If you missed it, I posted the first chapter already. Go on over and read that now and then come back for another taste.
Chapter Two
TALLIE
For
whatever reason, he said he would go along with it. I was still
dumbfounded that Mama and Mrs. Jernigan had come up with the idea of us getting
married to begin with, and I wasn’t positive that I was fully on board, but Hunter Fielding had agreed to marry me,
and now everything was moving at the speed of light. I needed to make up my
mind, once and for all, before it was too late. Yes, Mama and Lance insisted
that I had no choice and was going to have to marry someone, but I was a grown woman. An adult. I had choices. And
marriage? That was a big decision to make, even if it was essentially to be in
name only and would have an expiration date.
The meeting with
the Thunderbirds brass took place on Tuesday morning. That afternoon, Daddy and
I sat down in his office with Hunter and his agent and hammered out the details
for the prenuptial agreement.
“You’ll live
together as husband and wife for one year,” Daddy explained to the other men. He’d
already gone over all of it with me, Mama, and Lance well before now. He and I
were seated on one side of the long board table at Roth & Rainier, the law
firm where he was one of the two primary partners, while Hunter and John sat
across from us. “All money and possessions that started out being Hunter’s will
remain Hunter’s. The same will go for Tallie. Upon your divorce, everything
that she comes into the marriage with will leave the marriage as hers. You’ll
maintain a single residence but separate bank accounts.”
“Who will own
the house?” the agent asked.
“Hunter buys a
house,” Daddy answered before I could interject. “He’ll need one to live in
after this all washes over, anyway, since he’ll still be on the team. You’ll
live in it together to give the impression of being as completely head-over-heels
in love as possible. What happens inside that house with the doors closed is
your business and yours only, no matter what her mother and that ass Lance may
have to say on that matter.”
Heat raced to my
cheeks as I remembered what I’d said earlier about not necessarily remaining celibate.
The fact was, Hunter was hot. Seriously gorgeous. He was about half a foot
taller than me and solid muscle. His dark hair was too long and curled a little
where it hit his shoulders, and he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, a bit of
scruff lining his square jaw. Everything about him screamed Man, with a capital M, from the defined
muscles of his forearms to the deep, gravelly sound of his voice. He’d been
wreaking havoc on my girly parts since the moment he’d walked into the
Thunderbirds offices earlier, and I couldn’t seem to get my hormones under
control. At least not while he was staring at me like he was right now.
Something told me he was remembering what I’d impetuously said, as well.
“Speaking of
Lance,” Hunter said. There was a surly, grumbly tone to his words that shot
straight through me and made my temperature rise again. “Who the hell is that
guy and what does he have to do with anything?”
I blinked, but
Daddy didn’t say anything to answer him. I supposed that meant it was going to
be on me to explain. Daddy and Lance had never gotten along. The sooner he
could get Lance out of my life, the better. I was almost positive that was why,
out of everyone involved, Daddy was the least upset about my mishap in Cancun
and the most receptive to the idea of me getting married. No more pageants. He
assumed that would mean no more Lance. I wasn’t so positive about that,
considering the way Mama was pulling Lance along to participate in every aspect
of the aftermath.
“Lance Benton. He’s
my pageant guru,” I said feebly. Anyone who’d been involved in the pageant
world would understand in a heartbeat, but to the rest of the world, a guru was
sort of a mystery. Mama had hired him when I was still just a baby and too
young to voice an opinion on the matter, and she’d kept him regardless of
whatever complaints I might have about him because he was the best. He got
results, and he was the reason I’d succeeded. That was what Mama said, at least.
Sure enough,
Hunter just raised a brow in question, his sexy-as-sin face a mass of
confusion.
I sighed. “He
oversees everything for me, training me in every aspect of my presentation and
supervising all of the people who help out—my designer, my hair and makeup
people. He runs the show.” Whether I liked it or not, and for a great many
years now I’d been leaning toward the side of not. Hunter still didn’t look like he followed, so I added, “He’s
kind of like my coach, I guess.”
“Your coach?”
Hunter scoffed.
I nodded.
“For pageants?
You need a coach for a beauty pageant?” He raised and lowered his gaze, giving
me a thorough and disbelieving once-over.
