Playboy's Secret Wife novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Page Two

Lucas explains the three-year rule and keeps the rest to himself; Callie flies home and finds Dee sitting in her kitchen.

I ate a whole plate of eggs before I asked.

Lucas Hargrove watched me do it, and didn't say a word.

His mother watched him watch me.

I set my fork down.

"Did we sleep together?"

"No," Lucas said.

He said it at once, flat and certain.

"You fell asleep in the elevator."

"I carried you to the suite, I took your shoes off, and I slept on the couch."

"Ask the hotel. There are cameras in every hallway."

My shoulders dropped an inch I hadn't known I was holding up.

"Then why am I married to you?"

"That's a longer story."

"I have a flight."

"You don't, actually. You told the bartender you'd never go home again."

"I was upset."

"You were magnificent," Lucas said.

"You tried to tip a fountain."

His mother closed her eyes for one second.

"Lucas."

"I'm telling her the useful part, Mother."

He turned back to me.

"Here is the useful part."

"My grandfather left a trust that holds the controlling shares of Hargrove Capital."

"I get them on one condition."

"I have to be married for three years."

I stared at him.

"That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard."

"It was written in 1998 by a man who thought his grandson was running wild."

"He wasn't wrong," said Eleanor.

Lucas ignored her.

"If I'm not married by my thirty-fourth birthday, the shares go to my cousin."

"Chad runs the board now."

"He'd run everything."

"When is your birthday?" I asked.

"Three weeks from Saturday."

I laughed.

I couldn't help it.

"So you got drunk in Vegas and married a stranger to beat a deadline."

"I was sober," he said.

The laugh died in my throat.

"I had one whiskey at nine o'clock and didn't finish it."

"You were the one at the bar, singing."

My cheeks burned.

"I don't sing."

"You sing beautifully, and with total confidence, and every word is wrong."

Eleanor made a small sound into her coffee that might have been a cough.

"So you took advantage of me," I said.

His grey eyes held mine.

"I'd like you to remember that for yourself."

"What does that mean?"

"It means if I tell you my version, you'll decide I'm a liar."

"If you remember yours, you'll know what's true."

"That's convenient."

"It's the opposite of convenient," he said.

"It's the hardest thing I could have said."

I looked at the ring on my finger.

The diamonds were small and clean.

They were exactly the size I would have picked.

That scared me more than anything else on the table.

"Then I want out," I said.

"I want it undone."

"Annulled, or divorced, or whatever your family calls it."

"I'll help you do it," Lucas said.

I blinked.

"What?"

"If you want out, I'll sign anything."

"I'll swear to whatever the court needs."

"But if the marriage is void, Chad gets the company in three weeks."

"Eight thousand people work for it."

"Half of them have been loyal to my mother for thirty years."

Eleanor didn't speak.

She looked at me over her cup, and I understood she was waiting to see which woman I was.

"That isn't my problem," I said.

"No," Lucas agreed.

"It isn't."

"I'm only telling you what it costs, so you can choose with your eyes open."

I stood up.

My knees were a little unsteady, but I made it.

"I'm going home."

"I'm going to shower for an hour, and I'm going to sleep, and then I'm going to think."

"That's reasonable," he said.

He took a pen from his shirt pocket and wrote a number on my paper napkin.

"My own phone."

"Not my assistant's, and not my mother's."

"Call it when you've thought."

"I won't use the black card," I said.

"I won't touch one cent of it."

"Understood."

"And you keep your hands to yourself."

He smiled for the first time, slow and crooked.

"Callie, I have kept them to myself since three-forty this morning."

"It has taken some effort."

The heat that went through me was not entirely anger.

I took the napkin and walked out.

Behind me, I heard Eleanor Hargrove say, very quietly, "Well."

The flight to Chicago was four hours.

I slept for three of them with my forehead on the window.

My car was in long-term parking, where I'd left it before I flew out in a rage.

The drive from O'Hare was thirty-five minutes.

I rehearsed what I would say to the building manager about breaking the lease.

I rehearsed what I'd say to my mother, and to Midland Mutual's HR, and the one terrible conversation I'd have with myself in the mirror.

I climbed three flights of stairs to apartment 3C.

The key turned like it always did.

The kitchen light was on.

Someone was sitting at my table, in my grey bathrobe, with her feet up on my second chair.

She was drinking from my favorite mug.

"Hi, Cal," said Dee.

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