The hours on the plane go by quickly, and all too soon we’re landing at JFK. We’re all a little tipsy from the bottomless champagne, but I don’t think there would be a better way to end this trip than tipsy. After all, being drunk was kind of the theme. We exit down onto the tarmac, and our baggage is being taken to black cars that are there to meet the plane. Will comes down after the rest of us, the look on his face not a happy one. He was on the phone for most of the flight, and when I asked him what he was doing, he barely had time to tell me it was business calls.

Not surprising. Running Emerald Hotels can’t be a small endeavor. But he looks unhappy and upset now, and compared to the carefree Will I’ve seen in the past day, it’s a harsh contrast. He meets me at the bottom of the stairs and tucks his arm around my waist. Even in my heels I have to look up to meet his eyes. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he says, but it’s not convincing. “Just some unpleasant business decisions. I’ll be able to tell you soon, but it’s too involved for out her on the tarmac.” He sighs. “I thought I was going to be able to take you home, but I have to go straight to the office. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Okay.” I’m surprised by the confusion I feel. After being so close to him, the idea of going home to my empty apartment seems daunting. But this is also good. We’re not jumping straight into living together, which I think would be too much. Why can’t I have a single straightforward feeling?

Will cups the back of my neck, tilting my face up to meet his as he kisses me in a way that leaves me absolutely breathless. Without him having to say it, I know he’s kissing me in a way I’ll remember all night long. He is entirely successful. I’m not quite steady on my feet when he lets me go, and he presses a small kiss to my hands before he heads to his car and driver.

Naomi comes over, waving her hand by her face like she’s hot. “Damn. That kiss was straight out of the movies.”

“I think that was the point,” I say, the memory of the kiss swimming up into my chest and making me feel light.

“Where is he going?” Elizabeth asks.

“His office. Apparently all the calls were some kind of problem.”

Anna smirks. “Too bad, guess night one of the honeymoon won’t be as hot as either of you hoped.”

I blush, and she laughs. “I’m kidding, but not that much.”

A man in a sleek suit comes over to our group. “Mrs. Herrington?”

It takes me a moment to realize that he is, in fact, talking to me. “Right. That’s me.”

“I’ve been instructed to take you home, and each of your friends has a car as well. Just let me know when you’re ready to leave.”

“Thank you…” I trail off, not knowing what to call him.

He nods his head in a kind of salute. “Simon, Ma’am.”

“Thank you, Simon. I’ll be right there.”

As Simon heads back towards the car, I look around at my friends, my eyes wide. “Holy hell, I have no idea if this is going to work out, or if tomorrow I’ll wake up and realize how stupid this is, but it might be fun while it lasts.”

“I say enjoy it,” Naomi says. “Best. Revenge. Ever.”

Anna makes a face. “That’s true, but if she’s only doing it to get revenge on Wyatt, that’s not a good enough reason, and not fair to Wilcox.”

“Do you really like him?” Elizabeth’s voice is quiet.

That now familiar confusion and attraction rise in my gut. “I think I do. And I don’t think there’s any harm in just getting to know each other for a few days. We can always undo it.”

She nods her head, and we’re all quiet for a moment. “Well,” Anna says, glancing at the setting sun, “I’m exhausted and I need a vacation to recover from my vacation. So we should all get some sleep, and maybe meet up on Wednesday for our normal drinks?”

“Sounds good to me,” I say.

“We will expect a full report on Mr. Delicious,” Naomi says, emphasizing her words. “A full report. No details left out, just like we would have asked you if he hadn’t shown up this morning.”

I’m laughing now. “Fine.”

We all disperse to our separate cars, waving like princesses and giggling like maniacs. Simon is holding the door open for me to the giant black car, and he helps me into it. It takes him a second to get around to the driver’s seat, and he asks “Where are we going, Mrs. Herrington?”

“Oh, right.” I give him the address of my apartment on the Eastside, and off we go. The familiar skyline of New York passes me by as we drive from Queens to Manhattan, and the comfort of being home lulls me. I doze on and off as we drive, only coming back fully awake when Simon stops driving in front of my apartment building.

Simon opens the door for me, my suitcase already in his hand. I don’t argue as he carries it up the three flights of stairs and wishes me a good night. I think I say good night to him, but I’m so tired that it probably doesn’t sound like English. I can barely keep my eyes open. The events of the past day have taken it out of me completely, and I can barely find the strength to take off my shoes as I flop down onto the bed and slip peacefully into darkness.

