Best Friend Bride

Her enthusiastic response was killing him. His response was even worse. How had they been friends for so long without ever crossing this line? Well, he knew how—because if they had, he would have run in the other direction.

He groaned as her fingers threaded through his hair, sensitizing everything she touched. Then she iced that cake with a tentative push of her tongue that nearly put him on his knees. So unexpected and so very hot. Eagerly, he matched her sweet thrust with his own. Deeper and deeper they spiraled until he couldn’t have said which way was up. Who was doing the giving and who was greedily lapping it up.

He wanted more and took it, easing her head back with firm fingers until he found the right angle to get more of her against his tongue. And now he wanted more of her against his body.

He slid a hand down the curve of her spine until he hit a spot that his palm fit into and pressed until her hips nestled against his erection. Amazing. Perfect.

The opposite of friendly.

That was enough to get his brain in gear again. This was not how it should be between them, with all this raw need that he couldn’t control.

He ended the kiss through some force of will he’d never understand and pulled back, but she tried to follow, nearly knocking herself off balance. Like she had at the ceremony. And in a similar fashion, he gripped her arms to keep her off the floor. It was dizzying how caught up she seemed to get. A rush he could get used to and shouldn’t.

“Sorry,” he said gruffly. “I got a little carried away.”

“That’s what was supposed to happen,” she informed him breathlessly, “if we have any hope of your grandfather believing that we’re deliriously happy together.”

Yeah, that wasn’t the problem he was most worried about at this moment. Viv’s kiss-swollen lips were the color of raspberries and twice as tempting. All for show. He’d gotten caught up in the playacting far too easily, which wasn’t fair to her. Or to his Viv-starved body that had suddenly found something it liked better than her cupcakes.

“I don’t think anyone would question whether we spark, Viv,” he muttered.

The real issue was that he needed to kill that spark and was pretty certain that would be impossible now.

Especially given the way she was gazing up at him with something a whole lot hotter than warmth in her brown eyes. She’d liked kissing him as much as he’d liked it. She might even be on board with taking things a step further. But they couldn’t consummate this marriage or he could forget the annulment. Neither did he want to lead her on, which left him between a rock and an extremely hard place that felt like it would never be anything but hard for the rest of his life.

“In fact,” he continued, “we should really keep things platonic behind closed doors. That’s better for our friendship, don’t you think?”

He’d kissed his wife and put his hands on her body because she’d told him to. And he was very much afraid he’d do it again whether it was for show or not unless he had some boundaries. Walking away from Viv wasn’t an option. He had to do something that guaranteed he never got so sucked into a woman that she had power over his emotional center.

Thankfully, she nodded. “Whatever works best for you, Jonas. This is your fake marriage.”

And how messed up was it that he was more than a little disappointed she’d agreed so readily?

Three

Viv hummed as she pulled the twenty-four-count pan from the oven and stuck the next batch of Confetti Surprise in its place. Customers thronged the showroom beyond the swinging door, but she kept an eye on things via the closed-circuit camera she’d had installed when she first started turning a profit.

Couldn’t be too careful and besides, it made her happy to watch Camilla and Josie interact with the cupcake buyers while Viv did the dirty work in the back. She’d gotten so lucky to find the two college-aged girls who worked for her part-time. Both of them were eager students, and soon Viv would teach them the back-office stuff like bookkeeping and ordering. For now, it was great to have them running the register so Viv could focus on product.

Not that she was doing much focusing. Her mind wandered constantly to the man who’d kissed her so passionately last night.

Jonas had been so into the moment, so into her, and it had been heady indeed. Score one for Viv to have landed in his arms due to her casual suggestion that they needed to “practice.” Hopefully he’d never clue in that she jumped when he touched her because he zapped a shock of heat and awareness straight to her core every dang time, no matter how much she tried to control it.

Of course, he’d shut it all down, rightfully so. They were friends. If he’d been interested in more, he would have made a move long before now.

