SERENA collapsed onto the sofa with a groan after Jonas had left. What should she do? If she accepted his proposal—his second proposal—she had only a matter of days to sublet her apartment, pack up her belongings, quit her job at Bonaventure Creations, and inform her friends and family that not only was she married, she was moving to Vegas.
She nibbled a fingernail—a habit she’d broken two decades earlier.
Should she tell them everything? Including that she and Jonas were only staying married to keep Jonas’s political future alive? Gee, that would go over well with her parents. Serena could already hear her father’s booming baritone.
Do you ever use your head? Do you ever think before you act?
No doubt her mother would chain-smoke a pack of cigarettes as she demanded of no one in particular, Where did we go wrong?
Serena was used to their reactions. She was pretty sure she’d been a huge disappointment to her folks from the moment she’d slipped from the birth canal and the doctor had offered his congratulations on a healthy baby girl. Her father had wanted a boy. Her mother? She’d just wanted peace, and there would be none in the Warren household until Buck got his way. Unfortunately health complications had prevented Susanne from having a second child, and so the cold war had begun. It had been waging ever since, with Serena lost in the permafrost.
Well, no matter. She could deal with her parents’ disappointment and censure. Nothing new there. But what were her friends going to think?
She nibbled a second fingernail.
She wasn’t as concerned that they would be disappointed in her judgment. Their love, unlike her parents’, was unconditional. But they might be angry or hurt that she’d failed to tell them about her hasty nuptials to begin with.
Resting her head on the back of the sofa, Serena studied a quarter-sized indentation on the ceiling. A shooting champagne cork the previous New Year’s Eve was responsible. Alex, who’d opened the bottle, had apologized profusely and insisted on paying to fix the damage. Serena had waved off the offer. It gave the place character, to her way of thinking. But it would have to be patched before she moved out if she hoped to get her security deposit back.
The four women had drunk a toast to the mark then, and another celebrating their friendship. A couple of hours later, minus Jayne, who’d gone off to dinner with her fiancé, they’d rung in the New Year with another bottle of equally poor-quality sparkling wine. The good, the bad and the ugly. Serena had shared it all with her friends. So why hadn’t she told them about Jonas when she’d returned to the hotel?
It wasn’t like her to keep secrets—especially one this big, that was just begging to be picked apart and analyzed as only good friends could do. She’d told herself at the time it was because Alex’s decision to stay in Vegas had been enough for them to deal with. But that was an excuse. Curiously, even Molly hadn’t said a word about Serena’s all-nighter.
She glanced at the clock. She needed to get to work, but tonight she would gather the troops—two physically, one by phone—beg their forgiveness if necessary, and solicit their advice.
“I still can’t believe you got married.” Molly shook her head before taking another sip of iced tea. “I know we were in Vegas and all, and that’s the place where people do things that are…well, out of character.” Her cheeks turned rosy as she said it. “But married?”
Serena lifted her shoulders and sent her a weak smile. “You know me.”
“No, hon. This is wild even for you,” Jayne put in. She snagged a tortilla chip from the bowl in the center of the coffee table and dipped it in salsa. Though she tried to hide it, sadness leaked into her expression when she added, “He must be something else to have turned your head so quickly and so completely.”
“You met him, Molly. What’s he like?” Alex asked via speakerphone.
“I wasn’t with them for long, since I had a headache and it was quite obvious I was a fifth wheel.” Her smile was wry. “But he seemed nice.”
“He is nice,” Serena said.
Which was why she was so torn. If Jonas were a jerk it would have been so easy to tell him no straight out when he’d showed up that morning. She wouldn’t have had to involve her friends, desperate for their insight. Instead, as night fell on San Diego, she remained confused.
An hour had passed since she’d made her big announcement. At first the news had been met with utter silence. But once their initial shock had worn off the other women had pelted Serena with questions—Alex burning up the phoneline with her queries. Now they were down to the nitty-gritty of figuring out what Serena should do.
Jayne, who worked as a debt manager, was ever practical, and offered to make a list of pros and cons.
“I don’t know,” Serena hedged. “I’m not much of a list maker.”
“In this case you need to be,” Alex admonished over the phone. “You need to be sure you’re making the right choice.”
“She’s right,” Molly said. “Let’s put it all down on paper and see what we’ve got.” She rose and crossed to the overflowing desk that was tucked in the corner. After rooting around in the clutter, she came back with a notebook and pen. “Pros,” she wrote, and glanced expectantly at Serena.
Serena coiled a lock of auburn hair around one finger, picturing Jonas. “Well, as I said, he’s nice. He’s smart, too, and surprisingly funny.” Though his demeanor during their encounter earlier that day had been nothing short of grim. But in Vegas. Ah, Vegas… A sigh escaped her lips as she recalled their evening together. In a voice barely above a whisper, she said, “You wouldn’t believe how well that man can kiss.”
