Married to My Best Friend's Brother

My ice-cold CEO of a boss paid me in black cards to marry him.

He slid the card across the desk like spare change. That was the deal: be his wife.

He was my best friend's older brother. And he looked at me like I was something he'd scraped off his shoe.

Pretend to be my wife, he said.

That card could wipe out every cent of debt I had. I said yes before he finished the sentence. Deal.

So I married him. And then I treated him like furniture. Gone every day, out eating and running wild with his little sister instead.

Until the night he caught my wrist and backed me into the wall and wouldn't let go.

"We're married," he said, low. "You really planning to make me starve in my own house?"

...???

Chapter 1

The plan was simple. Quit my dead-end job in New York, go home to Crestmont, and do absolutely nothing with the rest of my life.

Presley had other plans.

I hadn't even finished handing off my work before I was strapped into the private jet she'd sent to collect me.

The billionaire heiress and her corporate-drone best friend. Living the dream.

"You should've quit and come home ages ago." She wrapped herself around my arm, practically vibrating. "You have no idea how boring it is being rich and alone. Now you're back to entertain me. Perfect."

The whole flight she whined into my shoulder about the tragic loneliness of her little-princess life while I'd been grinding away up north.

"Let go of my arm. Let me send this rsum, then you can cling."

I gave her a fake glare. She grumbled and let go.

Going home to coast, I'd said. Cute. Turns out coasting just means being a corporate drone in a nicer zip code.

A girl's still gotta eat.

The second my application went through, Presley leaned over. "Wait. Isn't that my brother's company? What'd you apply for? I'll put in a word."

"..."

You want to know what it's like having the daughter of the richest family in town for a best friend?

I shed one single, undignified tear. You could have mentioned that before I spent an hour on this rsum.

And just like that, I was working at Presley's brother's company. She'd clearly made a call, because my job barely counted as work. I clocked out on time every single day and went straight to her.

She fed me constantly. Dragged me to her place for whatever the family's private chef felt like making.

Food I could never have touched during my grind years in New York. I'd lived on cheap seafood-flavor instant ramen for so long that real seafood, actual steamed sea bass flaking apart on the plate, felt fake in my mouth.

"Novi." Presley pushed a plate of skewers at me, sliding off the ones without chili sauce. "These two years without you, I couldn't click with a single one of those socialite girls. Not one. You're the only person who'll eat street food with me."

"Yours aren't spicy," she added.

"Thank you, Your Highness."

"Oh, shut up." Her voice dropped. "Hey. If you see my brother at the office, dodge him. We're fighting."

"...What?"

A month in, and I still hadn't laid eyes on Presley's brother.

"All I did was back Mom up about him bringing someone home already, and he lost it. Froze half my cards over it. That temper. It's a miracle any woman likes him."

She stabbed a skewer. "And what if the sister-in-law I get stuck with has the same rotten temper? Then I'm double miserable."

"I've never even met your brother." I paused. "He wouldn't know who I am, right?"

Because if he decided to take it out on me at work, I was finished. I have exactly one workplace nightmare and it's a boss who gaslights you and grinds you into paste. But I needed this job. I needed to live.

The only reason I'd crawled home at all was that the commute and the overtime in New York had finally broken me.

"He'll figure it out eventually. Just lie low for now," Presley said. "My brother takes work about a thousand times more seriously than he takes his own life."

I nodded like a good girl and swore to the heavens I would never, ever provoke him.

The universe heard me, and laughed.

The very next morning I slid in right at the buzzer and got caught red-handed.

Blame Presley. She'd forced drink after drink on me the night before and I'd passed out cold. Woke up late, threw on the first thing I touched, sprinted.

I shoved my wrecked, hungover face at the time clock and badged in with two seconds to spare. Perfect attendance, saved. I let out a tiny breath.

"Rolling in at the buzzer. Half-dressed. Which department are you in?"

A cold voice behind me. Not my manager's.

I turned, stiff as a board, and found a face that was criminally handsome and thoroughly disgusted.

"...Admin," I said.

"Admin dresses like this? You haven't read the handbook?"

"Sorry. I'll go fix myself right now."

"Name."

My stomach dropped. Presley's warning came flooding back.

This wasn't the psycho brother. Was it.

"Nova Bennett."

"New?"

"About a month in."

His eyes stayed on me a beat longer than they had any reason to.

"Noted."

Noted what?

I watched him walk off toward the executive floor, completely lost.

Done. It was the psycho brother.

Done. He knew now. The nepotism hire, his little sister's freeloading best friend.

I patted my own skull in silent mourning.

After one dose of Cole Ashford's face, I was useless for the rest of the day. Just watched the clock and prayed for freedom.

The instant it hit quitting time I bolted, terrified of running into him again.

I made it out the door, and there was Presley, waiting in the lobby.

"Novi, baby!" She latched on. "The chef's doing your favorites tonight. Come on, come on, dinner at mine. She does a steamed sea bass that'll change your life."

She hooked my arm. I hesitated.

"Your place... will your brother be there?"

"Why? Did he yell at you?" The sweetness evaporated. She went dead serious in half a second.

