Grace Kelly vibe, classy as hell. Despite the rumors and gossip swirling around her she’d held her head high and he’d yet to see her unhinged, to break into a sweat.
He liked calm women, women who could keep it together when their lives were falling apart. That showed a strength of character few women—hell, few men—possessed. Teresa St. Claire was beautiful, sexy and smart. What more could he want in a wife? The Fixer had also suggested her as a candidate to be his wife; said that she was a possibility and that he could, possibly, make that happen.
Marrying Teresa would’ve been an elegant, and quick, resolution to his current problem. Except for the little problem that she was crazy about Liam Christopher... He wasn’t the most perceptive guy in the world but even he noticed the way she looked at Christopher. Part exasperation, part denial, part annoyance but mostly like all she wanted to do was strip him naked and do several things to him that were X-rated. Brooks knew that he was marrying for convenience, as a means to an end, but he certainly didn’t need to watch his wife pine for someone else. Or wish he was someone else.
So he refused The Fixer’s offer and settled for his arranging for Teresa to organize his blowout wedding.
What could The Fixer have on her to (a) think that he could get her to agree to marriage and (b) to get her to undertake such a massive event on such short notice? It had to be something...
But Teresa’s past didn’t concern him and he had bigger worries. Like who might say yes to his crazy-ass proposal to marry him.
In two weeks’ time.
Happy bloody birthday to him.
* * *
Teresa leaned back in her chair and stared out the high-arched windows of her waterfront office in Seattle, just a few blocks from Pike Market. She loved her view, her open-plan office with its high ceilings, industrial lighting and its hardwood floors. But today all she could think about was the look of betrayal on Joshua’s face as she left him at the tightly controlled and monitored rehab facility two hours away. He understood that he had to lie low but, damn, his tightly crossed arms and the emotion washing in and out of his eyes nearly dropped her to her knees.
She wanted to believe his denials about his addictions, she really did. But she still didn’t know how to explain that small puncture mark on his arm. Had someone injected him and then, in his woozy and hazy state, manipulated him to take a flight across the country to Napa to gate-crash Matt’s party? Was that possible or was she overreacting, allowing her imagination to run wild because she so badly wanted to believe him?
All her anxiety about Joshua would simply evaporate if she could pay off Joshua’s debt. Then they’d both be free. She’d been such a naive fool to believe that when the drug-running charges against Joshua were dropped—thanks to The Fixer—he would get his life together. Silly her.
Most women in their late twenties were concerned about their careers, their young children or their new marriages—and, frequently, a combination of all three—but no, she spent her time stressing about unpaid debts to criminals, her inconvenient attraction to a man who blew hot and cold but whom she couldn’t avoid, and rocketing from crisis to crisis. It was times like these that Teresa wished she had a mother to turn to but her mom, like her brother, relied on her. Since her father’s death, she’d been the glue holding their family together, the strong one, the capable one, the one who could always make a plan.
It would be so nice to rely on someone else, to have someone in her corner loving and supporting her but she was terrified that that person would, just like her father had, fade on her. Sharing the load meant opening up, allowing herself to be vulnerable, exposing herself...
What if that person left, disappeared on her, leaving her to waft in the wind? No, it was better to hang tough...
Besides, there was only one person who’d scaled her walls to peek inside her soul—she hadn’t told anyone else but Liam about Joshua and the stress she was under—and he was even more closed up and messed up than she was. They were a hell of a pair...
Teresa heard a throat clear and lifted her head to see Corinne hovering by her partly open door as if deciding whether to knock or not. Teresa dropped her hands, swallowed her sigh and gestured her assistant inside. Corinne’s face reflected the grim mood of the rest of her colleagues: they were worried about the future of Limitless Events, and Teresa didn’t blame them. For any event company, Saturday’s events would be a death knell and she had no doubt that most of her people were brushing up their résumés.
Teresa gestured for Corinne to sit. When Corinne’s eyes met hers, she saw her curiosity and knew a dozen questions were hovering on Corinne’s tongue. Teresa’s respect for her increased when Corinne just powered up her iPad and asked a simple question. “So, what’s the plan?”
Teresa tucked a strand of hair that had fallen from her loose bun behind her ear. “The plan is that we arrange Brooks Abbingdon’s big blowout wedding.”
Corinne’s brown eyes widened. “He’s getting married? To whom?” Corinne read the social pages and entertainment magazines with utter dedication and Teresa knew that she was wondering whether she’d missed a crucial piece of gossip.
“He didn’t say.”
Corinne looked at her like she was, finally, losing it. “I’m sorry? I don’t understand.”
Yep, crazy. “Brooks didn’t tell me who he was marrying. I suspect it’s someone very famous and intensely publicity-shy. And that’s okay. We don’t need her input because Brooks was very explicit in what he wanted.”
Corinne leaned forward, her expression intense. “So what does he want?”
Teresa half smiled. “He wants me to recreate Delilah Rhodes and Alex Dane’s wedding. With one crucial difference...”
Corinne bounced up and down and gestured Teresa to keep talking. “What? What’s the difference?”
“Delilah and Alex had a massive budget.”
“Our budget is smaller? Dammit. Okay, we can get creative.”
Teresa shook her head. “No, we have an unlimited budget. We can spend what we like, how we like, but it’s got to be blow-your-socks-off amazing. But we only have two weeks to get everything organized.”
Corinne pulled a smile up onto her face in an effort to appreciate the joke. “Ha ha.”
“I wish I were joking. But I’m not. Brooks has thrown Limitless Events a lifeline. Minimal time is the cost of that lifeline.” Teresa forced a smile of her own. “But, if we work every hour of the day, maybe we’ll all still have jobs at the end of the month.”
Teresa watched as confusion and disbelief flew across Corinne’s face and gave her assistant a minute to take in the news. She’d come into her office thinking that the company could not possibly recover from Saturday night’s fiasco but instead of getting pink slips, they were going to organize the wedding of the year.
How did this happen? Why was this happening? Teresa couldn’t answer Corinne’s questions, not without explaining that she owed someone a favor and that this was his way of collecting. The Fixer had told her, when he checked on Joshua to see if the $7 million debt was real, that she owed him a nonmonetary favor and she was finally being asked to cough up.
She’d always worried that The Fixer would
