His 24-Hour Wife. Rachel Bailey

      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...

       Two

      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 cheek, which had turned pink.

      “So why are we all here, then?” his mother asked.

      Adam drew in a breath and cast another quick look at Callie, to ensure she was coping with his family’s antics. Besides being a little tense—which was to be expected under the circumstances—she seemed fine.

      “Callie and I...” he began, wishing he was anywhere but here. “We knew each other before she took this account.”

      Dylan made a sympathetic sound. “Callie, sweetheart, if you’ve dated my brother, let me apologize now. He can be a little—”

      “Uptight,” Liam interrupted.

      “Yeah,” Dylan said without missing a beat. “Let’s go with uptight.”

      Adam pinched the bridge of his nose. His life was unraveling and they wanted to take the opportunity to rib him?

      “She didn’t date me,” he said when he knew his voice would be even again. “She married me.”

      After a moment of stunned silence, the room erupted into questions, each being called more loudly than the one before. Even the babies, Jenna’s daughter, Meg, and Liam’s daughter, Bonnie, joined in on the action, laughing and waving their arms around.

      Callie looked over at him, her eyes wide. He didn’t know much about his wife, but from her reaction he guessed she didn’t come from a boisterous family. This was a baptism of fire into the Hawke clan.

      “Sorry,” he said, and offered her a tight smile. He loved his family, but they tried his patience at least half the time. He turned back to the horde. “If you’ll give me a chance, I’ll let you know what happened.”

      The noise immediately stopped, and Adam could breathe again. “Callie and I met at a conference in Vegas several years ago. We’ve spent time together at the same conference for three years running and at this last one, we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to get married.”

      Liam was first to find his voice. “I assume alcohol was involved?”

      “Please tell me there was an Elvis impersonator officiating,” Dylan said, clearly loving the entire debacle.

      Adam kept his voice even. “Alcohol on both sides, and no Elvis impersonator.”

      His mother leaned forward in her chair. “From the fact that this is the first we’re hearing about it, you clearly didn’t plan on staying married. So why are you telling us at all? Are you hoping to make a go of it now?”

      “Hey!” Dylan said before Adam could reply. “I just realized why you refused to be part of the bachelor auction. You were already married.”

      Adam winced. The auction had taken place just after he’d arrived home from the fateful weekend in Vegas. He might not have been telling the world about the wedding, but neither would he lie and pretend to be a bachelor. However, he ignored the question and turned back to his mother.

      “Callie was given this account by the partners of her firm without them knowing about our connection. Unfortunately, a colleague of hers found out and is hoping to blackmail her into handing the project over to him so that he can get the promotion when it’s completed.”

      “That’s awful,” Faith said. “I hate petty politics like that. Can’t you tell the partners?”

      Callie leaned forward. “I could, but the story would probably get out anyway, and I think with Adam’s connection to Larsland’s royal family through Jenna, combined with his profile here in LA, the tabloids would have fun with the story.”