Didn’t stop her from wishing for a repeat.

A stone settled into her stomach as three dressed-to-the-nines women breezed through the door of her shop. On the monitor, she watched her sisters approach the counter and speak to Josie, oblivious to the line of customers they’d just cut in front of. Likely they were cheerfully requesting to speak with Viv despite being told countless times that this wasn’t a hobby. She ran a business, which meant she didn’t have time to dash off with them for tea, something the three housewives she shared parentage with but little else didn’t seem to fully grasp.

Except she couldn’t avoid the conversation they were almost certainly here for. She’d finally broken down and called her mother to admit she’d gotten married without inviting anyone to the wedding. Of course that news had taken all of five minutes to blast its way to her sisters’ ears.

Dusting off her hands, Viv set a timer on her phone and dropped it into her pocket. Those cupcakes in the oven would provide a handy out if things got a little intense, and knowing Hope, Joy and Grace, that was likely. She pushed open the swinging door and pasted a smile on her face.

“My favorite ladies,” she called with a wave and crossed the room to hug first Grace, her next-oldest sister, then Joy and Hope last. More than a few heads turned to check out the additions to the showroom. Individually, they were beautiful women, but as a group, her sisters were impressive indeed, with style and elegance galore.

Viv had been a late-life accident, but her parents tried hard not to make her feel like one. Though it was obvious they’d expected to have three children when they couldn’t come up with a fourth virtue to name their youngest daughter. She’d spent her childhood trying to fit in to her own family and nothing had changed.

Until today. Finally, Viviana Kim had a new last name and a husband. Thanks to Jonas and his fake marriage deal, she was part of the club that had excluded her thus far. Just one of many reasons she’d agreed.

“Mom told us,” Hope murmured, her social polish in full force. She was nothing if not always mindful of propriety, and Viv appreciated it for once, as the roomful of customers didn’t need to hear about Viv’s love life. “She’s hurt that you ran off to Vegas without telling anyone.”

“Are you happy?” Grace butted in. She’d gotten married to the love of her life less than a year ago and saw hearts and flowers everywhere. “That’s the important thing.”

“Mom said you married Jonas Kim,” Joy threw in before Viv could answer, not that she’d intended to interrupt before everyone had their say. That was a rookie mistake she’d learned to avoid years ago. “Surely his family would have been willing to make a discreet contribution to the ceremony. You could have had the wedding of the year.”

Which was the real crime in Joy’s mind—why spend less money when you could spend more, particularly when it belonged to someone else? Joy’s own wedding had garnered a photo spread in Bride magazine five years ago, a feat no other Raleigh bride had scored since.

It had been a beautiful wedding and Joy had been a gorgeous bride. Of course, because she’d been so happy. All three of her sisters were married to handsome, successful men who treated them like royalty, which was great if you could find that. Viv had made do with what had been offered to her, but they didn’t have to know that. In fact, she’d do everything in her power not to tip off her sisters that her marriage was anything but amazing. Was it so wrong to want them to believe she’d ended up exactly where she’d yearned to be for so long?

“Also, he’s Korean,” Hope added as if this might be news to Viv. “Mom is very concerned about how you’ll handle the cultural differences. Have you discussed this with him?”

That was crossing a line. For several reasons. And Viv had had enough. “Jonas is American. He was born in the same hospital as you, so I’m pretty sure the cultural differences are minimal. Can you just be happy for me and stop with the third degree?”

All three women stared at her agape, even Grace, and Viv was ashamed at how good the speech had made her feel. She rarely stood up to the steamroller of her sisters, mostly because she really did love them. But she was married now, just like they were, and her choices deserved respect.

“Jonas does make me happy,” she continued, shooting Grace a smile. “But there’s nothing to be concerned about. We’ve known each other for about a year and our relationship recently grew closer. That’s all there is to it.”

Despite the fact that it was absolute truth, prickles swept across her cheeks at the memory of how close they’d gotten last night.

