Contract Bride

He liked her hair.

It was the most personal comment he’d ever made and she turned it over in her mind, examining it from all angles.

“Oh,” Warren continued. “I forgot that Jonas and Hendrix asked if we could join them for dinner. To celebrate. It’ll be low-key, just them and their wives. Is that okay?”

She nodded, though she’d rather have said no. But refusing would have felt petty when clearly he meant they were supposed to be celebrating their wedding. Social events were a part of the deal, whether she wanted to avoid opportunities for more weirdness or not.

Get a grip, she scolded herself. The weirdness was all on her. Warren wasn’t Bryan and she had to stop cringing as if her new husband was going to morph into someone completely different after lulling her into a false sense of security. Not all men did that.

She hoped.

For the remainder of the afternoon, she forced a smile and slayed the meeting with Wheatner and Ross, earning approving nods from Warren, which shouldn’t have meant as much as it did. He’d always approved of her work. That’s why she was still in the US and not on a plane at this moment, as she’d fully expected to be when she walked into his office on Wednesday to explain the issue with her visa.

Now she was married, complete with a gold ring on her finger that contained nine emerald-cut diamonds sunk into the band. It was exactly the right ring for her, low-key, not at all flashy. How had Warren known what she would like? Luck? She would have been fine with a plain band from a vending machine. This one had weight. She curled her hand into a fist but she could still feel it on her finger.

Warren herded her back into his car at the end of the day to take her to the restaurant where his friends were waiting for them. He’d made it very clear that they wouldn’t have to do any sort of acting like a lovey-dovey couple in public, but she still had a fair amount of trepidation about whether she’d get along with his friends’ wives. She knew how things among men worked, and she didn’t want to fail this important test of fitting into his world for however long she would be required to do so.

“Is it okay to go straight there?” Warren asked politely as they settled into his car for the second time that day. “If you want to go home first to freshen up, that’s fine.”

“No, thank you.” What would she do, shellac the errant lock of hair to her head that Warren had already said not to fix? Not a chance. And she didn’t own any suits that weren’t dove gray or brown, nor would she ever change into something like jeans and a T-shirt to meet his friends, so she was as ready as she ever would be. “I appreciate the offer.”

He dove into a very long summary of the day’s progress, which was fairly typical of how they usually parted for the night. But today they weren’t parting. Would it ever not be weird to realize they were a couple now?

At the restaurant on Glenwood Avenue, Warren’s friends had already arrived, crowding into a round booth with a table in the center that was probably meant for six people but seemed quite cozy given that she’d only met Jonas Kim and Hendrix Harris for the first time earlier today.

The two women at the table slid out from the booth to meet her. Tilda shook the hand of Rosalind Harris, Hendrix’s wife, a gorgeous dark-haired woman who could have come straight from a catwalk in Paris. Her friendly smile put Tilda at ease, a rare feat that she appreciated. Viv Kim, Jonas’s wife, immediately pulled Tilda into a hug, her bubbly personality matching her name perfectly.

“I’m thrilled to meet you,” Viv said and nodded at Rosalind. “We’ve heard absolutely nothing about you, and when our husbands keep their mouths shut about something, we’re instantly curious.”

Rosalind scooted a little closer and plunked her martini glass down on the table.

“Tell us everything,” Rosalind insisted, leaning in with the scent of something expensive and vaguely sensual wafting from her. “How long do you think you’ll have to be married before your immigration issues will be resolved? Are you going to stay in the country even after you annul the marriage?”

“Um...” Tilda’s butt hit the table as she backed up, and she briefly considered sliding under it. Warren had apparently told his friends the truth about their marriage, so obviously she could trust them, but still. These were things better left out of polite conversation. You could never be too careful.

Salvation came in the form of her husband, who scowled at the two women, clearly having overheard despite his involvement in his own conversation with Jonas and Hendrix. “We didn’t agree to dinner so you could gang up on my wife.”

For some reason, that brought a smile she couldn’t quite contain. In one short sentence, Warren had turned them into a unit. They were together, an integrated front. She was his new wife just as much as he was her new husband, and it apparently came with benefits she hadn’t anticipated. But liked. Very much.

Rosalind scowled back, clearly not cowed in the least. “You have to know that we’re curious.”

“Darling.” Hendrix held out his hand to his wife. “Your curiosity is one of my favorite qualities. Come over here and be curious about the advantages of a round booth when you’re sitting next to your husband.”

An intense smile that held a wealth of meaning bloomed on Rosalind’s face. She clasped his outstretched hand, allowing him to draw her into the booth and over to his side, where he slung an arm around her. He murmured something in her ear and she laughed, snuggling against him with such ease that Tilda got a lump in her throat while watching them. They were so clearly in love, so obviously the kind of lovers that trusted each other implicitly.

The white-hot spurt of emotion in her chest was nothing but pure jealousy. Naming it didn’t make it any more acceptable or understandable. Where had that come from? Longing for that kind of intimacy with a man had gotten her into trouble with Bryan, leading her into dangerous water before she fully realized she’d left the shore behind. Tilda swallowed as she tore her gaze from the two.

“Don’t mind them,” Warren said with a note of disgust in his voice. “They embarrass the rest of us, too. They have no boundaries in polite company.”

“That’s so not true,” Hendrix countered with a smirk, scarcely lifting his gaze from his wife’s luminous face. “We’ve turned over a new leaf. No more public nakedness.”

That broke some of the tension, and Jonas slid into the booth with his wife, which left Warren and Tilda. He sat next to Hendrix, leaving Tilda at the edge. Which suited her fantastically. She liked nothing less than being trapped, and luck of the draw meant she wouldn’t have to be.

Across from her, Viv settled in close to her husband. Viv and Jonas might not have sensual vibes shooting from them the way the other couple did, but it was clear they were newly married and still in the throes of the honeymoon phase.

Happiness in marriage wasn’t a goal of Tilda’s. Burying herself in her job was. That was all she could handle at the moment, all she would allow herself to hope for. Intimacy wasn’t on the table in her marriage, by design, and that was a good thing. After all, she couldn’t trust herself any more than she could trust a man.

Warren had left a solid foot of space between his thigh and Tilda’s. Appropriately so. He would never slide his arm around her and nestle her close, turning his head to murmur something wickedly naughty or achingly sweet into her ear.

And it shouldn’t have taken the rest of the evening for her to convince herself she didn’t want that.

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