Chapter 22
LINCOLN
“Just a few more boxes,” I say to Rocco as I pass him, hauling another load down the path from Jules’s front door to the rented truck.
Easton and Oliver are busy today. But Rocco has a few hours to spare before he leaves town. Thankfully, he’s helping me move Jules’s stuff into my house before it’s time to pick up Cameron from school. Clearly, I underestimated how much stuff my future wife had crammed inside that tiny bedroom.
Books and leather jackets and biker boots.
So many biker boots.
As I try to fit a crumbling box of workout gear into the vehicle, I’m realizing that I should have rented a bigger truck.
Jules hasn’t said much to me all day. She and I have barely exchanged a few words. I think we’re both really nervous about living together under the same roof.
Even still, I’ll admit that a part of me is so damn excited about having her around every day. I’d never say it out loud, though.
My soon-to-be wife makes me feel alive in ways I haven’t felt in a really long time.
But yet another part of me is acutely aware of all the ways this whole thing might blow up in my face.
Jules and I are so different. And throw an eight-year-old kid into the mix? This might very well end in disaster.
I’m lost in my head as I trudge back inside the house for another box. I turn down the hallway and Jules bumps straight into my chest. I catch her, both of my hands gripping her waist and ignoring how good her body feels against mine. We both mumble our apologies.
“Sorry.”
“Oops. My bad.”
But when she looks up at me with those soft brown eyes, I can’t help but hold onto her waist a little longer.
“You okay?” I ask her in a private voice that’s just for the two of us.
She nods and smiles unconvincingly. “Yeah. Great. Just a little preoccupied.”
I can feel Laney discreetly peeking at us from the kitchen where she’s pulling a load of Jules’s fresh laundry out of the dryer and stuffing them into garbage bags.
Rocco is much more obvious, abandoning the bookshelf he’s in the middle of disassembling in the living room so he can stare right at us.
Sensing an opportunity, I brush Jules’s dark hair away from her eyes and plant a kiss on her forehead. “Can’t wait for you to move in with Cameron and me…” I say more loudly.
Supposedly, it’s all for show. I’m pretending to be the perfect fiancé. But deep down, the words I’m saying are sort of true. I’m really looking forward to sharing my home with her.
Jules’s eyes flutter shut, and she tucks her head against my chest. In moments like these it’s hard to tell if she’s still acting. Until she grabs a handful of my ass and purrs. “Aww…I’m excited, too, Snooky Poo.”
Startled, I leap, growling by her ear. “You always have to take it too far…” I complain in a whisper, wrenching myself out of her grasp.
She snickers under her breath. “PDA was part of our deal, Pumpkin Pudding. Clause four. Remember?”
Right then, Rocco strolls by chuckling, the disassembled pieces of the bookshelf clutched in his hands. “Break it up, lovebirds. We have work to do, and I don’t have all day.”
I fight off my own smile as we all get back to work. Julissa Mei Lannister will be the death of me. She was right—I probably should get my will in order.
Once we’ve filled the moving truck to capacity, Jules and Laney start piling things into Laney’s car.
By the way Jules is going in circles—checking and re-checking the bathroom cabinet, the kitchen drawers, under the bed—I can tell that she’s stalling.
She doesn’t quite seem ready to move out of her home with Laney.
So I decide to give the two of them some space.
Rocco and I jump into the truck, and I tell the girls to catch up to us back at my place.
“Damn. Lincoln and Jules sitting in a tree, huh?” Rocco muses as I’m steering the truck away from the curb.
“Yeah. Definitely,” I say admittedly not in the most convincing tone. “We’re in…love.” I try not to gag on the L word.
My brother quirks an eyebrow. “Yeah, in love. And getting married.”
I nod wordlessly, keeping my eyes on the road as I turn at an intersection.
“You don’t really look all that sure of yourself for a man who’s in love,” my brother remarks.
I roll my eyes. Rocco is a notorious playboy. He’s never had a real girlfriend. He can hardly commit to a damn haircut, let alone an actual relationship. Yet, here he is, giving me shit.
“Don’t start with me. What the hell do you know about being in love, anyway?” I bark out, defensive as fuck.
He just laughs. “Fine, I’ve never been in a committed relationship.