"No, no"

"Relax. He hasn't come home once since he blew up over the whole find-a-partner thing. He's got his own place across town."

"Good. Great. Love that."

Knowing I wouldn't run into Cole, I breathed easier.

"Come on, then. Chef wants to know if there's anything else you want. She can make a little of everything."

"Something light," I said. "Those skewers last night wrecked me."

"Done and done."

So there I was, elbow-deep in the best meal of my month, when Cole came home.

My spoon stopped halfway to my mouth. We locked eyes, bare and unguarded.

He swept a flat, unbothered look across the two of us, mid-feast. For half a second it snagged on me, and stayed. Then he went upstairs without a word.

His parents were off vacationing overseas. He lived across town. This whole cavernous mansion was supposed to be Presley's, and Presley's alone. Neither of us had counted on him walking through that door.

We traded one look and put our heads back down over our plates. We just dropped the subject we'd been giggling about and went quiet.

"I swear I didn't know he'd show up," Presley whispered.

"Is there still time to run?"

Chapter 2

We were mid-giggle when Cole came down the stairs.

"Phones at the dinner table." That cold, familiar drawl. "No manners left at all?"

I did not dare lift my head.

"Thirty-two and still single," Presley fired back. "Now that's no manners."

I snorted.

I swear my sense of humor is usually very refined. I just couldn't hold it in.

Cole's face soured. He set a stack of documents on the table, long fingers drumming out a hard rhythm on the wood.

His eyes cut to Presley, then to me.

"Nova, right? Get these to my office before ten tomorrow."

"..."

I threw Presley a save-me look. She gave me nothing.

My phone buzzed twice.

Presley: [I'm so sorry, Novi baby. I have to stop running my mouth. One more word out of me and we'll be down to renting the cheapest eye candy in town.]

Presley: [Be brave, big sis. If it comes to it, take the fall for Pres.]

"..."

The next morning I carried the documents up to Cole's office, jumpy as a cat. No Cole. Instead, a stunning woman was stretched out on his couch, scrolling her phone.

His girlfriend, probably. Any woman who could lounge in that ice block of a man's office was not someone to trifle with.

I gave her a friendly smile, squared the files neatly on his desk, and turned to make a clean getaway.

"Hey." She stopped me without glancing up. Then she did glance up, and her eyes traveled down me and back like she was pricing a rack of clearance sweaters. "You. Any idea where Cole ran off to?"

The way his name rolled out of her, first name, bored, entitled, told me plenty. Not someone in my weight class. Definitely not someone to offend.

"Just dropping off files," I said, all politeness. "No idea. You're welcome to wait."

"Sure." She was already back on her phone, done with me.

I nodded, sending up a quiet thank-you that the boss's girl hadn't torn a strip off me, and made my elegant retreat toward the door.

But of course. The thing you dread is exactly the thing that comes for you.

I walked chest-first into Cole rounding the corner.

I patted my sternum to talk my nerves down and stood there, completely wordless.

He stared, stone-faced, silent. The air went thin.

So I broke first. "Boss. Files are on your desk. Your girlfriend's waiting inside. I'll head down, if that's all."

His cold face went colder. "Girlfriend?"

"...Huh?"

"With me. Now."

"...Huh?"

I trailed after him, sulking. He stepped through the doorway and stopped dead. I walked face-first into his back.

My nose. That genuinely hurt.

"Why'd you stop"

"How many times have I told you." His voice ran straight over mine. "Do not come looking for me. Do not walk into my office."

The woman rose off the couch. "Cole. I made a mistake. Let's start over."

"You actually think I'm a toy you get to pick up and toss whenever the mood takes you?"

"But you've stayed single all this time." She said it like it was obvious, like it was owed to her. "You've been waiting for me. Of course you still love me. And now I'm back."

She surged forward to throw her arms around him. He sidestepped her like she was spilled coffee.

Which left me, standing right behind him, suddenly visible. Her face curdled, humiliated that a nobody had watched the whole thing.

"Why are you still here?" she said.

"..."

You think I want to be here?

Cole didn't miss a beat. "Gia. We broke up. Keep clinging and it stops being sad and starts being harassment."

"Cole. Just hold me."

Her voice went soft and coaxing and my stomach turned. I was inching toward the door, ready to vanish, when Cole caught me by the arm.

"And," he said. "I have a girlfriend."

He pulled me into his side, his arm sliding around me, drawing me in tighter.

Me: ?

"Her?" Gia's voice jumped an octave, like the word wouldn't fit in her mouth.

"Her."

His arm cinched down. I went stiff as a plank, every circuit in my body shorting out at once, close enough to feel the buttons of his shirt press into my shoulder.

Gia's face went blank, then bloodless. Whatever she'd rehearsed died in her throat.

"Walk out of here on your own," he said, "or I call security and they carry you."

That, unmistakably, was anger.

I didn't so much as breathe. I'd come up to drop off a folder and walked into front-row gossip instead. Tonight's dinner with Presley had just written itself.

I was already drafting how to tell her, mostly to distract myself from the crushing gravity of the man pressed against my side, when Gia decided she'd humiliated herself enough. She shot me one last glare and finally left.