An unconvinced expression stole over Hope’s face. As the oldest, she took her role as the protector seriously. “We still don’t understand why the secrecy. None of us even remember you so much as mentioning his name before.”

“Of course we know who he is,” Joy clarified. “Everyone in Raleigh appreciates that he’s brought a global company to this area. But we had no idea you’d caught his eye.”

Viv could read between those lines easily enough. She didn’t wear nine-thousand-dollar Alexander McQueen suits to brunch and attend the opera with a priceless antique diamond necklace decorating her cleavage. “He’s been coming in to buy cupcakes for quite some time. We go to lunch. It’s not that big of a mystery.”

Did it seem like a mystery to others? A lick of panic curled through her stomach. She couldn’t ruin this for Jonas. If other people got suspicious because she wasn’t the type of woman a billionaire CEO should want to marry, then everything might fall apart.

Breathe. He’d made that decision. Not her. He’d picked Viv and anyone who thought she wasn’t good enough for him could jump in a lake.

“But he married you.” Grace clapped her hands, eyes twinkling. “Tell us how he proposed, what you wore at the wedding. Ooooh, show us pictures.”

Since his proposal had begun with the line “This is going to sound crazy, but hear me out,” Viv avoided that subject by holding out her left hand to dazzle her sisters with the huge diamond and then grabbing her phone to thumb up the shots Warren had taken at Jonas’s request. The yellow of her dress popped next to Jonas’s dark suit and they made an incredibly striking couple if she did say so herself. Mostly because she had the best-looking husband on the planet, so no one even noticed her.

“Is that Hendrix Harris in the shot?” Hope sniffed and the disapproval on her face spoke volumes against the man whose picture graced local gossip rags on a regular basis.

“Jonas and Hendrix are friends,” Viv said mildly as she flipped through a few more pictures that mercifully did not include North Carolina’s biggest scandalmonger. “They went to Duke together. I’ll try not to let him corrupt me if we socialize.”

As far as she could tell, Hendrix had scarcely noticed her at the wedding, and he’d seemed preoccupied at the cocktail lounge where they’d gone to have drinks after the ceremony. The man was pretty harmless.

“Just be careful,” Hope implored her, smoothing an invisible wrinkle from her skirt. “You married Jonas so quickly and it appears as if he may have some unsavory associations. I say this with love, but you haven’t demonstrated a great track record when it comes to the men you fall for.”

That shouldn’t have cut so deeply. It was true. But still.

“What Hope means is that you tend to leap before you look, Viv,” Grace corrected, her eyes rolling in their sister’s direction, but only Viv could see the show of support. It soothed the ragged places inside that Hope’s comment had made. A little.

“It’s not a crime to be passionate about someone.” Hands on her hips, Viv surveyed the three women, none of whom seemed to remember what it was like to be single and alone. “But for your information, Jonas and I were friends first. We share common interests. He gives me advice about my business. We have a solid foundation to build on.”

“Oh.” Hope processed that. “I didn’t realize you were being so practical about this. I’m impressed that you managed to marry a man without stars in your eyes. That’s a relief.”

Great. She’d gotten the seal of approval from Hope solely because she’d skirted the truth with a bland recitation of unromantic facts about her marriage. Her heart clenched. That was the opposite of what she wanted. But this was the marriage she had, the one she could handle. For now. Tomorrow, Jonas would take her to his father’s house to meet his grandfather and she hoped to “practice” being married a whole lot more.

Thankfully, she’d kept Jonas in the dark about her feelings. If he could kiss her like he had last night and not figure out that she’d been this close to melting into a little puddle, she could easily snow his family with a few public displays of affection.

It was behind closed doors that she was worried about. That’s where she feared she might forget that her marriage was fake. And as she’d just been unceremoniously reminded, she had a tendency to get serious way too fast, which in her experience was a stellar way to get a man to start looking for the exit.

