A soft knock at the door brought Cole to his feet. Something deep inside his gut tightened at the prospect of seeing Jenn again, of having her here in his house, and it had absolutely nothing to do with business or headlines or marriage. It was every male part of him reacting to every female part of her.
He swung open the door to find her standing in his courtyard. She wore a blue fitted top and jeans, a cup of coffee and a white paper bag in one hand, her phone in the other. Her gorgeous red hair had been pulled back into a loose ponytail, and although she was scowling at him, he wondered if she might be fighting the same feelings he was.
Because the sight of her had reverberated through him like the caress of his fingers over the strings of his favorite Fender guitar, tightening his body as a warm hum of awareness vibrated through him. He stepped back, motioning her inside. “Hi.”
“Hello.” Her green eyes darted to his as she stepped into his entrance hall. “Since you so rudely interrupted my day, I hope you don’t mind if I eat my breakfast in front of you.” She held up the white paper bag.
“Not at all. Can I get you anything to go with what you have?”
She shook her head as she showed herself into the living room, glancing around as she walked. “Beautiful place.”
“Thank you.” He couldn’t take any credit for that, of course. He’d had an interior designer outfit the whole place for him, but it was a killer space, with exposed brick on the walls and a private courtyard with a small pool where he could relax and enjoy some green space in privacy…a rarity in New York City.
“So what did you want to talk about?” she asked as she sat on his black leather couch, placing the white paper bag and coffee on the table in front of her.
“Our…marital situation.” He winced at his own words, walking to the window that faced the street.
“Our marital situation?” she repeated, amusement in her voice.
“Obviously, our hopes for a quiet annulment are out the window.”
“Yes, but other than that, our situation hasn’t changed,” she said slowly, turning to look at him.
“But it has. Just think about it. If we go through with the annulment now that the whole world knows we’re married, we just look like drunken fools.”
“You look like a drunken fool,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him as she sipped from her coffee. “No one will even remember my name by Friday.”
She was quick, and she was right. He was going to have to lay all his cards on the table. “To be perfectly honest, yes. The headlines today are the best press I’ve had in months…maybe a year. If we annul our marriage on the grounds it was never consummated, well, you know what they’re going to say.”
“That you can’t get it up.” Jenn’s gaze flicked to his crotch.
His dick stirred in his jeans as he nodded. “Those rumors will never end. It’ll be worse than ever, but if we pretended to be happily married for, say, six months or so, then we could cite irreconcilable differences and go our separate ways. I can take advantage of the good press, and I’ll make it up to you any way you want. Anything you want, just name it.”
“I don’t want your money,” she said, her tone gone flat.
“I didn’t mean money, necessarily. If I can help your career in any way, introduce you to the right people. You mentioned in the Bahamas that your dream is to be a songwriter. Let me help you, mentor you, do whatever I can to help jump-start your career.”
Her cheeks darkened. “I could ask Kate to do any of those things for me if I wanted that kind of help.”
“But you haven’t.”
“No, I haven’t.” She looked away. “And I don’t want my career to be tainted by our farce of a marriage.”
“Tainted is a strong word.” Temper snaked through him, mixed with the heat he felt just from being in the same room with her. “This may be hard for you to believe, but I like you, Jenn, despite the fact that you’re my wife. I wish I’d had more of a chance to get to know you in the Bahamas. I would very much have enjoyed becoming your friend and your lover. I never meant to become your husband, but apparently, you and I make crap decisions when we’re shit-faced, and now we have to deal with the fallout.”
She narrowed her eyes at him but said nothing.
“We can go through with the annulment—and my offer to mentor you still stands, by the way—but our friends, family, and, in my case, pretty much everyone else in the world will know about it. They’ll know we got drunk and did a stupid thing, and they’ll know we were so drunk that we never even had sex.”
“Look, I wanted to keep this private as much as you did, but it’s too late for that now,” she said. “At this point, everyone’s going to know our business no matter what we do.”
“But we still have the power to change the narrative. We can let them believe in our whirlwind romance in the Bahamas, let them believe that we’re madly in love, and in a few months, when we realize it was just lust, they’ll feel sad over our breakup, but they won’t laugh at us the way they would if they knew what really happened.”
“That’s all on you, Cole. The world won’t be laughing at me over this.”
“What about your family? Do you really want them to know you got so drunk you married a total stranger?”
She flattened her lips, staring down at her hands, which he took for a no.