“They’re about a
lot more than just physical appearances,” I groused, sick to death of having to
explain pageants to people who weren’t part of this community.
He narrowed his eyes
at me, seeming to analyze every minuscule bit of my appearance. “Mm-hmm,” he
said, making me feel all of an inch tall. “So what the fuck does he have to do
with any of this?” he asked, scowling and waving an arm across Daddy’s desk and
the papers littered all over it. “This is a marriage, sweetheart. It isn’t a
pageant. The guru stays out of it.”
There was no
masking the grin that swallowed up Daddy’s face. “You know, son, I think I’m
going to like you. I think I’m going to like you a hell of a lot.”
“I might be
marrying your daughter, Mr. Roth, but I’m not your son, and you and everyone
else around here had better get that through your thick fucking skulls.”
Daddy just
chuckled and sifted through the stack of papers to find another one to go over.
“Got it. Noted. Not my son.” He winked at me. I had no clue how he could be
laughing and winking at a time like this. My whole world was changing.
Everything I’d known my whole life had been ripped out from under me the day
I’d returned from a summer vacation with my sorority sisters and had to face
the scandal of being stripped of my crown.
Hunter met my
gaze from across the table, almost staring through me. “You understand what I
said about Lance? He has no place in our marriage. At all. Not ever, regardless
of how short or long this marriage may be.”
“Of course he
doesn’t,” I readily agreed.
I didn’t mention
the fact that a wedding was not a marriage, and there wasn’t a chance in
hell that I could convince Mama that Lance couldn’t be involved in the planning
for the ceremony. He had already started working on it, and she would have a
serious conniption fit if I tried to put down my foot about it. The fit that
Lance would throw would be big enough to cause the Gulf of Mexico to swell up so
far it would cover the entire state of Oklahoma. Whether I was happy about it
or not, and no matter what Hunter thought on the matter, Lance’s fingerprints
would be all over the wedding and reception. Heck, he’d already made the
executive decision that I would be walking down the aisle in my competition
ball gown, despite the fact that it wasn’t even close to being appropriate for
a wedding. It was white, there wasn’t time to get something else more wedding
appropriate made, and it would look stunning on camera, especially after they
added some more pizzazz to it. Those were all the reasons he needed to lay down
that particular law.
Daddy finally
found the sheet he’d been searching for and drew it forward, passing it across
so Hunter and John could see it. “This one is more specific to finances. I set
up a trust fund for Tallie years ago. It allows her to have access to the funds
upon her marriage at a set dollar amount per year, so that should cover all her
living expenses during the course of your marriage. In other words, while
she’ll be living in your house, she won’t be touching your money. There won’t
be any need for it. Additionally, I’ll be paying for the wedding since you’re
buying the house.”
“The wedding shouldn’t
cost too much, though,” Hunter said, narrowing his eyes. “Not like a house. I
mean, maybe if we were waiting a few months and could plan it properly—”
“I promise you,”
Daddy interrupted, “my wife can spend money like you wouldn’t believe, on short
notice or otherwise.” He passed over another sheet of paper and pointed toward
a line so he could explain the terms outlined on it, effectively putting an end
to that part of the conversation for the moment.
John took each
sheet of paper as Daddy discussed it, poring over it with a fine-toothed comb
while the explanation continued. For the most part, it was just Daddy talking.
Every now and then, either Hunter or John would pipe up with another question,
or John would point out a section of wording that he wanted to have changed
before he would advise Hunter to sign on the dotted line. I decided to leave
them to it. Daddy and I had already gone over every single detail in these
documents even before my husband-to-be had been decided upon, so there wasn’t
much for me to contribute.
The basic gist
of the rest of our meeting was that Hunter and I would publicly play the parts
of a loving couple, putting off the impression that we were exuberantly happy
newlyweds. The story we would feed the press was that we’d met at an event
while Hunter was in town to meet with his new team, and we’d both been so instantly
smitten that we knew this was it. We couldn’t wait, so we’d dropped everything
and married as soon as it could all be arranged. In that way, we were revealing
things as truthfully as possible without letting the whole truth out. Once we decided to go our separate ways after the
requisite year, we would simply state that we’d rushed into things and hadn’t
thought it through, that love at first sight had turned out to be just a myth,
not reality.
