CHAPTER
FOUR
RHETT blinked at Shawn. All the blood had gone south to his cock just watching the dirty word roll off Shawn’s plump lip, so maybe he was at less-than-full mental capacity, because he could have sworn she had just asked him to marry her. Which could not be what she had said. Hell, he’d had to talk her into a beer.
“What?” he asked, wanting to shake his head and rattle it into a reset like they did in old-school cartoons. “What did you say?”
Shawn blushed. She looked down at the bar, fiddling with her empty Guinness glass. “See, here’s the thing. I need a husband. I’m offering money. Are you interested? A business deal, pure and simple.”
He was not following her at all. “Why the hell would you need a husband?” This wasn’t the fifties. If she was knocked up, no one was going to think anything of it. It couldn’t be for any sort of tax advantage. God knew, she was better off being single if she wanted a break from the IRS, so he didn’t understand.
Her eyes finally met his, and she looked emboldened, determined. The shift was dramatic, and it had his body responding again. There was something so damn sexy about her, vulnerable yet strong at the same time.
“Let’s just say that if I don’t get married, I’m going to lose something that means a lot to me. It’s ridiculous, but there it is. I’ll give you a hundred grand if you stay married to me for a year.”
Rhett actually felt his jaw drop open. A hundred thousand dollars? Was she serious? That was more money than he could ever hope to see at once. While he had made a decent living on Evan’s pit crew, he’d taken a pay cut to switch to Eve’s crew, and he’d be lucky if he made five grand off his dirt track racing this year. There just wasn’t a lot of cash at this level, and he wasn’t expecting to win right out of the gate. He was aiming more for breaking even on his car and expenses. A hundred grand. Damn. That was a lot of cheddar.
But he shook his head. “I need more details. That’s a lot of money, and this doesn’t seem above board to me, Shawn. I don’t want to get involved in something illegal. Or be some sort of pawn to make a boyfriend jealous.”
Now it was her turn to look surprised. “I would never involve you in something like that! Either of those things! I wouldn’t ever do anything illegal. Hell, I don’t even jaywalk. And I am not the kind of woman to play games in relationships.”
She looked so indignant that Rhett instantly trusted what she was proposing was something that, while not exactly typical, wasn’t sketchy either. “So then tell me what it really is.”
Shawn sighed. “I guess I can’t expect you not to have questions. I shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that. But the thing is, I’m desperate. I’m not sure if you heard, but my grandfather died in November.”
She paused, jaw working, he suspected both from grief and from struggling to find the words for what she needed to say.
“I’m really sorry, Shawn. That must be very difficult.” His own grandparents were all still miraculously alive, and he knew he was fortunate in that regard.
“Thanks.” She ran her finger around the rim of the glass, slowly, methodically, her nails painted a rich, ruby red that surprised him.
He would have expected something more natural, clear polish or a pale pink. The image of those red nails on her pale flesh popped into his head. He wanted to see them splayed over her breasts, trailing down her belly to bury inside her hot, moist inner thighs. Rhett cleared his throat and shifted on his stool. He needed another drink. Preferably with ice he could pour down his jeans to cool him down.
“Pops owned the track and ran it for forty years. I’ve been working there since my midtwenties. It’s my . . . life.” She looked pleadingly at him, as if she were begging him to understand.
He did understand the love of racing, but he still didn’t understand what she was getting at. “You love racing. I get that, Shawn. It’s my life, too.”
She nodded. “I assumed the track was left to me. Or at least a portion of it, so that I would continue to run it as operating manager. My father hasn’t been around since I was a kid, and my mother hates everything about racing. My brother is an optometrist, go figure, and he was never big on being a Hamby anyway. So it was always me and my grandfather, playing in the dirt, as he called it. But it turns out he didn’t leave me the track free and clear. His lawyer read his will to me today, and it seems the only way I can inherit is if I’m married.” The grimace on her face showed him exactly what she thought of that.
“Are you serious?” Rhett could see why she was having a bad day. “Why would he do that?”
