Married To The Maverick Millionaire

Quinn made a sound in the back of his throat that sounded like a rhino going into labor. She patted his shoulder and smiled. “Quinn, it’s a masked ball, not a root canal.”

Quinn reached out and tugged her ponytail. “So what are you wearing?”

Cal looked down into her empty coffee cup, wondering if she should tell him about the dress she’d found in a tiny boutique in Gastown. Maybe not, because she still wasn’t sure whether she’d have the guts to wear it. It was a kick-ass dress and not something her husband’s friends and acquaintances would expect her to wear.

It would make heads turn and tongues wag and probably not in a good way. But no one would mistake her message: Callahan Adam-Carter had died with her husband, but Cal Adam—or Cal Adam-Rayne to be precise—was back in town. “I’m not sure yet,” she hedged.

“Whatever you wear, I know you’ll look fantastic. You always do.”

Cal tipped her head and flushed at his words. It wasn’t an empty compliment or a line. Quinn said the words easily and with conviction. He genuinely believed them. God, it was such a silly thing, but such easy acceptance meant the world to her.

“So what time do you want to leave for the ball?” Quinn asked.

Cal lifted his wrist to look at the face of his high-tech watch. She was going to be late for her early meeting if she didn’t get cracking. “I’ll find you there, somewhere. I have to be there early to check on everything, so you can get there later. Or come with Mac and Kade. Anyway, I have to go,” Cal told him, leaning sideways to place a kiss on his cheek.

She inhaled his scent and instantly felt calmer, his arm under her fingers tight with muscle. God, her best friend—her fake husband—was all heat and harnessed power. Their eyes clashed and an emotion she didn’t recognize flashed between them. Quinn’s eyes dropped to her mouth and she touched her top lip with the tip of her tongue.

Quinn lifted his hand, bent his head and for one brief, red-hot second Cal thought that he would, finally, give her the kiss she was aching for. She waited, but Quinn just sucked in a harsh-sounding breath, pulled back and abruptly stood up.

Cal bent over to pick up both their cups, stood and walked to the stairs. “I’ll see you at the ball, okay?” she said, her voice wobbly as she tossed the words over her shoulder.

“Sure,” Quinn answered, sounding absolutely normal. So why did she sense—wish—that he was looking at her butt as she walked away?

* * *

It was later in the morning and Mac warbled a horrible version of the “Wedding March” tune as Quinn walked into the conference room at the Mavericks’ headquarters. He handed Mac a sour look and frowned at Kade.

“What?” Kade asked, looking confused. “What did I do?”

“You instituted the ban on getting physical anywhere other than the ice or the gym,” Quinn complained, dropping his helmet onto the seat of an empty chair. “If it wasn’t for you, then I could shut him up.”

“You really should see someone about those delusions, dude.” Mac smiled.

Standing opposite Mac, Quinn placed his hands flat on the table, leaned across it and got up in his face. “And I swear, if I hear that stupid song one more time, I will rip you a new one, Kade’s ban be damned.”

Mac just laughed at him. “You can try, bro, you can try. So how is married life?”

Quinn pulled back, blew out his breath and tried to hold onto his temper. He had this conversation at least once a day and he was thoroughly sick of it. What type of question was that anyway? he silently fumed. What he and Cal got up to behind closed doors—which was nothing that would make a nun blush—was nobody’s business but their own. Yet their marriage fascinated everybody, from his friends to the general public.

And why was Mac asking? He knew that their marriage was as fake as the tooth fairy. Quinn sent Mac an assessing look and decided to play him at his own game. “Actually, Cal and I had hot sex on the deck in the moonlight.”

“Seriously?” Mac’s face lit up with amusement.

“No, butthead, we didn’t.” Quinn looked at his helmet and wondered if he could use it to bash some sense into Mac’s thick skull. He dropped into a chair, placed his elbows on the table and shoveled his hands into his hair. “Dude,” he moaned, feeling a headache brewing, “I don’t know how else to explain this to you... Cal and I have been friends since we were in kindergarten. We are not going to sleep together. This is a sham marriage, one we entered to achieve a very specific objective. Remember?”