* * *

The ringing of my phone wakes me the next morning. I sit straight up, confused for a second about where I am. I’m in my apartment, still in the Marchesa sundress, which is probably ruined from me passing out in it. My phone is ringing from the other room, still in my purse where I dropped it last night. I retrieve it just as it stops ringing. I have enough time to see that it’s a call from my mother before the battery goes dead. Not surprising, considering the past couple of days. I grab my charger and return to my bedroom, booting up my laptop on my desk while I plug the phone in.

My ring catches my eye while I wake up the computer, and I hold out my hand to examine it. I didn’t really want to seem preoccupied with it while Will was around, but it really is gorgeous, and it does look exactly like something I would pick out if given the choice. One diamond in the swirl of other, smaller diamonds for an ethereal and non-traditional look.

Well, now that I have some time to myself, it’s time to do some research on my brand new husband. I pop open the search engine and enter his name. Wilcox Herrington. Thank god I can call him Will. Also, thankfully, there aren’t any news stories about our Vegas marriage. If my family had found out through the news I think I would be disowned.

Everything else is just like he told me. The newly minted CEO of Emerald Enterprises, taking over from his father. One younger sister, mother deceased. There aren’t many personal details, he hasn’t done many interviews, and the ones I find are mainly about the business. But in everyone he has that same charisma that I’ve seen in him. There aren’t any news stories about scandals or tabloid photos of him with women. All in all, it seems too good to be true.

My stomach growls and I grab a bowl of cereal from the kitchen. I haven’t heard from him since last night, and I can’t help but wonder what he’s doing. This morning I know for sure that Will is right. There is something between us. I feel a pull toward him that I can’t explain him, and I miss him even though we’ve barely been apart, or even together.

The phone pulls enough battery to turn on, and the chime of a voicemail sounds immediately. It’s my mother, telling me to call her right away. I’m in the process of calling her back when the phone rings in my hand. Not shockingly, it’s her.

“Hey, Mom.”

She doesn’t sound pleased. “Why didn’t you answer before? I left you a couple of messages.”

“Sorry,” I say through a bite of cereal. “My phone died. It just came back on.”

“You know what I’ve said about keeping your phone charged.”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, I know, Mom. I just fell asleep last night without plugging it in.”

“Well, all right. How are you holding up?”

“Surprisingly okay,” I say. I married one of the richest men in the world while I was blackout drunk, and he doesn’t want an annulment, oh, and he’s scorchingly hot. It’s tempting to tell her just to see how she would react. “The girls and I had a really good time, and I think it was a good idea that we went. To…you know, get my mind off of things.”

“So you’re back in the city?”

“Yes.” I’m wary now. My mother rarely asks where I am unless she has somewhere she wants me to be, and the tone in her voice tells me that she’s about to ask for something.

“I was wondering if you could come out to the island this afternoon to help with the party?”

I shake my head, trying to remember if I was told about a party or if that’s another thing that was swallowed up by my night of drunken madness. “What party?” My mother is silent, and my stomach drops. It’s not a good silence. “Mom, what party?”

“Laura didn’t call you?” Her voice is unnaturally high and tight, like she’s trying to remain calm.

I cover my eyes with my hand. “No, Laura didn’t call me. What exactly is this party?”

“It’s all very last minute,” my mother says, flustered. “It’s Laura’s engagement party.”

I feel sick. I feel physically ill. I try to keep my voice smooth and even. “Laura is engaged. To Wyatt?”

“Yes. I know it’s not fair of me to ask you to help, but it’s so last minute that I didn’t have time to hire any caterers. I could really use you as backup, sweetie. But I understand if you don’t want to.”

Unexpected tears come to my eyes. It’s been what …three weeks …and Wyatt proposed to my sister? I haven’t seen him since he left. I still have the ring he gave me in a box on the shelf. I haven’t even had a chance to give it back to him. This is so fucked up and so unfair. How am I supposed to go to this party and be happy for her when the two of them basically threw a box of explosives into my life?

But then again, do I really have a right to be angry about this? The suddenness of it? I just got married overnight and no one of my family knows. I don’t exactly have a leg to stand on when it comes to sudden and permanent attachments.

Fuck it. I am angry. I’m angry that he left. I’m angry that he’s with Laura. But beneath that pulsing river of ever-present anger that’s been there since it happened, there’s another thought. If it was so easy for Wyatt to leave me, then he couldn’t have been happy, and we wouldn’t have been happy after we married. And the more I see everything for what it was, I don’t think we were ever happy. If he makes Laura happy, I can get over it. I can. Well, I can try. I swallow my anger and my confusion and I clear my throat. “I’ll come.”