It was the wrong thing to remember, much less to say. She glanced over at Molly and Jayne. Their expressions were rife with concern. She didn’t need to see Alex to know hers was the same.
“Um, Serena, we were looking for pros as to why you should agree to move to Vegas and pretend to be happily married to Jonas until the election,” Molly said.
Jayne was more direct. “Do you think you might want to remain married to him for real?”
“No! God, no!” Serena straightened in her seat. It took an effort, but she pulled herself back from the edge of the hormonal abyss she’d all but drowned in upon meeting Jonas. “Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m attracted to him. How could I not be? You saw him, Moll. Tell Jayne and Alex. The guy is way hot.”
“Way hot,” Molly repeated dutifully. Then, “You’ve met hot guys before. Remember Giovanni from last summer? Body of a god and an Italian accent that qualified as foreplay? You didn’t marry him.” Her brow puckered. “You didn’t even go on a second date with him.”
Serena ignored Molly’s comment and tapped a finger thoughtfully to her chin.
“Okay, pros for helping Jonas out by putting off our annulment and relocating to Vegas temporarily,” she stressed for her friends’ benefit. “Alex is there. We can hang out.”
“I love that idea!” Her friend’s voice rang out. “Although I’m pretty swamped with work right now, and it sounds like you’re going to have some obligations, too. Still, it will be good to have at least one of you here.”
Serena grinned. “Write that down.”
“Got it. What else?” Molly asked.
“He’s offering me a chance to jumpstart my cake-decorating career.”
Molly dutifully penned that one in the “pros” column as well.
“And there’s the obvious one that I owe him.”
Molly’s hand stilled.
Jayne squinted at her and asked, “How do you figure that?”
“Hello? The man woke up in a honeymoon suite with a wedding band on his left hand,” Serena replied dryly as she waggled her bare ring finger. “Not exactly rocket science.”
Alex’s voice cut through the silence. “You woke up in the same suite, in the same condition. Unless you’re going to tell me you held a gun to his head and marched him to the nearest chapel, he put that ring on your finger of his own free will.”
Molly, a kindergarten teacher, was more diplomatic in her analysis. “Serena, it’s fine to take responsibility for your own actions, but there’s no reason to blame yourself for his. Alex is right. Jonas is a big boy. From what you said, neither of you was inebriated when you decided to head to that chapel.”
“We hadn’t had a drink in hours,” she agreed, although somehow the word intoxicated still applied.
“And don’t forget,” Molly continued, “I met Jonas. I saw the way he looked at you. I saw the way you looked at him, and the way the two of you were together. There was definite chemistry there, and that was before he kissed you.”
“Definite chemistry,” Serena agreed, feeling uncomfortably warm recalling the extent of it. “But chemistry doesn’t make a marriage. It just makes for a really great night.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” Molly murmured. Were her cheeks pink again?
“Marriage requires honesty and above all trust,” Jayne put in quietly.
Serena looked at her friend’s sad expression and wanted to smack herself upside the head. “God, Jayne. I’m sorry. Marriage is probably the very last thing you feel like discussing right now.”
Jayne waved a hand. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Serena didn’t buy that for a minute. Jayne was a long way from fine, thanks to Rich. And now Serena’s penchant for getting into tight spots was only adding to her friend’s misery.
“We went to Vegas to help you forget your troubles, and you wind up having to help me untangle a mess. Per usual,” she snorted.
“It’s all right,” Jayne insisted.
“No, it’s not. God, you must think me the worst sort of friend there is. And I am. The worst. The absolute worst. You need me, and instead of offering you comfort and support I’ve sucked you into the vortex of my own domestic drama.”
Jayne pinned her with a glare. “Shut up, already. I’m not fragile. As for friendship—you should know by now it isn’t a one-way street. Yes, I have needed you, and you’ve been there. Who talked me into going to Vegas? Who bought me my first drink when we got there? Now you need me, and I’m here.”
“Thanks, Jayne.”
“Don’t mention it.” Serena thought that was the end of it until Jayne mumbled, “The fact that your crisis followed so closely on the heels of my own is unexpected, but…”
While Alex’s muffled laugh leaked over the phoneline, Molly asked, “So, any more pros?”
Two hours later she’d said goodbye to her friends. Serena was left with a sink full of dishes, a mountain of uncertainty, and a list of the reasons why she should or should not demand an immediate annulment from Jonas.
