The Convenient Wife (A BWWM Steamy Marriage of Convenience Romance) (6 page)

Gigi sat across from me at the same
booth we’d had our first breakfast together. We thought it best to stay away
from her law firm with the scandal that our impending marriage might stir
up—especially if word got back to my mother before we could tie the knot. She
was wearing a tapered pair of slacks and a billowy blouse that hugged her
curves just enough to make her figure enticing. But it wasn’t just her body
that had my interest piqued.

After the purse incident, I made it
a policy to admire Ms. Deveraux from afar, like a thorn-covered rose or a
graceful tigress. That would all have to change, of course, when the time came
to produce an heir. At least… A man can hope.

Between us sat a stack of papers
that had been drawn up by Gigi herself the night before, filled with legalese
that probably would have given me a headache to read myself. Thankfully, I’d
brought a guest.

“Who’s your friend?” Gigi asked, her
eyes narrowed.

“My friends call me Ollie,” he said,
reaching over to offer my soon-to-be-fiancée his hand in greetings. “Dorian
brought me along to translate.”

I’d never thought that in my life,
Ollie’s determination to be like his father would come in handy, but with my
boy about to take the BAR exam, I figured he needed some more tangible,
on-the-job training.

“Why do you look familiar?” Gigi murmured,
gripping his hand cordially. Her brow creased. “It sounds really familiar.”

“Oh,” Ollie replied through his
teeth, “no reason.”

Ollie sat back down, clearing his
throat and fixing his shirt a bit before taking a sip of his coffee. I couldn’t
help but grin, watching Ollie squirm as Gigi fixed her scrutinizing gaze on
him.

“No. I know you from somewhere,” she
said, leaning back to take Ollie in more completely. “Ollie… that’s short for—”

“Please don’t,” Ollie interrupted,
his voice laden with the faintest whimper of embarrassment. But Gigi couldn’t
be stopped, her eyes wide with realization.

“You’re Oliver Walters, Sr.’s
son
?!” she hissed, her dark eyes turning
on me. They flashed under the fluorescent lights of the restaurant, reminding
me of a cat about to pounce on its prey. “You brought my
boss’ son
here? Are you
insane?!”

“You keep using that word,” I said
with an overdone Spanish accent. “I do not think it means what you think it—”

“No,” she interrupted, wagging a
finger, “no pop-culture references. Do you know what would happen if my firm
found out what I was doing—
actively
defrauding a client’s will with an arranged marriage?”

“I won’t tell anyone, I promise,”
Ollie said, his hands up. “Dorian’s my best friend. I’ve got his back.”

“It’s not
Dorian’s
job that’s on the line,” Gigi said, sighing before
motioning to the pre-nup sitting on the table. “Just look that over and we’ll
talk if you have any questions.”

“Well, my
client
and I—” Ollie began, but a growl from my soon-to-be-wife
silenced him immediately. “Sorry. I’ll be quiet.”

Ollie took the pre-nup from the
table and started to read through, mumbling softly to himself. I had every
confidence in Ollie to give me fair warning if I was being screwed over, but
something told me that Gigi wasn’t the kind of person to take advantage of anyone.

I smiled, turning back toward her as
she idly stirred her coffee. She was watching Ollie like a hawk, so intent that
I wasn’t sure I’d even seen her blink once the entire time. She was an odd kind
of woman—compared to the usual women I hung around, at least. Her phone wasn’t
constantly out, she wasn’t taking pictures of herself—she was there, in the
moment. Present.

“So, explain it to me in layman’s
terms, Gigi,” I said, breaking her out of her one-sided staring contest with
Ollie.

She startled and blinked at me, like
she’d just been caught sleeping in class. “What?”

“Explain the terms to me, and Ollie
can worry about whether the legalese is airtight.”

“It
is
airtight,” she said, taking a breath before turning her
attention fully toward me.

“The pre-nup outlines the deal we
talked about before,” she said, running a hand through her dark hair. “In the
case of a divorce, you will pay me alimony in the sum of five-thousand dollars
a month. I have no rights to any property not signed for under my name and you
have no rights to anything that qualifies under that category.

“If there’s a child, boy or girl,
then you’ll also afford me an amount in child support equal to another
five-thousand dollars a month for
each
child
—since your inheritance states that you need a male heir, or to be in
the process of producing one—to keep your inheritance, then you’re going to foot
the bill for any children that don’t fall under your grandfather’s draconian
rules.”

“That seems fair enough,” I said,
nodding thoughtfully, “What about custody?”

“Half and half,” she said, “an evenly
shared custody agreement for
all
of
the children. The first male heir will inherit your family’s entire estate,
along with comparatively smaller inheritance for your other children upon your
death to be determined by your will, none of which will be less than a value of
one million dollars for each child that is not the heir.”

