My Husband the Enemy Read online

  My Husband the Enemy

  Emery Cross

  Published by Emery Cross, 2018.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  EPILOGUE

  Copyright© by Emery Cross

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  CHAPTER ONE

  SERENA

  JENNY DEALT A MAGICIAN card and, giving me a significant look, intoned, “You will meet a handsome, mysterious stranger.” Every time she drew a Major Arcana card that featured a male figure she repeated that phrase.

  Having no clue how to read tarot cards, she was making stuff up as she went along. She’d brought a novelty deck which was really nothing more than a drinking game. Four friends, four bottles of booze. All to celebrate my twenty-first birthday.

  Nobody had bothered to read the instructions. Instead, for each of the four Minor Arcana suits a different alcohol had been assigned. Vodka for the wands, rum for the pentacles, tequila for the swords, and gin for the cups. When a face card turned up a shot glass was filled with the respective liquor.

  Nicole insisted that mixing all those liquors was no different from drinking a Long Island Iced Tea and that considering we were leaving out the simple syrup and triple sec there was really very little chance of getting sick. We all laughed at her logic.

  Probably because we’d done a lousy job shuffling the deck, a face card from the swords suit kept turning up for me. Twenty minutes into the game and I’d already downed three shots of tequila.

  Jenny’s eyes opened wide as she plunked down the death card with a skeletal knight astride a horse. “You will meet a handsome, mysterious stranger.”

  “She can’t have all the mysterious strangers,” Kate said as she grabbed the card. “You know how much I love a guy on horseback.”

  My phone rang and I fumbled it. Giggling, I bent over and scooped it off the floor.

  My inebriated mind couldn’t grasp what I was hearing. My father shot?

  “What?” I asked the panic rising in my voice.

  The girls gathered around me.

  “Your father’s just been shot,” repeated the gravelly voice.

  “Serena, do you understand what I’m telling you.” I put a face to the voice. It was my father’s business partner, Ward Payne.

  Jenny had come up behind me, and placed a supporting arm around me.

  “Please tell me he’s alive.”

  “He is,” Ward said. “I’m sending a car around.”

  “No, I can get there faster on my own.” I hung up. What the hell was I thinking? I wasn’t fit to drive and neither were any of my friends. I called Ward back and asked to be picked up.

  I pulled on some boots and threw a jacket over my tank top.

  “We’re going with you,” Jenny said. She was holding onto the table to stop from swaying. I didn’t think five drunk girls coming into the ER was a brilliant idea.

  I gave them each a quick hug. “You guys stay. I’ll call you.”

  On the ride to the hospital, I tried to make sense of what had happened. Had my father been mugged? Why had Ward not given me any details?

  As it turned out, my father hadn’t been shot recently as Ward had led me to believe, he’d been admitted twelve hours before, which explained why my doting dad hadn’t called and wished me a happy birthday. I headed down the corridor toward the ICU. I was a trembling mess, scared for my father and furious with his business partner.

  I stopped and braced myself on the wall thinking I might pass out or vomit. It felt as if my heart was being squeezed. A man wearing scrubs slowed his steps as he neared me. I avoided eye contact and he got the message and moved on.

  I picked up the phone on the wall outside of ICU.

  The voice on the other end asked me to enter alone because my father already had a visitor and visitors were limited to two. I was shocked that Ward would be at his bedside. Their partnership had become strained over the years. There was a short pause, before I was buzzed in.

  The ICU was intimidating. Cold and clinical and deadly serious. My pulse was pounding in my ears as I searched for the room number. The news had sobered me some, but I wasn’t in great shape. I kept repeating the number to myself so I wouldn’t forget it.

  There was an ominous looking machine parked outside my father’s room. I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans and reached for the door handle. That was not short and stocky Ward leaning over the bed. Dammit, I’d screwed up and gone into the wrong room. I took a backward step just as the man straightened up and glanced over his shoulder at me.

  What the hell was Mac Sutton doing here? Instead of leaving, he walked around to the other side of the bed.

  I tried to shut out the monitors, tubes, and IV bags so I could focus on my father. How had he changed so dramatically in those twelve hours? His skin was paper-white. His eyes always a clear blue seemed milky and aged.

  “Thank God, Serena,” he said, his voice strained. He reached for me; the movement seemed feeble and shook me to the core.

  The floor seemed to tilt out from under me and I grabbed for the bed’s side-rail. Keeping a white-knuckled grip on the rail with one hand, I clasped his hand with the other. I leaned over and kissed his knuckles. His skin felt cool and clammy against my lips.

  “No time for any of that...” He was never one to let people make a fuss over him.

  The ominous phrase “no time” shook me.

  “Mac,” he said. “Do we have an agreement? Will you marry my daughter?”

  My eyes opened wide. Had the bullet caused some sort of stroke?

  “Dad, you’re confused.”

  “I’m not confused,” he rasped out.

  My father reached over and grabbed Mac’s suit jacket. “You must do this. You owe me.”

