Indecent Proposals
Chapter One
Her life was over.
Sami Brady sat in a heap, crumpled to the floor on her knees, her dress fanned out around her as she wept against the couch cushions, her chest heaving with sobs.
It wasn't fair, it just wasn't fair.
After everything she'd been through, after she'd worked so hard to be perfect and good, to be what he wanted her to be, Austin had just left her on their wedding day, all because of something she had done years and years ago.
This is all your fault, Lucas, she raged to herself, gasping for air. I swear to God, you're going to pay for this.
She couldn't believe him, couldn't believe he was such a bastard, but then again, she shouldn't have been surprised. She had known better than to believe his 'I come in peace' mantra, she had known that he was as much her enemy now as he had been before he slipped into that coma, but damn it, she had let her guard down without realizing it.
And it had been her downfall.
"I bet Lucas knew Austin was outside of the bridal room the whole time," Sami seethed in between sobs.
"Actually, that was just a lucky break."
Hearing his smug, cocky voice caused a bolt of anger to stab through her, and Sami pushed herself to her feet, clenching her jaw and her fists tightly as she turned to face him. "Yeah, right," she snarled. "I don't buy that, Lucas, not for a minute."
"That doesn't bother me one way or the other, sweetheart," Lucas replied coolly. "I don't care what you think or buy or believe, I didn't trick you into confessing that I never hit my son for Austin's benefit."
"Then you admit that you tricked me?" Sami demanded.
"Of course I tricked you," Lucas agreed with an eerily pleasant smile. "You know me better than anyone, Sami, you should have expected it."
"What was the point of getting me to confess if it wasn't to get Austin to dump me at the altar?" Sami cried.
"This," Lucas announced, pulling a tape recorder from his tuxedo.
Sami's mouth went dry, she tried to swallow as the terrible truth of it all sunk in, as she realized just what he had been after and that she had fallen right into his little trap, but it was too painful.
"You taped me," she whispered hoarsely, her eyes stinging with angry tears.
"Yes, I did," Lucas confirmed remorselessly. "Not only did you admit I never hurt so much as a hair on Will's head, you also confessed to perjury."
"And you're going to give that to the police, is that it?" Sami demanded furiously, clenching her fists at her side in an effort to keep herself from attacking him and choking the life out of his horrid little neck. "You're going to send me to jail so you can have full custody and tell my son what a horrible person I am?"
"Tempting as that sounds, no," Lucas replied casually. "That's not quite what I had in mind."
"Then what, Lucas?" Sami cried in frustration. "What was the point of all this?"
He stepped the rest of the way into the room, letting the door close behind him, and Sami glared as he approached her, his poker-face firmly in place to conceal whatever was going through his mind.
"I have a proposition for you, Sami Brady," Lucas said lowly, coming to a halt in front of her.
"A proposition?" Sami echoed suspiciously.
Lucas nodded, and tapped the tape recorder against the palm of his hand almost absently, and she wondered if she could snatch it from him, but he smirked and raised an eyebrow, as if daring her to go ahead and try it. He might be acting like he wasn't keenly aware of the tape recorder in his hands, but she knew he was keeping a sharp eye on her.
"What kind of proposition?" Sami asked bitterly. "The kind where I give up Will or go to jail?"
"What I have in mind would allow you to stay out of jail and keep our son," Lucas replied, and his smirk broadened, knowing he had her attention. "In fact, I think if you think it over logically, you'll realize it's the only option you have."
"And what option is that?"
"Marry me, Sami," Lucas said evenly.
Sami blinked, startled. For a moment she could have sworn that he'd just asked her to marry him... "What?" she gasped, staring at him in disbelief. "Are you crazy?"
"Probably," Lucas conceded with a shrug. "But if I am, then so are you, so we might as well be crazy together, right?"
"You have got to be joking," Sami scoffed.
"I'm dead serious, Sami," Lucas replied with a straight face. "I want you to marry me."
And he was serious, she could see it in his eyes. The smirk was gone from his face now, replaced by a grim set to his mouth, and he looked as if he were in the process of working out a business merger for Titan, rather than asking his mortal enemy to be his wife.
"You're out of your mind then," Sami cried. "Why on earth would you want to marry me, Lucas? And what in hell makes you think I would ever, ever say yes?"