“What’s the point of being hitched if you don’t, at the very least, get some fun out of it? And by fun I mean sex.”

Quinn didn’t respond, knowing that Mac was just looking for a reaction. And they had the temerity to tell him that he needed to grow up?

“The point of their marriage was to rehab his reputation and that is going exceptionally well.” Wren’s cool voice brought a measure of intelligence to their conversation and Quinn could’ve kissed her.

“Really?” he asked.

Wren sent him a sympathetic smile. “Really. The press has definitely warmed up to you and Bayliss doesn’t think you are the spawn of Satan anymore.”

“Yay,” Quinn said, hiding his relief under sarcasm.

Once he agreed to sell his soul to the devil—aka Wren and her publicity machine—he’d placed his life into Wren’s very capable hands. She’d organized every detail of their wedding and made it look like a hasty, romantic, impulsive affair. The woman was damn good. No one suspected that it was a highly orchestrated con.

“And, despite some initial reservations about you and Cal, and how good you will be for her, the public sees your marriage as a positive thing.” Wren’s eyes left his face and dropped to the sheaf of papers on the table in front of her and Quinn knew there was more she wanted to say and she was debating whether she should or not.

Quinn rubbed the space between his eyebrows. “What, Wren?”

Wren lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “A good portion of the public is just waiting for you to mess it up.”

Quinn threw his hands up in the air. “What can I mess up? You’ve banned me from doing anything that might raise an eyebrow. I’m married so I can’t date.” Quinn shook his head and looked at the broad band on his left hand. “That sounds insane.”

“You do have a knack of complicating the hell out of your life, Rayne,” Kade agreed.

That was the thing. He really didn’t. His life, as he saw it, was uncomplicated: he went to work, coached the hell out of the Mavericks and got results that nobody expected from a young coach with little experience. So why couldn’t they keep their hands, and their opinions, off his personal life? He kept it simple there too: he did what he wanted, when he wanted.

Well, except for this episode of his life. He really hadn’t wanted to get married...

You’re temporarily hitched, temporarily grounded and for a damn good reason. When he remembered what was at risk, he would stay married and well-behaved forever if that was what was required of him.

He would not be the reason the deal with Widow Hasselback failed. He would not give Bayliss a reason to pull out of the deal. He’d protect his team, his players, the brand. He’d protect the Mavericks with everything he had.

Because this place, this team, these men were his home. Yeah, technically, he had a family, but he hadn’t spoken to any of them for years. A lack of understanding, communication and, okay, kindness had forced him to distance himself from them and it was a decision he did not regret. Kade and Mac, as annoying as they could be, were now his brothers and he would, at some point—soon!—go back to thinking of Cal as the sister he’d never had.

Cal, Mac and Kade were all the family he needed—the only family he’d ever have. He wasn’t going to risk Cal not being part of his clan, part of his life, by acting on what was a frequent and annoying fantasy of stripping her naked and making her scream.

Quinn scowled up at the ceiling. His simmering attraction to Cal was unexplainable and ludicrous and it would pass—he just had to keep avoiding her as much as possible until it did—and their friendship would survive. This craziness would pass. Everything always did.

Quinn rolled his shoulders and felt like the walls were closing in on him. He imagined himself on his bike, leaning into a corner, the wind blowing his restlessness away.

“Oh, crap, he has that faraway look in his eyes. The one he gets when he’s feeling caged in.”

Mac’s words penetrated Quinn’s fog and he snapped his head up to glare at his friend. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s one of your tells,” Mac informed him. “You get glassy-eyed and we know that you’re considering doing something crazy.”

“I’m not going to do anything.” Quinn pushed the words out. He wanted to. He wanted to burn some of this excess energy off. But he wouldn’t. Not today anyway.

“Don’t mess up, Rayne. Please don’t jeopardize our hard work.” Kade’s words felt like bullets from a machine gun.

Ben is studying, Quinn. Don’t disturb Jack.

Try to be more considerate, Quinn.