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An idea so much worse than any murderous plot he could come up with…
An idea so unbearable, so revolting…
She backed away from the phone. “I need alcohol.”
He jabbed the receiver in the general direction of her head. “Kerosene burns hotter and faster.” She must have looked as sick as she felt because he didn’t immediately start to dial. “What’s wrong? You’re not going to throw up, are you?”
If only it were that simple. She gulped. “J-just hear me out, okay?”
“Make it quick.”
“Oh, God…” Her legs had begun to buckle, and she sank into the chair on the other side of the couch. “There’s a…” The room started to spin around her. “There might be…a-a way out of this.”
“You’re right. And I promise, I’ll have fresh flowers delivered to your grave once a month. Plus your birthday and Christmas.”
She absolutely could not look at him, so she stared at the creases of her gray slacks. “We could…” She cleared her throat. Swallowed. “We could s-stay married.”
Thick silence filled the room, followed by the piercing bleat of a telephone left too long off its cradle.
Her palms were sweating, and her cheeks burned. He set the phone back on its hook. “What did you say?”
She swallowed again and tried to pull herself together. “Just for—for a year. We stay married for a year.” Her words sounded wheezy, as if she was squeezing them through a kazoo. “A—a year from today, we announce that—that we’ve decided we’re better friends than lovers, and we’re getting a divorce. But that we’ll love each other forever. And—Here’s the important part.” Her thoughts tumbled over one another, then focused. “We—we make sure we’re seen together in public after that. Always laughing and having a good time together so neither of us gets painted as a”—she caught herself just before she said “victim”—“so neither of us gets painted as a villain.”
The bits and pieces came together in her mind like a sitcom episode on crack. “Slowly, we let the story leak that I’ve started fixing you up with some of my girlfriends and that you’re fixing me up with a few of those cretins you hang out with. Everything incredibly friendly. All Bruce and Demi. No drama, no scandal.”
And no pity. That was the important part, the only way she’d be able to keep it together. No more pity for pathetic, heartbroken Georgie York who couldn’t hold on to love.
Bram was still stuck at the beginning. “We stay married? You and me?”
&nbs
p; “Just for a year. It’s—I know it’s not a perfect plan”—a mind-numbing understatement—“but given the circumstances, I think it’s the best we can do.”
“We hate each other!”
She couldn’t fold now. Everything was at stake. Her reputation, her career, and most of all, her battered pride…
Except it was more than pride. Pride was a surface emotion, and this went deeper—all the way to her sense of identity. She faced the painful truth that she’d lived her entire life without making a single important decision of her own. Her father had guided every step of her career and her personal life, from the jobs she took to how she looked. He’d even introduced her to Lance, who’d dictated when they’d get married, where they’d live, and a thousand other things. Lance had announced they’d have no children, and he was the one who’d delivered the verdict that had ended her marriage. For thirty-one years, she’d let other people chart her destiny, and she was sick of it. She could either continue to live by the dictates of others, or she could set her own path, however bizarre.
A frightening—almost exhilarating—sense of purpose came over her. “I’ll pay you.”
That got his attention. “Pay me?”
“Fifty thousand for every month we stay together. That’s over half a million dollars, in case you can’t add.”
“I can add.”
“A post prenup,” she said.
Once again, he jabbed a finger toward her head. “You did this on purpose. You trapped me just like you tried to trap Trevor. This was what you had in mind all along.”
She jumped up from the chair. “Even you can’t believe that! Every minute I spend with you is misery. But I care more about my…career than about how much I hate you.”
“Your career or your image?”
She wasn’t discussing her self-worth issues with the enemy. “Image is career in this town,” she said, giving him the easy answer. “You know that better than anyone. It’s why you can’t get a decent job. Because nobody trusts you. But the public does trust me—even through all this mess with Lance. My reputation will rub off on you. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by going along with this. People will think you’ve reformed, and you might finally be able to get a decent job.”
Something flickered in his eyes. She’d picked the wrong argument, and she quickly switched direction. “Half a million dollars, Bram.”
