Indecent Proposal (15 page)

“My hair is fine,” she said.

Patty stepped closer, bringing with her the crackling energy and disapproval of five generations of money and power. Ryan swallowed. “I don’t think you understand that whatever rock you have lived under is gone. Your sad little existence as a waitress and a would-be model—it’s over. The way you lived your life, the things you believe, they do not matter anymore. You are a Montgomery, and you will behave as such, or I’m afraid you’ll find this golden ticket you’ve managed to weasel out of my son will vanish. You. That baby. You will disappear right back into the hole you came from with absolutely nothing.”

“All right, Patty.” Wallace stepped forward, but Patty’s gaze was so cold that he froze in his spot.

“Is this the same speech you gave that girl who almost died in the car crash with your husband?” Ryan said, deliberately baiting the bear, because she’d been taken out by her knees by this woman. And the only thing to do when you were going down in a fight was to make sure you weren’t going down alone.

“Ryan,” Wallace breathed, as if a warning to take cover. To tip over that ugly chair and hide behind it. But she stood her ground, because it was all she had left.

“Do you think not caring makes you brave?” Patty’s
low voice cut her to pieces. “It doesn’t. It makes you stupid. More than your lack of education, or where you come from, not caring just makes you stupid, Ryan. And you don’t know this about Harrison, but he cares. More than anyone else in this family, he
cares
. And you may have impressed him one night in a bar. But you are in his life now and he won’t be impressed by you at all. Now, you’re getting married in the south parlor. You have twenty minutes.”

Patty’s heels nearly bored holes in the granite and hardwood floors as she left, Noelle her shadow trailing behind her.

“Holy shit,” Ryan said, finally sucking in a breath. Panic roared around her. “What the hell am I doing?”

“Hey, hey,” Wallace said, grabbing a stiff armchair next to a table covered in flowers. “Don’t pass out. Please don’t pass out.” He shoved the chair behind her knees and Ryan collapsed gratefully into it.

She put her head in her hands and let her hair fall down around her. A cave that smelled like the shampoo that was still in her tiny shower back in her apartment.

The hole I come from
.

I want to go home
.

“This is ridiculous,” she said, torn between angry tears and hysterical laughter. Because Patty had been right; where she was from, not caring was the only way to survive. Where she came from you learned not to get your hopes up and then you learned not to hope.

After that, all you had left was bravado.

“No. No, it’s not.” She felt and heard Wallace get down in a crouch in front of her.

She shook back her hair, staring at this strange ally. “Ten minutes ago you would have given me the same damn speech.” Oh, now she was turning toward tears. Because this guy had a nice face.

“Yeah, and now I’m telling you to suck it up. Harrison, his career, hell, even his mother needs you to see this through.”

“I don’t give a shit about his mother,” she spat.

“Excellent. Me neither.”

She smiled, but sagged farther into the awkward chair. “This is going to be a disaster.”

“Maybe,” Wallace said. “But you’re here. You’ve come this far and you’ve done all right.”

That made her laugh. “All right?”

“Yeah, you know, better than all right,” he said, settling into his pep talk. “The lawyer. Making sure you get something out of this. That your family is taken care of. You’re clever. You’re tough. How’d you know about the girl in the car crash?”

“My brother sent me some information about the family, and I just put two and two together.”

She was tempted to ask him why he was being nice. If it was real. Because she could use something kind, something real right about now.

But tough was lonely. So was proud.

And she had a lot of practice with those things, having lived alone with them for years. Exiled from every Christmas and birthday with her family. Weekends at home, Olivia’s performances, Dad …

The thought of Dad got her to her feet.

This was how she made things right with Dad. The money her lawyer was making sure she got—that would go a long way toward fixing what she’d done.

She grabbed her leather purse. It used to be one of the nicest things she owned, but now, sitting on the granite floor under the chandelier, it just looked cheap.

I don’t care
, she thought.
I don’t care how I look to these people. I have a job to do, a past to make right, and a future to secure
.

And I’m not stupid
.

“Show me where the fucking south parlor is. I need to get married.”

