Just a Little Bit Married Read online

  How to ruin a perfectly good divorce

  The last time Rose Tucker saw her ex-husband, Lincoln Hart, he was fleeing their newly minted marriage. Now the man she fell in love with at first sight has returned to say those three little words: “we’re still married!” And while the lawyers fix the clerical glitch, the handsome millionaire offers a way to help his not-so-ex wife save her business.

  The pretty interior designer can hardly wait to say “I don’t.” But in the meantime, Rose can’t afford to turn down her husband’s job offer. So she agrees to decorate Linc’s new luxury condo. While Rose draws up plans for his home, he has designs on her heart. And if he gets his way, the new towels will say His and Hers.

  “Don’t expect me to forgive you,”she said.

  “I don’t.” But seeing her again, remembering that they’d once been two halves of a whole, made him wish she could. “I just thought you should know about the divorce.”

  “It is kind of important,” she agreed. “Chances are I would have found out the hard way pretty soon.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve been dating someone and it’s getting serious.” She turned away and walked over to the couch, absently rearranging throw pillows. “Lately he’s been hinting about getting married.”

  Linc had absolutely no right to the feeling, but that didn’t stop the blast of raw jealousy that roared through him. “I guess it would have been awkward to apply for a marriage license and find out you were still married.”

  “You think?”

  He detected the tiniest bit of defensiveness in her voice and decided to take a shot. “You never told him you’d been married before?”

  “We were married for fifteen minutes.” Ten years ago her eyes took on shades of gray when she was annoyed, and they looked that way now. “It was a long time ago. I’ve been busy. It didn’t seem important.”

  “The thing is, you never checked to find out about the divorce,” he reminded her.

  “Neither did you.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll take care of it now...”

  THE BACHELORS OF BLACKWATER LAKE: They won’t be single for long!

  Dear Reader,

  Do you remember the first time you fell in love? The soul-searing, fill-your-senses-with-magic kind when all you could think about was that person and being with them? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thrill. But thinking with your heart isn’t always best and can lead to painful decisions, leaving deep wounds that never heal and cause lifelong regret. If only are arguably the most profoundly sad two words in the English language.

  But what if you got a do-over?

  In Just a Little Bit Married, Lincoln Hart finds himself in this position. Ten years ago he was a blissfully happy newlywed who learned a family secret—one he believed could hurt the woman he loved more than his own life. To protect her he got a divorce, or so he thought. The papers were never filed and he has a chance for, if not making things right, at least earning redemption.

  Rose Tucker is struggling—and failing—to make her interior-design business a success. The last thing she needs is a personal problem, but that’s what she gets when the man who sliced and diced her heart shows up to tell her they’re still married. Worse, he offers her a high-profile job decorating his condo. To save her business she has to accept it and his help. But what if her first love also turns out to be her last?

  One of my favorite things about being a writer is playing “what if.” In chapter one of a book there are an infinite number of directions to take your characters. I hope you enjoy the direction of Linc and Rose’s story of first love, one that neither of them ever got over.

  Happy reading!

  Just a Little Bit Married

  Teresa Southwick

  Teresa Southwick lives with her husband in Las Vegas, the city that reinvents itself every day. An avid fan of romance novels, she is delighted to be living out her dream of writing for Harlequin.

  Books by Teresa Southwick

  Harlequin Special Edition

  The Bachelors of Blackwater Lake

  A Word with the Bachelor

  How to Land Her Lawman

  The Widow’s Bachelor Bargain

  A Decent Proposal

  The Rancher Who Took Her In

  One Night with the Boss

  Finding Family...and Forever?

  Montana Mavericks: The Baby Bonanza

  Her Maverick M.D.

  Montana Mavericks: What Happened at the Wedding?

  An Officer and a Maverick

  Montana Mavericks: 20 Years in the Saddle!

  From Maverick to Daddy

  Mercy Medical Montana

  Her McKnight in Shining Armor

  The Doctor’s Dating Bargain

  Montana Mavericks: Back in the Saddle

  The Maverick’s Christmas Homecoming

  Men of Mercy Medical

  The Doctor and the Single Mom

  Holding Out for Doctor Perfect

  To Have the Doctor’s Baby

  Cindy’s Doctor Charming

  The Surgeon’s Favorite Nurse

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  To my sister-in-law, Rose Boyle.

  I borrowed your name for the heroine in this book because she’s as smart and sweet as you. Thanks for marrying my brother, sole sister!

  Contents

  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

  Excerpt from Kiss Me, Sheriff! by Wendy Warren

  Chapter One

  “Rose, this might come as a shock, but we’re not divorced.”

