it as a compliment.”
Vivienne twisted her new accessory around her finger. “Oh.”
Since he’d penetrated her bravado, Wes kept talking. Viv always took a little while to open up.
“My mom used to fade into nothing when my dad was serving time. I thought that’s what love was for most of my life...staggering codependence. And then I met you, and it was, I don’t know, kind of refreshing that you didn’t need me like she needed my dad.”
He felt her gaze on him as they inched their way past the fender bender that had been holding things up, and Wes maneuvered the vehicle into
