Disclaimer: Holy crap, I forgot to disclaim in the prologue. Well, I won't want to subject you guys to the same disclaimer forever, so this one is enough. I don't own any of the characters, and I sure as hell don't own any familiar named settings. It's just me, my laptop, and a lot of smoochy lovin' joy. Lotsa love to my faithful readers. I'm such a slacker! I'm sorry.
Chapter 1
She was sure she needed more than a drink. But given the circumstances, Stephanie was also pretty sure that drinking was the last thing that she really wanted at this point of time.
"God, Kurt. I hate him. How could I ever let this happen?"
As much as she wanted it to be security's fault, she couldn't help but trace back the blame to herself; if she'd taken personal precautions like watching her own drink or making sure that there was more than just herself to take care of her, she may not have landed in this mess. But then again, Steph could never be completely safe from anything as long as she was a billionaire's daughter.
Her hand was hammering against the steering wheel as she spoke. "How the hell am I supposed to explain this to anyone?"
"You didn't have to explain it to me," her passenger said, getting a little uncomfortable with her driving. "You can always get the marriage annulled."
"That's not the point!" she issued exasperatedly. "One word of this to anyone other than you and he, and I'm going to suffer for it. What will my father think? What kind of impression do you think this will play on Shane?" The car made a hard right, and Kurt clung for his life.
He sucked in a deep breath when he felt the vehicle accelerate. "I promise I won't tell anyone."
"But he can tell whoever the hell he wants!" she said. She ran a hand through her hair and flipped it over her shoulder. "Looks like it's either blackmail or some kind of slavery that's going to be involved to solve this crap."
The Olympian was about to take the wheel himself. "Okay, but don't channel all this to road rage, because the way you're driving, having a seatbelt isn't going to save my life."
The brunette huffed. "I don't know, Kurt. I don't know what to do." It shocked her friend when she decided to slouch and put her hand on one cheek and the other on her lap. Immediately, he started to drive from the passenger's seat.
"Okay," he began, containing his apparent cardiac arrest the best he could, "the first step is to calm down and think about what you want to do."
"I want to get out of this," she replied briskly.
"Alright. So you can get your marriage annulled later in the evening… Steph, it's hard to drive like this."
"But what if he wants to stay together?"
"Why would he want to stay together? You hate each other."
She sighed. "I know, of course I do. I can't stand to see that shit-eating grin at any time of my life. But what if he's psycho enough to want to ruin my life so bad that he'll refuse to acknowledge and declare our marriage void?"
"That's an extreme case, Steph," Kurt unbuckled his seatbelt.
"You'll never know! He's as crazy as it gets in this world. Let's switch," then she unbuckled her own seatbelt when they stopped at a red light to exchange places. Kurt settled down, glad that he could finally counsel her and be sure that he could live to see tomorrow again.
She looked at her ring dismally, and then focused on her friend. "Look, don't worry. Just keep yourself low profile for the rest of the day and act like nothing happened. I'm pretty sure that no one will notice," Kurt assured.
Perhaps he didn't quite understand that Stephanie was the kind of person who could never really keep a humongous secret to herself, even if it was her own. People could tell when she was keeping something, or that something extraordinary was bothering her. After all, that was how Kurt found out about the entire fluke in the first place.
She looked at the ring once again. Guess she had no choice but to deal with being married to Chris Jericho for a day.
How shitty.
As if keeping the secret wasn't hard enough for her. Stephanie stood by the coffee dispenser to wait for her drink, and stuck out her hand to have another look at her wedding band. If only her old one looked as good as this. Did she have better taste when she was not aware of her surroundings?
No. Because if that were the case, it would mean that Chris Jericho fell under the category of 'better taste'. She'd never admit that.
She was hitched. She couldn't say that she knew what being married to Jericho was like, since they never had contact after their psychotic screaming episode, but she couldn't help but feel curious about what might happen if she stopped, accepted it, and settled down. Could it work?
Ugh, no! Stephanie didn't want to think about it. That was just her mind wanting gravely to make her marriages work. Not that this was even qualified in anyway as a real marriage, but still…
She grabbed the styrafoam cup of steaming coffee and sighed. It just had to be her, didn't it? Some great big joke God was playing on her. So when the hell was He going to jump out of nowhere and maniacally yell, "Psych!"?
Just as she was tipping her drink to her lips, a bump gave her silk blouse a lovely addition of aromatic instant coffee. This was one of those jokes God kept dishing out on her, wasn't it? Angrily, she shut her eyes and hissed a breath in to give whichever asshole did it.
Of course, maybe she was being delusional all along about what she believed in and in this sick world, God could actually be Chris Jericho.
"Hey honey," he smirked at the mess he made, "looks like you decided to stop washing your clothes altogether, huh?"
Could that mouth ever stop moving? She wouldn't have been surprised if gave Bush and step-down speech in his sleep.
"My lawyer's settling the legal papers for us right now, and she should be ready later tonight," Stephanie said, going straight to the point. "This is the only time my house will be open to you."
"What makes you think I want to step into a sewer?" he scoffed. "And why the hell do we need legal papers?"
"To get our marriage annulled, you idiot."
For a split second, Stephanie could've sworn she saw a flash of genuine surprise cross his features. Then he chuckled, getting himself his dose of caffeine. "But you've already grown so accustomed to the 'our' and the 'us' and the 'we'."
She rolled her eyes. "Just be there at eleven."
Jericho took his drink and walked away, waving it off.
"Thank goodness we don't have to settle this in court," Stephanie said, "I just don't have the time."
"I'm sorry, but it's been quite awhile. Are you sure he's coming?"
Stephanie glanced at her clock. '00:06'. Where was that inconsiderate bum? "Angela, I'm really so sorry about this. It's just that he always does this. Just count on me to get into this kind of crap."
The blonde lawyer pursed her lips together. "Well, it looks like he doesn't mind being married to you." She looked at her watch. "I have to make my down to my next client in Hawaii now. We have to settle this another time." And then she took her things and let herself out before Stephanie managed to plead her case.
"God, I hate lawyers." She hated the reason for calling them down in the first place. Determined to find out what lame excuse Jericho had in store for her this time, she dialed up the Raw officer's mobile.
"Where in the world is Chris Jericho!"
"Uh, just hold on, Ms McMahon." The pause was getting on her nerves. "We're actually looking for him."
"What do you mean, 'looking for him'?"
"Well, you see, he seems to have left the building quite a while ago. No one knows where he is."
"I just saw him today!" she raised her voice, "There's no way that he's authorized leave on this short notice. He's got a match today."
"Just a minute…"
"I don't have a minute!"
"Then just give me a couple of seconds," the officer huffed. Stephanie felt bad about bossing him around, but sometimes authority needed to be used to get things done. "He took his name off the match list tonight, or at least, someone did." The man cleared his throat. "He was filled in by Randy Orton."
Right, so he gave himself an off day without telling anyone. "Is there anything I should know if it's of that much importance?" he asked politely.
Mentioning anything legal would definitely be a bad idea, since that sort of thing would eventually end up in the ears of her father, who didn't let things like this slip through his fingers. If he was disappearing for more than a week, there would be less time for them to carry out an annulment. Even if she had three years, the sooner it was axed, the better.
The shine her wedding ring gave off was unsettling. It was gorgeous in tungsten light. After a moment, she addressed the officer again.
"It's nothing. I just have to discuss with him a new creative angle that we once planned vaguely long ago. Thanks."
"No problem."
It really annoyed her that he stood her up. Then again, he didn't say that he was going to stop by. That stupid time-wasting leech!
Where the hell could he be?
