Chapter 2

TWO

SILAS

I'd heard about people getting drunk married in Vegas, but I'd honestly thought it was a joke or a plot in a cheesy rom-com. Not something that could happen to people like me—serious adults with an Ivy League education, international acclaim for having a sharp strategic mind, and a billion dollars in the bank.

So when I woke up hungover as shit and saw the marriage certificate with its shiny gold seal on the bedside table, I assumed it was a prank.

I fumbled for my phone and texted Landry first since he was the most likely culprit.

Me

WTF asshole?

Landry

As much as I love these pet names you have for me, Silas, I have no idea what you're referring to. You ready for breakfast? I could eat a horse.

Me

I'm referring to the marriage certif?—

I was halfway through typing my response when I noticed the cowboy hat perched atop the lamp across the room.

"What the hell?" I mumbled, nearly knocking myself out with bad breath. Jesus fuck .

I stood up and stumbled to the bathroom, grabbing for my toothbrush. Flashes of memory from the night before tumbled through my pounding head.

Making a scene at Justin's wedding. My friends rushing in to pull me away before I forced them to leave me to drown my sorrows at the hotel bar. The handsome cowboy on the barstool next to mine who'd had women sending him drinks like he was some kind of rock god. And dancing… hours of dancing with my hands moving up and down lean muscle and warm cotton.

My heart jolted as the image of him blinked more clearly into my mind. Tall, blond, and enough muscles to rope a steer… literally. Blue eyes like the endless sky over the Rocky Mountains on a clear summer day.

He'd been wearing a snap-front shirt and dark jeans. Worn cowboy boots. A charming smile with a goddamned dimple that made him look like the poster child for clean Midwestern living.

And the hat. That well-worn Stetson he'd fiddled nervously with and that I'd held while we danced.

The hat currently decorating my hotel room.

I groaned around the foamy toothbrush and squeezed my eyes closed. I'd taken the man's hat like some kind of prepubescent teen.

Had we…? I squinted at my horrid reflection in the mirror as I tried to remember. Stubble-scratched kisses. Rumbled laughter. Shared confessions. Hands fucking everywhere .

A cheesy white altar with fake plastic flowers and limp swaths of tulle hanging over it.

"Oh, fucking fuck ."

I rinsed and wiped my mouth before looking over my shoulder to where the wedding certificate still sat on the bedside table. To my hungover brain, the thing seemed to be pulsing like a telltale heart.

My fingers shook as I typed a message to my friends.

Me

Code red. Get in here.

Hopefully, they remembered my room number because I certainly didn't.

Only when I set my phone down did I belatedly notice the shiny gold band on my left ring finger. I glanced back at the bed and noticed an indentation on the other pillow. The duvet was in a messy twist in the center of the bed, and it looked like I hadn't been the only one sleeping in it. If the cowboy had come back to the room with me, where was he? Surely I would have heard him leave?

Then again, there seemed to be a lot of gaps in my memory.

By the time I finished a quick shower and threw on a pair of sweats, someone was pounding on my door. I opened it to find Landry and Zane looking way less hungover than I was. I glared at them. "Was I the only one drinking last night? Why do you two look like you just unhooked from an IV at a med spa while I feel like I've just been dragged up a sewage drain?"

Zane grinned. "I built up a tolerance on tour."

Landry huffed out a laugh and pushed past me into the room. "That and we got the IV infusion before we went out last night. You know, when you were busy meddling in that asshole's business?"

It took my sluggish brain a minute to realize which asshole he was talking about. "Well, it didn't work, did it? Justin's married."

Landry threw himself down on the sofa and kicked off his shoes. "Yeah, but at least now you know the chick is just as bad as he is. They're perfect for each other."

This was true. My evil ex had married a woman in order to control her fortune, like something out of a made-for-TV miniseries. And when I'd ridden in like a white knight and tried to warn the woman with a well-intentioned conversation before the wedding, somehow, it had turned into a kind of…

"Catfights are very Vegas," Landry said, scrolling through his phone. "Trying to see if anyone posted a video on socials so I can download it for my own personal collection."

I closed my eyes and tried to will my pounding headache away. "Zane, I will pay you a million dollars to order us some food."

"Don't need the money, bro, but you can give me that killer hat instead." Zane grabbed the room phone to put in a room service call.

I glanced at the cowboy hat before carefully plucking it off the lamp and tossing it into the closet with my suitcase. Surely the man who owned it would want it back, and I didn't need these two putting their dirty paws all over it before I had a chance to return the thing.