  Lincoln Hart looked around the room to make sure there was nothing pointed, heavy, or sharp enough to take out an eye, bash in his skull or maim a fairly important body part. Satisfied, he studied the woman he hadn’t seen in ten years and realized Rose Tucker was even more beautiful than she’d been then, when she took his breath away every time he saw her. When he was so in love that being apart from her was almost a physical ache.

  Rose. Even her name was lovely. She was more polished than the young woman he’d walked away from. And more hostile, but he couldn’t blame her.

  After what he’d just said she was going to hate him even more than she had a decade ago, and she’d hated him quite a lot then.

  “What? Not even a hello?” The hostility in her dark blue eyes wavered to make way for surprise, then suspicion.

  “I thought it best to lead with the headline, make sure you got the information before slamming the door in my face.”

  “You’re telling me we’re still married? I don’t believe you. What kind of game are you playing now? What in the world would you have to gain by pretending we’re still married?”

  “I’m
not pretending. And I’m as thrown by this as you are.”

  “I doubt that.” She put a hand to her forehead as if feeling dizzy.

  Linc reached out and curved his fingers around her upper arm to steady her. “Let’s sit down.”

  Apparently his touch snapped her out of it because she yanked her arm away. He half expected her to take a swing at him and wouldn’t blame her if she did. This whole mess was his fault from start to finish. If there was anything at all positive about his screwup, it was that his family knew nothing about his brief, whirlwind marriage.

  His brothers, Sam and Cal, would rag on him relentlessly, which was bad enough. Katherine and Hastings Hart, his mother and her husband, and his younger sister, Ellie, would be disappointed in him for the way he’d handled the situation. But none of that mattered now. He and Rose had a problem and it was all on him.

  “We should probably sit—”

  “Don’t be nice to me, Linc. We both know that’s not who you are.”

  “What I did to you was lousy, Rose, but that’s not who I am.” He wasn’t the man she thought she’d married, but he wasn’t a complete jerk, either.

  They stood in the postage-stamp-sized living area of her apartment, which was upstairs from her small interior design studio in an old, redbrick building on one of Prosper, Texas’s, side streets. The fact that this one-room place had charm was a reflection of her skill as an interior designer. The paint was pale gold except for one olive-green accent wall in the living room. The kitchen and living areas were set apart by the clever placement of the love-seat-sized sofa. Wall hangings, knickknacks, lamps and throw pillows added color without being stuffy and formal. It was homey and warm. He liked her taste very much.

  “You must have questions,” he said.

  “How do you know we’re not divorced?” She tucked a strand of long black hair behind her ear.

  “My lawyer passed away after a short illness and I had to hire a new one to handle my personal affairs. He insisted on looking over all of my official documents. There was a marriage license but no divorce decree. After researching the situation, he discovered that the papers were never filed with the court.”

  “How could that happen?”

  It was hard not to cringe at her bewildered tone, especially since he’d assured her he would handle everything. “I hired a half-price lawyer and got what I paid for—half a divorce.”

  “Why would you do that, Linc? Your family is worth millions and Hart Industries must have a platoon of the best and brightest legal minds around. It doesn’t make sense that you would get an attorney from outside the company, especially someone incompetent. The Harts don’t do things like that.”

  Leave it to Rose to zero in on the core of the problem. It wasn’t something he wanted to talk about, but she had a right to know. “I’m not a Hart.”

  “Excuse me? You’re what now?”

  “Hastings Hart isn’t my father.”

  “No way.” She shook her head.

  “It’s true. Hastings and Katherine confirmed it. I found out right after we got married.”

  “How?”

  “My biological father came to see me. He confessed he had a...thing with my mother.”

  “You told me your parents were deliriously happy,” Rose said with equal amounts of accusation and defensiveness in her voice.

  “That was their story. Turns out there was a rough patch. My older brothers were born nine months apart—twins the hard way, she always said. The fact is she had her hands full raising them and Hastings wasn’t around much. He was traveling, working long hours to build Hart Industries into something he could leave to his sons.”

  “So she turned to another man and had an affair?”

  “He and my mother were legally separated and headed for a divorce, so technically it wasn’t an extramarital affair.”

  “And you never knew? Never suspected?” There was skepticism in the questions.

  “No. They worked through their problems and he promised to give me his name. Both of them agreed there was no reason for me to know.”

  “And your biological father was all right with the arrangement?”

  “He was a lawyer on the partner track at an ultraconservative law firm that specialized in divorce. Sleeping with a client and getting her pregnant would have caused a scandal that might have cost him his career, so keeping it secret was fine with him.”

