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She lay down on the sofa where he was stretched out at full length, and she wedged in until her head was on his chest, her ear against his heartbeat. Instantly, she settled down, soothed, eyes beginning to droop.
“So you’ll accept the credit card?” he asked.
“A paid line of credit with no restrictions outside of probably illegal firearms? Who wouldn’t?”
“Someone far too independent for her own good?”
“Right. Count me in. I’ve already accepted your diamonds. I might as well take living expenses, too.”
“We’re heading home to New York tomorrow. There will be photographers when we get off the plane. You’ll need to go shopping before we depart, choose a going away outfit. There are plenty of places to shop in Vegas, I believe.”
“I’ve looked at pictures of the Forum shops at Caesar’s. The place looks like a museum or a cathedral with painted ceilings and statues and, like, a Cheesecake Factory in the background. It’s crazy and tacky and I would be in paradise there. Especially with a credit card.”
“Then the car will take you there in the morning. I have other business, but we can meet back here before departure.”
“Oh. Okay,” she said.
Marj was a little disappointed that he didn’t plan to come with her. She realized it wasn’t a real marriage, a real honeymoon. It must have been the sensational sex that confused her, she thought. It wasn’t in her best interest to start being clingy. It was smarter to take what he offered and ask for nothing more. It was better than scraping by to make rent, giving up her weekly latte and being lonely all the time. It would be nice to have a man around, even if he was only a friend with benefits.
He stroked her hair as he gazed into her eyes. “Thank you for everything. You singlehandedly saved my ass, saved my estate, and my future. I’ll always be indebted to you.”
“You’re welcome.”
His lips softly brushed against hers.
Brandon laid there for a few minutes with his arms around her, seemingly content. Then he levered up off the sofa, draped a cashmere throw over her, kissed her forehead, and mumbled something about having work to do.
Chapter 9
Brandon Cates had never needed much sleep. He got by on less of everything, seemingly, except for his damn type one diabetic pancreas of course which demanded insulin, demanded regular low-carb meals. So he downed a bottle of water and sat down with his laptop and vowed not to waste time thinking about his wife.
It sounded ugly and selfish when he put it that way, but she was, in fact, his rather unexpected wife. Sure, he’d figured out he was going to have to nail down a bride within the next few days, or he’d lose his inheritance, but he hadn’t figured on picking one up in a bar in Las Vegas. An employee, no less.
His father was no doubt laughing his smug ass off in the afterlife even now. Because Brandon had spoken with his dad, had pulled him aside before the wedding with Lena, and asked if it was really appropriate for him to marry someone who’d worked for him. His father had laughed in a knowing way and suggested that his teenaged son mind his own damn business. Brandon had felt somehow wronged by that, as if his opinion, his righteous and somewhat inflexible adolescent moral compass had been discounted when his father, in fact, should have kept it in his pants and stayed away from the employees and interns instead of treating them like his personal candy store.
And now, a decade and more on, Brandon was doing the same thing, screwing a woman who worked for Power Regions, Ltd. and expecting everyone to overlook the fact that his position of authority made it seem smarmy and exploitive. A fairy tale is what he planned to spin it as in the press. Of course, most fairy tales were fairly patriarchal, he mused.
He would get some work done. He’d already sent a photo of his marriage license to the legal team. Now he set to work on the restructuring plan for Simpatico Paper, where his bride worked. If he combined PR and marketing divisions, he could eliminate some redundancies and reassign those employees to keep from pink slipping them. He wanted to preserve the existing team as far as possible for the sake of morale, but there were some inefficient methods at work that he needed to remedy.
And if this girl he’d picked up in a bar, the one with the pretty eyes, and the smart mouth, and the killer ass. If she had looked at him and listened to him like he was really something, well, he wasn’t about to let that cloud his judgment. She was a necessary investment, the kind that protected his interests by her very existence. He would have the papers drawn up, so she was subject to a gag order with punitive damages far in excess of her net worth if she ever violated it. He would make sure a proviso in their post-nuptial paperwork entitled her to ten million if she lasted a year as his wife, fifteen if they were together for longer than that.