She gave a bitter laugh. “I guess he thought I was devoting too much time to the track and racing. He wanted me to settle down and breed, like a good girl.”
Oh, yeah. That was bitterness. He couldn’t exactly blame her. “Jesus. And I thought my mother was bad, always dropping hints about how I should get married sooner than later.”
“She does? But you’re only twenty-five.”
“I know. But she thinks that I should be married and have a baby by now, like she did. You have to start early to rack up nine kids, you know. She’s always on my case about it, giving me advice in front of my whole family.”
“What kind of advice?”
“She thinks I should smile more,” Rhett told Shawn. “She says I scare women.” It was true and he knew it. But somehow he didn’t think he scared Shawn much.
In fact, Shawn laughed. “Now that’s funny.”
“Clearly, I don’t scare you.”
“Only a little,” she admitted. “But that’s more because I can’t figure out why I’m attracted to you.”
“I mean, who would be?” he asked ruefully.
Shawn smacked his arm. “That’s not what I mean! It’s just bad timing, you know? But then I thought, well, maybe it’s not bad timing. If I have to be married to save the track, maybe you’d be a good candidate. But now it just sounds crazy and rude and creepy. I don’t know what I was thinking. If anyone should be frightened here, it should be you.” She fussed with her bun, which was sliding south. “You must think I’m a total freak, popping the question to a guy I just met.”
“I’m flattered.” He actually was. Yes, it was crazy. It was crazy that her grandfather would expect her to jump into a marriage. It was a plan bound to fail. But he respected that Shawn was willing to do whatever it took to save her property, to save what was meaningful to her. He would probably consider doing the same thing, though he wasn’t exactly one to like being told what to do. But he admired her guts and her businesslike approach to the problem. Instead of crying, she’d sought a solution. “And I’m not saying no straight out. I just need to hear what would be expected of me.”
“You’re not saying no?” she asked, eyebrows shooting up as she froze with her arms above her head, tightening her hair thing.
“No, I’m not saying no.” He wasn’t. Insane or not, she had just dangled a hundred grand in front of him. Not to mention, he’d been looking for a good excuse to get to know her better, both with clothes on and off, and what could be a better excuse for that than marriage?
Was marriage a huge commitment that he shouldn’t take lightly? Yes. But this wasn’t a real marriage. He didn’t think. “What does this marriage mean exactly? Is it paper only? We would never see each other?” He wasn’t down with that. He couldn’t walk around and be secretly married, shagging other women and taking money for something he hadn’t really done. It all just seemed too dishonest to him. He liked his cards out on the table. If he was going to be fucking anyone, it was going to be Shawn.
His wife.
Oh, damn. He should walk away. This was dicey.
Yet, he wasn’t. He flagged down the bartender and said, “Can we get two more shots of Jameson? Skip the Guinness this time.” This was a straight-up liquor conversation.
Shawn took a huge breath. “The deal is this. We have to be married for a year, but we have to live together at least for the first six months. So you would have to move in with me. I have a guest room that you can use, and I suppose the positive is, you’ll be saving on rent for six months.”
That was an attractive thought, he had to admit. He’d only been in Nolan’s old apartment for five months, and while he loved the freedom, the rent was kicking his ass. “Guest room, huh?” So he wouldn’t lose his own space, exactly. But he wouldn’t get the ultimate benefit of marriage—having a warm woman in his bed every night.
“Yes. If we get married before February fifteenth, the will states I get the funds to hire a full-time marketing director for the upcoming season, which would really be helpful, so that would be my preference. To get married before then, I mean.”
Rhett watched her face carefully. She seemed to have shifted into efficiency mode.
“I can have my lawyer draw up a contract outlining what I just described and that you’ll receive payment upon completion of the year. I will pay for the divorce. I will pay for the initial marriage license fees and all of that. So there is no risk, no hidden cost to you. We both enter and leave the marriage with what we came with, save the hundred grand fee.”