“It’s just a couple of months so that we can regain control of the situation. I get some much-needed positive press that will hopefully end this fucking rumor about my dick once and for all. And, honest to God, that is worth more to me than you could possibly know. And you get, well, whatever you want. You said you didn’t want money, but as my wife, you’re fully entitled to some of it. I’ll buy you a place to live here in the city. I’ll let you take me home to meet the parents if you want, and I’ll be the most polite man you’ve ever brought home. When we stage our breakup, you can blame it all on me. Say anything you want about me.”
Her eyes rounded.
Shit. He held up a finger. “No, I take that back. You can paint me as a jerk or an asshole, but leave sex out of it. No rumors about our sex life or me cheating on you.”
“I would never do that,” she said emphatically.
“If you agree to this, I’ll do anything and everything I can to make this situation as beneficial for you as it is for me. I swear to God, I’m not trying to screw you over here, and I’ll sign a contract with you that says as much.”
“I believe you.” She leaned forward, hands on her knees. “And I feel for you, Cole. I do. But the reality is that this situation is a lot worse for you than it is for me, and as much as I want to help you out, I’m just not sure pretending to be your wife is in my best interest.”
He stalked toward her across the room, resting his hands on the back of the chair opposite her. “You wouldn’t have to pretend to be my wife. You are my wife.”
“On paper.” She sighed. “I don’t know. I guess…I need some time to think about it.”
“Unfortunately, time is something we don’t have.” He’d silenced his phone, but it vibrated constantly in his pocket. Already the paparazzi were gathering in the street outside, eager for a statement or a first picture of the newlyweds together here in the States.
Jenn held up her own phone, thumbing through her notifications. “You’re right. News of our nuptials has spread alarmingly fast. This seems to be blowing up even faster than when Kate and Josh eloped.” Her voice remained calm and professional, but her legs bounced restlessly, her shoulders hunched and rigid.
“Let’s face it together. Please?”
Jenn’s life was spiraling out of control right in front of her eyes. Her phone was flooded with messages from friends and family, and they all had very strong opinions about her surprise marriage.
“What will the people at church say?” her mother had said in an angry voice mail left while she was on the subway.
Not “Are you okay?” or “What happened?” As devout Catholics, the church was their community, their social network, their frame of reference for everything. And they weren’t going to like anything about this, not the fact that she’d gotten married outside the church, or the fact that they’d never even met her husband, or the end of her marriage, whenever and however that came about.
In the eyes of the Catholic church, a couple was still legally bound in the eyes of God even after divorce. Oh, she was so screwed.
Cole had dropped into the chair opposite the couch, looking as miserable as she felt. He’d offered to mentor her, to help jump-start her career. As dirty as that felt, coming in the context of their marriage, she believed he meant it from an honest place. And as much as she wanted to “make it on her own,” she knew that was all but impossible. For someone who wanted to write songs for other people, it was almost imperative that you have connections.
He could do that for her. He could guide her into the next chapter she’d been hoping for. He could get her started as a songwriter and buy her a place to live here in the city so that she could afford to stay once she no longer had her salary as Kate’s assistant to fall back on. He could give her everything she needed to take the next step in her life.
And she’d never admit it to him, but she liked him too. He might be an arrogant, self-absorbed rock star, but he was surprisingly earnest…and honest, as far as she could tell. He needed this marriage more than she did, and he owned that fact. He’d offered to mentor her even if she went through with the annulment.
And maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world if she let people believe she’d married him for the right reasons instead of all the wrong ones. The truth was embarrassing. Getting divorced after six months was embarrassing too, but probably less so than admitting she’d been so drunk, so stupid and sloppy she’d married a near stranger.
“I’m considering it,” she said finally. “But we have to agree on our terms first.”
His eyes lit, and he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Just tell me what you want. Anything.”
“No sex, not even fooling around with anyone else while we’re married.”
He nodded. “Not a problem. Cheating is a hard no for me.”
“And sex between us is not part of the contract either,” she said.
He sat back. “What?”
“I wouldn’t say it’s off the table, but it has to develop naturally between us. You don’t get to jump in the sack with me tonight because we’re playing the role of loving newlyweds for the press. Our contract will specify that this is purely a business proposal. We’re in this to help each other out professionally, not personally.”
“But…” His expression was so pained that she almost felt bad for him. Almost.
“I realize this means your yearlong drought might become an eighteen-month-long one. If that’s a deal breaker for you, you’d better speak up now.”
Cole blew out a long, slow breath. “Fine. Just hadn’t thought that part through yet.”
“And here I thought sex was the first thing on your mind.”