But I’ve seen Easton. Now, that is a man in love.
Have you seen him with Alba? When Alba walks into a room, Easton gets this goofy-ass look on his face and he can’t stop grinning and he acts like every word out of her mouth is gospel.
” He scoffs. “When Jules walks into a room, you both look like hi-tech robots doing your best to replicate human emotions. It’s weird. ”
I speak through gritted teeth. “Shut up.” Then I think up something diplomatic to say. The sort of thing our mom would say to us when we were growing up. “Everybody shows love differently. It’s what’s in the heart that counts.” I pat a hand over my chest to make my bullshit more convincing.
“Right…” Rocco mutters, clearly not believing me.
I change the subject. “So what’s up with you? How’s work?”
My brother’s demeanor shifts automatically. “Work is…complicated.”
“What? What’s going on?” I ask, noting the suddenly serious atmosphere in the truck.
It alarms me. Because Rocco is the most unserious person I know. But when it comes to his job, he doesn’t play around.
“I just…I, um…The thing is…” He runs his fingers through his hair. “I think it’s almost time for me to move on.”
“As in, quit?!” I bark out in shock.
He sort of shrugs, sort of nods.
“Rocco, you love your job. You love working with the Saints.”
“I love working as a trainer,” he corrects me. “Working with the Saints is optional. There are other teams out there.”
Now, every single alarm in my head is going off, because leaving this job is something he would never take lightly.
When Easton pulled the strings to get Rocco hired, the guy walked around cheesing for a month non-stop.
I was seriously afraid he’d split his face open from grinning so hard. And now, he’s quitting?!
After spending a lifetime cleaning up my younger brother’s messes, I’ve become an expert at separating their tiny problems from their nuclear-level disasters.
This is nuclear-level.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I demand, shifting into oldest brother mode.
He expels a sigh, dragging his hand through his hair. “Let’s just say I made a…mistake.”
My eyebrow pistons up toward my hairline. “Who’d you sleep with?”
“What? Why’d you assume I slept with someone?” He tries to laugh it off. But he can’t meet my eyes so I know I’m onto something.
“Because I know you,” I say confidently. “I know you well enough to know you stuck your dick somewhere you shouldn’t have, and now you’re trying to run away from the consequences. So, spill. Who was it? Your boss’s wife?” I prod.
Rocco scoffs. “Yuck! No! Never! I don’t do cheaters. Dad was a cheater,” he says in disgust.
I nod, knowing that he’s telling the truth. My brothers and I all witnessed the destructive effect Dad’s infidelity had on our mother. I’d like to believe that none of us would never inflict that kind of pain on any woman.
“Your boss’s daughter then?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t have a death wish.”
“Your boss’s mother? Grandmother?” I feel a headache coming on. “Jeez, Rocco. Not the grandmother!”
He flings his arms up in the air. “For crying out loud, Lincoln!”
I stare at the distress on his face. I shake my head. “You’re gonna have to grow up, Rocco. Before you blow up your whole life in your own face.”
“Don’t you think I know that…?” He looks out the window and mumbles, “I feel like I just need a…fresh start.”
I’m ready to read my idiot brother the riot act.
But before I can tear him a new one and figure out what the hell is going on, I’m pulling into my driveway and cutting the engine.
Rocco eagerly jumps out of the truck, popping open the cargo space, hauling out boxes and lugging them inside like his life depends on it.
Trying to dodge accountability like always.
I move at a slower pace, something I soon come to regret. Because when I finally step into the house, I see that Rocco has been carrying Jules’s boxes upstairs to my bedroom.
I panic.
“Hey, wait, wait, wait!”
Rocco turns over his shoulder to look at me as he’s climbing the stairs.
“Uh, we’re just gonna leave that stuff down here,” I call out frantically from the bottom of the stairs. “Maybe we can put it in my office.”
My brother glances down at the box he’s holding. “It says bedroom, though.”
I fumble over my words. “I, uh, we’re, I’m just gonna leave it down here so Jules can sort through it at her own pace.” I smile tightly.
I’m pretty damn sure that Jules will snap my neck when she sees that her stuff has been placed in my bedroom. She and I haven’t discussed sleeping arrangements, and I definitely don’t want to be presumptuous.