Everything about
this marriage business felt cold and calculated, which I supposed it should.
That was the truth of it. It was all
being decided and arranged in an almost mercenary manner. The craziest part of
it all was that Daddy—the one who was most in line with the idea of Hunter
Fielding being the man I married for this farce—was also the one who was most
able to keep emotion out of the arrangements. Maybe that was to be expected
since he was a lawyer. I supposed it came with the territory.
Anyway, once
everything was hammered out, the contract was drawn up, agreed upon, and signed
by all parties involved. Hunter pushed back his chair and stood, his agent
following suit. I glanced up to find Hunter’s eyes trained on me. I’d never
seen eyes quite like his. They were light, and on first glance, they seemed to
be some sort of blue, almost too crystal clear to be human. But when I looked
closer, I realized they were a silvery sage green unlike any I’d observed
before, both magnetic and impenetrable. Every time I’d caught him looking at
me, his expression had been unreadable, but it grew more and more heated with
each glance. Not an angry sort of heat but more along the lines of sexy and
sensual, causing tingles to race to every nerve in my body.
“So you’re
coming to dinner with me tonight then,” he said.
“Dinner?” That
was enough to take me by surprise, and I sat back in my seat, eyes wide. “Why
do you think I am coming to dinner with you?”
“Because we’re
supposed to be putting on a show for everyone,” he said, aggravation coming
through in his tone. “If we wait until after the wedding to start that, there
are going to be even more questions than there already will be. Might as well
get started now. See and be seen, right?”
I took a gander
at Daddy, but he was no help. At the moment, he was gathering up all of the
documents that we had just gone over and sorting them into stacks. Traitor. “Maybe we can start in a few
days. Mama expects to go over wedding details with me tonight.” I honestly
didn’t know if Mama expected anything of the sort, but there were a lot of
details that needed to be seen to, and she wouldn’t want to put them off any
longer than necessary. Not to mention Lance, but I didn’t see any reason to
bring him into the equation right now. The less Hunter knew about Lance’s
involvement, the better, at least for the time being.
“How many
wedding details can there be? There are only so many things that can be put
together at the last minute like this.”
At that, Daddy
snorted in laughter. “Son, you’ve got a lot to learn about Southern women and
what they can accomplish on short notice.”
I was sure that
Hunter was about to gripe that Daddy had called him son again, and I was prepared to interject, but John beat me to it.
“We should
really get out of here,” he said. He took Hunter by the arm and started guiding
him toward the door. “We still haven’t had time to check in at the hotel, let
alone change clothes. Hunter needs to get a rental car. We can work the rest of
this out tomorrow, can’t we?”
Hunter would not
be deterred so easily. He stopped and turned, narrowing those silky green eyes
at me. “Seriously, dinner?”
“Pick her up at
six thirty,” Daddy said. “My secretary will give you the address, and she’ll
make reservations for you at Giovanni’s Trattoria.”
I did a double
take. “Giovanni’s?” Not only was my father blatantly ignoring everything I had
said about needing to work on wedding details with Mama but Giovanni’s was one
of the swankiest restaurants in town, easily one of the most expensive places
we could possibly go. Getting in there at the last minute was next to
impossible. I loved their food as much as I loved anything, and I wasn’t
worried about the cost, but it seemed like a bit much for the first time we
went out together.
Daddy raised a
brow in my direction, continuing to sort his papers into stacks. “The goal is
to start putting it out there that you two are an item, isn’t it? There’s no
better place for that in Tulsa.”
Hunter quirked
up a grin, a rarity in the brief time I’d known him and an action that made my
heart go pitter patter, and he winked at me. “I’ll see you at six thirty.”
“With a ring,
like we outlined earlier,” Daddy said. “Size five. Make sure it’s big enough to
draw notice.”
“Got it,” Hunter
said, catching John’s eye and jerking his head toward the door. With that, his
agent preceded him out of the board room, and Hunter snaked his way out behind
him, leaving me with a stunning view of his very tight ass, my jaw nearly
hitting the floor at the perfection of it. His jeans hugged every blessed inch
of him, defining all the muscle there and in his thighs.
Daddy chuckled
after the door closed. “Just be glad your mama isn’t around to see you gawking
at him like that.”