That was the part that hurt the most. She wanted to care about someone, to let him know he was her whole world and have him say that in return. It wasn’t neediness. She wasn’t being clingy. That’s what love looked like to her and she refused to believe otherwise.

But she’d yet to find a man who agreed with her, and Jonas was no exception. They had a deal and she would stick to it.

* * *

The house Jonas had grown up in lay on the outskirts of Raleigh in an upscale neighborhood that was homey and unpretentious. Jonas’s father, who had changed his name to Brian when he became a legal US citizen upon marrying his American wife, hadn’t gone into the family business, choosing to become a professor at Duke University instead.

That had left a hole in the Kim empire, one Jonas had gladly filled. He and Grandfather got along well, likely because they were so similar. They both had a drive to succeed, a natural professionalism and a sense of honor that harbored trust in others who did business with Kim Electronics.

Though they corresponded nearly every day in some electronic form, the time difference prevented them from speaking often, and an in-person visit was even rarer. The last time Jonas had seen Grandfather had been during a trip to Seoul for a board meeting about eighteen months ago. He’d invited his parents to come with him, as they hadn’t visited Korea in several years.

“Are you nervous?” Jonas glanced over at Viv, who had clutched her hands together in her lap the second the car had hit Glenwood Avenue. Her knuckles couldn’t get any whiter.

“Oh, God. You can tell,” she wailed. “I was trying so hard to be cool.”

He bit back a grin and passed a slow-moving minivan. “Viv, they’re just people. I promise they will like you.”

“I’m not worried about that. Everyone likes me, especially after I give them cupcakes,” she informed him loftily.

There was a waxed paper box at her feet on the floorboard that she’d treated as carefully as a newborn baby. When he’d reached for it, she’d nearly taken his hand off at the wrist, telling him in no uncertain terms the cupcakes were for her new family. Jonas was welcome to come by Cupcaked next week and pick out whatever he wanted, but the contents of that box were off-limits.

He kind of liked Bossy Viv. Of course he liked Sweet Viv, Uncertain Viv, Eager-to-Help Viv. He’d seen plenty of new facets in the last week since they’d moved in together, more than he’d have expected given that they’d known each other so long. It was fascinating.

“What are you worried about then?” he asked.

“You know good and well.” Without warning, she slid a hand over his thigh and squeezed. Fire rocketed up his leg and scored his groin, nearly doubling him over with the sudden and unexpected need.

Only his superior reflexes kept the Mercedes on the road. But he couldn’t stop the curse that flew from his mouth.

“Sorry,” he muttered but she didn’t seem bothered by his language.

“See, you’re just as bad as me.” Her tone was laced with irony. “All that practice and we’re even jumpier than we were before.”

Because the practice had ended before he started peeling off her clothes. Ironic how his marriage of convenience meant his wife was right there in his house—conveniently located in the bedroom next to his. He could hear her moving around between the walls and sometimes, he lay awake at night listening for the slightest movement to indicate she was likewise awake, aching to try one of those kisses with a lot less fabric in the way.

That kind of need was so foreign to him that he wasn’t handling it well.

“I’m not jumpy,” he lied. “I’m just...”

Frustrated.

There was no good way to finish that sentence without opening up a conversation about changing their relationship into something that it wasn’t supposed to be. An annulment was so much less sticky than a divorce, though he’d finally accepted that he was using that as an excuse.

The last thing he could afford to do was give in to the simmering awareness between them. Jonas had convinced himself it was easy to honor the pact because he really didn’t feel much when it came to relationships. Sure, he enjoyed sex, but it had always been easy to walk away when the woman pushed for more.

With Viv, the spiral of heat and need was dizzyingly strong. He felt too much, and Marcus’s experience was like a big neon sign, reminding him that it was better never to go down that path. What was he supposed to do, stop being friends with Viv if things went haywire between them? Neither was there a good way to end their relationship before the merger.

So he was stuck. He couldn’t act on his sudden and fierce longing to pull this car over into a shadowy bower of oak trees and find out if all of Viv tasted like sugar and spice and everything nice.