But Rocco is starting to smell a rat. I can tell.
His eyes pingpong between the box in his arms and me. “What’s there to sort through? The box is clearly labeled and everything.”
I exhale. “I just don’t want Jules to feel pressured into anything.”
He frowns. “Why would she feel pressured? I mean, you guys are getting married. What kind of newly weds don’t share the same bedroom?”
He has a point. I hate that.
“Y’know what? Fine. Put it in my bedroom. Fine.”
I’ll have a snapped neck. I’ll manage. But at least I’ll get Rocco off my back. Anything to keep from blowing my fake marriage’s cover.
My brother keeps giving me suspicious looks until we’re done emptying the truck. Once we’re finished with the last few boxes, we head to the kitchen for a drink.
We’re leaned side by side against the counter, each drinking our own ginger ale, when he can’t hold his tongue any longer.
“Okay, spit it out. What’s going on with you and Jules?” He wipes a hand across his sweaty forehead and his eyes bore into me. “Why does it feel like you two are trying to prank the rest of us?”
Ugh. Why won’t he just let it go? Annoying younger brothers!
“Because our marriage is a business deal!” I roar before I can stop myself.
My now-smirking brother angles his body to face me, fully invested in my story. “Well, this I have to hear.”
“Look—this stays between the two of us, okay?” I demand before proceeding to spill my guts.
He throws up his free hand in surrender. “Okay. My lips are sealed.”
My shoulders drop on a huff. “Jules is expecting some money from her family,” I explain. “But she needs to be married to cash in. That’s why she needs a husband. Temporarily.”
“And you. What’s in it for you…?” Rocco asks.
“I, well…um…”
“Yes…?” My asshole brother rotates his wrist in a speed it up motion.
“My business won’t survive much longer if I keep doing things the way I’ve been doing them,” I start.
“I’m trying to close a merger with a bigger sports agency in order to tap into a larger well of resources.
But the owners don’t want anything to do with me because I don’t have a wife.
” I shake my head, hating that I find myself in this position. “It’s all bullshit.”
Rocco huffs out in surprise. But before he can ask the million questions that are swirling in his head, the front door pops open.
We walk out into the foyer and find Jules and Laney dumping garbage bags of clothes at the bottom of the staircase.
Jules meets my stare with wary eyes. “We’ve got a few more things in the car,” she says hoarsely before returning outside with Laney on her heels.
I take the initiative, hauling garbage bags upstairs to my bedroom.
My brother follows after me with a pile of bags in his arms. My pulse throbs in my throat when an engine groans out.
Through the window, I see Laney’s rusty 1990s Corolla bumping off down the driveway.
Rocco and I are busy stacking the bags in the corner of the room when Jules appears in the doorway.
Her eyes go wide and her footsteps grind to a halt. She looks around at the pile of documents sitting on the armchair by the window, the book and the water glass on the bedside table, the cologne bottle sitting on the dresser.
“Is this…your bedroom?” she croaks out.
I swallow as our eyes meet. “Yes.” I give my head a shake. “Well, our bedroom now, I guess.” I search her stare, trying to gauge her reaction. “Is that okay?”
My bedroom is pretty big, fully furnished with a king-sized bed, dresser, side tables and sizable armoire. But suddenly, it doesn’t feel big enough for this woman, this tension and me.
Jules smiles. It’s forced. “It’s good. Great. Amazing,” she says quickly.
She trips on her own feet when she starts backing up. She looks like she’s about to run. In fact, she does just that.
“I’m gonna go, uh, for a jog.” She jabs a thumb over her shoulder. “Need to, um, exercise. Exercise is so important.”
Before I can say a word, she spins on her heel and takes off down the stairs.
In a heartbeat, the front door opens and shuts, then Jules is hightailing it down my driveway like she’s the subject of a police manhunt. Biker boots and all.
“Dayum. This whole thing is crazy.” Rocco chuckles as we watch Jules go. “For the past two years, you’ve vowed to never get re-married. Now, here you are engaged to a woman who clearly can’t stand you. The universe has a dark, dark sense of humor.”
“Tell me about it,” I groan.
He claps me on the shoulder then he strolls toward the exit. “Good luck big brother. I have a feeling you’re gonna need it.”