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Juniper’s eyes cut to him and he flinched inwardly. Had he read her signs wrong? Fuck today couldn’t get any worse.
Marshall wrapped his arm around the shoulders of one very quiet wedding planner and pulled her close.
He plowed forward, tossing aside any caution he might have exercised before being pushed against the wall and left with few options. “The wedding is set and Juniper will marry me on my birthday. Invitations to the ceremony will be issued shortly. BlackCo is no longer in danger and you, Becker, can shove your tongue up your ass and fuck off.” Marshall no longer cared about being polished and polite.
Juniper leaned into him a little more and he welcomed her silent support. Marshall looked down at her. For a second, he didn’t know which way to take her silence. When he got her alone, he sensed there would be a little groveling to do. Maybe another session like they shared on the plane.
“Colorful,amigo.So,you’re marrying the wedding planner?” Becker couldn’t drop it. “Slim pickings, huh? So why wait,” he pushed on, obviously seeing through the subterfuge.
“My family is not here,” Juniper cut in, to Marshall’s relief.
“Besides, what’s wrong with falling for the wedding planner? Am I not up to your high standards, Mr. Becker? You can’t fake love. It has a will and an energy all its own. You know nothing about me. None of you do. But all you do need to know is that I’m standing next to your CEO ready to save the fucking day and your precious bank accounts.”
He held the shit-eating grin that he wanted to plaster on his face in check. His pride for the woman at his side doubled. Hell, tripled with the pale look she got from Becker.
Juniper rose to her tiptoes, placed a tender kiss on his cheek, and wrapped her arms around him, and for a split second, he wanted to believe her. She blew him away.
“Now if you’ll excuse me…us,” Marshall cut in. “There’s a lot of preparations still to take care of. You’ll be receiving your invitations by the end of the day if you haven’t already.”
Becker’s eyebrows were so far up he couldn’t tell where his hairline began and his eyebrows ended.
Marshall led the way out of the boardroom past a gaping Becker and to not-so-hushed whispers.
∞∞∞
BOOM. HER LIFE JUST WENT NUCLEAR. They’d left a room full of people reeling in the wake of their—Marshall’s—news and Juniper was one of them.
Back in Marshall’s office, Juniper mentally sorted through the last seventy-two hours, forty-nine minutes and twelve seconds of her life. Smoke fogged over all but two and a half minutes of that time.
She had every intention of saying no to Blackwood’s insane proposal. It shocked the hell out of her as much as it did him, when she agreed to his crazy idea.
But the poor man needed someone in his corner for once and she guessed it would be her for the near future.
“Are you really going to go through with this?” Juniper perched on the end of her chair as she looked back and forth between the open office door and Marshall, hoping no one overheard.
She leaned in, dropped her voice. “Correction, are we really going to put on a fake wedding? Is that against the law or something? I feel I should know this answer.”
Marshall dropped his papers and mimicked her. “You don’t need to whisper. No one can hear us.”
“How do you know? That Becker dude seemed pretty up to date on everything to do with one Marshall Blackwood.” Her brows inched up as her point hit home.
“Touché. I’ll check on that, but my office is a safe zone. Corporate espionage really isn’t the issue here. There's bad blood. I’ll handle it.”
“Right, well, now you’ve gone off script and dragged me in the middle of your bad blood. While you do that, I’ll find you arealbride.”
“Come again?”
She stood up, “You know, someone to walk the aisle with you and say I DO. Someone that isn’t me. You know that, right? The whole ‘will you marry me’ back on the plane. That can’t happen. You know that right?”
Grr. This was getting complicated. All she wanted to do was plan a wedding and save her business and NOT have to return to law school. She preferred building lives, instead of destroying them with lawsuits and divorces, thank you very much.
She rubbed at her forehead. Sleeping with this man had been a bad idea. Good, sosogood at the time, but now that she was chin deep in shit, badbadidea.
She paused when a single black brow rose, and he pegged her with ayou’ve lost your marbleskind of look.
Me? Crazy? Not even close. Right. “Marshall Blackwood,” she began in a stern tone.
With a huff of breath, he left his large leather chair and came to stand beside her.