“Also fair.” Now that we were
starting to talk about them, the thought of children was actually rather
frightening. An undetermined number of mini-mes running around my family’s
property, getting into trouble just like I used to. My heart started to pound,
but as I listened to her speak and fight for the well-being of even her
hypothetical children, I felt a bit more at ease. Again I was reminded of the
reason I’d liked Gigi in the first place—she cared.

“And then there’s the matter of
infidelity,” Gigi said. Those words stopped me cold.

“Go on,” I said hesitantly, a frown
forming on my face.

“While the two of us are together,
you and I will refrain from acts of infidelity of any kind. You will not take a
mistress or engage in any extra-marital affairs while the two of us are tied
together in the bonds of holy matrimony.”

“You don’t think I would seriously—”
I began, but quickly silenced myself as Gigi rose in her seat, towering over
me.

“Dorian Lambert,” she growled, a pit
forming in my stomach. “You might love me, you might discover that you don’t, but
while we are husband and wife, there will but
one
thing that will happen in this marriage—you will
respect me
. I won’t be hassled and
harassed by paparazzi or tabloid scumbags with pictures of you macking on some
barely-legal sorority girl. I’ve done my research on you, and I know what I’m
getting into here. I deserve
better
than that.”

I blinked, staring up into her fiery
eyes as she slowly took her seat once again. I hated to admit it to myself, but
Gigi was more frightening than even my mother—and that was a feat I’d thought
impossible. I’d never liked the idea of being tied down. If things weren’t
working out between us, it might be months or even years before we divorced.
That was a long time to get acquainted with my hand...

“Fine,” I said finally. “No
cheating.”

“Good. That just leaves living
arrangements, then. We have to share an address once we’re married—strictly to
keep up appearances. We don’t want it to
look
like we’re in a fraudulent marriage.”

“Sleepover,” I said, a grin
spreading across my face. “Gosh, I haven’t had one of those in a
long
time.”

“No pillow fights at this party,”
Gigi said, her brows furrowing. “This is business, plain and simple, until I
say otherwise.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, giving her a
mock-salute. “No funny-business. All serious, all the time.”

“Give me a break, Dorian,” she said,
rubbing the bridge of her nose. “This was your idea. I just want to make sure
it works out for both of us.”

“Sorry,” I said, flashing her a more
sincere smile. “I’m not used to this whole ‘legal’ side of a relationship.”

“That I can believe.”

I shifted in my seat, rubbing my chin.
“So, what did you want to do about the ceremony? You seem like the kind of girl
who wants her wedding to be a big occasion.”

Gigi went quiet for a few minutes,
her eyes on her coffee, the sound of Ollie’s mumbling filling the silence. Her
frown deepened and her eyes lost some of their shine.

“Let’s not have one. We’ll just do
this legally so that there isn’t any huge press circus. We want to keep this as
quiet as possible. Besides, we want to make it quick, don’t we?”

She looked up at me, putting on a mask
of indifference. I could tell something was bothering her, something deep down
that she’d never let slip. I felt uneasy, like I was doing her some great
wrong.

“Okay,” I said, clearing my throat.
“We’ll do it quick and dirty. No big affair. But in the meantime…” I trailed
off, digging in my coat pocket for my checkbook.

“What’re you doing?” Gigi asked.

“How much money do you owe for your
loans?”

“What?”

“Your student loans. Do you have the
exact number?”

“Over half a million dollars,
Dorian. You can’t just—”

“How does six hundred thousand
sound? Just in case you’re off by a few numbers.”

She gaped at me. She’d been dealing
with our family’s estate, and yet she still wasn’t comfortable around this much
money. It made me a little giddy for reasons I couldn’t quite quantify. “You
shouldn’t—I can handle—”

“Consider it my wedding present to
you. And we’re going to have to get you a new car, too.”

Gigi stared at me for what felt like
an hour. I thought I might have broken her, the way her face almost went entirely
blank. I let out a chuckle and tore out the check from my checkbook, handing it
to her.

“How about you and I head over to
the dealership right now. You like Mercedes, right? Who doesn’t love a
Mercedes?”

“Dorian…” she said, her voice
strangled. The corners of her eyes welled up with tears, a few escaping and
trailing down her cheek. She wiped them quickly. “Thank you.”

I smiled, genuinely touched. When a
few more tears made it past her lashes, I reached over and brushed them away
myself.

“Hey, no need to thank me,” I said.
The way she looked up at me, so damn grateful, broke my heart. “We’re about to
get married. Only the best for my wife…”

Some strange sensation was stirring
in my chest—a heaviness while, not unpleasant, wasn’t exactly something I was used
to. It made me feel like there were butterflies in my stomach and I pulled away
from her, swallowing the urge to say anything more than, “Let’s just get this
pre-nup signed, and then the two of us get this plan moving.”

“Right,” she said, wiping the sides
of her eyes with a napkin from the table. “Down to business.”

“Everything seems like it’s in
order,” Ollie said, setting the contract down on the table in front of me. “I’m
a notary, so I’ll sign it as the witness and you’ll be all set.”