The Extravagant Collection, page 34
MY ONE WEEK HUSBAND
ABOUT
A week-long trip. A fake marriage. And seven delicious nights with only one bed in the hotel room.
He’s my business partner, my good friend, and the man I’ve craved for years.
But I’ve resisted the sexy Brit, and I plan to keep up my walls because I’ve been there, done that, and I know how much it hurts when you let someone into your heart.
Then an opportunity comes along for us to snag the business deal of a lifetime.
The catch?
We need to pretend we’re married to pull off this high-stakes deal.
So the clever, charming man with secrets a mile deep becomes my temporary husband, as we travel around Europe. Soon, we fall into bed, tangled together like newlyweds who can’t keep their hands off each other.
One week to explore our fantasies, then we return to who we were.
But when I learn the dark secrets he’s been keeping, I doubt we can go back.
Because they change everything.
MY ONE WEEK HUSBAND
By Lauren Blakely
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1
SCARLETT
Some things feel true, even if you know they won’t ever come true.
But in the moment, your imagination takes hold.
Like right now.
As I stroll down the street in Avignon with my business partner, the sun shimmering low in a clear blue sky and the scent of lavender wafting in the soft breeze, I feel as if I could linger all day. Funny, because I am not known for lingering.
Yet lingering feels inherently right. “I could spend hours roaming this town,” I declare with a deep inhale of the South of France air, far away from the glitter and lights, the hustle and bustle of Paris.
Daniel shoots me a skeptical look as we wander past a chichi boutique peddling silk scarves and sky-high heels. “You could definitely not spend hours wandering, Scarlett.”
I scoff, raising my chin. “You doubt my ability to roam?”
“I doubt your tolerance for roaming through here.” He gestures grandly to the plethora of boutiques and cafés on the street. “You don’t even like to shop.”
“I do like to shop,” I say defensively.
He shakes his head, laughing. It’s a rich, deep sound that I’ve loved to hear ever since I became his financial advisor a few years back. I’ve grown to know him even better in the past twelve months, after I bought a third of a stake in his company. “No,” he counters. “You like to buy. You like to have a list of things you need. You like to pop into stores, grab what you’re after, then scurry on out.”
I argue that point, something I do love to do. “That’s shopping. Going in, buying what you need—that’s the literal definition of shopping.”
His blue eyes glint with mischief. It’s a look I see often in those crystal irises. “Exactly. We’re only wandering down this street because our train arrived early. I doubt you’d actually spend hours strolling through this town otherwise. In fact, I don’t think you’d spend hours doing anything except work,” he says, throwing that down like a gauntlet.
I square my shoulders, bristling at his accusation, though it’s largely true. “What do you think I should spend my hours doing? Sunning myself? Being fanned with palm fronds?”
He gives me a lopsided grin that is both endearing and infuriating. “The latter sounds perfect. But I’m simply saying that you don’t lollygag. You have a plan for everything. A strategy for ‘tackling every day because days should be tackled.’”
He sketches air quotes around those last words—words I use, well, daily.
I toss my head back, laughing as we near a café with its red windows flung open, green tables spilling across the sidewalk. “So this is what we’ve come to? You mock me for having strategies?”
“Well, you do make it easy,” Daniel teases.
A waiter rushes out of the main door of the café with a tray of wineglasses balanced on his forearm expertly, different shades of crimson in the glasses.
“Strategies are a woman’s best friend. And a man’s,” I add, making a move to swat Daniel’s elbow.
Playfully, of course.
He sidesteps me.
The waiter bumps into him.
“Excusez moi,” the waiter says, an apologetic frown creasing his brow.
“De rien,” Daniel quickly reassures the man. The waiter smiles, nods, and weaves through the tables.
The Englishman by my side returns to ribbing me. “As I was saying, you don’t actually like to linger, wander, or roam, Scarlett. You like to do. You like to accomplish. I suspect you’re secretly pissed that our train was early, since now we have to kill a whole half hour before our meeting.”
“Oh yes, that’s me. Secretly mad,” I say deadpan. Then I deal him a sharp stare. “I don’t get mad in secret.”
He taps his chin. “True. You have been known to march right up to me and give me hell though.”
“When you deserve it. Which is often.” I glance his way, then flinch when my gaze catches on a spot of burgundy on the sleeve of his silk shirt.
“Daniel,” I say, touching his forearm.
“Yes?”
“It seems your shirt might have been the collateral damage back there,” I say, gesturing to a small but stands-out-like-a-sore-thumb spot on the expensive fabric.
His eyes drift down to the red stain on his sleeve. “Huh,” he says, amused. His lips curve into a grin. “C’est la vie. Or perhaps that’s one of the hazards of lingering?”
“Do you want to go back to the hotel so you can change?”