The list took up two notebook pages, much of it referring to her professional future. It seemed incredibly thorough. Only Serena knew it was woefully incomplete. She’d left a lot of things off, keeping them to herself because she couldn’t bear to see them in ink.
Still, if she went with what Molly had jotted down in her tidy cursive Serena had her answer. Now she just needed to call Jonas and tell him.
Jonas’s unplanned trip to San Diego had forced him to reschedule a couple of meetings with clients, and another with his campaign staff to go over canvassing strategies. Neither his clients nor Jameson Culver were particularly pleased with him, though Jameson at least was privy to the actual reason.
Though his father was still in Washington, his mother was at the family estate in suburban Las Vegas for the summer, and they’d made plans for lunch. He’d forgotten all about it until his plane had touched down in San Diego. He’d called to cancel, manufacturing an excuse about a question-and-answer interview with a local group running long. Lying to his mom didn’t sit well. It occurred to him then that if Serena accepted his proposal he would be lying to voters and to all of the people who’d already thrown their support behind his candidacy.
Flipping his TV to the Sports channel, he wondered why it didn’t seem that way.
Though the hour was late, Jonas had been home only forty minutes. He was still wearing a white dress shirt, albeit untucked, and gabardine trousers. He’d toed off his wingtips and shed the tailored jacket upon walking through the door of his condo. His stained tie was somewhere on the floor between the kitchen and living room. He’d find it later, or his housekeeper would. Either way, it was the least of his worries now.
The telephone rang as he nursed a beer and caught the final inning of a major league baseball game. His exhaustion was such that he couldn’t even muster outrage at the umpire’s bum call at home plate. Every last cobweb was shaken from his head, however, when he heard Serena’s voice.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she began.
She was. Disturbing him in ways he didn’t care to analyze, which made it easier to assure her that she wasn’t. “I’m just watching the ballgame.”
He pictured her in her tiny box of an apartment. Was she watching television, too? If so, was she doing it from the bed that pulled down from the wall? And what was she wearing? Thankfully her reply pulled his carnal thoughts up short.
“Oh. I’m not a fan of the actual game, but I once made a cake for a boy’s tenth birthday that was shaped like a catcher’s mitt, with a ball tucked in the pocket.”
“Yeah? Lucky kid. I had a chocolate layer cake for my tenth birthday that had a clown face on one side. I hate clowns. They scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. I’m still not too crazy about them.”
“I’ve never been a clown person either,” she sympathized.
Silence stretched after that. Baseball, birthday cakes and their mutual dislike of clowns weren’t what she’d called to talk about and they both knew it.
Finally she said, “I’ve done a lot of thinking about…everything.”
“Oh?” He swore he could hear the blood whoosh and thump in his temples as he waited for her to continue.
“I also talked to my friends.”
“The ones you came to Vegas with?”
“Yes. They’re like the sisters I never had. I trust their judgment.”
“Don’t you trust your own?” he asked.
“Let’s just say that my friends tend to be a little more grounded than I am.”
“Oh.” Unable to decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing where he was concerned, Jonas took another pull of his beer. He heard her clear her throat.
“There are several sound reasons why delaying our annulment and pretending to be happy newlyweds would be a bad idea.” Uh-oh. As he began to mentally prepare his rebuttal, Serena went on. “First of all, it’s a complete fabrication.”
“Is it?” Jonas wondered if he’d asked the question of Serena or himself.
“Come on, Jonas. We hardly know one another. We met two nights ago in a lounge. Are you…are you telling me it was love it first sight?”
It was something at first sight, but away from her and removed from the desperation of that night he was once again too practical to believe love could strike like a lightning bolt. It was built slowly and surely, layer upon layer. When one had enough layers, something solid upon which to stand, one proposed marriage. Jonas’s last serious relationship had ended a month prior to his announcement that he would run for Mayor. And that had been after five years of careful layering. Despite the length of time, he hadn’t felt secure enough about a future with Janet Kinkaid to propose when she’d issued an ultimatum.
He frowned. Just what had made him ask Serena to become his wife? He had no answer for either of them. It dawned on him that she was waiting.
“We hardly know one another. That’s true. But what I do know about you, Serena, I like. A lot.”
“I’m sure that would change once we got to know one another,” she informed him dryly.
Cynical. Hmm. He hadn’t noticed that about her the other evening.
“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But then we’re not planning on the long-term here.”
“No. Back to my point.” He thought he heard papers shuffle in the background. “There are a lot of sound reasons for me to stay put in San Diego and insist on a quick annulment. Most of my friends are here, and my folks would go ballistic if they got wind of this. I have a good job. I’m learning a lot and finally getting some clients of my own. I like my apartment, and I have another nine months left on the current lease.”
