Page 13 of Hitched to My Enemy
"Answer it." Her voice carried that razor-sharp tone I'd learned to fear. "Something's wrong."
She was right. Bryce wouldn't call repeatedly at eight in the morning without good reason.
"What's the emergency?"
"Thank Christ." Bryce's voice crackled with panic. "I've been calling for an hour. We've got problems—multiple problems involving reporters and words like 'impropriety' and 'scandal.'"
My stomach turned to lead. "What kind of reporters?"
"The hungry kind. Liv Chen called my personal line asking for comment about your 'romantic evening' with a certain commission investigator. She has photographs, Easton."
I closed my eyes. Vegas thrived on surveillance and scandal—privacy was just another commodity to be traded. "Photos of what?"
"You two at the gala. Dancing. Looking... intimate. She hinted at more."
Across the bed, Harlow had gone pale, clearly catching enough to understand we'd graduated from personal catastrophe to public relations nightmare.
"Buy us time," I said. "No comments until I figure out damage control."
"What exactly am I controlling damage from? If there's more to this than dinner and dancing, I need to know."
I glanced at Harlow, who was frantically mouthing "Don't tell him." She was right. The fewer people who knew about our accidental marriage, the better our chances of quietly undoing it.
"It's complicated. Keep everyone away from the hotel. Give me an hour."
"Easton—"
"One hour, Bryce."
I hung up and found Harlow already climbing from bed with military efficiency. She'd slipped into my dress shirt sometime during the night—probably when the air conditioning turned arctic—and seeing her in my clothes sent an unwelcome jolt of possessive satisfaction through me. The shirt hit her mid-thigh, revealing legs that belonged in fantasies.
"This is a disaster." She paced to the windows, staring down at the Strip like surveying a battlefield. "If the commission discovers last night, I'm finished. Not reassigned or demoted—obliterated. Blacklisted from every regulatory agency in the country."
"They won't find out." I injected more confidence than I felt. "We'll get an annulment. Quietly. Today."
She whirled to face me, and even disheveled and panicked, she was breathtaking. "You think it's that simple? Nevada has waiting periods, paperwork trails. Any legal filing creates records that can be subpoenaed or leaked."
Of course she was right. Harlow's mind worked like a precision instrument, dissecting problems to expose their most vulnerable points. It made her a formidable investigator—and dangerous to men who operated in regulatory gray areas.
"Then we don't file anything yet." I headed for my walk-in closet, grabbing a fresh shirt. "We control the story. Present a united front until media attention dies down."
"A united front?" Her laugh held no warmth. "Easton, I'm supposed to be conducting an impartial evaluation. Howdo I maintain objectivity when I'm..." She gestured helplessly between us.
"When you're what?" I emerged with the shirt, noting how her gaze dropped to my bare chest before snapping back to my face. "When you're married to me?"
The words landed like grenades. Marriage implied partnership, intimacy, a future neither of us had planned. It suggested feelings we hadn't acknowledged and commitments we'd never made.
"This isn't real," she said, though her voice wavered. "Just paperwork. A mistake to be corrected."
"Absolutely." I pulled on the shirt, using the mundane task to steady myself. "Temporary complication. Nothing more."
But I remembered how she'd looked at me in that tacky chapel, the trust in her eyes as she placed her hand in mine. For those alcohol-soaked hours, it had felt like something good instead of a nightmare in the making.
My phone buzzed with a text from building security:Mr. Ricci here to see you. Says urgent.
The timing reeked of opportunism. Enzo showing up the morning after my very public evening with Harlow meant he knew more than I was comfortable with.
"We have a visitor who thinks he can use last night against us," I said. "Enzo Ricci. He owns the Mirage Continental as you’re already aware and has been hunting for excuses to sabotage the Jade Petal."