“Maybe we shouldn’t touch each other,” he suggested.

That was a good solution. Except for the part where they were married. Married people touched each other. He bit back the nasty word that had sprung to his lips. Barely.

“Oh.” She nodded. “If you think that won’t cause problems, sure.”

Of course it was going to cause problems. He nearly groaned. But the problems had nothing to do with what she assumed. “Stop being so reasonable. I’m pulling you away from your life with very little compensation in return. You should be demanding and difficult.”

Brilliant. He’d managed to make it sound like touching her was one of the compensation methods. He really needed to get out of this car now that he had a hyperawareness of how easily she could—and would—reach out to slide a hand full of questing fingers into his lap.

Viv grinned and crossed her arms, removing that possibility. “In that case, I’m feeling very bereft in the jewelry department, Mr. Kim. As your wife, I should be draped in gems, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely.” What did it say about how messed up he was that the way Mr. Kim rolled off her tongue turned him on? “Total oversight on my part. Which I will rectify immediately.”

The fourteen-carat diamond on her finger was on loan from a guy Jonas knew in the business, though the hefty fee he’d paid to procure it could have bought enough bling to blind her. Regardless, if Viv wanted jewelry, that’s what she’d get.

They drove into his parents’ neighborhood right on time and he parked in the long drive that led to the house. “Ready?”

She nodded. “All that talk about jewelry got me over my nerves. Thanks.”

That made one of them.

His mom opened the door before they’d even hit the stone steps at the entryway, likely because she’d been watching for the car. But instead of engulfing Jonas in the first of what would be many hugs, she ignored her only child in favor of her new daughter-in-law.

“You must be Viviana,” his mother gushed, and swept Viv up in an embrace that was part friendly and part Thank you, God, I finally have a daughter. “I’m so happy to meet you.”

Viv took it in stride. “Hi, Mrs. Kim. I’m happy to meet you, too. Please call me Viv.”

Of course she wasn’t ruffled. There was so little that seemed to trip her up—except when Jonas touched her. All practicing had done was create surprisingly acute sexual tension that even a casual observer would recognize as smoldering awareness.

He was currently pretending it didn’t exist. Because that would make it not so, right?

“Hi, Mom,” he threw in blithely since she hadn’t even glanced in his direction.

“Your grandfather is inside. He’d like to talk to you while I get to know Viviana. Tell me everything,” she said to her new daughter-in-law as she accepted the box of cupcakes with a smile. “Have you started thinking about kids yet?”

Jonas barely bit back another curse. “Mom, please. We just got here. Viv doesn’t need the third degree about personal stuff.”

Right out of the gate with the baby questions? Really? He’d expected a little decorum from his mom. In vain, obviously, and a mistake because he hadn’t had a chance to go over that with Viv. Should they say they didn’t want children? That she couldn’t have any?

He and Viv clearly should have spent less time “practicing” and more in deep conversation about all aspects of potential questions that might come up this weekend. Which they’d have to rectify tonight before going to bed. In the same room.

His mother shot him a glare. “Grandchildren are not personal. The hope of one day getting some is the only reason I keep you around, after all.”

That made Viv laugh, which delighted his mother, so really, there was nothing left to do but throw up his hands and go seek out Grandfather for his own version of the third degree.

Grandfather held court in the Kim living room, talking to his son. The older Jonas’s dad got, the more he resembled Grandfather, but the similarities ended there. Where Brian Kim had adopted an American name to match his new homeland, Kim Jung-Su wore his Korean heritage like the badge of honor it was.

Kim Electronics had been born after the war, during a boom in Korean capitalism that only a select few had wisely taken advantage of. Jonas loved his dad, but Grandfather had been his mentor, his partner as Jonas had taken what Jung-Su had built and expanded it into the critical US market. They’d created a chaebol, a family-run conglomerate, where none had existed, and they’d done it together.

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