"Don't flatter yourself, sweetheart," Lucas drawled. "I'm not exactly looking forward to wedded bliss with you, either. But the fact of the matter is, we're both at the end of our ropes here. You have Will, but I have this nifty little tape that could throw you in jail. Of course, then my son will have to suffer because his mother's locked away, and I don't want that."
"Yeah, right," Sami muttered under her breath.
"Think what you want," Lucas said flatly. "But Will is the most important thing in my life, Sami, just like he is in yours. If you'd stop to think about him for a second, you'd realize that us getting married would be his biggest wish come true."
"Yeah, and a living nightmare for us," Sami snapped. "Will loves Austin, he's looking forward to having him be his dad."
"Stepdad," Lucas was quick to correct, with a sharp tone. "I am Will's father, whether you like it or not, and you can try as hard as you like to get rid of me, Sami, but you can't replace me in my son's life. And if you think that Austin is ever going to marry you after today, then you're even crazier than I thought. He knows the truth now, he finally sees you for what you really are, and he's disgusted with you."
"If I'm so horrible, then why do you want to marry me so badly?" Sami shouted, furiously blinking back tears as his harsh words cut through her.
"Maybe I want to see how much you've grown up since the last time I saw you naked," Lucas said leeringly, letting his eyes wander over her figure beneath her dress.
Despite herself, Sami flushed, and only managed a mildly outraged, "Pig."
"Yeah," Lucas agreed with her assessment, flashing her a decidedly kinder smile than the one he'd been wearing a few minutes ago. "I know."
He sighed, running a hand through his hair, and for the first time she noticed how tired he looked. It hadn't been that long since he awoke from the coma, after all, and she could see the signs of fatigue that he was trying to hide, and she almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
Then she remembered that this was Lucas, who'd tried to kill her so many times, who wanted to take her son away.
Who was now trying to blackmail her into marrying him.
"Look," Lucas said seriously. "Austin's never going to marry you, if you'd wake up from your obsession, you'd know that. And if you marry me, well, you get to stick it to him and to my mother, while giving Will the only thing he's ever wanted, his parents together. And after a year, assuming we haven't killed one another, I'll destroy the tape."
"You'll destroy the tape?" Sami repeated skeptically.
"I will," Lucas vowed. "You have my word-" Sami opened her mouth, but he cut her off with a knowing smirk. "Yeah, yeah, my word's not worth much, I know. We'll get it in writing if you want."
Sami stared at him, unable to fathom what he was up to.
There had to be a catch, but she couldn't figure out what it was. And he had a point, marrying him would certainly be a slap in the face to Austin, and it would drive Kate insane.
Maybe so insane that she'll kill herself, Sami thought gleefully.
A girl could dream, anyway.
Narrowing her eyes, she fixed Lucas with a suspicious look. "What's in it for you?"
"Other than the fact that we can finally call a truce, that we can both have full custody of our son?" Lucas said dryly, and smirked, but there was something bitter and troubled in his eyes. "Well, let's just say that I'm all for sticking it to my mother, too, these days."
Sami frowned, not understanding, and Lucas looked away.
"She set the fire."
Something like lightning shot through her, and Sami gaped at him incredulously.
"Kate did?"
It shouldn't have surprised her, she knew better than anyone how ruthless Kate Roberts was and the lengths the woman would go to in order to get what she wanted, but it did.
But why on earth would Kate do something like this to Lucas, of all people?
Her middle son followed her every word like a sad little puppy starving for attention, and Kate enjoyed having him wrapped around her finger that way. Lucas was her little puppet, what had he done to piss her off so bad?
"She was trying to kill Victor at the time, apparently," Lucas explained with a sad attempt at a laugh. "And didn't bother to check if I was still in the mansion."
"Oh my God," Sami whispered in horror.
"Yeah," Lucas said flatly, his dark eyes dull. "If you hadn't taken Will away from me, she might have put him in the hospital bed beside me."
Or maybe if Will had been there in the house, Kate would never have done something so insane.
"How did you find out?" Sami asked, ignoring the twinge of guilt.
"It's a long story," Lucas replied, and it was clear he did not want to talk about. "But the point is, my mother nearly killed me. She let her hatred consume her to the point where her own son had to pay the price. I don't want that to happen to us, Sami. I don't want Will to have pay for our sins."
"Lucas," Sami began softly, but didn't know what else to say.
For a long moment, they just looked at one another, and she let herself wonder how they had gotten here.
They'd been friends once, best friends, and for one single night lovers.
And then everything had fallen apart.