  “Dad, I’m dating Ryan Jarvis.”

  Mac gave me a brief glance, his eyes unreadable, and then returned his attention to my father. “I’ll marry her.”

  My father continued to clutch at Mac’s jacket.

  “You have my word,” Mac said.

  My father’s grasp on his jacket relaxed.

  “What is going on here?”

  My father turned to look at me. Why were his eyes so cloudy? “An alliance with Mac can protect you.” His voice was now nothing more than a faint croak, I found myself bending forward to hear him.

  “Protect me from what? Who did this to you?”

  My father’s eyes drifted shut.

  “No more questions,” Mac said. “He needs to rest.” He moved around the bed and took my elbow in his hand, ready to steer me out of the room.

  I wanted to resist him, to remain by my father’s side, but he was right.

  “You’ve been drinking,” he said in an accusatory tone the second we stepped outside of the room.

  “I was celebrating. I turned twenty-one today.” I yanked my arm from his grasp and headed toward the exit through a blur of tears. I could feel Mac’s presence behind me as I stumbled over the threshold and into the waiting room.

  Ryan was suddenly in front of me, his arms open wide. I fell into them.

  “I just heard,” he said.

&nb
sp; The news of my father’s injury had clearly filtered through the company’s ranks.

  “Jarvis, I need to talk to you. Meet me in the parking lot,” Mac said as he strode past us.

  Oh hell, he was going to tell Ryan. I disengaged myself from Ryan’s comforting embrace. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.” I hurried after Mac.

  He was heading toward the bank of elevators when I caught up with him. “Please don’t mention what my father said.”

  He shot me a sideways glance, but didn’t break his stride. “You’re going to slam Jarvis with the news after the marriage?”

  “I’m not going to hold you to your promise. I know you had no choice.” Only a monster would have denied my father’s frantic plea.

  “You had your opportunity to speak up,” he said gruffly.

  “I tried.”

  He punched the down arrow button then turned to face me. His gray eyes suited his personality perfectly. They were the color of unbending steel. “I’m not going to burn in hell for you, baby. I’m not reneging on a promise to a dying man.”

  I gasped. “He’s not dying.”

  “He is,” he said bluntly.

  My throat constricted with angry tears. “I always figured you for a grade-A bastard and you’ve just confirmed it.” He flinched at my rage. I’d never spoken to him like that before. I’d always maintained a polite, distant attitude.

  There was a subtle change in his expression, a tightening of his jaw, a slight narrowing of his eyes. It was clear that up to this moment he hadn’t realized I had such a low opinion of him.

  My father had spoken to me about his new hire, recounting Mac’s exploits with relish. Mac Sutton had been fresh from a stint as a mercenary, working for a shady outfit in the Middle East when my father offered him the corner office and the Operations Manager position. Once an Army Ranger, he’d traded his military know-how for cold hard cash. He’d been arrested for gun-running, but those charges hadn’t stuck.

  When I’d questioned my father’s decision to hire a man with such a dodgy past, he’d snapped at me. He’d said, with obvious impatience, that Mac had once been a hero and that he deserved a second chance.

  The elevator door opened and he stepped into the empty car. He turned to face me, his gray gaze stone-hard. “Fine, darlin’, I won’t talk to Jarvis.” His Texas drawl was suddenly stronger than usual. I wondered if anger had triggered that. “I’ll leave that up to you.”

  He reached over and hit the button for his floor. “Whether you break his heart before or after the ceremony makes no fucking difference to me,” he said just before the doors closed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SERENA

  THE DAY I’D MADE ARRANGEMENTS for a graveside ceremony the weather had been glorious. Now the sky was dark and dreary and pouring down buckets. The clouds seemed to be crying for me since my eyes were dry. I’d wrung myself out in the days following my father’s death.

  I stood on the grassy hill flanked between two men built like trucks. Mac Sutton had hired bodyguards immediately after our contentious encounter. I’d come home from the hospital and found the men waiting for me on my doorstep.

  I’d worn a sedate, knee-length dress and tucked my pink hair under a black hat. The pink had struck me as too frivolous for the occasion.

  Tom, who seemed to always wear sunglasses no matter the weather, covered both our heads with a big umbrella. I was still getting wet though. Drops propelled by the wind, came at me diagonally, dotting my black dress.

  A clear plastic tarp had been placed over the coffin. The wind kept lifting one of the corners of the tarp, revealing the brass handles, and ruffling the spray of flowers draped over the coffin. I recalled the pallbearers carrying my mother’s glossy white casket. My father who had taken one of the handles had faltered after only a few steps. A friend had rushed to his side to catch him before he collapsed to his knees.

  That friend was now walking across the grass toward me. Ward Payne, my father’s partner, had become stockier over the years, more barrel-chested. He still had a thick mane of hair, but it was now snow white.

  It was disconcerting to see that he was also accompanied by bodyguards. What the hell was going on?

  Ward covered the wet ground with his usual officious pace. I could see the frown lines on his face deepen as he neared me through the rain. He had long ceased being the man who would run to the aid of a friend.