No hidden cost?
Just a year of his life.
Could he commit a whole year to a woman who didn’t really want to be involved with him, even for money? Or did she?
Those were the real questions on his mind.
“I’m not the tidiest person, I’ll admit, so if you’re a neat freak, that is something to consider,” she added.
That wasn’t a factor he cared about it. He had more important concerns.
“I wouldn’t want it to be a secret,” he told her. “I can’t live like that.”
“It has to be a secret,” she said. “No one can know about the money. My grandfather’s lawyer said I can’t marry an actor, a stripper, or a criminal, and he’ll be doing a background check. We can’t let anyone know we’re faking it, that it’s not a real marriage, or it’s null and void.”
“A background check? I don’t have anything to hide.” Rhett took the whiskey from the bartender with a murmured thanks, and threw the shot back. It burned going down, and he welcomed the distraction. “I meant, I can’t keep the marriage a secret. I wouldn’t be able to date and tell women I’m free and available when I’m not, regardless of the circumstances.”
“Oh.” Shawn lifted her own shot glass and bit her bottom lip. “I guess I just assumed we wouldn’t . . . see other people. But now that you say that, I realize that’s a lot to ask. I suppose if you’re discreet . . . I mean, it’s not a real marriage and you have . . . needs.”
Hell, no. Rhett shook his head. “That’s not how I roll, Shawn. Real or not, I’m not interested in any woman who would sleep with a man she thinks is married.”
“Celibacy is a lot to ask. Even for a hundred grand.”
Rhett gave a low laugh, sliding his hand over to rest on her thigh. She jerked slightly. “Who said anything about being celibate?”
“Me?” she asked, suddenly sounding unsure of the whole thing.
He shook his head slowly. “No. If we do this, sex will be a part of the equation.”
“But . . .” She took a sip of her whiskey. “I would feel like I was paying you to sleep with me.”
Now that was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard in his entire life. Hell, he would pay her for sex, not the other way around. “You wouldn’t. It would be entirely voluntary on my part.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
Was she serious? Or did she just want him to work for it? Spell it out. “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to. But we both know you want me to.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s really ballsy.”
“It’s true.” Rhett moved his hand higher, stroking through the denim of her jeans, feeling the heat at the juncture of her thighs, his thumb rubbing over the seam. “I give it two weeks, tops, before we’re fucking.”
“What makes you so confident?” she asked, her expression annoyed.
Yet she didn’t push his hand away. Nor did she deny it.
“Because you want me as much as I want you. I can practically smell how wet you are for me.”
Without hesitation, she tossed her shot of whiskey into his face.
It missed his eyes, fortunately, because that shit would have stung. It didn’t particularly surprise him, nor did it piss him off. He just slid his hand over his face, pulling the random drips of liquid off his nose and cheek. He licked his lips.
“You’re an asshole,” she told him.
But she still didn’t push his hand away. In fact, she had spread her legs a little, her hips moving forward so his light touch was more intimate, the pressure greater.
Oh, yeah. She was exactly the kind of woman he needed. She was going to fight it, yet she could more than handle his proclivities. She was going to enjoy them. And he was going to enjoy teaching her how much she could take pleasure from submission.
“I accept your offer,” he told her. “And I’m changing my estimate to one week.”
• • •
SHIT fire, Shawn was in trouble. She was breathing a little too raggedly from both agitation and arousal. It was entirely possible that she was in way over her head with Rhett. Because her impulsively tossing a drink in his face didn’t seem to anger him one bit. If anything, he seemed even more confident, more pleased with her. His movements were slow and methodical, and he was still resting a hand between her legs and she was letting him.
But he knew precisely how to push her buttons—all of them, good and bad.
“Is that a challenge? A bet?” God, she needed to work on her inability to back down from a dare. It was going to land her in a marital bed with Rhett Ford, her ankles over her head.
Though maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, now that she considered her vagina. Nope. Not such a bad thing.
