The Surrogate Husband Page 2

  He opened his jacket and pushed a pen into the inside pocket, next to a pencil and a stylus, all neatly lined up.

  A distant memory of her father came to mind, of him taking a black marker out of the breast pocket of his uniform and drawing an X next to Lucy’s name on the behavior chart that hung on the refrigerator. She couldn’t even recall what she’d done that day to displease him, but there were few unmarked boxes. Lucy, with her creative mind and free spirit, had never managed to do anything right for Sergeant By-the-Book. Despite the fact that she hadn’t seen nor spoken to her father in more than a decade, her stomach seized up with panic at the mere thought of his damn chart, just as it had when she knew he was about to mete out some draconian form of punishment.

  Setting a hand on her belly, she stood taller and met Dex’s stare. Maybe it would be better to find a different guy to play the role.

  But her mother sidled over and spoke up before Lucy could stop her. “You see, we need someone—maybe you, if you would agree—to pretend to be Lucy’s husband at a relative’s wedding.”

  His eyes grew so wide, a rim of white appeared around his green irises. She had to give him credit; that was his only outward sign he gave of the panic he must have felt. “Her husband,” he repeated.

  His voice seemed to have grown even deeper, sexier. Like so many Floridians, he had no discernible accent, but rather a hint of Yankee, a smattering of Midwest, and a dollop of Southern. Woven through the words was unmistakable confidence, as if he was used to women asking him to marry them. Or fake marry them.

  Which she wasn’t. This was entirely different. Her mom was the one doing the asking.

  Say no, she willed.

  She rubbed the tension from the back of her neck. “It would be just for my uncle’s wedding. But I haven’t decided if this is what I want to do. Actually, it’s asking too much, so don’t worry about it.”

  “Here’s the deal.” Her mother told Dex the whole story, then faced Lucy. “Honey, there’s no other choice. Uncle Alan’s wedding is just around the corner. And my poor aunt could have another heart attack if she learns that Lucy’s not really married.” She grasped Dex’s arm. “Please, Lucy’s desperate.”

  Desperate? “Thanks, Mother.” Good thing she didn’t have self-esteem issues. She moved between her mother and Dex. “I’m hardly desperate. We can find someone else. I’m sure of it.”

  Her mom huffed. “Think about it, Dex, would you?”

  Tucking his briefcase under his arm, he backed away slowly and nodded. A little too quickly. “I will. I promise.” Giving Lucy a tight smile, he waved, then practically teleported out the door.

  “Sure hope I haven’t just lost my accountant,” Lucy said.

  Her mother shook her head. “I’ve got a good feeling about him. Bet he’ll do it.”

  The screech of tires that came from the shop’s side parking lot seemed to contradict her mother’s statement.

  But what if he, for some ungodly reason she couldn’t even fathom, did decide to say yes? The prospect of lying to Aunt Bev tied her stomach up in knots. She twirled the pink tourmaline ring that Bev had given her for her eighteenth birthday. “I still prefer that we say my ‘husband’ is away on business. How long will Bev be here?”

  “She’ll be here the day before the rehearsal dinner, but she said she was leaving her return ticket open-ended. She might stay a while.”

  “A while?” Lucy rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Then the husband-away-on-a-business-trip ploy won’t work. Unless he’s in the Merchant Marine.”

  “Aunt Bev is a smart cookie. It’ll be tough to fool her for that long.” She quirked her mouth to the side for a moment, thinking. “She was really excited by the idea of meeting your husband. I think she’d probably try to wait out the Merchant Marine.”

  Lucy crumpled onto a stool, half-wishing it would rise up and kill her so she didn’t have to face Dex ever again. “If Dex says no, what the hell are we going to do, Mom?” The prospect of him agreeing to play the part bothered her even more than the notion of him turning it down.

