In Name Only. Kat Cantrell
mom was running for governor of North Carolina and had made him swear on a stack of Bibles that he would not do anything to jeopardize her chances. For Hendrix, that meant a complete overhaul of his social life, and he was feeling the pinch. So far, his uncanny ability to get photographed with scantily clad women hadn’t surfaced, but he’d just begun his vow of chastity, so there was plenty of opportunity to cause a scandal if he really put his mind to it.
“Maybe we could focus on the matter at hand?” Warren suggested, and ran his fingers through his wavy brown hair as he plopped down on the love seat near the floor-to-ceiling glass wall of the Sky Suite they’d booked at the Aria. The dizzying lights of Vegas spread out in a panoramic view sixty stories below.
“Which is?”
Warren pointed his glass at Jonas. “You’re getting married. Despite the pact.”
The pact.
After the cheerleader had thoroughly eviscerated Marcus, he’d faded further and further away until eventually, he’d opted to end his pain permanently. In the aftermath of his death, the three friends had sworn to never let love destroy them as it had Marcus. The reminder sobered them all.
“Hey, man. The pact is sacred,” Jonas said with a scowl. “But we never vowed to remain single the rest of our lives. Just that we’d never let a woman take us down like that. Love is the problem, not marriage.”
Once a year, the three of them dropped whatever they were doing and spent the evening honoring the memory of their late friend. It was part homage, part reiteration of the pact. The profoundly painful incident had affected them in different ways, but no one would argue that Warren had taken his roommate’s suicide harder than anyone save Marcus’s mother.
That was the only reason Jonas gave him a pass for the insult. Jonas had followed the pact to the letter, which was easier than he’d ever let on. First of all, a promise meant something to him.
Second, Jonas never got near a woman he could envision falling in love with. That kind of loss of control...the concept made his skin crawl. Jonas had too much to lose to let a woman destroy everything he’d worked for.
Warren didn’t look convinced. “Marriage is the gateway, my friend. You can’t put a ring on a woman’s finger and expect that she won’t start dreaming of romantic garbage.”
“Ah, but I can,” Jonas corrected as he let Hendrix top off his champagne. “That’s why this plan is so great. Viv knows the score. We talked about exactly what was going to happen. She’s got her cupcake business and has no room for a boyfriend, let alone a permanent husband. I wouldn’t have asked her to do this for me if she wasn’t a good friend.”
A friend who wasn’t interested in taking things deeper. That was the key and the only reason Jonas had continued their friendship for so long. If there was even a possibility of getting emotional about her, he’d have axed their association immediately, just like he had with every other woman who posed a threat to the tight rein he held on his heart.
Hendrix drank straight from the champagne bottle to get the last few drops, his nearly colorless hazel eyes narrowed in contemplation as he set the empty bottle on the coffee table. “If she’s such a good friend, how come we haven’t met her?”
“Really? It’s confusing to you why I’d want to keep her away from the man voted most likely to corrupt a nun four years in a row?”
With a grin, Hendrix jerked his head at Warren. “So Straight and Narrow over there should get the thumbs-up. Yet she’s not allowed to meet him either?”
Jonas shrugged. “I’ll introduce you at the ceremony tomorrow.”
When it would be unavoidable. How was he supposed to explain that Viv was special to a couple of knuckleheads like his friends? From the first moment he’d met her, he’d been drawn to her sunny smile and generosity.
The little bakery near the Kim Building called Cupcaked had come highly recommended by Jonas’s admin, so he’d stopped in to pick up a thank-you for his staff. As he’d stood in the surprisingly long line to place his order, a pretty brown-haired woman had exited from the back. She’d have captured his interest regardless, but when she’d stepped outside to slip a cupcake to a kid on the street who’d been standing nose pressed to her window for the better part of fifteen minutes, Jonas couldn’t resist talking to her.
He’d been dropping in to get her amazing lemon cupcakes for almost a year now. Sometimes Viv let him take her for coffee to someplace where she didn’t have to jump behind the counter on the fly, and occasionally she dropped by the Kim Building to take Jonas to lunch.
It was an easy, no-pressure friendship that he valued because there was no danger of him falling in too deep when she so clearly wasn’t interested in more. They weren’t sleeping together, and that kind of relationship wouldn’t compute to his friends.
Didn’t matter. He was happy with the status quo. Viv was doing him a favor and in return, he’d make it up to her with free business consulting advice for the rest of her life. After all, Jonas had singlehandedly launched Kim Electronics in the American market and had grown revenue to the tune of $4.7 billion last year. She could do worse than to have his undivided attention on her balance sheet whenever she asked, which he’d gladly make time for.
All he had to do was get her name on a marriage certificate and lie low until his grandfather’s merger went through. Then Viv could go back to her single cupcake-baker status and Jonas could celebrate dodging the bullet.
Warren’s point about marriage giving a girl ideas about love and romance was pure baloney. Jonas wasn’t worried about sticking to the pact. Honor was his moral compass, as it was his grandfather’s. Love represented a loss of control that other men might fall prey to, but not Jonas. He would never betray his friends or the memory of the one they’d lost.
All he had to do was marry a woman who had no romantic feelings for him.
* * *
Viviana Dawson had dreamed about her wedding day a bunch of times and not once had she imagined the swirl in her gut, which could only be described as a cocktail of nerves and holy crap.
Jonas was going to be her husband in a few short minutes and the anticipation of what if was killing her.
Jonas Kim had asked her to marry him. Jonas. The man who had kept Viv dateless for almost a year because who could measure up to perfection? Nobody.
Oh, sure, he’d framed it all as a favor and she’d accepted under the premise that they’d be filing for annulment ASAP. But still. She’d be Mrs. Kim for as long as it lasted.
Which might be short indeed if he figured out she had a huge crush on him.
He wasn’t going to figure it out. Because oh, my God. If he did find out...
Well, he couldn’t. It would ruin their friendship for one. And also? She had no business getting into a serious relationship, not until she figured out how to do and be whatever the opposite was of what she’d been doing and being with men thus far in her adult dating life.
Her sisters called it clingy. She called it committed. Men called it quits.
Jonas was the antidote to all that.
The cheesy chapel wasn’t anything close to the venue of her fantasies, but she’d have married Jonas in a wastewater treatment plant if he’d asked her to. She pushed open the door, alone and not too happy about it. In retrospect, she should have insisted one of her sisters come to Vegas with her. Maybe to act as her maid of honor.
She could really use a hand to hold right about now, but no. She hadn’t told any of her sisters she was getting married, not even Grace, who was closest to her in age and had always been her confidante. Well, until Grace had disappeared into her own family in much the same fashion as their other two sisters had done.
Viv was the cute pony in the Dawson family stable of Thoroughbreds. Which was the whole reason Viv hadn’t mentioned her quickie