“Convinced? And what kind of prodding am I going to have to do to achieve that?”
He turned away, lay on his back. “I’m sure you can come up with something.”
Leaning up on her forearms, she unbuttoned the rest of her shirt and tossed it away.
His eyes watched and his cock swelled as she pulled her skirt down and off . . . panties, along with her bra, were next.
One leg over his hips and she straddled him, taking the lead and doing all the work.
Three mind-numbing orgasms and they hadn’t had dinner. It was like Lori was on a sexual high and he was a vessel for her pleasure. Not that he was complaining. If this was what picking her up from work was going to result in, he’d happily play chauffeur.
Lying to his side, her arm thrown over her head, Lori was working on catching her breath.
“Good God, I needed that.”
“You might have killed me,” he teased. He looked down. “Yep, it’s dead.”
Lori started chuckling. “He died happy.”
He liked her like this, carefree and lax. After two months of dating, he’d learned that it wasn’t her normal. She carried the weight of too many people for a single woman without kids.
“Why were you so stressed?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. Everything just built up inside. Ya know?”
Reed rolled to his side and pulled the sheet over the top of them before resting his hand on her flat stomach. “Same buildup or new buildup?”
“Both. I had this new client come in. What a shit storm this is going to be.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, she’s thirty-six, stunning . . . under all the makeup and bruises.”
A muscle in his arm twitched. “Her husband is hitting her.”
Lori glanced at him, blew out another long breath. “Hitting? No, beating the crap out of her. Who does that?”
“Not a real man.”
She rolled on her side, tucked the sheet higher over her breasts. “It’s hard. I wanted to grab her hand and run her to the nearest police station.”
“She doesn’t want to press charges?”
“He’s a very powerful man. I’ve learned that powerful men have a way of getting away with everything. She’s right in being careful about who she tells what.”
“But she came to you.”
A tiny, satisfied smile crossed her lips. “I do know people. People that can protect her while she severs herself from his life.”
He couldn’t imagine.
“She doesn’t even want his money. She just wants to get out.” Lori shook her head. “How can someone be an eight-year punching bag for someone else and not want them to pay?”
“If she were my sister, I’d kill him.”
Kindness swam in Lori’s eyes. “You’re a good man.”
“Not always,” he confessed.
She took his words as nothing more than humility and patted his hand over her waist. “How did she not see it before they were married? If she’d come to us before saying I do, we would have flushed this out before the wedding.”
“What do you mean?”
She ignored his question as she finished her broken thoughts. “What am I saying? There is no guarantee. Look at Trina. None of us had a clue about Fedor’s instability.”
He knew all those thoughts linked inside her head, but he was lost. “Back up, babe. What are you saying? It’s your job to determine if someone is suicidal?”
“With Alliance, it is.”
“Am I supposed to know what Alliance is?”
“Alliance is Sam’s service. She matches eligible clients with a wife, or a husband, but those aren’t as common.”
“Like a dating service?”
Lori looked directly at him. “This stays between you and me.”
For a second he considered telling her to keep her secrets, but then he’d have to confess his. That halo she’d placed over his head was slipping way below the waist. “Of course.”
“There are men out there who need a wife . . . temporarily.”
The pictures in his home and all the lines he’d drawn between Lori’s friends and her . . . and Samantha Harrison. “Like Trina’s husband?”
“Right. Fedor wanted to reassure his mother. He knew she was dying and didn’t see the harm in marrying just to make the woman’s last days happy.”
Like snow falling in exactly the right place, everything started to come into focus. “And what did Trina get out of this?”
“A paycheck for a year of her life. The relationship is on paper. That’s understood. Nothing physical.”
“And that works?”
“Most of the time. There is the occasion where the marriage works.”
He rolled on his back. “Shannon . . .”
Lori huffed. “You didn’t hear that from me.”
“Jesus . . . Avery?”
“Everyone got out of their marriages everything they wanted.”
“Except Trina.”
Lori pushed a strand of his hair out of his eyes.