The corner of his mouth tilted up in a slow smile. “Yes. I’ll marry you, and we’re going to have sex within the first seven days, because you want to.”
“I can resist you,” she bluffed. “One week is nothing.” Then because she couldn’t look him in the eye when she was so blatantly lying, she turned and flagged down the bartender. “Could we have more napkins? My whiskey seems to have spilled on my friend’s face.”
The bartender nodded. “I saw that. We’re not going to repeat that, are we? Or I might have to ask you to leave.”
She was going to get kicked out of Milt’s, a dive if ever there was one? The thought almost made her laugh. “No, there will not be a repeat. I was just making a point.”
“We’ll take another round,” Rhett told him. “We just decided to get married.”
The bartender looked more than a little skeptical as he handed a napkin to Rhett, who swiped it over his damp face. “Huh. Well, good luck with that. Methinks you’re going to need it.”
Rhett laughed. “Probably. But she’s worth it.”
He was almost convincing. Shawn was suddenly amused at the absurdity of the whole situation. If she had to do something so insane, she might as well enjoy what she could get out of it.
“I won’t have sex with him until we’re married,” Shawn said. “And then not for seven more days. Isn’t he devoted?” She shared a grin with Rhett, thinking that the truth was way more ridiculous than the story she was spinning.
And she was definitely going to have sex with him and reap the benefits of this odd arrangement. After seven days. There was no way she was losing this bet. But after that? All bets were off and all beds were on.
“Very devoted. To her physical and mental well-being.” Rhett leaned closer to her, violating her personal space in a way that was territorial. “Sometimes I know what she needs even before she does.”
He was talking about sex again, clearly, and her nipples knew it. Damn it, how did he manage to do that so easily? She moistened her lips and tried not to pant in anticipation. They needed to get married soon because the seven-day grace period was going to be hell on her. So the sooner they got to it, the sooner she could be feeling his touch everywhere.
Which was the most ass-backwards logic she’d ever used in her entire life, but there it was.
“If you don’t mind my saying, I think y’all are fucked up,” the bartender said. “Relationships don’t work when you’re playing games.” Then he promptly walked away, clearly wanting out of their conversation.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Rhett told her, nudging her knee with his. “I’ve always enjoyed Follow the Leader. That usually works for me. If I’m the leader.”
“You’re a very dirty boy, Rhett Ford. But didn’t your mother teach you that you can’t always get what you want? I think I’m the leader in this case.” They were playing games, definitely. But what difference did it make? It wasn’t going to be a real marriage, and they might as well enjoy the sexual tension strung out between them.
She was going to save the track and get some action.
After seven days.
If they were really doing this. Were they really doing this?
Her cheeks felt hot at the very idea.
“I don’t think you’re in any position to make threats or demands,” he told her. “You are, in essence, the damsel in distress, and I’m rescuing you. You can’t be nagging me about my dragon-slaying techniques.”
That doused her libido quite effectively. “You’re no hero. You’re a hired mercenary, remember? I’m not in your debt, emotional or otherwise, when I’m paying you a hundred grand.”
His hand fell off her leg, and he sat back so quickly the air around her actually cooled. Despite her annoyance, she found herself regretting his retreat. Which meant it really was a good thing he had distanced himself. She couldn’t afford to want anything other than to save the track from being sold, and she needed to remember that.
“Let’s get one thing straight, or I’m not doing this,” he said, words slow and determined. “When we’re in public, I play the role of your legitimate husband, and yes, then I’m your mercenary. Your hired hand. But when we’re alone in your place, what happens between us has nothing to do with money and nothing to do with any of the legalities or any contract I signed. It’s strictly about what you and I both want. If you can’t keep the money out of the bedroom, then there’s no deal.”
Shawn sat stunned by his vehemence. She hadn’t meant that she would be tossing the payoff in his face every time he hit on her. In fact, that was the opposite of what she wanted. It would be profoundly awkward to be thinking about how much money she was paying him while he was between her thighs.
