When Lightning Strikes (Whiskey Creek #1)(14)
Author: Brenda Novak

Ian spoke up. “So go to your mother. Tell her you’re in love, get her to intercede.”

Gail straightened in her seat. “I don’t have a mother.”

Simon was still watching her. “Why not? Is she dead?”

“No, but she might as well be.” Gail hadn’t seen her in twenty years. “We don’t have a relationship.”

Ian raked his fingers through his hair. “We’ve got everything else worked out. This can’t be that hard. Tell your father he has nothing to worry about. You’ll get a big settlement even if your marriage turns out to be the worst thing you ever did.”

“News of the prenup will be in the press,” she said. “We have to make sure it is. It has to look like love and only love is the reason we’re getting together.”

“So?” he argued. “You’ll be receiving other money.”

“But I can’t tell anyone about that, not without letting them in on our little secret.” To Martin, having her marry someone he’d consider morally bankrupt would be bad enough. Getting paid for it would be worse. “Anyway, he doesn’t care about money. That’s not what matters to him.”

“What does?” It was Simon who asked. She could tell he was leery of the answer. Knowing her father, he had reason to be.

“Me.” Martin DeMarco also cared about character. But a list of Simon’s faults had come from her own lips as recently as a few days ago, when she’d last spoken to her dad. In retrospect, what she’d said during that phone call was unfortunate; telling Martin she was marrying Simon O’Neal would be no better than announcing she was marrying Charlie Sheen or Tiger Woods. “That means we’ll have to visit, show him you’re a changed man.”

“Forget it,” Simon said. “I’m a good actor but even I’m not  that good, or I wouldn’t need to be doing this in the first place. If your dad is such a stickler, he won’t accept me even if I grovel.”

“So what do you suggest?” she asked.

“You’ll just have to cut ties with him for a while,” he replied.

“What?” She tightened her grip on her purse. “I can’t disappear from my network of family and friends for two years.”

Finished with his drink, Simon set it aside. “That’s what you’re asking from me, isn’t it?”

“It’s your image that needs improving! Your associates are the ones who threaten that, not mine.”

“I don’t care. Considering everything I’m giving up, you can make a sacrifice, too. I have enough to deal with. Why should I put up with people who are convinced I’m the devil out to drag you off to hell?”

“Because you’re the one who has to face down what you’ve done.” Why did her sacrifice have to be equivalent to his? She hadn’t screwed up her life the way he had.

“Not with your father looking on I don’t. I just have to survive the next two years without doing anything stupid. The rest is up to you.”

“Why are you making this so difficult?” she demanded.

“You started it.”

“Going without sex isn’t the same as giving up my family and friends!”

“I think it’s pretty equal,” Ian inserted, but both she and Simon ignored him. They were locked in battle.

“I make some concessions. You make some concessions,” he said. “How’s what I’m doing so unfair?”

He was attempting to punish her, but she wouldn’t let him. “You’d know if you had a family to bother with!”

When a muscle jumped in his cheek, she realized what she’d just said and had no idea how she’d allowed herself to be so callous, even to someone who provoked her as much as he did. His father, a dissolute movie star himself, had conceived Simon with his wife’s sister. For obvious reasons, the relationship between father and son had always been strained. His father’s wife refused to have Simon anywhere near her. And his mother, who’d been disowned by the rest of the family for sleeping with her sister’s husband, had died of breast cancer when Simon was ten. After she was gone, he’d been moved from the small house he’d lived in until that time to his father’s estate, where he’d been raised by the hired help that slipped in and out of Tex O’Neal’s life, not all of whom were particularly reliable. Rumor had it that the one nanny Simon had loved most had gone to prison for embezzlement.

“I’m sorry.” Her cheeks burned as she gaped at him.

He glared back. “I’m not going anywhere close to your family,” he said, and got up and walked out.

“Simon, you okay?” Ian’s expression filled with so much concern that Gail was tempted to believe he really cared about his employer, beyond just the paycheck, but Simon didn’t respond.

“Did you have to go that far?” He turned to face her once it was clear that Simon wasn’t coming back.

She was so busy kicking herself she didn’t need him to pile on, too, but she couldn’t blame him. “I didn’t mean it. I—I’m overwrought. Couldn’t sleep a wink last night. Other than that, I have no excuse.”

“You’re in the public-relations business, damn it!”

“I wish I could take it back.” She honestly hadn’t meant to hurt Simon, hadn’t realized she could. He seemed so…impervious. Still, she prided herself on using restraint and diplomacy especially in difficult situations. What had gotten into her?

Sinking onto the sofa, she tilted some of the ice left in Simon’s glass into her mouth. She’d turned him down when he’d offered her a drink, but she shouldn’t have. She needed something to relieve her dry throat, and she was rattled enough not to care where she got it.

“For what it’s worth, he’s going through hell,” Ian said.

She set the glass, now empty, back on the table. “You’ve mentioned that. But he’s not the only one, okay? I don’t like this any more than he does.”

“Of course you don’t.” He made a noticeable effort to calm down. “You’re out of your comfort zone, and that’s understandable. But…can’t you…I don’t know…put out for him once in a while? Just to help him stay on the straight and narrow? I bet he’d agree to meet your dad if you do.”

She smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Tell me you’re kidding.”