Wilde at Heart (Wilde Security, #3)(35)
She hoped.
“Oh God.” She banged her head against the door a few times. “What have I gotten myself into?”
Fifty-five minutes later, Reece paced the living room and alternated between checking his watch and glancing toward Shelby’s door. Had she heard him say they needed to go in an hour? He’d been in a hurry to leave her room to keep himself from doing something stupid, so maybe she misheard him or…
Another minute ticked by.
Damn. He really didn’t want to go knock on her door, but this was not the kind of party to be fashionably late for. He took two steps in the direction of her room, and the door opened. His breath of relief snagged somewhere around his Adam’s apple. Shelby looked…like a completely different woman. Red hair fell in loose ringlets around her shoulders. Her black dress was cocktail length and flared at the hips in a striking silhouette. Underneath the long lace sleeves, he saw no hint of her colorful ink and honestly, he wasn’t sure what to make of that.
She smirked. “Roll up that tongue and put it back in your mouth, Hershey.”
“Uh, sorry.” He re-hinged his jaw. “You look…”
“Like a good little housewife?” she suggested at the same time he said, “Different.”
“Well of course I look different. That’s the point, right?” She held out her arms and twirled. “Do I pass inspection, Mr. Wilde?”
No. It was the first answer to pop to mind and he bit it back. This was wrong. This wasn’t Shelby, and asking her to change was wrong. He should call the whole thing off right now and figure something else out, but when he opened his mouth, all that emerged was a strangled, “We need to go.”
She nodded and disappeared back into her room for a second. When she returned, she wore a knee-length coat that tied at her waist and was in the process of putting in pearl earrings. He grabbed his own coat and held open the door for her.
Neither of them said anything during the nearly forty minute car ride to Irving James’s home, but when Reece pulled up to the gate, he couldn’t take the silence any longer. He turned in his seat to face her. “Are you sure you want to do this? It’s not too late to call it off.”
Smiling slightly, she reached over and cupped his cheek with her left hand. Light flashed off her wedding ring. “I’ll be okay. I won’t embarrass you. Promise.”
“It’s not that.” His gaze traveled out the windshield to the looming mansion. All that glitz and glam might look like a fairy tale from the outside, but he knew what lay waiting within. “Shelby, these people are—”
“Bunnies compared to the people I’m used to dealing with. The Headhunters are after my head, remember? Doesn’t get much worse than that.”
Another problem he needed to deal with. She didn’t want his money, but he had to do something to help smooth the waters there until her insurance paid up. “That’s not a fact I’m soon to forget, but you’re wrong. Maybe these socialites won’t gun you down, but they’ll stab you in the back if you give them the slightest opening. Don’t give them one. Don’t trust anybody.”
“It’s only paranoia if they’re not out to get you, right?” When he didn’t smile back at her, she nudged his shoulder. “Relax, Hershey. I’ll watch your six if you watch mine. Now let’s go in before whoever is manning the security cameras wonders why we’re just sitting here.”
Yeah, she was right. He rolled down his window and hit the buzzer for the gate, waited a moment for a response, and stated his name. The gate slid open soundlessly a moment later, and he guided the Escalade toward the valet waiting in front of the house. “If you get cornered at any point during the night, your best bet is to play the dumb trophy wife. It’ll be what they expect from you, anyway.”
“Oh, dream come true! I’ve always wanted to be a trophy wife,” she said with mock excitement then rolled her eyes. “Not.”
He winced. Jesus, this was so wrong. If his mother were alive, she’d slap him silly for putting Shelby through this farce. “I’m sorry.”
“Reece.” She tugged on his jacket sleeve until he looked at her again. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be, okay? This is about more than me needing the protection of your name. I’m the reason you’re being blackmailed and I want to help. If I have to play the dumb trophy wife, then I’ll be the dumbest trophy wife around. Now deep breath and woosah. We got this.”
Impossibly, a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he climbed out of the SUV and walked around the hood to open Shelby’s door for her. She hooked her arm through his and smiled up at him like the smitten wife she was supposed to be. Damn, she was good. He had to give her that—as adaptable as a chameleon.
And if he didn’t relax, he’d be the one to blow up their little charade, not her.
Chapter Fourteen
The evening passed in a whirl of fake air kisses and small talk, and Shelby lost interest about halfway through cocktail hour. She’d played up the dumb trophy wife, but now as she sipped at her glass of champagne, she wondered if she’d done too good of a job. The women she found herself surrounded with gossiped endlessly about people she didn’t know and frankly, didn’t care about. But one of them was Irving James’s wife, Charlotte, and so she made all the appropriate noises at all the appropriate times.