When Lightning Strikes (Whiskey Creek #1)(11)
Author: Brenda Novak

“Oh, quit being such a prude,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “We’ll be married. It’s not like you’d be standing on a street corner. And if you won’t let me get it anywhere else, I need to know we have some sort of…arrangement, in case I get desperate.”

“Desperate?”

He didn’t bother to apologize. He’d been cross all morning, supremely unhappy with the problem as well as the solution. But Simon was always cross these days. The only thing that mattered right now was procuring a commitment to the no-sex rule, just as she had with the no-alcohol rule, so they’d both be going into this with the same expectations.

“I understand that you’re trying to be practical,” she said. “And I realize two years is a long time for…a man of your age and, uh, limitations.” She smiled, knowing she’d just jabbed him back. “But our relationship isn’t real, so we won’t be sleeping together no matter how desperate you become.”

“Why the hell not?” he demanded, finally losing the battle with his temper.

“Because I’m not an object! And we don’t even respect each other!”

There was more to it. For one thing, after the sex goddesses he’d been with, he was certain to find her lacking. And what could she possibly gain? Nothing. Sleeping with Simon would only set her up for future disappointment. It wasn’t as if she could expect the relationship to last, even if she wanted it to.

Fortunately, she could stand on principle and wouldn’t have to explain the more embarrassing reasons behind her refusal. “Look, don’t make a big deal out of this, okay? This is acting. You don’t really get to sleep with the female leads you pretend to make love to in the movies, do you?”

Too late, she realized that might not be true off-set and couldn’t believe she’d let her tongue get so far ahead of her brain.

“Only eighty or ninety percent of them,” he responded, and Ian began to laugh.

When she shot Simon’s manager a dirty look, he laughed even harder but tried to speak through it. “Come on, we all know the number of women who fall at his feet. Why pretend otherwise? In any case, you can’t expect him to give up the good life—”

“You were with me on this!” she complained. “We talked about it last night.”

Obviously sensing how easily their deal could fall apart, Ian sobered. “I agreed that he couldn’t have any extramarital affairs. I didn’t agree that he couldn’t screw his own wife.”

She’d said no sex, right after no alcohol, and he hadn’t corrected her. “But I won’t really be his wife!”

“You’ll be legally married.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

Finished emailing her the photos, he closed his computer. “It means he should be able to sleep with you if he wants.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Then what else is he supposed to do?”

“He could try exercising a little self-restraint!”

“Like you?” Ian asked. “Someone who wouldn’t know how to have fun if it came up and bit her on the ass?”

Fun had never been her top priority. Her mother had walked out when Gail was eight. Since then, she’d had too much to prove to her father and brother. “That won’t change my answer.”

Ian expelled a loud sigh. “He will be exercising some restraint. If he gives up booze and refuses the women who hit on him, he’ll be exercising a lot of it. But you have to be realistic. If you take other women away, you have to provide something else instead.”

Gail dropped her purse to the floor. “No matter how undesirable.”

She’d imbued her voice with enough sarcasm to wither them both on the spot, but it didn’t seem to make an impact. If anything, her words had the opposite effect. It was almost as if she could see them mentally offering each other a high five for scoring a direct hit. They respected her professional ability—she knew that much—but they’d never been particularly fond of her. She and Simon had too often been at cross-purposes, with him trying to do what he wanted regardless of the consequences and her trying to protect his image.

“It’s a fair question,” Ian insisted.

“A sabbatical might be good for him,” she argued, “give him a chance to pull his life together.”

Simon came to his feet. “This is bullshit! You’ll have my name, my ring and two years of my life, and I can’t even climb into bed with you?”

Suddenly Gail realized that this conversation had nothing to do with the topic. He wasn’t attracted to her; he’d made that clear. He was responding to being nudged out of the power position and wanted to get back on top in some way. So he was demanding she make a difficult concession, one that couldn’t be overruled simply by pointing to the fact that it would compromise the campaign.

“Sleeping together is not part of the deal,” she reiterated.

Jaw set, he slammed his glass down on the coffee table. “Fine. I’ll make some sort of discreet arrangement with a third party.”

“No, you won’t! We’ve been over that.”

“It won’t matter if no one knows.”

“Isn’t that the kind of thinking that got you into this mess? Word would get out, eventually. Your bed partners are too anxious to brag about their good fortune.” Besides, she wouldn’t want to lie awake night after night imagining what he might be doing in another part of the house. “Can’t you look at this as a job? Pretend you’re preparing to play a monk and celibacy is key to getting into character? If you can stay focused and put in the time, we’ll all get what we need in the end. Then you can have a whole harem if you want.”

Pivoting, he spoke to Ian as if she was no longer in the room. “This won’t work. I’m already going without alcohol. I’ll be cut off from my friends, in case they see through this…sham of a marriage or—” he made quotation marks with his fingers “—lead me astray. And I’ll be connected at the hip to someone who’ll be monitoring my every move and, no doubt, criticizing it.”

“Stop it,” she told Simon before Ian could respond.

Simon whirled on her. “Stop what?”

“Stop looking for a way out. If you don’t want to do this, fine. But don’t justify blowing up the deal by acting like you would’ve jumped in with both feet if only I’d been reasonable.”