After turning back around, I caught Landry staring at me. "Oh shit," he breathed with a familiar look on his face. "Oh shit. Silas Concannon, what did you do? Did you do the dirty with a rhinestone cowboy? Did you Magic Mike yourself some hot ass last night?"

For some reason, I felt like the answer to that was no. I didn't have sex with the hot cowboy. But we'd done… something? Danced, definitely. And kissed. And… apparently gotten married?

I ran my fingers through my hair and squinted in case that would actually help sharpen my memory.

Zane snickered as he hung up. "Landry, remember who you're talking to. I hardly think Silas is the one of us who… wait. Why are you wearing a wedding ring?"

Silence landed heavy and awkward in the room while all three of us stared at my finger. After a beat, I tried yanking the ring off, only to have it jam. The more I yanked, the more stuck it seemed to get.

Landry grabbed my hand to stop me. "Dude. You're making it worse. Use some lube or…" He paused, examining the ring, then glanced up at me in shock. "Silas, this doesn't feel like a cheap souvenir."

"No. I think I…" I couldn't even say the words. Instead, I glanced over at the certificate, which I still hadn't had the balls to look closely at.

Landry saw the direction of my glance and walked over to retrieve the damning evidence. "Holy… holy fuck, Silas." He thrust the paper at Zane. "Is this… is this real ?"

Zane's eyes widened comically. The guy had the ability to look like a manga character when he was taken by surprise.

I threw up my hands and tossed myself down on the sofa. This was clearly a disaster. "I don't know, okay? I don't know!" I hoped to hell I'd gotten it and the ring in a souvenir shop… but I doubted it. "After the two of you fucked off to wherever the hell you went last night, I left the hotel and went and got another drink, and I met a guy…"

Landry handed the certificate to Zane and sat down next to me. "Where's the guy now?" His usually snarky voice had gone soft and kind, which brought the horrifying reality of the situation into sharp focus like nothing else could.

"Gone." My voice carried a nervous wobble while I tried very hard to keep my thoughts from going there .

If this marriage was real… then I was in trouble.

A metric shit-ton of trouble.

A nightmare dumpster fire train wreck of trouble, as my sister, Camille, called her worst nights in the ER.

Half-a-fucking-billion dollars' worth of trouble.

Landry and Zane exchanged a look before Landry quickly dialed someone on the phone. Within seconds, our beloved, dependable assistant answered, sounding cranky as fuck.

"What the hell, Landry?" Kenji asked on an exhale. "You left your phone charger here. As I've told you before, my home is not a lost and found for your miscellaneous junk. And if you're in jail again, I swear to god?—"

"I'm not the one in trouble this time," he said quickly, never taking his eyes off me. "It's Silas."

The silence from Kenji lasted several beats. "It's never Silas. What did you do to him?"

Blood pounded in my head as they all spoke over each other, discussing my "predicament." Had I been targeted at the bar last night? Did this cowboy somehow peg me as wealthy and deliberately set out to entrap me?

Everything in my gut screamed that he hadn't. That he'd genuinely been a fish out of water in that bar last night while people showered him with free alcohol.

I tried to remember how our interaction had begun. I'd noticed him the minute I'd entered the bar. In fact, I'd deliberately sat next to him because the only other empty stool had been next to a couple of women taking selfies from multiple angles.

And then I'd watched people attempt to pick him up for an hour. The cowboy hadn't been the one to initiate our contact; it had happened when I'd started outright laughing at him. He'd been adorably oblivious and uncomfortable.

And hot.

My sluggish brain took a moment to ponder just how hot he was. Thick forearms and wrists covered in golden hair. Big hands with blunt nails and calluses. Working man's hands. Blue jeans that might as well have been a love letter to the man's muscular ass. That snap-front shirt, fitted enough to emphasize his trim waist. I'd assumed he was straight, but I still hadn't been able to take my eyes off him.

And then we'd danced. My fingers flexed, remembering the feel of his abs under the warm cotton.

Fuck. Why had he let me touch him? Kiss him?

I pressed fingers into my forehead to try and stop the pounding.

Kenji's voice was all business, as usual. "I'll start an investigation on the man now. Zane, shoot me a picture of the document. I'll get our lawyers working on an annulment. Silas, do you have the guy's phone number?"

It wasn't until Landry barked my name that I jumped and realized Kenji had been talking to me. "How the fuck would I have his number? It's not like I asked him out."

"No." Landry's tone was dry. "Just married him. No big."

"His name was… Way?" I said, vaguely recollecting the sound of it spoken in his deep drawl. "That can't be right."