“I don’t want that either,” she assured him. “I agree entirely that if anything happens between us, we keep it totally separate from our business arrangement.” If she stopped to think about it, she would have to admit that doing that would be damn near impossible, but she just refused to think about it. There was too much at stake to worry too much about the finer points.
He gave a slow smile that made her wish his hand were still between her thighs. “Then we have a deal. Get over here and seal it with a kiss.”
Shawn gave a nervous laugh. Because she was going to do this. And because she wanted to do this. It was a smart business decision. It was a monstrously stupid personal one. But that basically summed up her life over the last decade—she could run a business, but she had no clue how to handle men.
Maybe that’s why Rhett was so damn appealing. She didn’t have to handle him. He wanted to handle her, and he gave step-by-step instructions on how to do it.
So she shifted her butt on her stool, inching forward, maneuvering between his open legs, her right hand gripping the bar top. Her lips parted in anticipation and she watched him as she leaned, watched the way he watched her, his stare never wavering, his eye contact so complete, so intense, it was instinctive to look away. But she didn’t. She forced herself to continue, even when she wanted to drop her gaze to her lap in confusion, view him under the demure protection of her eyelashes and a tilted head.
When she was close enough for him to reach for her without stretching, he did, putting the palm of his hand firmly on the back of her head and drawing her to him, with a commanding, but not harsh, pressure.
Then they were kissing. It wasn’t a kiss. It was kissing. It wasn’t tentative, or curious. The minute their mouths met, it was like they’d been there before many times, and both wanted more. Shawn had thought kissing was pleasant before, that it was a nice gesture of affection, or a precursor to the passion of sex. But never had she known that it could be this—a hot, wet explosion, an all-consuming tangle of tongues and desires, her breath ragged and desperate, his hand digging into the remains of her bun, yanking her hair harder with each passing second.
Just when she was reaching for him, wanting to slip her arms around his neck, wanting to snuggle in closer to brush her body against his, he seemed to sense her need and let her go so quickly she almost fell off her stool. Rhett stared at her, panting, his eyes hooded, expression unreadable. She stared back, unsure what to say, wanting to regain the upper hand, but feeling too confused, too aroused, to form a coherent sentence. She knew if she tried to speak, she wouldn’t be able to achieve the casual nonchalance she wanted to project. He would hear her nervousness.
Because he had made her nervous. Afraid that she might lose the bet. Afraid that she might lose even more than that before the six months of living with him was out.
What she really wanted to do was say something funny that would break the intimate spell between them, but she couldn’t think of a damn thing to say, which further confused her.
She settled on, “What date are you free to get married?” It was businesslike, efficient, and her voice only wobbled a little on the last word. The M word. Her stomach flipped like a pancake. She had not been a girl who had fantasized much about her wedding, but she had assumed that she would at least want to get married, not be terrified.
But hearing herself ask him the question like she was an employer asking when a new employee could start work, she felt significantly better. She could handle this.
“We’ll get married this Friday, which gives your lawyer time to draw up the papers. Then we’ll have a party to celebrate on Valentine’s Day,” he told her. “It will make it seem like a romantic elopement, totally legit. And you can wear sexy red lingerie on our wedding night. I prefer garters and corsets.”
He never ceased to amaze her with his arrogance. Or the fact that he was right about the dates. Both made total sense. But if she agreed, she was feeding his ego. “Oh, really? I agree with the elopement nonsense. But you can forget the corset. I’m not trussing myself up like a Victoria’s Secret model for you, because I won’t be having sex with you.”
Rhett reached out and ran his thumb along her bottom lip. Shawn wanted to jerk away, but she didn’t want to look petulant. Besides, it was causing her to shiver in places she hadn’t even known she could shiver.
“We already placed that bet—you don’t need to reiterate it.” He shrugged. “I’ll buy you the lingerie and we’ll see who wins.”
Shawn calculated four days until the wedding and seven after it to be the victor. Holy hell. It was going to be the longest eleven days of her life.
She was screwed. Quite literally.