Legal Ease (Sutton Capital Series) (3 page)

“We’re here to meet Jack’s fiancé,” a smug-looking Mabry announced to Chad and Jack watched a bemused expression come over his cousin’s face.

Chad had to be wondering what the hell was going on. He and Jack were more like brothers than cousins, so if Jack were getting married, Chad should have been the first to know.

Oh, shit. I’m never gonna’ hear the end of this from him.

So there they sat, waiting for an introduction to a fiancé that Jack had never mentioned to Chad and a fiancé that Chad had never set eyes on.

Jack
leaned forward in his chair, took a deep breath and prepared to come clean. Just then his secretary’s voice cut in and he could swear he heard her say that his fiancé was here.

His head whipped around and
he stared open-mouthed at the phone, unable to process what was going on. Jack’s experience in business had taught him to school his expressions and hide his thoughts from those around him and though he was shocked, he did just that. He quickly hid all emotion from his face as he listened to his secretary.

“Sir, did you hear me? Mr. Sutton? Your fiancé has
just arrived. Shall I show her in?” Jennie spoke again.

Andrew.
Andrew must have sent him a fiancé. How in the hell had Andrew found him a fiancé? I mean, how does one go about that, Jack thought. Oh God, what if Andrew sent him a prostitute?

“Uh, yes, send her in, please.” Jack
forced the words out as his mind raced through the possible scenarios.

Jennie opened the door to his office and
stepped aside as Kelly swept into the room as if she owned the place. She glided over to Jack’s desk, brushed a light kiss on his cheek, and casually handed him a stack of papers.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Kelly said to
Jack before turning to his aunt and Chad. “You must be Jack’s Aunt Mabry and his cousin. He’s told me so much about you. I’m Kelly Bradley.” Kelly took the hand of a very stunned Aunt Mabry and pumped it before she turned to Chad, whose amusement had turned to confused surprise. Kelly shook his hand as well.

“It’s nice to meet you, Kelly,” Chad said, but it came out more as a question than a statement. “I don’t know where Jack has been hiding you but I can see why he wanted you all to himself,” Chad said with a huge grin on his face.

Jack was too busy standing slack-jawed in front of his desk, trying to figure out who had just walked into his office…and what she was doing. This Kelly person had walked in as though she belonged there. As though she and Jack had the kind of intimate, close relationship that lets a woman waltz into a private family meeting and announce herself rather than wait to be invited and introduced.

Jack couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Whoever she was, s
he was beautiful. Her hair was a deep chestnut color and it fell down her back in loose waves over the soft ivory cashmere of her sweater. She had incredible, bright blue eyes and a lightly freckled complexion and her snug sweater showed off a soft, curvy figure that just begged to be held. Wherever Andrew had found her, he had done well. She was exquisite.

Jack tore his eyes off her and
skimmed the papers in his hand while she stood chit chatting with his aunt and cousin as if nothing were out of the ordinary. The papers appeared to be an application for a marriage license for the State of Connecticut. There was a yellow sticky note on the top page that said: One year of marriage = $154,000. He quickly tucked the note in his pocket as his mind flew over possibilities.

Andrew had found him a wife for $154,000.
What the hell?
Had he hired some call girl service? Asked some girl off the street? As he did in all of his deals, Jack quickly scanned all potential scenarios in his head. He assessed and evaluated the merits or drawbacks of each possibility. Obviously, if she was a call girl, the drawbacks were significant. In this case, Jack realized, he was woefully uninformed, and that wasn’t a position he was used to being in.

What the hell should he do? He had no idea who this
woman was, but he didn’t have a choice if he wanted to continue to head up the company his father had built, the company Jack had expanded and come to love. Jack stood stiffly in his office as his head reeled from the sudden proposition in front of him… But reason kicked in; he had to trust that Andrew wouldn’t have sent a hooker or someone Andrew didn’t know. Could Andrew have found a willing friend of his? Or maybe an ex-girlfriend?
Oh God, how weird would that be if this was one of Andrew’s exes? Wait
,
I know all of Andrew’s exes, don’t I?

Jack hadn’t felt so off balance in his life. He suddenly realized that
his supposed fiancé was talking to him.

“Jack? Jack, honey, I just need to know if you can make it to the courthouse to apply for the marriage license tomorrow? We both have to be there to get it. Does that work for you?” Kelly asked, indicating the papers in his hand
.

“Uh, yes. Yeah, that works for me.” Jack spit the words out through the haze in his head
and then turned to smile at his aunt and cousin. No matter what Chad’s relationship with Bryan Barton was, it looked like Jack had just committed himself to a year of marriage with a stranger.

Kelly swallowed hard as she heard Jack’s answer to her ‘proposal.’ She was relieved he was going along with it, but a tight ball of nerves had been growing in her stomach since she walked in the room and she felt that ball taking over her entire being.

Chad, with a look on his face that promised Jack would be grilled for details later, excused himself to return to his office. Kelly watched Jack out of the corner of her eye as she continued to talk to his aunt. She had seen Jack Sutton on occasion coming in and out of the building when she’d met Jennie for lunch and Jennie had told her he was handsome, but handsome didn’t even begin to describe the man.

Jack was tall, at least six foot three or four inches. He had dark brown hair that curled up at the
edge of his collar. His eyes were a rich, deep brown, almost mahogany, and his face had chiseled features with a strong jaw. There wasn’t a damn thing about the man that didn’t sizzle.

He wore a suit, but even in that Kelly could see that his body was hard and fit under it – his tall, lean form toned and strong. His intense gaze made Kelly’s breath go ragged and she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be alone in the room with him if he had this kind of effect on her with his aunt and cousin with them.