Zane read off the paper. "Waylon Heath Fletcher. Of… Majestic, Wyoming. Where the hell's Majestic, Wyoming?"

The details came back to me in errant sparks. Way from Wyoming. The sweet man who was willing to marry a pregnant friend to help her out. The man who'd made sure to tip the bartender, even though his wallet had been painfully thin.

Landry snorted. "Silas got himself a real-live cowpoke from nowheresville. Tell us he's pretty, at least?"

I snapped a curse at him without opening my eyes. "Kenji, figure out what I have to do to get this reversed. Surely they'll void this thing if I just go down there and tell them it was a drunken mistake."

Keyboard clacking came over the speakerphone before Kenji's voice returned. "Doesn't look like it, but I'll wait to see what the attorney says. Hang tight."

He ended the call right as the food was delivered to the room. The scent of it turned my stomach, but I forced myself to choke down some coffee and dry toast.

By the time Kenji called back, my head had begun to clear.

"No annulment," he said quickly. "You don't qualify. And since you used your Delaware address on the marriage documents, there's a mandatory six-month waiting period after you file for the divorce to be granted?—"

I squawked. "No way. I'm not waiting six months." I didn't mention that this guy was straight and was probably freaking out even more than I was this morning. Surely Way would be as eager for a quickie divorce as I was.

"Let me finish," Kenji said with his usual calm. "Your husband?—"

"He's not my husband," I growled, though technically speaking, I supposed Kenji was right.

"Fine, then. Your legal spouse … resides in Wyoming, which doesn't have a waiting period. And if you get divorced in a tiny town, it's possible our attorneys could try to obfuscate your statement of net worth so?—"

The blood started rushing again. Statement of net worth. Statement of net worth.

I was one of five people who'd founded ETC, an emergency traffic control program that had made us billions in our early twenties. Two of the other founders were in this room, Dev was most likely hiding away in a stable somewhere whispering sweet nothings into a horse's ear, and Bash was probably in a cornfield in Indiana fucking his new boyfriend.

All five of us were billionaires. And, with very few exceptions—including our assistant, Kenji—all five of us had sworn each other to secrecy about it. We'd learned early on that this kind of money made it nearly impossible to trust people. It was much easier to simply pretend we were regular rich guys, the kind of guys who did well in corporate America and could afford vacations and fancy cars. Once people discovered your net worth was in the ten-figure range instead of the six-or-seven-figure range, things had a tendency to get scary.

We'd learned this from personal experience.

I remembered Way's comment about not being able to afford the drinks at the bar. The guy didn't have a pot to piss in. So even if he was the most honest man in the world with the best intentions, if this cowboy in his tiny rural town of Majestic discovered he'd accidentally married into hundreds of millions , the chances he wouldn't see this as the biggest payday anyone had ever brought home from Vegas were less than zero.

Which meant I needed to get out of this marriage without him finding out exactly who he'd married.

"…says if you can get him to sign papers for an uncontested divorce the way they prepare them, you should be fine," Kenji continued. "If it's uncontested, there's a way to list the accounts without including their balances. The assumption is the other spouse can do their due diligence once they know the accounts exist, but they're banking on the fact this guy won't bother and won't have a bloodthirsty attorney on retainer. Hopefully, he wants out of this mistake as much as you do, and he'll see various accounts listed and assume they're standard checking, savings, retirement, etc."

"But he could inquire about the balances?" Landry asked. "Like, he'd have a right to ask for statements or something if he wanted to?"

Kenji hesitated. "Yeah. That's where you're going to have to sweet-talk the guy, Silas."

Zane and Landry both groaned in defeat.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, assholes," I snapped. "Have you forgotten I have a reputation for corporate negotiation?"

Kenji sighed. "With all due respect?—"

Landry cut in. "Kenji's too professional to say bullshit . This requires finesse, Silas. Not corporate negotiation. You think some good ole boy is going to see you pull up in your Range Rover and believe it's in his best interest to sign those papers without asking questions? Small town doesn't mean small brain."

I clenched my teeth as I imagined trying to manipulate the sweet cowboy. This whole thing was a disaster. "Then I'll rent a… an economy car. A compact or whatever. I'll wear normal clothes. I'll look like a regular guy." I gestured to the clothes I was wearing. "I'll show up in sweats, for fuck's sake."

They stared at me before Landry pointed a long, lazy finger at the logo down the side of my leg. "Your eight-hundred-dollar Alexander McQueen joggers? Is that what you're referring to?"

Kenji cleared his throat. "Everyone be quiet and listen to me. I know exactly what we need to do."