Even as she hammered out the reasons to decline he sensed a but was coming. Jonas held his breath and waited for it.
“But—” He exhaled. Thank God—there it was. “Your proposal…um…proposition is not without merit.” Again he heard papers shuffle. “First of all, I wouldn’t be alone in Vegas. My friend Alex just took a job there. And then there’s the not-so-little matter that I feel really bad about what happened. My friends don’t exactly agree, but I figure I owe it to you to help make things right. Also—”
“Whoa, whoa. Back up there, Red.” Jonas set his beer on the coffee table and stood so he could pace. “You owe it to me?”
“Did you just call me Red?”
“I did.” He stopped walking. “Problem?”
“No. I just never had a nickname. That one’s not terribly original, given my hair color, but…”
He pictured a pair of sexy shoulders rising in a shrug, and enjoyed his first genuine smile in nearly thirty-six hours. Her comment about owing him, however, chased it away. She’d said something similar earlier that day, about how their situation was more her fault than his. He wanted to end that notion once and for all.
“Look, Serena, whatever you decide, don’t do it out of some misplaced sense of guilt. You don’t owe me anything. Your friends are completely right on that score.”
“They’re going to like you.” She laughed before sobering. “I mean, not that we’re going to be hanging out together or anything.”
“Does that mean…?” He left it at that, afraid to hope.
“Yes. I’ll come back to Vegas and do what needs to be done.”
“I don’t think it will be as grim as all that,” he replied dryly.
“Sorry. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah.” He returned to the couch. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And thank you. The contacts you’ve promised and the loan you’ve agreed to give me…the amount is very generous—especially since I doubt I could convince the bank to stake me anytime soon. I’ll pay back every dime of it. I swear.”
The loan. The business contacts. That was why she was agreeing. Jonas swallowed the disappointment that tried to creep into his tone when he replied, “No problem. I can’t wait to sample some of your best work.”
“Um, Jonas?”
“Yes?”
“I do have a few stipulations regarding our arrangement.” Those papers shuffled ominously.
“Go on.”
“First, I think we should have this all written down and spelled out clearly.”
“Verbal contracts can hold up in a court of law, but I agree.”
“I’m not planning to sue you or anything,” she assured him. “It’s just that Jayne… Rather, I think—”
“It makes sense, Serena. And since contracts are what I specialize in as a lawyer I’m a huge fan of them. They take the guesswork out of things. I’ll take care of it.”
“Okay.”
“What else?” he asked.
“No matter what the reason—in fact, no reason is necessary—either one of us can opt out of our agreement at any time.”
That didn’t sit well with him, but he understood Serena’s motive. She needed to feel she had choices, some control over her destiny, especially if after she arrived in Vegas she found herself in an untenable situation.
“An easy get-out clause. Got it.”
“It goes without saying that should I bow out before the election I would not expect you to follow through with the loan.”
He should have been happy that she was so focused on the business aspect of their relationship. Instead it was starting to annoy him.
“I’ll make a note of that in the contract,” he said curtly. “What else?”
“Well, it concerns our…um…personal interactions. Those…um…away from the public eye.”
Jonas reached for his beer. Something told him he was going to need it. “Yes?”
“Our marriage will be in name only. No sex.”
No sex?
As in none of the spectacular sex they’d enjoyed on their wedding night?
The lawyer in Jonas knew that Serena’s stipulation made sense. Continuing an intimate relationship would complicate things, and everything was already complicated enough. The last thing Jonas needed—the very last thing—was for the bride he’d married in a whirlwind to wind up expecting his child. As it was, they hadn’t been exactly careful on their wedding night.
He took a quick pull on his beer. If she were pregnant, or were to become pregnant, no easy way out of their marriage would exist regardless of the election’s outcome.
“About that. The other night we didn’t use any…um…Is there a possibility that…?” He gulped another swig of beer, but his mouth remained as dry as talc.
“No.”
After that highly personal exchange, the conversation turned decidedly businesslike. They discussed her move to Vegas in strictly utilitarian terms. He would rent an SUV to haul what she needed right away. What didn’t fit would either be shipped or remain in her apartment. She’d deal with the issue of subleasing at a later date. He gave her a time to expect him in San Diego on Friday, and promised to email her a copy of his itinerary for the rest of the week, so she could reach him if need be.
“Thanks, Serena,” he said again as the conversation wound down.
“Sure.”
“See you on Friday.”
She laughed nervously. “I’ll be waiting.”
So much had been settled, Jonas thought. All those pesky Is dotted and Ts crossed. He should have felt relieved that she’d agreed to his plan. But long after he’d hung up one question weighed on his mind: how was he going to live under the same roof as Serena and keep his hands to himself?