There was so much bad blood between them, so much hurt and anger. They had both done such terrible things to one another in their cruel attempts for revenge. It was a dance they'd been dancing for years, each of them always coming up with a new way to hurt the other as badly as they'd been hurt.
Always plotting to be the other's undoing.
Anger was something they both did well, it was easier to be angry and hateful than to admit you were hurting.
They'd both learned that lesson early in life.
In an instant, they had gone from friends to enemies, and neither one of them had ever let their guard down since.
And yet here was Lucas, looking at her with solemn dark eyes, asking her to marry him.
After all the backstabbing, the blackmail and all the lies, the merciless interference with one another's lives, the attempted "accidental deaths" and the violence, he was trying to bury the hatchet once and for all by marrying her...
He must have lost a lot of brain cells while in that coma.
Or maybe... maybe was just tired of all the fighting, tired of the whole sick mess and always having to justify the terrible things he'd done.
Maybe he hated himself some days just as much as she did.
"What do you say, Sami?" Lucas asked lightly, as if he were asking her to pick up Will from soccer practice for him instead of proposing marriage. "Do you think you could stand a year with me in order to get back at Austin and my mother? Or are you too scared to find out?"
Normally, she would have lashed out for that last remark, but Sami remained silent, studying the man in front of her.
This was the man who had turned on her all those years ago when the truth about Will came out. The man who had spent the better part of the past few years trying to steal her son away from her, breaking her spirit at every turn. The man who had caused her so much and suffering, and reveled in every heartache she endured.
He'd let her go to Death Row for a crime he'd committed, and then taken part in numerous plots to end her life after that.
But he'd also saved her, on more than one occasion.
Why?
She had never really figured that out, but the most likely answer she could come up with was that he'd done it for Will.
After all, he might hate her, but he loved their little boy, and it would be devastating for Will to lose his mother at such a young age. Despite her claims that Lucas was unfit to be a father, even despite her genuine fears about his drinking problem, Sami couldn't deny that Lucas truly loved their son.
And he was right, the one thing Will wanted most in the world was for his parents to get together.
"What about Will?" she asked, not yet ready to give Lucas an answer. "We'd be getting his hopes up, and then crushing him when the year was up and we divorced."
"How do you know we'll end up getting a divorce?" Lucas challenged.
Sami rolled her eyes. "Please, like you and I could ever actually work? I know you're not that stupid, Lucas."
"Was that a compliment or an insult?" Lucas inquired flippantly, then shrugged. "At least this way, Will knows we tried, right? If we sit him down and explain that we really made an effort to make it work, to be a family, and it just wasn't enough, then, yeah, it will crush him, but all he's ever wanted was for us to try, Sami. I think we owe him that. We can worry about what to tell him a year from now."
Biting her lip, Sami couldn't help wringing her hands.
This was her wedding day, she was supposed to be getting married to Austin and starting their new life together, but Lucas was right, there was no chance of that happening now.
Austin was gone, she had no chance of getting him back.
It would serve him right if she married Lucas, then who would be the one left out in the cold?
And she could imagine the look on Kate's face when she learned that Sami was her daughter-in-law, after all, just with Lucas instead of Austin.
But could she really endure having Lucas as a husband for an entire year?
Having to be around him, having to play nice, having to act like a happy little family... it would probably kill her. That is, if she didn't kill Lucas first. Where would they even live, her apartment or his? She would have to share a bed with him, and that would be horrible enough, but what if the bastard tried to put the moves on her?
She could easily picture him breathing on her neck, running his fingertips over her arm as she tried to go to sleep...
A shiver went through her, but it was one of disgust.
Definitely disgust, in no way shape or form did she find that scenario appealing.
In fact, it sickened her.
"You'd better not even think for a second that I'm going to have sex with you," Sami warned, fixing him with a deadly glare. "If we do this, you're going to keep your slimy hands to yourself."
"I promise not to seduce you," Lucas agreed sarcastically. "But if you jump me... well, that's a different story."
"One that will never happen," Sami snapped.
"Whatever you say, sweetheart," Lucas replied smoothly, with just a hint of a smirk. "Does this mean that you're agreeing to my proposal?"
"It's only for a year, right?" Sami questioned nervously.
"Yeah," Lucas promised evenly. "Three hundred and sixty-five days. I'll get Mickey to draw something up, and we'll both sign it."
Sami took a deep breath, then nodded. "Okay, then."
