Charade (A Fake Fiancée Romance) (Pretense and Promises Book 1)
Page 22
Right now, though, she was replaying lunch in her head, so it really didn’t matter where she spent her non-productive time.
“I’ll get to work on that this week. I’ll be in touch by Monday.” When Conor hung up the phone after saying goodbye, he didn’t even look at Morgan. Instead, he was tapping on his computer, possibly typing notes from the conversation he just had. As was his usual MO, he switched gears, assuming she’d keep up. Ordinarily, she could run circles around him. Today, though, he had no idea she was not in the right place emotionally. “So I have a bit of a dilemma—and a solution, but I need you to be in agreement with it.”
Okay…this sounded weird. “What are you talking about, Conor?”
He cocked a beautiful brown eyebrow and glanced to the left of the computer screen to look at her. Maybe he could sense her distress, because he stopped tapping on the keyboard and sighed. “Did you go to your ten-year high school reunion?”
“Why the hell would I go to a high school reunion?” Before he could reply, she said, “They were big enough dickwads the first time around. I’d only go back if my therapist said I needed exposure therapy.”
Conor’s eyes crinkled at the corners but she could tell he had a lot on his mind—as usual. “I’m considering going to my twenty-year.”
“Twenty? Oh, my God. I forgot how ancient you are.”
“I’m not ancient, Morgan. I’m not even forty yet.”
“Well…if you’re pushing forty—which you are—you’d just as well have one foot in your grave.”
Conor’s right eyebrow arched. “Forty’s the new dead?”
Dammit. Conor never failed to make her smile, even when her mood was shit. “Do I wear too much red?”
“Is this a trick question?”
She needed to talk about it, but she couldn’t bear looking her boss in the eye, so she began pacing. “You know T-Rex?”
“The dinosaur? Not personally. I’m not that old.”
Huffing, she looked over at him. “No. Rex. The douchebag I was dating.”
“Now he’s a douchebag?”
Trying to be calm, she answered. “Yeah. He broke up with me because I wear too much red.” Conor burst into laughter. “It’s not funny!”
“It’s not funny that he broke up with you…but it’s hilarious that he gave you a stupid reason like that.”
“It’s not funny.” While she stared Conor down, she felt the corners of her lips twitching while she plopped back in one of the chairs in front of his desk. “Okay…it is funny. But that doesn’t make him any less a shithead.”
“Agreed. So…you wear too much red. Compared to who?”
“Whom. It’s compared to whom.”
Shaking his head and giving his computer screen more attention again, he said, “I’m beginning to understand the troubles in your relationship.”
“Thanks for cheering me up. Now I’ll need a double therapy session. But enough about me. What did you need me for?”
“My question can wait till you’re in a better frame of mind. Are you going to be okay? Do you need to go home early?”
Morgan smiled as she ran her hand over the polished surface of his desk, wiping off a few specks of dust, marveling how sweet Conor could be—when he wanted to be. “I’ll live. Rex was an asshole anyway and, I guess, better to find out now instead of later, right? When I really started to fall for him?”
“That’s a good way of looking at it. Relationships are—”
She interrupted him, quoting him. “—overrated. Yeah, I think I’ve heard that before. You might be happy being loveless for your entire miserable life, married to your business, but the rest of us want to spend our life with someone. Now…I can tell you I want to be with someone smart and funny and nice, not a douchebag like Rex, but I would like to find a good guy.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Maybe I’m just a poor judge of character.”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe I’m just a magnet for shitty guys.”
“Or maybe,” Conor said, his full lips turned up in a smile, “all the good guys have been taken.”
Morgan frowned. “Thanks, Conor. I always feel better talking to you.” As he started smiling, she flipped him off.
He howled with laughter again. “I don’t want to charge you for this session, so now it’s time for you to listen to my problem.”
“Oh, yeah. Just throw it in my face that you’re actually employing me to work for you. Does this part fall under the other duties as assigned heading in my job description?”
Ignoring her remark, he said, “Here’s the deal.” Conor then stood up and walked across the room to glance out the window of his office over the buildings of the city toward the ocean. Morgan watched him, wondering what he was going to throw at her now—because he always had something brewing in that brilliant brain of his. “I was asking you about your high school reunion, because I’m planning to go to mine.”
“Why?”
“Never mind why. It’s too long a story. But it’s something I need to do. The problem is, if it’s anything like my ten-year, I need to protect myself.”
It was Morgan’s turn to laugh. “Protect yourself? From what?”
“Again, another long story. Maybe I’ll tell you on the flight there.”
“What do you mean?”
He turned around and leaned his butt on the window sill. “I want to make you an offer, but you’d have to come with me.” Morgan had a million questions but realized this wouldn’t be an assignment she’d have to take notes for, so she waited patiently. “I need to appear, uh…unavailable. For multiple reasons. And the easiest way I can think of is to have a friend—an assistant—help me out.”
She was feeling skeptical. “How?”
“Let me just say I’ll make it worth your while, doubling your salary for one weekend.” He smiled and pressed his fingertips together as if coming up with an incredible scheme. “I need you to work on your acting lessons…because, for one weekend only, I’m going to need you to play my wife.”
Want more of Morgan and Conor?
Read Shenigans, the next story in the Pretense & Promises series!
Shenanigans
Copyright
Copyright 2017 by Jade C. Jamison
Cover image © Volodymyr Tverdokhlib/Shutterstock
Cover design © Mr. Jamison
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be constructed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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