In Name Only: Best Friend Bride (In Name Only) / One Night Stand Bride (In Name Only) / Contract Bride (In Name Only)

“That sounds like a magical courtship,” she said.

“Oh, it was,” Viv agreed enthusiastically. “It was like one of those movies where the hero pretends he only wants the cupcakes when he comes into the shop, but it’s really to see the baker. But I always knew from the first that the way to his heart was through my frosting.”

His mother laughed and Jonas checked his eye roll because the whole point was to sell this nonsense. Everyone was eating it up, no pun intended, so why mess with the ridiculous story Viv was spinning?

Except the whole thing made him uncomfortable.

Surely his grandfather wouldn’t appreciate hearing his successor described with such romanticism. If anything, Viv could help Jonas’s case by telling everyone how hard he worked and how difficult it was to pry him away from his cell phone when they went to lunch.

He sighed. She couldn’t say that. It would be a big, fat lie. When he did anything with Viv, he always switched his phone to do not disturb. He loved listening to stories about her sisters, or a new recipe she was working through. But it didn’t mean he was gaga over her like a besotted fool.

Yet...that’s what he needed his grandfather to buy, as difficult as it was to envision. Grandfather hadn’t accepted Jonas’s marriage to Viv because she’d helped him increase profits or created an advantageous business alliance. Viv was an impulse of the heart.

How had he gotten caught in the middle of trying to prove to his grandfather that Jonas was a committed, solid CEO candidate, while also attempting to convince him that he and Viv had fallen in love? And Jonas had no illusions about the necessity of maintaining the current vibe, not after his grandfather smiled over Viv’s enthusiastic retelling of what would probably forever be called the Cupcake Courtship. It was madness.

“Will you bring your wife to Seoul to visit the Kim ancestral home?” Grandfather asked in the lull. “It’s yours now. Perhaps you’ll want to redecorate?”

Jonas nearly groaned. He hadn’t had four seconds to mention the gift to Viv. Her eyebrows lifted in silent question and he blessed her discretion.

“We’re actually looking for a house together in Raleigh,” Jonas improvised much more smoothly than he would have guessed he could. Viv’s eyebrows did another reach-for-the-sky move as he rushed on. “So probably we won’t make it to Korea anytime soon. But we do both appreciate the gift.”

Nothing like a good reminder that Jonas’s home was in America. The future of the company lay here, not in Seoul. The more he could root himself in North Carolina, the better. Of course the answer was to buy a property here. With Viv. A new ancestral home in North Carolina. Then his statement to his grandfather wouldn’t be a lie.

“Yes, thank you so much, Mr. Kim,” Viv said sweetly. “We’ll discuss our work schedules and find a mutual time we can travel. I would be honored to see your ancestral home. Mrs. Kim, perhaps you’d advise me on whether the decor needs refurbishing?”

Jonas’s mom smiled so widely that it was a wonder she didn’t crack her face. “That’s a lovely idea. I would be thrilled to go to lunch and discuss the house, as I’ve always loved the locale.”

Speechless, Jonas watched the exchange with a very real sense of his life sliding out of control and no way to put on the brakes. In the last two minutes, he’d managed to rope himself into shopping for a house in Raleigh, then traveling to Korea so Viv could visit Seoul with the express intent of redecorating a house neither of them wanted...with his mom. What next?

“While you’re in Korea,” Grandfather said, and his tone was so leading that everyone’s head turned toward him, “we should discuss taking next steps toward increasing your responsibilities at Kim Electronics. The board will look very favorably on how you’ve matured, Jonas. Your accomplishments with the American market are impressive. I would be happy to recommend you as the next CEO when I retire.”

The crazy train screeched to a halt in the dead center of Are You Kidding Me Station. Say something. Tell him you’re honored.

But Jonas’s throat froze as his brain tried to sort through his grandfather’s loaded statements.

Everything he’d worked for had just been handed to him on a silver platter—that Viv was holding in her delicate fingers. The implications were staggering. Grandfather liked that Jonas was married. It was a huge wrinkle he had never seen coming.

Now he couldn’t annul the marriage or he’d risk losing Grandfather’s approval with the board. How was he supposed to tell Viv that the favor he’d asked of her had just been extended by about a year?

And what did it mean that his insides were doing a secret dance of happiness at getting to keep Viv longer than planned?

* * *

The spare bedroom lay at the end of a quiet hall and had its own en suite bathroom. Nice. Viv wasn’t too keen on the idea of wandering around in her bathrobe. At least not outside the bedroom. Inside was another story.

Because Jonas was on this side of the closed door. Time to ramp it up.