"Okay?" Lucas raised an eyebrow.
"Okay," Sami confirmed.
"Okay, then," Lucas echoed her own words. "Stay here, I'll be right back."
He hurried out of the bridal room, and Sami watched him go, wondering what he was doing, and what she was doing saying yes. She was out of her mind, agreeing to marry him- they both were apparently!
What had possessed her to do something so stupid?
She and Lucas couldn't get married, they couldn't be husband and wife.
This was serious, marriage was serious, it wasn't just some little game. They couldn't just put on smiles and play house for a year.
But then she thought of Austin, of him walking out on her yet again.
And of Kate, who was probably laughing at her misfortune.
She thought of everyone outside, all the family and friends who had come here for her wedding, none of whom would be surprised when it was called off. They'd all expected her to fail, they acted supportive but they were all just waiting for her to screw up yet again.
And she thought of Will, on his last birthday, when she'd made the mistake of asking him what he wished for.
"For you and Daddy to like each other..."
He'd looked so sad then, and she'd wanted to comfort him, to tell him that she and Lucas did like each other, it was just a very... mean kind of "like".
His little face would light up when he heard.
The door to the bridal room opened again, and Lucas came hurrying back in with a very confused minister in tow. "Okay," Lucas announced, rubbing his hands together. "Let's get married."
Sami blinked in disbelief. "You want to do it now?"
"Sure, why not?" Lucas shrugged. "We have a minister, and you're already in a pretty dress. It's your wedding day, you might as well get married."
Her mouth opened, and she tried to find a reason to argue with that, but none was forthcoming.
"Don't we need a marriage license?" she asked weakly.
Lucas grinned and pulled an envelope out of his jacket pocket. "Already taken care of."
He tossed it to her, and Sami opened it slowly, not at all surprised to find a marriage licensee with both of their names on it. Lucas had already signed it, and was now holding a pen out to her for her to do the same.
"How long have you been planning this?" she demanded shakily.
"Only a few days," Lucas said casually. "It takes about fifteen minutes to get a marriage license in Vegas."
"But how did you get this without me...?" Sami trailed off, shaking her head. "Never mind, I don't want to know." She stared down at the paper in her hands for a long moment, then took the pen from Lucas and pressed it to the empty line below her name. After a moment's hesitation, she hurriedly scribbled her signature, and then handed the marriage license back to Lucas. "There."
Lucas passed it to the minister, who looked it over. "Well, everything does seem to be in order..."
"Great," Sami said. "Let's get this over with."
"Er, um, yes," the minister cleared his throat and looked at her. "Do you, Samantha Gene Brady, take this man, Lucas..."
"Desmond Roberts," Lucas supplied.
"Lucas Desmond Roberts," the minister continued. "As your lawfully wedded husband? To love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, for rich or for poor, for better or for worse, as long as you both shall live?"
So long as one of us dies within a year, Sami thought, forcing a fake smile.
"I do."
"And do you, Lucas-"
"I do," Lucas cut him off.
"Yes, um," the flustered minister nodded. "Then, by the power invested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife. You, uh, you may kiss the bride."
Sami did her best not to grimace as Lucas turned to her, a smirk on his face. She was about to warn him that if he tried to slip her the tongue she was going to bite it off, but the next thing she knew he was leaning in to place a gentle, brief kiss on her lips.
Her mouth tingled as he pulled back, and she found herself strangely disappointed.
Lucas turned to thank the minister, who was busy signing the marriage license himself, testifying that he'd witnessed the union, and the two men shook hands rather awkwardly, then the minister left the room.
Alone with Lucas, her new husband, Sami groaned and dropped into one of the armchairs. "This is not how I envisioned today," she muttered.
"Sorry I'm not Prince Austin," Lucas retorted with a snort. "I'm going to go find Will. We should probably tell him in private before we go shock the rest of Salem."
"Yeah, okay," Sami agreed.
As Lucas left, she glanced over at the mirror on the vanity, and sighed at her reflection.
Here she was, all done up and decked out in the dress of her dreams, and nothing was turning out the way it was supposed to.
Instead of her happily ever after with Austin, all she had was Lucas.
For a year, she would be stuck with him, and that was probably a year from when the marriage license got filed, which could take a few days. So it was more like a year and a handful of days that she would be trapped on Lucas Roberts' arm, with a fake smile plastered on her face.
"What did I get myself into?" she sighed.