  “What about one of those dating sites? Maybe you can find someone there willing to be your husband for one night. Once he makes that initial appearance, we can find excuses why he can’t be there for the rest of the festivities. She might not question it if she’s already met him.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “Do you know how long it takes to sift through the slashers and weirdoes on Match and eHarmony? God only knows what kind I’d get if I mentioned needing a fake husband.” She pitched her voice into the low, dweeby Muppet range. “‘Hi, I’m Dwight, and I like to watch Hostel marathons and eat paste…’”

  “Oh, you’re right. That might not be safe.” Moving behind Lucy, her mother massaged her shoulders, sighing softly. “I’m sorry for putting you in this position, honey.”

  “I know.”

  Despite her best efforts to lose herself in her work the rest of the day, every time Lucy slowed down for a moment, the problem of what to tell Aunt Bev weighed on her mind.

  After her mother left for the evening, Lucy locked the door and took out her phone. The idea of her mom’s marriage ruse had been gnawing at her conscience on and off all day. She refused to perpetuate her mother’s lie. The only thing to do was to tell Bev the truth. But would she ever forgive Mom if Lucy came clean?

  She thought about things she’d said and done in the past that weren’t a 100 percent truthful. Hadn’t she told a former landlord she didn’t have any pets when, in fact, she’d had a bunny at the time? Hell, she’d inflated her income when she’d applied for the loan to buy her Kawasaki Ninja.

  Several times a week, she kept quiet when a customer tried on a lingerie item that didn’t flatter them, even though they thought it did. But it made them feel better, more confident. So what was the harm? Okay, so she wasn’t a saint. Her mom had lied about the existence of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but only for the sake of her happiness and her sister Niki’s, too. No one was completely honest all the time.

  Maybe she could tell her aunt a white lie. Say she hadn’t known the man long before they’d eloped. She’d made a mistake, and now they were getting divorced. Of course. That was it. And it would appease Bev, get her mother out of the hot water into which she’d gotten herself, and let Dex off the hook.

  She scrolled to her aunt’s number.

  Bev answered on the second ring, sounding a little less frail than she had a few months earlier. “Is that you, Lucy? It’s been so long, sweetheart. It’s so good to hear your voice.”

  Guilt socked her in the gut. She should call more often. “Hi, Aunt Bev.”

  “You’ll have to speak louder, dear. My hearing’s not what it used to be.”

  She smiled. Bev had been half deaf for the past twenty years. “How are you?”

  “I’m very upset with you.”

  She swallowed hard. Did she know about the lie? If she did, at least Lucy was spared the ordeal of ratting out her own mother. “You are?”

  “You ran off and got married. Didn’t you think I’d have loved to see you walk down the aisle in a white dress? Or whatever strange colored dress you’d pick. I’m so pleased you’ve found someone, Lucy. I can die a happy woman now, knowing you’re taken care of.”

  Oh, boy. This was going to be harder than she’d thought. “Aunt Bev, I’m quite capable of supporting myself. Did Mom tell you all the business we do with the online store? I’m planning to open a second location next year.”

  “A celebration? What celebration?”

  “A second location,” Lucy said louder.

  “Oh, yes. Your mother told me. But there’s more to marriage than financial security. We all need someone to take care of our hearts. Every woman should be lucky enough to marry a wonderful man like my Clyde, God rest his soul. I’m so pleased that you’ve found that.” She sniffled. “I’m so excited to see your business, but more than anything, I want to meet your husband. I never thought I’d live to see the day. For s
o long I prayed that you’d somehow manage to get past all the poison your father injected into your life.”

  Lucy swallowed hard. Bev had taken them in when Lucy’s mother could no longer live with her husband’s controlling ways. She’d done so much for Lucy. Didn’t she owe her aunt the truth? “Um, about that—”

  “When your mother told me about your young man, I told the angels I was finally ready to join Clyde.” Her sobs filtered through the phone wires and straight into Lucy’s heart. Yep, she was definitely related to Lucy’s mother. “Whatever else happens for the rest of my life, I can die happy knowing you’ve overcome your father’s abuse.”

  Despite the melodrama, Lucy wiped a few tears from her cheeks at the sincerity and love in Bev’s voice, which was still noticeably weaker than it had been before her heart surgery. How could Lucy tell her the truth now?