He checks his wristwatch. “Not enough time before our meeting.” He squints, peering along the street. “Looks like there’s a men’s clothing shop up ahead.”
“Ah, is that your strategy for tackling the spot?” I ask, imitating him in his crisp London accent.
He grins. “I never said strategies were bad.”
“I beg to differ.”
“You just assumed I was giving you a hard time,” he tosses back at me.
“As you do,” I say.
Of course, it’s not a bad thing to get along swimmingly with a business partner. We’re like gin and tonic, and it’s a good thing. We don’t always see eye to eye, but we complement each other. That’s how we’ve been able to make magic happen with our hotels—with our different approaches and the way we’ve been able to mesh them to grow our business.
He reaches the door to the shop and holds it open with a flourish. “After you.”
“Show me how quick you can be,” I say.
His eyes narrow, flickering with naughty intent. “I don’t think you really want me to be quick.”
Heat flares across my skin at his sexy subtext, but I do my best to ignore it. “Is everything innuendo with you?”
“Life is innuendo. Of course everything is too. Now, let’s make sure I look the part of the impeccable hotelier wooing the town historical society with our plans to renovate the inn on the corner.”
In the store, the man is the model of efficiency. He’s incredibly fast, but that doesn’t surprise me. He’s a determined guy who makes quick decisions, and usually the right ones.
He finds a white shirt with thin blue checks, then tips his forehead to the back of the shop. “I’ll go try on this one.”
“Great. I’ll wait outside and answer some messages.”
He jerks his head back. “You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ll wait outside the dressing room and tell me how the shirt looks.”
I arch a brow, laughing. “Like we’re a married couple?”
“Yes. Pretend, Scarlett,” he says in that husky tone again as we weave our way to the dressing rooms. “Pretend you care deeply what your husband is wearing to the dinner meeting.”
“Fine. If you insist,” I say with a huff.
“I do insist.”
“Don’t you just love giving orders?”
He wiggles his brow as he opens the dressing room door, tossing me a wry look. “Yes. Yes, I do,” he says in a voice that drips with sex.
Daniel Stewart is the living, breathing manifestation of sex appeal. I’ve learned to live with his hotness. What else can I do? I work with him. I’d be a fool to entertain thoughts of him sexually.
We run a billion-dollar hotel empire together.
I heave a sigh, an absolutely aggrieved one, as if a make-believe marriage is the worst thing in the world, then I flop onto a leather chair outside the dressing rooms. “If I must check out your clothes, I will.”
He ducks into the room, his voice drifting out. “Thanks so much, my darling bride.”
I laugh, shaking my head at his antics, then reach for my phone. But as I tap out replies to emails, my brain wanders into the dressing room, opens the door, and tries to get a look at Daniel trying on the shirt.
I squeeze my eyes shut, doing my very best to banish those thoughts. To put them in an airtight container, close it up tight, and tuck it away.
Never to open it again.
The door creaks open.
I glance up as he steps out of the dressing room, showing off the new shirt, and I hum low in my throat, admiring the hell out of the view.
He’s a little over six feet tall. His brown hair is tinged with gold, sun-kissed, and his jawline could grace magazine covers. A rigorous commitment to cycling through the Alps and the streets of London and Paris has made him toned. The gym has made him muscular.
The job has made him filthy rich.
He’s the kind of man designers make clothes for. Clothes that should be so lucky to snuggle up against his skin.
Everything he wears looks devilishly handsome because he is devilishly handsome.
That’s a thought best kept in the container with the rest. I wrestle the errant idea, intent on securing it away with the others. But as I do, Daniel lifts his hands to the shirt’s buttons, and the thought wriggles free and shoves itself front and center in my head.
Because he stands mere feet away, doing up the buttons.
Which means his shirt is halfway open.
My eyes take a stroll.
So that’s what his pecs look like. So they do sport a smattering of hair. So they are, in fact, as carved as I’d imagined.
As I’d hoped.
And what of his abs?
My mouth waters as my eyes travel lower, eager to catch a glimpse of the ridges and grooves.
Snap out of it, Scarlett! He’s your business partner.
I blink, squashing the thoughts. Then I jump up and down on them to make sure they’re dead, reduced to dead-bug levels of thought mortality.
I swallow roughly and give Daniel a thumbs-up.
He rolls his eyes. “Your husband merely gets a thumbs-up?”
“I would think my husband should be happy I’m still shopping with him after all these years of marriage.”
“But maybe we’re newlyweds,” he says.
“As if.”
He grins, then echoes, “As if,” letting that hang importantly in the air, knowing that neither one of us would go there.
For very different reasons, but reasons nonetheless.
A little later, with Daniel in his new shirt, we head to the dinner meeting, where we explain to the Historical Society of Avignon how our renovations of the century-old inn we purchased here will benefit the town, and they agree.