Wallace pointed toward the door that Patty and Noelle had vanished through.

“Right.” She threw her hair over her shoulder and crossed the foyer.

“Ryan?” Wallace asked.

“Yeah?”

“You were right about my mom.” He was running a hand over that ugly tie. “She would have done this, too. For me.”

It felt like a blessing. But maybe that’s what any kind of approval looked like when you were lying down flat at rock bottom.

Whatever
, she thought
. I’ll take it
.

She winked at Wallace, which made him laugh, and she opened the door to the unknown beyond.

Chapter 12

Harrison saw Wallace tapping his watch in the study doorway. Harrison nodded and held up one finger.

Wallace pulled an exasperated face.

“Hey, Gibbs, I need to go.” He cut the analyst off in the middle of a discussion of language use in a new survey they were going to put out regarding fiscal responsibility. “Email me that poll data and I’ll look it over and call you back next week.” Gibbs agreed and hung up.

“I take it she’s here?” Harrison asked, hanging up his cell phone and slipping it into his pocket. He’d been procrastinating, listening to doors slam down the hallway and not in any hurry to join the fray.

Cowardly; he totally understood that.

“She’s been here waiting for nearly forty-five minutes,” Wallace said, and Harrison gaped at the man.

“Are you chastising me? The man who wanted me to pillory her in the
New York Times
?”

Wallace shrugged, stepping farther into the mahogany-paneled office. It was on the first floor and therefore open to the public for tours, so it fairly reeked of formal inefficiency. But Harrison had never been comfortable in his father’s offices. Not since he was twenty-two. In the irrational fear he would be contaminated. Pulled offside by his father’s weakness.

The joke’s on you, isn’t it
. The weakness was already in him.

Maybe that was why he was procrastinating, putting
off the ramifications of his weakness. The utter reality of his failure.

“I’ve changed my mind about her.”

This honestly didn’t come as a surprise to Harrison. Ryan had the kind of tough-love charm that Wallace would adore. Hell, Harrison had adored it for one night.

Tell me who your best isn’t good enough for
.

“Don’t tell me you’re turning into a romantic.”

“She went toe to toe with your mom,” Wallace said.

Harrison paused while shrugging into his coat. “And she’s still here?”

“She’s tough, man,” Wallace said with a shrug and a smile, like he was talking about some scrappy new pitcher for the Braves.

In Wallace-speak, it was high praise.

“We knew that.” He jammed paperwork into his briefcase, the amended marriage contracts he’d signed. No sex, separate rooms, she could leave if both parties agreed should he lose the election, the blood test Mother had insisted be included. This whole marriage was a farce. It wasn’t even a very good business arrangement since it was, at its core, a cover-up. “She is tough. Foolish and headstrong. Uneducated, a potential nightmare in the press, she has a loose-cannon brother with a criminal past, to say nothing of that Lip Girl thing. She may or may not be pregnant with my child. She may or may not have orchestrated this whole damn thing.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Wallace asked. “That she’s tricked you?”

“Don’t act so horrified, Wallace. Twenty-four hours ago you were saying the same thing.”

“Well, as your soon-to-be wife just reminded me, there were two of you in that room and only one of you knew who you were.”

Harrison came abreast of his campaign manager at
the door. “If that’s true and she didn’t know me, she quickly figured it out, didn’t she?”

“Or her brother did and she really knew nothing about it.”

What if that was the truth? he wondered, but then quickly decided it didn’t matter.

“That doesn’t change the fact that I barely know her. But what I do know is she is without a doubt the worst possible wife for me.”

“Yeah,” Wallace said. “If all you are is a politician.”

“I’m a Montgomery,” Harrison said. “What else would I be?”

The south parlor was the scene of a very strange tableau. Reverend Michaels and Mother sat on the love seat, their heads bent together. One might think they were praying, but Harrison knew better. Plotting world domination perhaps, or at the very least the destruction of one former bartender from Philly.

Dad sat in a chair by the curtains, his tie and jacket gone. A drink in hand. And by the flush on his cheeks, it wasn’t his first. Ted was studiously ignoring everyone else in the room, particularly Ryan. As if just clapping eyes on her might hurt his approval rating.