For a long moment it was just Cole and me.

The silence set like concrete. I nudged him, carefully. "She's gone. You can let go of my arm now."

He'd pulled me in too tight. First time I'd ever been this close to a man's chest. My heart slammed. I didn't dare move, close enough to feel his breath stir my hair and the heat coming off him.

Presley and I used to hire cute boys to drink with us, sure. But only ever to drink and play dice. Nothing that crossed a line. We talked a big, filthy game, the two of us, and our actual hands-on experience with men clocked in at roughly zero.

"Ahem. Nova."

He paused. Another stretch of that deafening silence.

"Take tomorrow off. We're going to the courthouse to get married."

"?"

"Are you insane?"

"Every card Presley froze, I put back. We sign a contract. You play my wife."

...This deal wasn't sounding like a loss.

The limit on a single one of those cards could have covered me working myself to the bone for the rest of my natural life.

"One condition. We stay out of each other's lives," he went on. "But so my parents don't see through it, you move in with me. I won't get in your way."

He laid it out slow and flat, like the terms of an acquisition, and I sat there absorbing it like a radio soaking up static.

Finally I managed, "Let me think about it."

"Don't run it by Presley. She'll say no."

"..."

How did you even know that.

"Answer me by tomorrow."

That afternoon I made up an excuse and left work early. I needed to be home to think.

Absurd as it was, I was too broke to walk away. What Cole laid on the table was, frankly, a trap built to the exact dimensions of Nova Bennett's one weak spot.

I'm nothing like Presley. I'm the textbook poor kid, raised on scraps. My mother died bringing me into the world. My father loved her past all sense, and losing her hollowed him out. His health fell apart after that, and an accident left him paralyzed, bedridden for good.

A perfectly good family, wrecked, all because I showed up.

I never had a home as a kid. I got passed around relatives' houses, no fixed address, learning to read the faces around me so I could stay a step ahead of being unwanted. I can still clock every flicker of mood in a room. It's how I survived.

I met Presley in college, working the counter at a coffee shop. We got close because we were from the same town, Crestmont, even though she and I ran in completely different worlds.

She's the one who showed me a girl could be that sunny, that untouched by worry.

We became real friends the day some guy conned her out of five grand. I chased him five blocks in the rain, cornered him against a wall, and didn't let go until he'd peeled every last bill out of his wallet.

Five grand. To Presley that was couch-cushion money. To me it was months of not drowning. No chance on earth I was letting him keep it.

After that, Presley looked at me differently. She started clinging, dragging me out to eat and play, and I let her, because she was also the kind of friend who'd sit in a library with me all day and never once complain.

Presley's good people. Nova-certified.

That line originally ran with the names the other way around. But it's mine to say now.

After graduation I went to New York to take my shot. Big city, better odds.

Presley went home. She wanted me to come with her. I said no. I wanted to earn enough to keep my father alive, however hopeless that was.

I clawed through two years in New York and sent most of what I made back home to keep my paralyzed father breathing.

Then, a few months ago, the hospital pronounced him dead. And I didn't feel much grief. Mostly I felt the weight lift off my shoulders. I'd finally set the burden down. All that was left was a mountain of debt.

I'd done right by the man who gave me life. Now I wanted to coast, and the debt could sort itself out slowly.

I told Presley I was coming home to do nothing. Broke was fine. Happy mattered more.

Twenty-six years of grinding. In year twenty-seven, I was going to start living for Nova.

So, yes. The deal Cole put on the table was obscenely tempting.

His money would clear every cent I owed in one stroke and let me stop, really stop, running my whole life on fumes. Marriage meant nothing to me anyway. I'd never once expected love to come knocking. And now it turned out marriage came with a paycheck.

Why on earth not?

So in the end, I kept it from Presley, and I went and married her brother.

We made it official the next day. I spent the whole thing somewhere far outside my own body, with no idea how I'd ever break it to Presley.

I was terrified of losing her.

So I asked him. "Boss. If Presley finds out, if she's furious with me, what do I do?"

Cole didn't answer.

He was too busy staring at the two marriage licenses in his hands, absorbed, cradling them like they were something rare.

...Is a piece of county paperwork really that fascinating?

Chapter 3

"Boss." I raised my voice.

"Mm... hm?"

"I said, if Presley finds out I married you behind her back and she loses it, what do I do?"

"Presley's temper spikes and drops just as fast. There's no hiding this from her anyway." He thought for a second. "So here's the plan. I'll go with you to tell her. Right now."

He walked me through it, calm and methodical, and honestly, he had a point. On my own I'd never figure out how to explain.

It felt like a betrayal. I'm a terrible person.

Cole drove us smoothly to the family mansion. I texted Presley that I was coming over.

And I swear I could have died, because the second my message landed she popped out onto the balcony, waving, then came flying down the stairs.

Presley being that genuinely happy to see me made it a thousand times harder to open my mouth.

So I threw Cole a save-me look. "Boss. Will you tell her? Please?"

"We face it together."

"..."

Presley came down, saw me and Cole standing side by side, and froze.

"Novi. Bro. You two