  Bev’s doorbell rang in the background. “Do you need to answer that?”

  “Answer what?” Bev asked.

  “I think someone’s at your door.”

  “Oh, dear. My mahjong group must be here.”

  She told her aunt she loved her and then hung up to gather her things. There was no way she could burst Bev’s bubble by telling her that she planned to divorce the guy. Nor could she come clean and say her mother had made up the marriage.

  Heaven help her if Dex refused to pretend to be her husband. Or worse—if he agreed to it.

  Chapter Two

  Dex parked his Volvo behind Lucy’s Lingerie at five minutes to ten, hoping he’d catch Lucy on her way in to work. He’d forgotten to collect her payroll records when he’d been there the day before. Of course, she and her mother had sprung their idea of him playing her husband minutes before he’d left. Talk about pulling the rug out from under him. The whole idea was nuts.

  So why didn’t I immediately refuse?

  Truth be told, he could hardly remember his own name after meeting Lucy Hamilton.

  Which was ridiculous on so many levels. He’d never had any trouble speaking to hot women before. Sure, she was gorgeous, but he’d never dated a woman like her, with those pink streaks in her hair and the dozen piercings in her ears. Lucy’s clothes might as well have been underwear, that black silky corset and the short, tight leather skirt. And those iridescent stockings. Yet somehow, she managed to strike the perfect balance between classy and smutty. Sexy as hell.

  He turned off the engine and studied the sign on the side of Lucy’s building—curvy black lettering that spelled out Lucy’s Lingerie, with a silhouette of a woman. A very nicely shaped woman. Had Lucy been the model for the picture? He imagined her stretched out on a sofa, posing for the painter. His groin tightened.

  He needed another cold shower, but he’d settle for a cup of hot coffee. So he headed across the street to a small Cuban café.

  After ordering a strong espresso to go, he flashed back to a phone conversation he’d had with her a few weeks earlier, when she’d wanted his advice on opening a second lingerie store in the future. She’d kept him in stitches telling him about her latest bridezilla client and the woman’s ridiculous demands for her bachelorette party. No one had ever made him laugh as much as Lucy did.

  But even though she looked even more gorgeous than he’d ever imagined, that relationship had to remain purely platonic. Period.

  After paying for his coffee, he sat at a table and checked his email from his phone: A few items from work he’d handle when he got to the office, and a question from Lucy about her sales tax return, which reminded him that she was an important client and therefore off-limits. Especially with the upcoming merger of his company with Johnny Bass’s firm, Bass Financial, which also happened to be the company his father worked for. The last thing he wanted to do was to screw up such a lucrative deal by getting caught in a precarious position with a client.

  He opened his briefcase and went over the counter-offer for the merger that his lawyer had drawn up to send to Johnny’s firm, a company that had strict rules about not dating clients. As a future member of Bass Financial’s board of directors, Dex had assured Johnny, the CEO, that he held the same principles. Even a hint of impropriety could derail the planned merger, and that would mean his parents wouldn’t have nearly enough for a comfortable retirement.

  After his folks had invested a large amount of money in a stock that had gone belly-up—his father had acted on a tip from a friend without consulting Dex—they’d lost a huge chunk of their nest egg. All they had left were their shares of Bass Financial, which Dex’s father had been buying during his years of working for the company. To Johnny Bass’s credit, he’d matched every share employees bought one for one, so at least that investment was actually still worth something. And it would grow exponentially if the merger went through, which would put their portfolio back on track. After everything they’d done for him, it was the least he could do for them to make sure their retirement was comfortable. The pressure to get the merger through had been weighing on him for months.

  Shutting his briefcase, he looked out the window and glimpsed a hot-pink Kawasaki Ninja cruising down the road. Too fast. Lucy. She’d told him during one of their phone conversations that she’d recently bought the bike. She wore a matching helmet, a black leather jacket, and short skirt. Beyond hot.

