Thirty Days to Win His Wife

“Successful, talented businesswoman in control of her own destiny?”

Amelia sighed. “I was thinking more along the lines of a relationship failure on the fast track to a house with too many cats.”

“Quit it,” he said in a stern voice. He turned toward her and tipped her chin up so she had to look him in the eye. “You are amazing. You’re beautiful, talented, successful... Any man would be lucky to have you in his life. You just haven’t found one worthy of you yet.”

That was a nice thought, but it didn’t change the fact that she’d been on a fruitless quest for Mr. Right since she’d come of age. “Thanks, Ty,” she said anyway, as she wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face in the lapel of his suit.

He held her tight, resting his chin on the top of her head. It was a simple hug. One they’d shared a hundred times before. But tonight, somehow, it was different. She was suddenly very aware of the movement of his hard muscles beneath his shirt. His cologne tickled her nose, so familiar and yet so enticing in the moment. It made her want to bury her face in his neck and inhale the warm scent of his skin. Run her palms across the rough stubble of his jaw...

A wave of heat licked at Amelia’s cheeks, and she realized it had nothing to do with the flames shooting across the water beside them. There was a warmth curling in her belly, a need building inside her. It was a familiar arousal, but one she’d never associated with Tyler. He was her best friend. Nothing more.

But in that moment, she wanted more. She wanted him to show her how beautiful and talented he thought she was with his hands and his mouth instead of his words. It was a dangerous thought, but she couldn’t shake it.

“Do you remember graduation night?”

“Of course,” she said, pulling away to put an end to the physical contact stirring the blood in her veins. She couldn’t forget that night. They had suffered through family parties, and then they’d snuck off together to camp in the desert. Amelia had driven them out to the edge of town, where they could finally see the stars. “We drank wine coolers and stayed up all night watching for shooting stars.”

“Do you remember the pact we made?”

Amelia thought back to that night, the details blurred by a combination of time and fuzzy navels. She remembered them pinky swearing something. “What was it about? I don’t remember.”

“We agreed that if we weren’t married by our ten-year reunion, we would marry each other.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, the moment flooding back into her mind. In their eighteen-year-old brains, twenty-eight was nearly ancient. If they weren’t married by then, all hope was obviously lost. They’d sworn they would save each other from a lonely middle-aged existence. “Twenty-eight sure doesn’t feel the way I expected it to. I still feel young, and yet sometimes I feel like the oldest, most boring person I know. All I do is work. I never have adventures like we used to have together.”

Tyler studied her face, his light brown eyebrows drawing together in thought. “Do you feel up for an adventure tonight? I guarantee it will cheer you up.”

That was exactly what she needed—the kind of night that would make for a great story. “I am definitely up for an adventure. What did you have in mind?”

Tyler smiled and took her hand in his. The touch sent a surge down her spine, and she knew she’d agree to anything when he smiled at her that way. Then he dropped to one knee, and she realized she was in for more than she’d bargained for.

“Amelia, will you marry me?”

One (#ulink_49911597-c659-57c3-9056-1373590058f3)

“Amelia,” Gretchen pressed, “tell me you didn’t elope in a Las Vegas wedding chapel.”

Amelia took a deep breath and slowly nodded. Her stomach was turning somersaults, but she managed to get the words out anyway. “I did,” she admitted. “The details are a little blurry, but I woke up married to my best friend.”

“Wait.” Bree held up her hands in disbelief. “Did you just say you’re married? Married?”

Amelia looked at her two friends and coworkers, not entirely certain she could repeat the words. It had been hard enough to say them the first time. She actually hadn’t admitted it aloud until that very moment. The past few weeks it had all seemed like a fuzzy dream, but with Gretchen and Bree staring at her as though she’d grown a second head, it was suddenly very, very real.

“My high school reunion didn’t go the way I planned,” she explained. “I thought going back to Las Vegas would be fun, but it wasn’t. Everyone was passing around pictures of their wedding days and their kids...” Her voice trailed off.

The sad state of Amelia’s love life had hit her hard that night. She’d been in the dating scene for ten years with nothing to show for it but a string of almost-but-not-quite relationships. It wasn’t for lack of trying—she put herself out there time after time, but with no luck. She refused to settle for anything less than a timeless love, and it seemed just out of her reach.

Her hectic career hadn’t helped matters. She’d spent the past few years since college focusing on building the business she and her partners had founded, From This Moment. Running a wedding facility was a stressful job, and her area of expertise—catering—was no small task. Between menu tastings, prep work and wedding cakes, the wedding day itself was the least of her troubles. She loved her job, but it left little time to seriously dedicate herself to finding the love and family she’d always fantasized about.

She was only twenty-eight. Hardly old-maid material. But then she’d gone to the reunion and found that her schoolmates had left her in their familial dust. Even dorky Dave Simmons had come with his wife, and she’d been certain he’d never find a woman. Not even having Tyler there—equally single—helped. He was single by choice, too happy to play the globe-trotting CEO to have the burden of a serious relationship.

“I was feeling sorry for myself. My best friend, Tyler, kept bringing me drinks, and eventually we decided to blow off the party and go down to the Strip.”

