The picture taking up half of the front page was a shot of our first kiss—how Mabel managed to get a picture of that, I had no idea, though I hadn’t exactly been paying attention to anything other than Quinn’s lips against mine. While we’d traveled thirty miles to another town specifically to keep this quiet as long as possible, we’d clearly underestimated Mabel’s investigative reporting skills.
Below the main picture were two smaller ones—both of Quinn and me. One from the back as I’d held her in my arms and carried her toward her car after she’d rolled her ankle following the auction. My head was bent down toward hers, making it look like we were having an intimate conversation. And the other at Kick Some Axe when I’d tugged her away from Eli, her back pressed to my chest as I held her to me with a hand curved around her waist. Her head was tipped back, resting on my chest, and mine was lowered toward her. And though I knew she’d been asking me what the hell I was doing while glaring daggers at me, from this vantage point, it looked like we were about three seconds away from fucking right there in front of everyone.
Jesus, was it getting hot in here?
With a gasp, Addison snatched the paper from Brady and stared down at it with wide eyes. “Holy shit, I can’t believe it’s true. You”—she shot a glare at me—“gotmarried. To Quinn. The one woman besides me in this entire state who doesn’t fall for your bullshit?”
“So it would seem.”
Addison huffed out a breath. “Seriously? That’sit?”
I shrugged, glancing at my brothers once again, but they were still no help. “Yeah? What else do you want me to say?”
“Um…I don’t know? How about you tell me what kind of backward reality I’ve stumbled into?”
“Not backward…just reality.”
“When did you decide to do this? Better yet, how did you manage to talk her into it?”
“How do you know I was the one who talked her into it?”
“Ohplease. This has Ford written all over it. I just want to know how much you had to drug her to get her to agree.” She gasped. “Oh my God, you’re blackmailing her, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not fucking blackmailing her. Jesus, Addison.”
She scoffed. “Oh, like it’s that much of a stretch with you two. I seriously don’t understand what’s happening. Every time I see you two together, you look ready to claw each other’s eyes out.”
“Or rip each other’s clothes off…” Brady piped up over his cup of coffee.
Aiden glanced at him with a raised brow. “Weird thing to notice about our brother, man…”
He shot Aiden a scowl. “It’s my job.”
“Okay, Mr. Small-Town Detective,” Addison said with a snarky edge to her voice. “Tell me what the hell is going on here, then, because none of it makes sense.”
“What do you mean, none of it makes sense?” I said, shifting in my seat. While Quinn and I hadn’t explicitly laid out that we weren’t going to tell other people about our little make-believe marriage, it sort of went unsaid. And if my family got in on this?Fuck me. “Quinn and I actually had a wedding yesterday.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt your wedding,” Addison said, eyes narrowed on me. “I doubt yourmarriage.”
She was too damn close to the truth, and I was sweating now for a whole different reason than the thought of fucking my wife. “Why the hell would I be in a pretend marriage?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“You twowerejust arguing at One Night Stan’s,” Levi said.
I shot him a glare. I’d helped that little shit out so he wouldn’t have to talk about Harper, and this was how he repaid me? See if I saved him from the wrath of our siblings ever again.
“Right before he grumbled to the bartender that she was about to become his wife,” my traitor—I mean, twin—said.
“Wait…” Aiden said, his attention pinging between our siblings. “He ran into Chelsea a couple weeks ago and got conned into going to her wedding. He wouldn’t actually go as far as to marry Quinn just to have a date to that, would he?”
Well…it sounded stupid when he said it like that.
As one, they all turned to face me, gazes scrutinizing, before turning back to one another, all of them nodding.
“Yeah, he’d definitely do that,” Aiden said.
They were acting likeIhad been the deciding factor here, when I was just a willing participant. Quinn was getting far more out of this than I was.