Or maybe he was thinking about Heidi, the young woman he’d used and discarded.

Maybe he was feeling the edges of his own guilt.

Ryan sat in one of the gold brocade Queen Anne chairs, her legs crossed, a flip-flop dangling from her toe. She was reading something on her phone, one finger twirling the end of a lock of hair.

She was chewing gum.

Loudly.

In a house full of lies and pretense, she was startling, viscerally real.

“I think I’m in love with her,” Wallace muttered.

“Sorry I’m late,” Harrison said, stepping farther into the room.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the Golden Boy.” Dad wasn’t slurring. Not quite. But his words were dipped in ugliness. Ryan lifted her head, a deer scenting danger.

Harrison ignored him. Ignored him so hard he practically shook.

“Not so sanctimonious now, are you, son?” Ted kicked his legs out in front of him, angling his head as if to study Harrison more clearly. “Tell me, how does it feel to be just as human as the rest of us?”

Harrison threw his briefcase onto the chair.

“Nothing to say to your old man? You know if you’d asked me, I could have told you. It’s never worth it, son.”

“Ted!” Mother’s sharp voice rattled the windows, silencing her husband, who took his chastisement like he always did—with a healthy slug of bourbon.

“It’s not too late to change your mind,” Mother said. She stood and approached him with her hands out. “We can think of another way out of this.”

Suddenly, it seemed as if their roles were reversed and he was the one steeling himself, holding himself away from her so as to not get dirty with her barely concealed emotion. Her messy desire for more of him than he was willing to give.

“There is no other way,” Harrison said.

“Well, in that case.” Dad stood up, bracing himself on the chair until his legs were steady. “Congratulations, son,” he said, toasting Harrison with his glass, and then turned to Ryan. He fought the desire to step in front of Ryan and shove his father back into his evil, dark little corner, but that would require acknowledging the man. “Welcome to the family. Welcome all to hell.”

“So romantic,” Ryan said, and all three Montgomerys turned to stare at her. “Really, how can a girl refuse?” She stood up, tucked her phone back in her purse, and approached all of them. Like Daniel sashaying into the lion’s den. “The contracts have been signed. I’m totally bought and paid for, and while I appreciate a good family fight before any wedding ceremony, I’ve been waiting for close to an hour to get married. I’m exhausted. Sick. And my feet are swelling. So, I’d like to get hitched.”

Everyone looked down at her feet. At her flip-flops.

“Harrison,” Mother moaned. “You cannot be serious about this.”

“I am.”

Ryan stood there looking exactly like what she was—beautiful, yes. Stunningly so. Sexy and lush and vibrant. But she was broke, desperate, and uneducated. In terms of improving her life, she’d hit the jackpot with him.

She wasn’t here because of any lingering emotional attachment he had to her from that night they’d shared. He didn’t share his sister’s romantic idealism, the desire to be anyone outside of his name.

Ryan was here because Harrison had been weak.

“Reverend Michaels,” he said. “If you would do the honors.”

Married. I am married
.

She kept staring at the simple gold band on her finger, next to the very not simple diamond ring Harrison had slipped on with the band in a very slick sleight of hand that she doubted anyone had noticed. Engaged and married in one fell swoop.

The diamond was at least a carat and made the diamond chip Paul had given her a lifetime ago seem ridiculous.

“Where’d this come from?” she asked. “The diamond?”

“My aunt’s.” He didn’t look at her, barely acknowledged her. “You’ll give it back if you break the contract.”

Right. Contract
.

She was married to a man who’d ignored her for the last hour. If he hadn’t said her name during the ceremony, someone watching the event would not have known whom he was marrying. The icy moat he’d dug around himself was impenetrable and despite the sticky heat of Atlanta in the summer, she was cold in his presence and felt naked in her dress.

As soon as Wallace had shut Harrison’s car door, Harrison had put up the privacy screen between the front and back seats and poured himself a scotch from the bar hidden in the seat between them. He’d given her a bottle of water, which sat in her lap, condensation making dark spots on her dress.