When it’s over, we return to our new hotel, and I’m ready for bed. I tell Daniel I’ll see him in the morning.
He brushes a kiss on my cheek. He always brushes kisses on my cheeks. So very European.
Though sometimes my body reacts in ways it shouldn’t.
With tingles.
“Good night, Mrs. Stewart,” he teases.
I laugh, because it’s all I can do. Then I say good night to him, and to the tingles he leaves behind on my skin.
Lavender eye mask? On the nightstand.
High-stakes thriller? Got that.
Phone. Right here with me.
Plus, I’m wearing my newest La Perla nightie, with delicate straps and the most succulent silk, the color of amethyst, that falls lovingly against my skin. In the ornate bathroom at this boutique hotel that’s now part of our portfolio, I reach for my favorite lotion, slather it on my legs, then put it back in my travel bag.
I brush one hand against the other and stand in the doorway of the bathroom regarding the space in front of me, looking for anything that calls to me, that might need to be changed to make this hotel a pinnacle of luxury here in Avignon, a fitting addition to our brand.
What about that mirror over the desk? It’s a little too ornate. It makes me feel like I’m in a Victorian-era home, all stuffy and buttoned-up.
The opposite of our brand.
The opposite of this hotel too.
When guests check into this establishment, they’re on honeymoons. They’re on getaways. They’re here to fuck.
I snap a picture of the mirror as a reminder that it ought to be replaced, then I dictate a note on my phone. “Look into new mirrors. Are these truly the best? Do they suggest sex enough? The people who come here probably want to watch themselves in the mirror.”
I set the phone on the desk, then smooth a hand down the front of my silk negligee.
What would I do if someone brought me here on a getaway?
Told me to watch in the mirror as he fucked me?
A shiver runs through me at that naughty scenario, but it’s fuzzy, hazy around the edges.
I don’t even know who I’m imagining saying that.
Telling me to do that.
But does it really matter? There is no time in my life, nor space in it either for that to happen.
I grab my tablet and slide into bed. I answer a message from my friend Nadia about our upcoming meeting in Paris. A few of her football team’s players are coming to Europe for an exhibition game as part of the league’s efforts to expand American football’s popularity here on the continent.
I reply and confirm which meetings I can attend with her, then sign off with a Go, team, go! GIF. As an American who now lives overseas, I haven’t lost my love of the sport I grew up watching, and I’m eager to see it develop in Europe.
I set down the tablet, take a deep breath, then slide under the covers with my book. I try to read, but there’s so much to do tomorrow, all of it flitting through my head. So much on my to-do list that’s never-ending.
But that’s what a good to-do list is. A good to-do list ought to be never-ending.
Lists are great for the soul. No list has ever let me down. Neither has work. Neither have friends.
Only relationships have left me disillusioned and disappointed.
That, and love.
On that note, I grab my eye mask, put it on and fall asleep.
Crash!
An earsplitting din rends the air.
A bolt of alarm jars me wide awake. I push up my mask and jump out of bed, flinging off the covers. I scan left then right, hunting the source of the sound and what I can do about it.
Where is the fire extinguisher? Something big and heavy in case I have to fight off an intruder?
I spot it in the corner next to the plush red velvet lounge, then I grab it, dash to the door, and peer through the peephole into the hall. I suck in a breath as I take in the carnage, then I let it escape as a sigh of relief.
I don’t need a fire extinguisher, thank God. The sight in the hallway is horrifying, but nonthreatening. Shards of glass are everywhere. But it’s time to woman up. Setting down the fire extinguisher, I glance at the time. Two in the morning. Grabbing my phones and my tablet in case I need to make a quick call or record details, I put on my slippers, unhook the chain, unlatch the door, and step into the hall.
Another door slinks open at the same time as mine, and Daniel steps out from his room across from mine.
He rubs his right hand over his sleep-rumpled hair. The hand with the jagged scar that runs down the length of it—a mark I find incomparably sexy.
He unleashes a yawn, stretching his arms and . . .
Holy low-slung sleep pants.
His sleep attire answers all my questions from the dressing room earlier today.
Every last one.
We’re talking ridges, grooves, divots.
Abs for days.
And that V?
The vaunted V cut, which I shouldn’t have imagined he had, but I don’t have to imagine anymore, because he does.
Oh yes, he does.
I ought to keep my gaze above his neck.
But my mouth is watering at the sight of his chest, his stomach, his hips.
I will my eyes not to stray downward.
I’m not a pervert.
I’m truly not.
But . . .
My eyes are traitors.
They stray to his pelvis.
To the outline visible through the fabric.
An outline that leaves little to the imagination.
My gorgeous, clever, charming business partner is rock-hard.
Nearly naked.
And sporting one hell of a bedtime erection.
Now I have a damn good sense of what he looks like underneath those devilishly handsome clothes all day long.