Jack sat on the edge of his desk, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles in front of him, arms crossed over his chest. He watched her quietly while Kelly finished chatting with his aunt.

Kelly wrapped things up and ushered
Aunt Mabry out the door by four o’clock as she made excuses about Jack needing to get back to work. She closed the door behind his aunt and turned to Jack. That’s when Kelly felt the ground fall out from under her and her world tilt on its axis.

Suddenly,
she faced Jack Sutton. Kelly found herself feeling very shaken, to say the least. She looked up at Jack and realized that, in essence, she had just waltzed into his office and proposed.

“I can’t believe I just did that,” Kelly began to pace frantically. She wrapped her arms around her waist
and circled the room.

“Oh
God, oh God, oh God,” she said and she began to feel like she might hyperventilate. She slid down onto the couch that sat along the longest wall in Jack’s office and tried to breath but ended up taking in huge gulps of air that felt as if they might choke her. For the first time since she came up with her hair-brained scheme to get her hands on enough money to attend Yale Law School by marrying Jack Sutton, the reality of what she had just done hit her like a ton of bricks.

***

Jack studied Kelly as she began to fall apart in his office. She was the one that had been so cool and collected two minutes ago – so totally in control of the situation. Now he watched her crumble as if all of the steel she’d seemed to have running through her veins moments ago was suddenly drained, leaving her frightened and panicked.

He smiled wryly as he watched his future wife burn a circle in his carpet.
Jack suddenly felt back in control.
I guess it’s my turn to be the calm, cool, collected one.

T
he killer instincts he always felt when he walked into the board room or sat down at the negotiating table came back in full force and he crossed to Kelly and took both of her hands in his. He led her to the couch and let her sit down, then sat next to her. He spoke firmly and calmly.

“You did great. You had them completely fooled and you did great. I don’t know how Andrew did this on such short notice, but you
were fantastic.” Jack started to rub her back in slow, soothing circles, hoping to calm her down so they could discuss the details of their newly made arrangement. Since Andrew hadn’t had time to give him a heads up, he had no idea how this was supposed to work out.

Jack continued to rub her back
and he could hear her breathing begin to slow down and become more regular. Jack felt her body relax as her breathing returned to normal. “See,” he said, “that wasn’t so bad.”

Kelly nodded and gave him a weak smile.
She took several more deep breaths. Jack watched as her expression moved from panicked to resolved.

“Ha! I did it. I knew I could,” Kelly said out loud.

Great, she’s got multiple personalities or she’s bipolar or some other shit. Jack watched as Kelly’s emotions swung back and forth.

Then
Kelly’s eyes went round and she sat up straighter. “Wait,” she said, “who’s Andrew?”

Poker face or not, Jack needed to put some space between them when Kelly asked who Andrew was. He stood up and took a few steps back and schooled his expression once again. He forced himself to stay calm despite her revelation that Andrew hadn’t set this up.
If she didn’t know who Andrew was, how did she come to be here, and who had he just agreed to marry? All the calm that had come back to him in the last few moments, fled and he felt himself floundering again. What was happening to his ordered world?

“If Andrew didn’t send you
, then who the hell are you?” Jack demanded. This day was just getting worse and worse. Hell, it had to be a nightmare. There was no way he had just agreed to marry some complete stranger in front of his aunt and cousin. A complete stranger who just happened to materialize out of thin air right when he needed a wife?

Jack rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He hadn’t slept much the night before after he had lied to his aunt about
having a fiancé and he had been working even more than usual lately. Maybe he had imagined this.
That’s it. She’s an hallucination. A very vivid hallucination.

The hallucination was sp
eaking, though. Do hallucinations speak? Jack asked himself. “I’m Kelly Bradley,” she said, tentatively.

Jack leveled a steady glare at her
and crossed his arms over his chest. “Nice to meet you, Kelly. Now who the hell are you and where did you come from?”

“Well, I recently became aware of your little problem and I have my own little problem and I put two and two together and figured out we could help each other and so here I am. Voila,”
explained Kelly with a little flutter of her hands at the voila. She pasted a smile on her face and hoped Jack wasn’t about to kill her.

“’Became aware’…? That’s a bit vague.
Start from the beginning, woman.” Jack knew he was a formidable looking man and he was using that to his advantage as he grilled Kelly but he also couldn’t help be a little amused by her attempts to skirt his questions.
Damn, she’s cute when she squirms.

“Um, well,” Kelly bit her lip as she started the story and Jack hardly heard her. He found himself distracted by her luscious, kissable mouth.
Jesus
,
Jack
,
get a grip on yourself and focus
.

Kelly was still talking and Jack forced himself to listen to what she said.

“Jennie overheard you talking about your mother’s will and that you needed someone to marry you by the end of the week. So here I am. We’ll get married for a year and then get a nice neat divorce and we’ll never have to see each other again. I’m not a psycho – just a normal girl with a degree that apparently isn’t going to get me a job anytime soon. So I improvised. And, before you get all worried, I have zero interest in a real relationship. I have other plans and marriage isn’t one of them. And, besides, I’m immune to falling in love. I’m broken or something. It just doesn’t happen to me, so that won’t be a concern.” At this point, Kelly was just babbling.

Jack
held up his finger to stop Kelly’s story for a moment. He pushed the button on his phone and spoke to Jennie. “Jennie, can you come in here, please?” Jack then released the button and turned calmly back to Kelly.

As he faced off with
Kelly once again, Jack asked, “Why $154,000? Why did you ask for such a specific amount?” Gather the information first, Jack told himself. Get the right information so you stay ahead of this thing – whatever the hell this thing was.