  “Serena, let’s move this inside,” he said when he was within feet of me. He couldn’t even spare a single word of comfort before barking out orders.

  I’d wrangled with Mac about this already. He’d insisted I was taking an unnecessary risk, standing in the open where a sniper could just pick me off. He’d finally relented when I broke down and explained why I wanted a graveside ceremony. I knew without a doubt my father would want the ceremony held beside my mother’s plot. That he would not want to spend one moment longer away from her side.

  I wanted to tell Ward to go home, that he had no business here, that we both knew he and my father had become nothing more than polite strangers. Instead, I answered him as civilly as I could manage. “We can’t. There’s a memorial service going on in the chapel.” I had no actual idea if the chapel was occupied or not.

  His lips thinned in annoyance. “Then you should have arranged for a tent.”

  He turned his head to glare first at one of his bodyguards and then the other. The men were bracketing his sides, standing at an angle that allowed them a view of the upper slopes and the roads leading into the park.

  “Stand behind me, you idiots. The access road is in back of me for God’s sake.” The bodyguards exchanged glances over Ward’s head.

  Carl, one of the giants protecting me, made a sound of disgust at Ward’s condescending tone.

  Ward obviously didn’t care if the men would be at a disadvantage standing with their backs to the road. He was clearly quite willing for them to take a bullet in the back for him.

  The bodyguard with the gray crew cut leaned in and spoke in a hushed tone. Ward waved him away with obvious irritation, but allowed the bodyguards to keep their positions.

  Ward jerked up his arm and quickly checked his heavy gold watch. “The minister better make this fast.”

  “But nobody else has arrived,” I said.

  “I threatened them with dismissal if they attended. I have no intention of being held liable if the killer decides to show up here and start firing.”

  I could not understand all these precautions. Jenny and Kate had wanted to come, but the bodyguards had nixed that idea. “But the police think it was a robbery that went wrong. They took his wallet.”

  He made a disgruntled sound. “What mugger leaves a platinum Rolex behind?”

  The core of me shriveled with sadness. After my mother died, my father had devoted his life to the company and now nobody would be paying their respects. Not even Ryan, who after the night at the hospital had vanished from my life. My calls had gone straight to voice mail and he’d ignored my texts. I suspected that Mac Sutton had spoken to him despite claiming that he wouldn’t.

  A small sigh of relief escaped my lips at the sight of the minister approaching from the nearby chapel. I wanted away from Ward. His presence chilled me more than the rain.

  The minister wore a clear poncho over his clerical attire. The Bible he held was sheathed in plastic as well. The man looked miserable as he opened the Bible and adjusted the plastic to protect the pages.

  “It’s pouring. What are you waiting for?” Ward said, startling the minister into action.

  The man stopped fussing with the plastic and cleared his throat then began reading a Bible verse in a rushed voice.

  Hearing wheels on the wet drive, I peered past Ward. A shiny black muscle car pulled up to the curb. I wondered who had the guts to defy Ward’s orders to stay away. Mac Sutton, of course. I watched him striding over the grass with only a long black overcoat for protection from the rain. There weren’t any private securit
y contractors trailing him. Though not officially made president of the company, he’d been the de facto head of it for the last few months. If there was a real risk, why wasn’t he taking any precautions for his own safety?

  The minister paused and waited for Mac to join us. Mac approached and took the umbrella from Tom, then with a subtle signal dismissed both of my bodyguards. The two big men were forced to cram under a single umbrella as they made their way to the SUV.

  I felt Mac’s piercing gray gaze on me, but avoided looking at him. I had no intention of engaging in another argument about my father’s insane request.

  The minister’s voice rose suddenly. It wasn’t lost on me that his recitation became more dynamic now that Mac had arrived. Mad had that effect on people. His mere presence turned other men into sycophants.

  The minister finished with a dramatic “Amen” and then moved to shake Mac’s hand first before offering me his condolences.

  Mac stayed rooted by my side, essentially forcing Ward to make the overture. Ward stepped forward and reached a hand out for Mac to shake, his self-importance shrinking almost visibly.

  Because Mac had so clearly aligned himself with me, Ward felt compelled to acknowledge me as well. Suddenly, he was offering effusive praise for my father. The fawning tone made me ill.

  I stiffened as Ward leaned in and gave me a peck on the cheek. Absently, I rubbed at my cheek as he turned around and headed back down the hill.

  “Expected a Wiccan ceremony,” Mac drawled. He’d teased me once before about my interest in all things Wiccan.

  I turned slightly beneath the circle of the umbrella and peered up at him. He looked like the all-American hero he once had been.

  “We have an appointment to get the license.” He checked his watch, reminding me of Ward trying to hurry the funeral along. Major life events such as death, and marriage had to be wedged into a tight schedule with certain men. “You have time to change first. Something white maybe.”

  I gaped up at him.

  “On second thought, stick with the black,” he said. “It’s the perfect wedding dress for a little witch.”