If she hoped to build her confidence with a man, there was no better scenario to play that out than this one, especially since she already knew they were attracted to each other And headed for a divorce. None of this was real, so she could practice without fear.

She shivered as her gorgeous husband loosened his tie and threw himself onto the bed with a groan. Shivered. What was that but a commentary on this whole situation?

“Bad day, sweetie?” she deadpanned, carefully keeping her voice light. But holy cow, Jonas was so sexy with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his bare feet crossed at the ankle as he tossed an elbow over his eyes.

“That was one of the most difficult dinners I’ve ever endured,” he confessed, as if there was nothing odd about being in a bedroom together with the door closed, while he lounged on the bed looking like a commercial for something sensual and expensive.

“Your family is great.” She eased onto the bed because she wanted to and she could. It wasn’t like there were a ton of other seats in the cute little bedroom. Well, except for the matching chairs near the bay window that flanked an inlaid end table. But she didn’t want to sit way over there when the centerpiece of the room lay on the bed.

As the mattress shifted under her weight, he peeked out from beneath his elbow, his dark eyes seeking hers. “You’re only saying that to be nice. You should stage a fight and go home. It would serve me right to have to stay here and field questions about the stability of our marriage.”

As if she’d ever do that when the best part of this fake marriage had just started. She was sharing a bedroom with Jonas Kim and he was her husband and the night was rife with possibilities.

There came the shiver again and it was delicious.

Careful.

This was the part where she always messed up with men by seeming too eager. Messing up with Jonas was not happening. There was no do-over.

Of course, scoring with Jonas had its issues, too. Like the fact that she couldn’t keep him. This was just practice, she reminded herself. That was the only way she could get it together.

“I’m not staging a fight.” She shook her head and risked reaching out to stroke Jonas’s hair in a totally casual gesture meant to soothe him, because after all, he did seem pretty stressed. “What would we fight about? Money?”

“I don’t know. No.” The elbow came off his face and he let his eyes drift closed as she ran her fingers over his temples. “That feels nice. You don’t have to do that.”

Oh, yes. She did. This was her chance to touch Jonas in a totally innocuous way and study her husband’s body while he wasn’t aware.

“It’s possible for me to do something because I want to instead of out of a sense of obligation, you know.”

He chuckled. “Point taken. I’m entirely too sensitive to how big a favor this is and how difficult navigating my family can be.”

Stroking his hair might go down as one of the greatest pleasures of her life. It was soft and silky and thick. The inky strands slid across her fingertips as she buried them deep and rubbed lightly against his scalp, which earned her a groan that was amazingly sexy.

“Relax,” she murmured, and was only half talking to herself as her insides contracted. “I don’t find your family difficult. Your mom is great and I don’t know if you know this or not, but your grandfather does not in fact breathe fire.”

“He gave us a house.” His eyes popped open and he glanced over at her, shrinking the slight distance between them. “There are all sorts of underlying expectations associated with that, not the least of which is how upset he’s going to be when I have to give it back.”

She shrugged, pretending like it wasn’t difficult to get air into her lungs when he focused on her so intently. “Don’t give it back. Keep it and we’ll go visit, like we promised.”

“Viv.” He sat up, taking his beautiful body out of reach, which was a shame. “You’re being entirely too accommodating. Were you not listening to the conversation at dinner? This is only going to get more complicated the longer we drag it out. And we are going to be dragging it out apparently.”

Normally, this would be where she threw herself prostrate at a man’s feet and wept with joy over the fact that he wasn’t calling things off. But she wasn’t clingy anymore. Newly Minted Independent Viv needed to play this a whole different way if she wanted to get to a place where she had a man slavishly devoted to her. And she would not apologize for wishing for a man who loved her so much that he would never dream of calling the duration of their marriage “dragging it out.”

“You say that like being married to me is a chore,” she scolded lightly. “I was listening at dinner. I heard the words CEO and Jonas in the same sentence. Did you? Because that sounded good to me.”

“It is good. For me. Not you. I’m now essentially in the position of using you to further my career goals for an extended period of time. Not just until the merger happens. But until my grandfather retires and fully transitions the role of CEO to me. That could take months. A year.”

Oh, God. A whole year of living with Jonas in his amazing loft and being his wife? That was a lot of practicing for something that would never be real. How could she possibly hide her feelings for Jonas that long? Worse, they’d probably grow stronger the longer she stayed in his orbit. How fair was it to keep torturing herself like this?

On the flip side, she’d promised to do this for Jonas as a favor. As a friend. He wasn’t interested in more or he’d have told her. Practice was all she could reasonably expect from this experience. It had to be enough.