  But he held his breath when a car turned in front of her, cutting her off. She stopped short. All he could think about was Caroline, driving that Mustang of hers too fast. Always too fast. Until that rainy night two and a half years ago, the last night of his fiancée’s life.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face, then stepped out of the café and tried to walk off the memory as he crossed the street toward Lucy’s building.

  She steered into the lot where he’d parked, climbed off the bike, and turned her back to him. Taking off the helmet, she shook out her long black-and-pink hair. Her bangs brushed her dark eyebrows, and he noticed a small gold ball at the arch of the left one. Not his thing, but it looked good on her.

  Where else did she have piercings? He dropped his gaze to her breasts and wondered. None of the women he’d dated had pierced nipples, yet the idea was surprisingly arousing.

  Now his erotic dreams about her were never going to stop.

  “Hey, Dex. What are you doing here?” She unlocked the door to the shop. Her smile was perfect except for that tiny space between her two front teeth. Natural, not the product of years of braces.

  He could have called to ask her to email the payroll records, as he did for most of his clients, but then he wouldn’t have gotten to see her again. Plus, he had to give her an answer about the wedding. Following her inside, he tried not to stare. But how was he supposed to resist? Her scent surrounded him. Her legs—covered in shimmery, black stockings—stretched from here to Canada.

  Concentrate.

  “Good morning. How’s the Ninja?”

  She set her helmet on the counter, which was actually an antique dresser. “Great. I can’t resist riding when the weather’s this gorgeous.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt you to slow down a little.” He tipped his chin toward the road. “I couldn’t help but notice you narrowly missed getting hit.”

  She actually flinched at his comment, leaving him to wonder why his well-meant advice would make her react so strongly. She didn’t seem the type to care what anyone else thought. “Would have been the other guy’s fault,” she said with a scowl.

  Stubborn woman.

  “Which would make a terrific epitaph.”

  She laughed. “Oh, Dex. Lighten up.” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “So…”

  “I meant to get your payroll records so I could work on the W2s for your employees.”

  “Dex, you say the sweetest things.” She flipped a wall switch that turned on the crystal chandeliers that hung from the ceiling, as well as four matching sparkly wall sconces. Then she peeled off her jacket and straightened her lacy corset-style top, similar to the one from the scorching hot dream he’d had about her last night, after he
r…proposition. Only better.

  It pushed her breasts up to a rounded fullness that made him fully conscious of the fact that they were in a shop made for people who were thinking about having sex.

  “I meant to give that stuff to you yesterday.” After she set the rest of her things on a chair, she strode to the tiny office area, leaving a trail of vanilla scent in her wake. That, along with her looks, intoxicated him.

  She’s my client, damn it.

  Without his permission, the racy dream he’d had the night before filled his head.

  Lucy had been wearing a black lace panties. Her garter belt was hooked to fishnet stockings that covered her long, lean legs. He’d stripped her bare and made love to her. Just thinking about how sexy dream-Lucy was had his balls aching. And the real Lucy was a hundred times better, even fully clothed.

  Geez, he wasn’t some horny teenager. Maybe it had just been too long since he’d gotten laid.

  Compose yourself.

  He took a gulp of coffee, thankful for how strong it was. “No problem. I should have noticed they were missing.” But as he headed after her, he couldn’t keep his focus anywhere except her rear view, which was nearly as spectacular as the front. Those curvy hips swayed gracefully with every step.

  He loved that she wasn’t too skinny and that she had more than enough confidence to rock her skimpy outfits with her hourglass figure. Today she wore a pink-and-black bustier with a ballerina-style skirt, items he was sure were sold in her shop, but that looked way better on her than on any mannequin.

  Lucy appealed to him on more than a sexual level, way more than any of the women he’d dated recently. Yet, there was more about her than her smoking-hot appearance that drew him. She was damn smart, incredibly insightful about her business, and knowledgeable about what drove her clients. Despite her sometimes eccentric record-keeping. But more and more, she was getting under his skin.

  Adjusting his glasses, he crossed the store, which resembled a woman’s bedroom more than a retail space. A velvet-covered bench was topped with frilly pillows, and several crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, lighting the place in a soft, pink hue.