“Skip to the part where you eloped,” Gretchen pressed, with an odd mix of wonder and glee on her cherubic face. She enjoyed living vicariously through others.

Amelia shook her head. “It’s kind of a blur, but Tyler reminded me about this stupid pact we made on graduation night. We swore that if we weren’t married by our ten-year reunion, we would marry each other.”

“You didn’t!” Bree said, her large blue eyes growing wider by the minute.

“We did.” She couldn’t believe it either, but they’d gone through with it. When Amelia woke up the next morning, the giant diamond ring on her hand and the naked man beside her in bed had confirmed her worst fears. The night before had not been just a vivid dream. It had really happened. She was married to her best friend.

“We did it for a laugh, you know? In high school, the two of us were always coming up with crazy ideas. I think Tyler was trying to cheer me up, offering to marry me so I wouldn’t feel like the single one at the reunion anymore. It seemed like a brilliant solution at the time.”

“It always does,” Gretchen noted, as though she’d had her share of impetuous experiences.

“What the hell kind of liquor were you drinking?” Bree asked at last, sliding away the bridal magazine she’d been reading to plan her own upcoming nuptials.

“Anyway,” Amelia continued, pointedly ignoring Bree, “the plan was to annul it as soon as we can. He lives in New York. I live here. It’s obviously not going to work long-term.”

Work? What was she even talking about? Of course it wasn’t going to work. She’d just married her best friend from high school! Tyler. She knew everything there was to know about him and she was certain Tyler was not husband material. He worked too much, he traveled constantly and he had a bad habit of falling off the face of the earth for weeks at a time. She loved him, but she couldn’t count on him. And yet, here she was. Married to him.

“So far the annulment plan isn’t panning out the way I’d like. Turns out you can’t annul a marriage in Tennessee just because it was done on a whim. New York may have better laws, but if not, that means a full-on divorce. Either way, Tyler has been traveling too much to start the process. I’ve only gotten a few texts from him in between stops in Belgium, Los Angeles, India... I haven’t even spoken to him on the phone since I left Las Vegas.”

“So do you think he’s really busy, or is he avoiding you?” Gretchen asked. “I would think that might be an awkward situation to deal with. I can’t even imagine sleeping with one of my guy friends from high school. If the sex was bad it would be hard to face him later. If the sex was good...that might be even worse.”

“The sex was amazing,” Amelia confessed, quickly clamping a hand over her mouth. Had she really said that out loud? She shook her head. The words had spilled out because they were true. Tyler had been the most talented and attentive lover she’d ever had. Their wedding night had easily left her top five encounters in its dust. She wasn’t entirely sure what to think about that.

“Well, then,” Bree noted with a smile twisting her lips. “Do tell.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I’ve already said too much.”

“Maybe he’s dragging his feet in the hopes of getting some more of that sugar,” Gretchen suggested.

“There’s no more sugar to be had. That was a one-night thing and we both know it,” Amelia argued, even as she felt the untruth of her words. She wanted more, she just knew she shouldn’t. “He’s just busy. He’s always busy.”

Tyler obviously wasn’t that concerned with fixing this. In the few texts she’d received, he’d told her to relax. If annulment was off the table, there was no rush, so unless she was madly in love and needed to marry someone else right that minute, it wasn’t a big deal. He, of all people, knew about her relationship struggles and knew that the odds of that were extremely low.

But it was a big deal to her. Especially considering the extenuating circumstances. She couldn’t even wrap her brain around that, so she continued to ignore it. It wasn’t a pressing issue...yet.

“So you’re really just going to walk away from the man that gave you the greatest orgasms of your life?” Gretchen frowned. “I don’t think I could do that, even if I couldn’t stand the guy. You and Tyler love each other, though. It’s not much of a hop from friends to lovers, is it?”

“It is a huge hop over a massive chasm, I assure you.” Amelia knew for certain they shouldn’t go there again. Tyler had been her best friend since ninth grade, but she had never really allowed herself to consider anything between the two of them. For one thing, there was no way she wanted to risk their friendship in an attempt to take it to the next level. If it failed—and the odds were that it would—she’d lose the most important person in her life.

For another reason, there was a big difference between being friends and being lovers. Being friends was easy. She tolerated Tyler’s jet-setting, bossiness and extended radio silences just the same as he tolerated her romantic drama and pickiness. It wasn’t a big deal because as friends, it didn’t impact them directly. Dating someone magnified those personality quirks, and suddenly they were deal breakers.

Her raw emotional state at the reunion had apparently forced all those concerns out of her mind. The next thing she knew, she was on the verge of consummating her marriage. In that moment, nothing mattered more than peeling away Tyler’s clothes and getting a taste of the forbidden. His hard body and sure touch had been an unexpected surprise, and she hadn’t been able to get enough of him. Even now, the mere thought of touching him again sent a thrill through her body, awakening parts of her that should never, ever throb with need where Tyler was concerned.

Since she’d gotten home from the reunion, their night together had haunted her. The marriage could be undone. But the memories... Those couldn’t be erased. The way he’d touched her. The way he’d coaxed pleasure from her body as though he’d studied his whole life for that moment... She could never go back to the blissful ignorance they’d once had. They had eaten the forbidden fruit.