“Are you sure, sweetie?”

“Yeah,” I say, though my voice sounds like I’m being strangled. “Besides, it’ll give me a chance to give him back the ring.”

My mother makes a sound of disapproval. “You know this isn’t the way I would have liked it to turn out, but I can honestly say that I haven’t seen Laura this happy. Ever.”

I sigh. “Well, I guess that’s good. What time should I be there?”

“Two would be good. It’ll give us some time to get ready before everyone gets here.”

“Okay. I’ll be there.” I let out another sigh as I hang up. The things you do for family. Not only will I have to see Wyatt. And Laura. And them together. But I’ll have to see everyone who was at my engagement party six months ago. This is going to go perfectly, I can just tell. I try to pull myself together—I brush my teeth and change out of the dress and into comfortable sweats that I can relax in until I get ready for the party. But I’m not comfortable. Everything here reminds me of the past. There’s the little dish that holds my rings that Wyatt bought for me at a street fair. There’s the photo of us in Ireland when we went on a spontaneous getaway. There’s the spot on the floor where we had sex after Wyatt asked me to marry him.

Now he’s engaged to my sister. Who the fuck does something like that? What kind of person do you have to be to utterly destroy someone in that fashion? I need a distraction. Now. And I find one in my husband. I go back to reading articles about Wilcox. Wilcox Andrew.

It’s around noon when there’s a knock on my door. I unfold myself from my position on the couch, set my laptop on the coffee table and stretch as I head over to the door. I open it, expecting the mailman or a neighbor, but instead find Wilcox Andrew Herrington in my doorway as if he magically stepped out from my laptop screen and the articles I’ve been reading about him all morning. Jeans and a henly have never looked so good.

“You’re here,” I say, kind of shocked.

He smiles, and my stomach does that pleasant flip-flop that I now associate with him. “I’m here. I realized that we never exchanged phone numbers. So I asked Simon where he dropped you off. Is that all right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, I can’t believe we forgot something like that, but yeah, come in.”

I stand to the side and let him step into the apartment, suddenly aware that I’m wearing ratty sweats and that I haven’t actually cleaned my apartment in a while. “Umm…yeah. I haven’t cleaned, sorry. I wasn’t expecting you. I’ll just be right back.”

Will catches my hand and pulls me close, so that my back is pressed to his chest. “Let me guess,” he says playfully, “you were going to change.”

I laugh, and it feels good after this morning’s revelation, even if the whole thing makes me anxious. “Guilty as charged.”

“I don’t care about what you wear,” Will says, “even if you do look damn good in high heels. I surprised you, there’s no reason for you to change.”

“Okay,” I say, still self-conscious and now blushing.

He lets me go and takes a few more steps into the space. “I like this,” he says. “It has that New York charm.”

“You mean old and broken down?” I smirk.

“No, more like it’s been lived in. It has a history.”

“I can see that.”

He spots my laptop, and unfortunately, the article that’s still on the screen that details the transfer of power between him and his father. “A little light reading?”

Ducking my head, I make sure to find my toe nail polish interesting. “You might say that.”

Will appears at my side and guides me to the couch like this is his apartment and he’s the host. He sits us down at a comfortable distance from each other. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I lie.

“That’s not true. You can barely look me in the eye. Did something happen?”

He’s not wrong, I can’t bring myself to look at him. Because the shame of Laura and Wyatt is too much, and because I know he’ll be understanding and want to fix it, and there’s nothing he can do. “Yeah, I have to go out to my parents’ house this afternoon and help with my sister’s engagement party.”

Even though I’m not looking at him, I feel his body go utterly still. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Yep,” I say lightly. “All very last minute, according to my mother.”

“I’m really sorry,” he says, taking my hand.

I nod. “Yeah, it really fucking sucks. It’s not like I want him back, I don’t. But seeing him with my sister …”

Will tugs on my hand, and the idea of physical comfort is too good to ignore. I let him put his arms around me and pull me close. I can suddenly breathe easier, and even through my relief I’m amazed that I could come to rely on someone that quickly. “You know,” he says playfully, “it’s good I’m not the jealous type.”

“Yes, it is,” I say in the same tone, “because he was the jealous type, and it’s really not a good look.”

“So you’re saying I’m better looking?”