“Fedor wasn’t supposed to take himself out. And Alice certainly wasn’t expected to leave everything to her daughter-in-law. So, yeah . . . I’ve been a little more stressed than normal.”
His heart started to pound. “If Ruslan Petrov found out about this, he could really screw up everything.”
“Yeah, which is why Sam wants all this security. But I don’t think for a minute he’s on to anything. He’s a bully.”
What an utter cluster fuck this was.
Noise from beyond her bedroom caught their attention. “Well, hello . . . did someone lose their pants out here?”
Lori cracked a smile and buried her head in his shoulder. “Danny.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Reed placed both hands on the wall in his office and cringed. Lori made a decent living working the legal end of Alliance alone. Million-dollar mergers from which she made a percentage. No need to go to court. No need to file extra papers. Write up a prenuptial . . . execute a prenuptial.
What a scam.
Only none of it was illegal that he could see. There might be a question of morality, and certainly in the case of Trina Petrov, someone, somewhere was going to question the legality of a fake marriage resulting in her ending up with half a billion dollars. And yes, Paul Wentworth and his fake wife, Shannon, wouldn’t be very credible if the facts leaked to the public.
He had the information his client needed. Not the proof, but enough to deliver, collect a check, and walk away.
Reed knew, without a second look, he wasn’t going to deliver this information to Senator Knight. She’d find out the public facts. Lori Cumberland worked with the rich and famous, and she was the lawyer to write up and execute the prenuptial. Was it legal for a lawyer to represent both parties? He jotted down a note for himself to research. He was relatively sure it was, but wondered if there were any loopholes.
A low hum on his desk told him the devices he’d planted in Lori’s home were picking up voices.
He moved to turn it off. He already had the information he needed.
“I’m not leaving,” he heard Danny say.
Reed hesitated over the button.
“You’re sticking around because you want to protect me. Noble, and I appreciate it. But it isn’t needed.”
“Don’t go, Dan. C’mon,” Reed prodded the air as if his chant would somehow go through space and hit Lori’s brother in the cerebellum.
“You just fired Cooper.”
“I didn’t fire him!” Lori’s voice rose.
“I don’t see him following you around anymore.”
“Danny . . . stop. I’m fine. You’re cramping my style.”
“Ha. Is this about making a crack about Reed’s pants on the living room floor?”
“Oh, Lord, do you have to mention that again?”
Danny laughed. “Seriously, sis. I think it’s great you have a guy in the mix. If you have company, maybe a tie on the door. We can work this out.”
Reed found himself smiling. Are we in college?
“I stopped putting ties on doors when I was in law school.”
“Yeah, but it worked,” Reed muttered to himself.
“It’s a great system,” Danny said.
“You’ve been here a month. I love you, but I don’t want anything to come between us.”
There was some noise. Danny’s voice sounded farther away.
Reed turned up the mic.
“And I love you too much to leave now. I’ll risk pissing you off until I know you’re safe.”
“Danny!”
“Lori! This isn’t negotiable, oh Mighty Lawyer. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened and I wasn’t here.”
Reed tapped a nervous finger on his desk. “I always knew I liked you, kid.”
Lori’s voice traveled. “You’re annoying.”
“You love me anyway,” Danny called after her.
Once a month, usually at Sam’s Malibu estate, she and Lori met and discussed current and prospective clients of Alliance.
At that exact moment, they had ten marriages in various stages. Two of which were walking the edge of voiding their contracts because the relationships had become physical. And so long as a child wasn’t a result, Alliance and the contracts signed were in effect if either party wanted out on the agreed upon date. They’d built in nearly every clause, including death. Although Trina’s situation wasn’t covered. Something Sam and Lori discussed over a bottle of really good Sangiovese on her back porch overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
“You know I’m not happy about you telling Cooper to piss off.”
Lori rolled her eyes. “I’m American, I don’t tell anyone to piss off.”
Occasionally, an English saying would leak through Sam’s words.
“You know what I mean.”
“Petrov is smoke and mirrors. He’s spinning around in Munich and Prague, trying to drum up money. He isn’t watching me.”