He frowned, searching her features. “What did you expect me to say?”
“I don’t know. Thing is, I don’t really know you that well, so it’s a pleasant surprise that you’re willing to stand behind me.”
She might not know him as well as, say, his brothers did, but surely she at least knew this much of his character? “Callie, I know our history is a little unconventional, but don’t ever doubt that I’ll stand behind you.”
“Thank you,” she said, and for one brief, shining moment he recognized the passionate woman from Vegas who’d snagged his attention from the moment he’d laid eyes on her in the bar. “That means a lot. And it goes both ways.”
“I appreciate it. Now, what’s our first move?”
She tapped a bright red fingernail against matching red pursed lips as she thought. “We need to get ahead of the story. Be on top of it and create our own story.”
“Sounds good,” he said. “How do we do that?”
“We need to come up with our own version of our wedding.” She rose to her feet and started pacing, her words coming rapidly. “Create a new truth—it was love at first sight. Make it a sweet story, not the sleazy version that the tabloids will want to print, and get that new truth in the media ASAP to beat the other story. My contacts will help get it out quickly.”
Adam made a few notes, and then looked them over. “It doesn’t seem like enough—it will be one version versus the other.”
“True,” she said, holding up an index finger, “but that’s only step one.”
He smiled. “Good.”
“The second part is to give them the current story.”
He made another note on the legal pad and asked without looking up, “What sort of current story?”
“Something about us.” She stopped pacing.
“About us being together?” he asked warily.
“That would be best.” She rested her hands on her hips, her mind obviously going at a million miles per hour. “Perhaps that we’re ready to have a real wedding.”
He hid the instinctive flinch. If they were to find a workable solution, he needed to be open to all ideas in this first brainstorming phase. “How does that help?”
“Then, the story of our Vegas wedding becomes a very sweet, love-at-first-sight beginning to our current relationship and can’t harm my career or your family. I’ll let my bosses know before the story appears, and apologize for not disclosing the fact sooner, saying we’d agreed not to tell anyone before the announcement.”
“A wedding,” he said, this time allowing his skepticism to show.
She shrugged one slim shoulder. “It doesn’t have to be forever, just until the story dies down and we can quietly separate and go back to our normal lives.”
“How do we explain the intervening months?”
“I’m not sure. Give me a moment.”
Again, she tapped her nail against pursed lips and, as he watched, he sat back. She was even more beautiful in real life than she’d been in his dreams last night. They’d been back in the Vegas hotel bed where he’d kissed that same lush mouth and covered her naked body with his. His blood began to heat. He stared at the light fixture in the ceiling as he brought his wayward body back under control.
“Okay,” she said, gracefully sliding back into the chair across from him. “What if we say we gave it a go at the start but circumstances tore us apart. However, we never lost touch and recently we’ve begun to work through our problems and can finally announce that we’re ready to begin a life together as husband and wife.”
He released a long breath, mentally checking all angles. “That roller-coaster history will feed in to the explanations when we break up again afterward. What will it take to convince them that we didn’t just make this story up as a stunt?”
“Besides the story itself, which we’ll give to an entertainment journalist I trust, I’ll have friends leak details to key journalists. We’ll also need to appear in public together, and do some media interviews. Then we’ll have the wedding.”
The last item on her list caught him off guard. His mouth dried. “You really want to go through with an entire wedding?”
Callie, on the other hand, seemed entirely unfazed by the prospect. Apparently she had nerves of steel. “We’re already married, so it won’t change anything legally. Either way, we’ll still need to get a divorce at some stage.”
Adam swallowed hard. She was right. Besides the cost of a wedding, which would barely make a dent in his bank balance thanks to the success of Hawke’s Blooms, marrying her again wouldn’t make any important difference—they were already married. But being around her, spending significant amounts of time near that lush mouth, just might change everything...
Four and a half hours later, Adam looked around his brother Liam’s living room at his collected family. Liam and his fiancée shared the sofa, a baby in each of their laps. On the opposite sofa were his youngest brother, Dylan, and his fiancée, Faith. Dylan and Faith now split their time between New York and LA; Adam was lucky they happened to be in town for this meeting. His parents were in two armchairs near Liam’s elbow, and he and Callie rounded out the group.
Everyone was chatting in twos and threes, catching up on each other’s news. But it was time to face the music. Adam’s gut clenched tight.
He turned to Callie and quietly said, “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” she answered, her expression not giving away much.
Bracing himself to lay out his mistake in front of the people whose opinions counted the most, Adam cleared his throat. His family quieted and turned to him, waiting.
“Thanks for adjusting your schedules so you could come out here on short notice. I needed to introduce you to Callie Mitchell. Callie is taking over the PR for the Hawke Brothers’ Trust.”
Both his brothers raised eyebrows at him, but Jenna jumped right in. “I’m thrilled to meet you, Callie. You probably already know, but I head up the trust, so we’ll be working together.”
Callie smiled back. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“However,” Liam said, his head cocked to the side, “this raises the question of why you’re introducing her to all of us and not Jenna.”
Dylan held up a hand like a stop signal. “Are you about to try and talk us in to some crazy-ass PR stunt like the bachelor auction?”
Adam snorted. “As I recall, that stunt seemed to work out well for you.” He looked pointedly at Dylan’s hand holding Faith’s—she was the person who had bought the package of three dates with Dylan at the auction.
Dylan grinned, acknowledging the point, and then leaned in to kiss Faith’s