I burst out laughing. “That’s what you took from that?”

“I’ll take any compliments I can get from my wife.” I don’t have a comeback for that. “Does it make you uncomfortable for me to call you that?”

“Surprisingly, no. It’s just a little weird. I’m not used to it. Not sure I want to be used to it. You have no idea how much you confuse me, Will.”

He stands, taking me with him so I’m cradled in his arms. “You don’t confuse me,” he says fiercely. We’re in the bedroom before I can blink and we fall back onto my bed, sprawled together, limbs tangled. I’m the one who kisses him first. God, his lips. They’re my favorite part of him, and given how perfect the rest of him is, that’s saying a lot.

“I don’t have much time,” I say. “I have to get dressed and head out to the island soon.”

I recognize the smirk as he rolls over me. “I don’t need a lot of time to make you come.”

He kisses me again, his hand sliding down my stomach and under my waistband to find where I’m already wet for him. The affect he has on my body is like fire and gasoline. No matter how little we touch, it’s always ready to explode. I gasp against his lips as he slips a finger inside me, curling it towards my G-spot. I can’t say I really paid attention to his hands, but I’m appreciating just how big they are now with his fingers reaching exactly where I need them.

Will quickly adds a second finger, stroking against that tiny spot that feels like tendrils of pleasure are reaching out through my body. “Oh my god.” It comes out as a groan, quickly stifled by Will’s lips. His tongue plunges into my mouth in time with his fingers and my body is already starting to shake. I won’t last long, and he’s making absolutely sure of it.

His thumb comes to rest on my clit, and now he’s both inside and outside me, and pleasure breaks through me in an explosion. I moan into Will’s mouth, my pussy gripping his fingers as he continues to fuck me with them. I can’t breathe because the pleasure is constricting my lungs. My breath comes in heaving gasps as he eases his fingers out of me, sending off aftershocks like tiny fireworks. Will’s forehead is pressed against mine, and when I can see again, his eyes are smiling.

“You are way too good at that,” I say.

“I don’t think there’s such a thing as too good at that.”

He has a point. I reach for his belt, ready to reciprocate, and he catches my hand. “Not now, you have to get ready.”

“Are you sure?” I glance down to where I can see his erection obviously pressing against his jeans.

“I’ve lived with worse,” he chuckles. “I wanted you to relax, to feel good, not to stress you out because you’re going to be late.”

I pull his face to mine and kiss him, thanking him without words. He’s right, I would have been anxious to be late, even if the party is kind of a horror show. I make myself sit up get off the bed, though the thought of staying in bed with him is the more appealing one. “I want to come with you to the party,” Will says, as I start to dig around my closet for something to wear.

I freeze. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s everyone I know and everyone will be looking at me since I was engaged to this same guy six months ago.”

He smiles, and I try to ignore how natural he looks lounging on my bed. “All the more reason for someone to have your back.”

“I know I can’t lecture Laura on the speed of her engagement because of this,” I gesture in between us, “but I’m not sure adding a new husband to the mix is the best idea here.”

Will stands and closes the space between us, pressing me back against the wall so I can feel all of his body and how hard he still is. “You’re wrong,” he says. “Sure, people might react, but if we’re together, no one will be able to pity you, or look down at you, or say anything to you but congratulations.” He kisses me softly, then harder, and I melt into him.

I narrow my eyes at him. “You’re using my body against me.”

He smirks. “I do what I have to.”

“You still haven’t given me a straight answer about why you want this. Why you want this to work out so badly.”

“Maybe I’m in love with you,” he says lightly. Then he presses his hips into mine. “I’m definitely in lust with you. And the truth is somewhere in between. All I know is I’m not ready to let you go yet.”

“Fine,” I roll my eyes and ignore the fluttering in my chest at his words.

“I’ll meet you there. I can’t show up to your sister’s party in jeans.” He looks down, where my tank top has fallen off my shoulder and he has a perfect view of my cleavage. “And if I don’t leave now, I may change my mind about not making you late.”

He’s so close, so overwhelming, that I almost beg him to break that promise. But he steps away, taking my phone and adding his number to it. “Text me the address?”

“I will.”

He takes my hand and kisses it—I wonder if that will always be something he does—before he leaves. I pick up my phone after I hear the door click shut, and search it for brand new contacts. He didn’t add his name, simply one word: husband. My stomach does that little flip-flop, and there’s a quiet voice in my head that says this whole marriage thing may not be so bad.