Checkmate

Page 81

“You didn’t have a choice, huh?” he mused, reaching for his wife as she unclipped her seatbelt and moved to straddle his lap.

“No, not at all,” she readily agreed with an impish smile that had him wishing that they could skip the final inspection and start their wedding night early.

“And how’s that?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her.

“I had to do it for our deal of course,” she said solemnly, looking so damn serious that he couldn’t help but laugh.

“For our deal, huh?” he asked with a chuckle, leaning in and stealing a kiss.

“Mmmhmm,” she murmured, returning the kiss. Before he could deepen the kiss, Rory opened his door. She pulled away and climbed out of the truck, laughing and jumping back when he moved to grab her and drag her back into his arms.

“We need to clear the site so that we can start that insanely expensive honeymoon that you promised me,” she said, heading for the manor.

“That wasn’t part of our deal,” he pointed out as he climbed out of the truck.

“It is now,” she said, sounding happy.

“Do I get a veto?” he asked, following after her.

“Sorry. You’re a married man now, Connor. Your job is to fulfill each and every one of my needs,” she explained, throwing him a wink over her shoulder.

“And you need an insanely expensive honeymoon?” he asked, chuckling as he veered off to the right towards her trailer.

“I really do,” she said, sounding happy, really happy and for a moment he was content with just watching her as she made her way inside the hotel.

How had he gotten so lucky? he couldn’t help but wonder as he turned around, hoping to get this done quickly so that he could move onto the insanely expensive honeymoon that his beautiful wife was demanding when he realized that he had one last problem that he had to handle before it bit him in the ass.

“I heard you tell Andrew that this was all a game,” Jacob, the surly assistant from hell, said numbly as he looked at Connor with what could only be described as disgust. “I kept my mouth shut because I thought Rory could handle herself, but apparently I was wrong. ”

“It’s not what you think, Jacob,” Connor said, taking a step towards the man only to have him take two steps back.

“Then you didn’t just marry Rory so that you could take over her company?” Jacob demanded.

Connor opened his mouth to tell the guy that he had it all wrong, that it wasn’t like that anymore when he realized that this simple misunderstanding had just blown up into a huge f**k up in under sixty seconds.

“Married?” Johnny repeated, sharing a confused look with his brothers as they quickened their step towards him. As he watched the five large men make their way towards him, he realized that there was no way that he could explain any of this without landing in a body cast. They wouldn’t believe him, not that he really cared, but he did care if his wife believed him. As he watched them approach and listened as Jacob ratted his ass out, he realized something very important. He was out of options. So he did the only thing that he could think of.

He made a run for it.

“Get back here!” Johnny yelled as Connor shoved past several men and ran into the hotel and straight into the beautiful lobby.

“Where’s Rory?” he asked Andrew when he spotted the man sitting on the couch, going over paperwork and looking better than he had in months.

“In the ballroom. Why?” Andrew asked, but Connor didn’t have time to answer him, not with five seriously pissed off James brothers after him.

“You have some explaining to do,” Reese, one of the Bradford twins and a f**king cop, shouted, drawing his attention.

Scratch that, he had five James, a little prick bastard and two seriously pissed off looking Bradfords after him and he probably only had seconds to convince Rory that he loved her and wasn’t after her company before they beat the shit out of him. Not wanting to waste another moment, he made a run for the ballroom, shoving men aside as he ran down the long hallway. The entire way he heard the sounds of very large men chasing after him, and he’d be lying if he said that he wasn’t a little weary of the ass whooping that he was about to receive, but he was more concerned about losing Rory.

He was just about to run through the open doorway of the ballroom when Rory stepped out, looking down at the clipboard in her hands and unaware of all the men barreling down on her. She’d barely looked up when he grabbed her arm and gave it a pull towards the elevators. He didn’t have a plan, but he hoped that this would at least buy him a few minutes.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rory demanded as he yanked her into the elevator, pushing her behind him as he slammed his finger against the “Close Door” button just as her brothers and cousins abruptly turned and headed for them.

“Come on, come on, come on!” he muttered, panicking as the door started to close, but not fast enough as her brothers got closer and closer until all they had to do was put their arms out to stop the doors from closing and take his only chance away. Just when he resigned himself to a trip to the hospital and losing Rory, something unexpected happened. The two Bradford twins reached out and grabbed Craig and Johnny just as they reached out to stop the elevator and yanked them back, allowing the elevator doors to close and confusing the hell out of him.

“What is going on?” Rory demanded.

“First things first,” he mumbled as he reached out and pulled the emergency elevator knob. The elevator shook hard once as it came to a complete stop. When the alarm began to blare, he flicked it off, took a deep breath and turned around to face the woman that he loved.

“I love you,” he said, needing her to know that. “I’ve always loved you and no matter what happens, I will always love you. ”

“You son of a bitch!” Bryce shouted, reminding Connor that it probably wouldn’t take the brothers long to crack those doors open and kill him.

“I love you too, Connor, but what is going on?” Rory asked, shooting a nervous look past him at the closed doors.

“I need to tell you something,” he said, cringing when the banging behind him started.

“Yeah, looks that way,” Rory mused, shifting her gaze right back on him.

“Did I mention that I love you?” he asked, shooting her a nervous smile as he tried to figure out how exactly to explain the whole f**ked up deal without Rory going for his balls.

“Start talking, Connor,” Rory said, arching an expectant brow as she folded her arms over her chest.

Since time was a serious factor, he decided to get right to the point. “I f**ked up. ”

“And…. . ”

“There was more to the deal than I let on,” he said in a rush. “I didn’t think it was worth mentioning because once I realized that I was still in love with you, I didn’t want it any longer. ”

“What didn’t you want any longer?” she asked with a put out sigh, the same way she always did when he was telling her how he’d screwed her over. He felt himself relax, somewhat.

“The plan,” he said, searching desperately for the right way to explain his original plan to her without making her hate him.

“And why did Darrin and Reese attack my brothers?” she asked.