He leveled her with a smoldering gaze that made everything inside her go all warm and shivery. “It sure as hell has been since I met you.”
“Just out of curiosity, how did you get to this point in the first place? I mean, I know you were worried about another woman selling stories to the tabloids, but going without sex for an entire year seems like a drastic response.”
He stared at her for a long moment in silence, his stormy gaze roiling with all kinds of things she couldn’t read.
She looked away. “I’m sorry. That was a really personal question.”
“But a fair one,” he said finally. “And as my wife, I suppose you’re entitled to an answer.”
His wife. The word still hit her like an electric prod to the ribs every single time.
“The first thing you should know about me is that I’m not a relationship man.”
“As your wife, I must say that comes as a shock.” She raised her eyebrows for effect. Zing. Who knew the word “wife” could be so hot?
He laughed without humor. “My parents go through spouses like most people do cars, trading one in for a newer model whenever it suits their fancy. I guess you could say it soured me to the idea of marriage.”
“Fair enough,” she said.
“I love women, and I love sex. I have gorgeous women throwing themselves at me everywhere I turn. It seemed like a win-win, and it was for a long time. Then after that headline, they all just wanted to fuck me to find out if the rumors about my dick were true. I could see the dollar signs in their eyes.”
“Not every woman is like that, Cole.”
He shook his head. “But the ones looking for a quick fuck with their favorite rock star are, or at least enough of them are that I don’t know which ones to trust.”
“Jesus Christ, then date someone other than groupies,” she said, unable to keep the frustration out of her tone.
“They’re the only women I meet. Can’t exactly fill out an online dating profile now, can I? I don’t have time to go out and socialize, and most of those women are looking for at least the potential of a long-term relationship, which is something I just can’t promise. Anyway, I never meant to go this long. It just happened, and it sure as hell hasn’t been a fun time for me.”
She watched him for a moment in silence. There was a whole lot more to Colton Nix than met the eye. Sure, that woman a year ago had screwed him over, but not many men would have reacted the way he had. He seemed to be a caring, considerate man, probably more so than he realized. He wanted more than casual sex, but he didn’t want to settle down, and now he found himself caught in a funny place in the middle. Rather than jerk women around, he’d retreated from the dating scene all together.
“Anyway, I’m willing to go another six months without sex if you are,” he said, looking her in the eye, his brown eyes earnest. “So what do you say, do we have ourselves a deal?”
And she must have been doomed to make stupid decisions around this man, because she heard herself answering, “Yes.”
Cole tugged at his baseball cap as he followed Jenn through the throng of people in Bryant Park. They’d waited until it was mostly dark to arrive so that he could go unnoticed, and consequently, Jenn was alternatingly texting with her friends as they walked and holding up her cell phone as a flashlight to illuminate their way. Up ahead, someone waved a cell phone in the air at them, and she turned toward them.
He stepped closer, sliding his hand in hers. If they were going to pose as newlyweds, they couldn’t be afraid of touching each other. She gave him a sharp look over her shoulder, relaxing into a smile as they reached her friends. There was a chorus of “hellos” and curious faces looking up at them from the cluster of people gathered on blankets in front of them.
“Hi, guys. Sorry we’re late.” Jenn spread out the blue-and-green-checked blanket she’d brought and sat on it, tugging him down beside her.
A black woman with wildly curly hair leaned over, eyeing him with unabashed curiosity. “Holy shit, you really are Colton Nix.”
“I really am,” he answered with a smile. “And you are?”
“Farrah Case.”
“Nice to meet you, Farrah.”
Then the whole group was crowded around their blanket, making hushed introductions in the dark. Jenn’s friends were friendly and enthusiastic if skeptical of the fact that their straitlaced friend had somehow gone to the Bahamas for work and come home married to a rock star. He saw plenty of whispered conversations between them, during which Jenn always smiled and shook her head, her gaze darting to his. He could only guess what they were asking.
“So, you and Jenn, huh?” one of the guys asked—Alex, if he remembered right, but he was god-awful with names.
“Yeah.” He smiled at his bride, currently sitting on the other side of the blanket between Farrah and Lucy.
“And we’re supposed to believe that Jenn, who has a spreadsheet a mile long for any man she even considers dating, somehow met and married you in less than a week?”
He lifted one shoulder with a half smile. “Well, it’s true. I get that she’s normally a planner, but what can I say? Something just clicked between us when we met.” Also true. “There may have been alcohol involved in the decision to tie the knot that night, but neither of us has any regrets about it.” Lie.
