“Maybe I was here to watch the show.” Tilting her head, she continued, “Or any other scenario that doesn’t have me as a man?”
I threw up my hands. “Look, I’m sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I first thought this was a male strip club.”
Addison cocked her brows. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“No, I’m not.”
“How could you possibly think that?”
“All I could deduce when Ty and I got here was that it was some kind of club, and we were surrounded by a bunch of drunken bachelorettes. It just made sense that it would be a strip club.”
“With your less than stellar deduction skills, it’s amazing you managed to get an MBA,” she teased.
“Why is it so unfathomable that I thought you’d snuck out because you wanted to see some naked men?”
“Well, for one, I signed a contract to be your fiancée, and in my experience, most engaged women do not frequent strip clubs unless it’s their bachelorette party. Second, you should know me well enough by now to know I’m not really the strip club type.”
“I know that. I just wanted it to be a strip club because that meant you weren’t out looking for another man—well, one that wasn’t oiled up in g-string.”
Addison’s eyes widened. “You thought I might be meeting up with another man?”
“Although I’m not proud to admit it, yes, I did.”
“Oh. My. God.”
“What?”
“Barrett Callahan, you were jealous!”
“I just said I didn’t want you meeting up with another man, not that I was jealous of one.”
Addison gave me a toothy grin. “You were totally jealous, and you know it.”
“Okay, you know what? I’m done talking about this. Go get dressed so we can get out of here.”
“Fine, fine. You can play it off all you want to, but we both know the truth.”
I rolled my eyes before I started to the door. “Keep dreaming, sweetheart.” When I got out in the hallway, Ty leaned up against the wall, wearing a shit-eating grin on his face. I knew then he’d heard every word of our conversation. “Don’t you start with me.”
He held up his hands. “I didn’t say a word.”
“You didn’t have to—it’s written all over your face.”
A shriek of pain followed by a grunt of frustration came from inside Addison’s dressing room. Turning back to the door, I called, “Are you all right?”
“The pin on my binding is stuck. I can’t seem to get it undone.”
“Do you need some help?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Without another word to Ty, I reentered the dressing room. The sight of Addison with one arm wrapped around her back like a contortionist made me laugh. “You could have asked me to do this before I left. You don’t always have to be so stubborn and independent.”
“At the moment, this stupid pin is the one being stubborn. It’s no wonder considering how fast they had to get me into this costume.”
“Would you just stop and let me get it?”
“Fine,” Addison replied as she dropped her arm and stood straight.
When my fingers brushed against her skin below the binding, she shivered. I tried to focus my attention on the pin instead of her reaction, and after working with it for a few seconds, it finally popped open. “There,” I said as I pulled it out of the fabric.
Addison took the pin from me and promptly tossed it into the trash. She smiled at me. “Thanks. I was beginning to think you might have to cut me out of it.”
Eyeing the scrunched material, I asked, “How do you get out of that stuff?”
She laughed. “It’s kinda like an ace bandage. You just unwrap it.”
Without thinking, I stood watching as she began unraveling the binding. Just before she got to the very end, she glanced up at me, and our eyes locked for a moment. God, she is so beautiful, even with all that makeup.
Shit.
More than anything in the world, I wanted to rip away the binding and jerk her into my arms. I wanted to crush her lips against mine, tasting her mouth and tongue, but this time it wouldn’t be because we were practicing or selling our relationship to the cameras.
No, it would be because I was dying to taste her. I wanted her. I wanted to fuck her, own her, keep her.
Fuck.
I could not go there with Addison. I was already confused as hell about what I felt for her. If I threw in the physical, it would mess everything up.
I took two steps away from her. Clearing my throat, I said, “I’ll be outside.”
“Okay.”
I was so incredibly screwed.
ADDISON
Two weeks after Barrett unmasked me—or maybe I should say unwigged me—singing at Divas, I found myself preparing for quite a different performance on a far bigger scale. As I stood backstage, the thundering roar of the crowd was so deafening it seemed to cause the floor beneath my Jimmy Choos to shudder. Peeking from behind the curtain, I anxiously eyed the multitude of people packed shoulder to shoulder in the George R. Brown convention center in downtown Houston.
In just a few short minutes, I was going to be in front of a crowd of thousands, not to mention the millions watching on television and their computers, to introduce Jane as the potential future First Lady. As I clung to one of the velvet curtains to steady me, I wished I had never agreed to do this. When the idea had first been broached, I had immediately voiced my opposition and suggested Caroline do it instead. She would be in attendance at the convention, and after all, she was a blood relative. I was just the woman masquerading as Jane’s son’s fiancée.