  “Yet he told you all those years later. Why?”

  “Midlife crisis, I guess. He never had children.” He stopped, waiting for the anger to roll through him so he could continue the act and pretend he was reconciled to the ugly secret. “No one to carry on the family name got to him, probably.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “It was a short conversation. At that moment I didn’t know whether or not he was lying.” Turned out the guy was the only one who hadn’t lied. “Hastings and Katherine confirmed.”

  “And you haven’t talked to your father since? Asked him why he finally came forward?”

  “No.” The man ruined his life. Sharing DNA didn’t make that okay. “The narcissistic bastard only thought about the fact that he had a son, not what the revelation would do to that son.”

  “Oh, God. Linc—” Shock and resentment were replaced by pity in her eyes and that wasn’t much of an improvement. “I guess it hit you hard.”

  “Let’s just say finding out your parents lied to you about Santa Claus is nothing compared to learning your father isn’t who you thought.” Linc had had no idea who he was and his only thought was to protect Rose, even from himself.

  He remembered that time as if it was yesterday. She’d been hired for the summer at Hart Industries in the real-estate development branch of the company he was taking over. They fell madly in love, had a whirlwind romance and he swept her away to Las Vegas, where they got married. It was the best time of his life and he’d never been happier. Then everything went to hell.

  He shook his head and met her gaze. “You thought you married a Hart but I’m not one.”

  Understanding dawned in her eyes. “You think that was important to me?”

  Intensity rotated through him and was nearly as powerful as what he’d felt ten years ago. He recalled the anguish and pain in her voice when she’d pleaded with him to tell her why he was leaving. What she’d done. It was an understatement to say he hadn’t been thinking clearly. He left the Harts, too, and stayed away for a long time. “It mattered to me.”

  “So you had to split from me and got a half-price lawyer to do it.”

  “I didn’t feel it was right to use a Hart attorney since I wasn’t really part of the family. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I walked away from everyone.” He backpacked through Europe, although it would be more accurate to say that he drank his way from one country to the next. “After two years I came back.” But he never forgot that he was the bastard son who always needed to prove himself.

  “And your father? The biological one?”

  “What about him?”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Good question. Like I said, I don’t see him. And if it’s all the same to you I don’t want to talk about him. I only brought it up for context.”

  “Don’t expect me to forgive you,” she said.

  “I don’t.” But seeing her again, remembering that they’d once been two halves of a whole, made him wish she could. “I just thought you should know about the divorce.”

  “It is kind of important,” she agreed. “Chances are I would have found out the hard way pretty soon.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve been dating someone and it’s getting serious.” She turned away and walked over to the couch, absently rearranging throw pillows. “Lately he’s been hinting about getting married.”

&nb
sp; Linc had absolutely no right to the feeling but that didn’t stop the blast of raw jealousy that roared through him. “I guess it would have been awkward to apply for a marriage license and find out you were still married.”

  “You think?”

  He detected the tiniest bit of defensiveness in her voice and decided to take a shot. “You never told him you’d been married before?”

  “We were married for fifteen minutes.” Ten years ago her eyes took on shades of gray when she was annoyed and they looked that way now. “It was a long time ago. I’ve been busy. It didn’t seem important.”

  “The thing is, you never checked to find out about the divorce,” he reminded her.

  “Neither did you.”

  “Fair enough. I will take care of it now. Mason, my new lawyer, will handle the details and send the papers to you for your signature. Then it will be behind us.” At least the paperwork part. His feelings were a lot more complicated than he’d expected.

  “Okay.” She frowned. “How did you know where I was?”

  “How does anyone find anyone? I looked you up on the internet.”

  Also he’d checked her out, found out what she’d been doing all these years. First college, then five years working with a prestigious design firm in Dallas before opening her own business not quite two years ago. And it wasn’t doing well. If she was, she’d still be located in Dallas, not thirty-five miles away, where office and living spaces were combined and cheap.

  She ran everything herself, no hired help and therefore no payroll. There were a few flooring, window-covering and paint samples in her downstairs studio, but not what you’d see in a larger, successful company.

  Her reputation was good, but her business was going down with a whimper. Unless someone gave her a high-profile opportunity.

  “Look, Rose, there’s another reason I came to see you.”

  “What else could there possibly be? Isn’t the fact that we’re not legally divorced enough?”

  “This is a good thing. Trust me.”

  “Seriously? You have the nerve to ask me to trust you? Getting involved with you was the worst mistake of my life.”