“Hmm.” Alex gave him a skeptical look. “Well, it’s completely out of character for the Jenn we know and love, but we support her no matter what, so if you guys are happy, then we’re happy for you.” And with that, he stuck out his hand.
As Cole took it and shook, a funny feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. This was…weird. When he’d suggested they stay married, he’d envisioned putting on a show for the paparazzi, but he hadn’t thought through all the real-life moments that would come with it, like getting to know—and lying to—her friends.
At that moment, the stage lights brightened, and the show began. Cole wasn’t a big fan of Shakespeare and hadn’t seen Romeo and Juliet since he’d been required to watch it back in high school, but he wasn’t sorry about being here tonight with Jenn. Besides, it was refreshing to be in the audience for a change instead of up there on the stage.
Jenn scooted closer, and he tucked her against him, her head against his chest like it was the most natural thing in the world, and oddly enough, it was. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. To be honest, he only halfway paid attention to the production up onstage. His full attention was on the woman in his arms. Jenn was completely engrossed in the play, gasping and laughing in all the right places. As the hour grew later, he stretched out flat on the blanket with Jenn snuggled in against him. She smelled sweet like candy, with just a hint of something flowery, like sugar-coated roses.
All around them, he heard the murmur of voices and the sounds of other couples making out. Jenn’s friend Ezra and his date were going at it on a nearby blanket. She looked up at him, her eyes twinkling with the reflection of the stage lights.
He leaned down, brushing his lips against her ear, half-mad with the need to kiss her properly. “We need to look convincingly like newlyweds, right?”
“Mm-hmm.” She turned her face so that her lips met his.
Fuck yeah. He slid his fingers through her silky hair, anchoring her face to his as their lips met. She tasted like she smelled—like she’d been dipped in sugar. His lips pressed against hers, moving, seeking, absorbing the warmth of her skin and the whisper of her breath. She sighed as her lips parted, her tongue skimming against his.
He rolled onto his side, his free arm around her as they kissed, touching and laughing on their blanket, like an island in the sea of people around them. It was so dark and so crowded that no one was paying them a bit of attention, but way too public to do anything more than kiss. So they made out like a couple of teenagers while Romeo and Juliet did their thing up onstage.
When it was over, as everyone around them packed up their things and headed out of the park, she gave him a shy smile, her lips glistening in the darkness. “Didn’t exactly see much of the play, but I had a good time anyway.”
“I enjoyed our production a hell of a lot more than theirs.” He slid his hand into hers. They said goodbye to her friends and headed toward 40th Street, where his car waited. Earlier, they’d stopped by Jenn’s apartment so that she could pack an overnight bag. She had reluctantly agreed to move into his place for the duration of their marriage for appearance’s sake, but she had insisted on staying in the guest room.
After an evening spent kissing her, though, he was hoping she might change her mind by the time they got home, because he was aching in the very best way. She was quiet during the drive, arms crossed over her chest, staring out the window. He didn’t have to be an expert in body language to know that wasn’t a good sign.
His driver, Steven, pulled the car up behind his town house, and they got out. Jenn slung her duffel bag across her shoulders. He carried their picnic blanket and the rest of the stuff they’d brought with them to Bryant Park. He led the way to the back door and disabled the alarm, motioning her in ahead of him.
Jenn walked into the darkened living room, dropped her bag beside the couch, and turned to face him. “This is awkward.”
“Doesn’t feel that way to me,” he said, although it damn well should. Having Jennifer MacDonald—his wife—here in his living room ought to be awkward as hell.
“This is no big deal to you, huh?” She stalked toward him, chin up and eyes blazing. “I’m just the latest in the parade of women who’ve come through your door. How many have been here before me, Cole? Dozens? Hundreds?”
“None.” He shoved his hands into his pockets as the awkwardness she’d initiated descended over him.
Her eyes rounded at his admission. “Um…”
“I mean, of course other women have been in this house—friends and colleagues, Jorja, my mother, but I’ve never had a woman here in my bed.”
“Well, that’s…weird.”
“Not really. You think I want the kind of woman who’d sell me out to the tabloids knowing where I live?”
“Then where do you take them?”
“Hotels, mostly.”
“Honestly, Cole.” She spun and walked toward the kitchen. “You need to up your dating standards a bit if you can’t even trust a woman enough to bring her to your house before you sleep with her.”
Truth. “I brought you here, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but we’re not dating.” She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, picked up her duffel bag, and headed down the hall toward the guest room. “And I’m not sleeping in your bed either.”