“She’ll be seeing
plenty of it soon enough,” I muttered. If all went according to plan, everyone
in Oklahoma would soon be seeing a lot more than me gaping at Hunter as he walked
away. I picked up my purse from the floor, tossing my copies of the pre-nuptial
agreement inside before pushing my chair back from the board table. “Daddy,
tell me something,” I said as I stood.
“What’s that?”
“Why is it that
you’re so hunky dory with all of this? Why aren’t you getting worked up?” Lord
knew worked up didn’t even begin to
cover it where I was concerned.
The entire
structure of my life until this point had been ripped away from me, just
because of one night’s worth of poor choices. Now my future looked so different
than it had only a few weeks ago that I couldn’t even recognize it. I’d been so
close to achieving the goals I’d been working toward since before I’d
understood what they were, but that was all gone. No chance. I couldn’t be Miss
USA. I couldn’t compete for Miss Universe. At this point, I didn’t even know
who I was anymore, or what my life should be about. I’d always had direction
and a narrowly defined purpose. Now, all I could do was go along with what I
was told. That wasn’t much different from any other time in my life, really. I
was good at doing what I was told. That was how I’d gone as far as I had in the
pageants I’d competed in over the years, so it came naturally to me.
Still, even with
everyone agreeing that I was going to have to marry in order to help my misadventures
in Cancun wash over, Mama and Lance were spitting mad over Hunter being the man
we’d settled upon. They hadn’t had any better suggestions, and Daddy’s firm had
run a thorough background check on him and come up with nothing worse than a
brother with some drug and legal issues that had nothing to do with Hunter, but
that didn’t seem to make any difference to them. They thought I deserved better
for my fake husband and short-term marriage. They thought he should be someone who
Oklahoma loved, not someone the people in the state hated with the fire of a
thousand suns. They wanted him to sweep in on a white charger and save the day,
not be dragged in kicking and screaming like Hunter was. They wanted the
impossible.
But Daddy? I
wasn’t at all sure what he wanted, and that left me feeling as if I stood on
shaky ground. He’d always been my rock, my safe place amid the colliding fronts
of Mama and Lance.
Those two pushed
me harder and told me I was never going to be good enough if I didn’t do
exactly as they said; he smiled and told me he loved me just as I was. They plucked
and waxed and airbrushed me, obsessing over my every flaw; he looked at me when
I had bedhead and a seaweed mask covering my face and told me I was beautiful.
They regimented everything I ate, putting me on fad diets that only allowed for
canned tuna and green vegetables one week and hard-boiled eggs and steamed carrots
the next week; he brought home Subway sandwiches and cupcakes and sneaked them
into my room, winking as he backed out with his finger pressed to his lips.
He winked in
that same way now, shoving the stacks of paper aside and placing his entire
focus on me. “I’m not getting worked up because, for the first time since you
were six months old and your mother informed me she was going to enter you in a
baby pageant whether I liked it or not, I’m not worried about the damage she’s
going to do to you. You’re going to get out from under her thumb, and you’ll be
all the better for it.”
“Out from under
Mama’s thumb?” I repeated after him, dumbfounded. It was Lance who had always
ruled every aspect of my life as far as I could figure it, dictating everything
to Mama from my diet to my bedtime, and even the electives I should sign up for
in school. He had determined that I should be in Delta Delta Delta. He’d been
the one to decide that I should major in communications at the University of
Oklahoma. He’d hired and fired the various designers, makeup artists, and
coaches I’d had over the years. It had always been Lance, not Mama, making
those decisions for my life. She’d just been the one to enforce my compliance.
Daddy smiled,
but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Tallie, I tried to fire Lance at least a dozen
times over the years, but your mother wouldn’t have it. He’s been the one
deciding how you needed to do things, but it was your mother who insisted he be
in your life at all. She’s ultimately the one behind it, and I couldn’t be
happier to have you finally coming to a point where the two of them can’t
dictate your life.”
My life.
But if I went
along with the plan and married Hunter, just as I’d been told to do, it wasn’t
really my life, was it? I’d just be going along with what they told me to do,
and maybe instead of Mama and Lance dictating everything now, it would be
Hunter taking on that role. Or maybe they would find a way to wheedle their way
in to keep going as they had been.
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