Marry Me Now: An Arranged Marriage Collection

by Wylder, Penny

  I smile at my reflection in my computer screen. I’ve got him.

  “No, you know what, we can make it,” Tony says. “If it’s all right to add in a few overtime shifts for my guys…”

  “Of course.” My smile widens. “Thank you so much for all your hard work, Tony.” I hang up and call through the open door. “You’re welcome.”

  Luke winks. “You’re an angel, Celia.”

  An angel. My heart skips a beat. I file that away, into the mental file filled with every compliment Luke has paid me in the past year. Ever since I got promoted out of the general secretarial pool and into my position as head assistant for Luke Rossfield, President and CEO. Billionaire genius inventor.

  Hottest man I’ve ever met.

  The office is small, practically start-up sized, which means, in about thirty minutes when everyone starts to file out for lunch, it’s not long before I’m left solo at my desk. Luke has a 12:30 lunch meeting that will run overtime, I’m sure. It always does when he meets with this particular investor. The rest of our staff tend to take long lunches on Thursdays, and they’ll be especially long today, on the first sunny Thursday of spring. This weekend is a long weekend too. Extra motivation for everybody to take a long lunch.

  My hands move as if they have a will of their own. I open a website and follow my history trail through to one of the most frequently visited sites on my computer, as embarrassing as it is to admit. It’s a “reality fanfiction” forum, mostly filled with people’s fantasies about NFL players or rock stars or even particularly sexy bartenders they’ve run across in real life. Those are the rules. You can contribute any sexy story you want, but they have to be about a real person—fake name used to disguise them, of course.

  It’s the first and only place I’ve ever confessed my feelings for Luke.

  It started out so innocently. Just a couple of fantasies late at night when I had trouble falling asleep, early on after my promotion. I swear it’s because we’d spend such late hours together at the office; I wouldn’t be able to hear anything but his voice by the time I got home, or picture anything but his sexy exasperated smirk, as we discussed one issue or another.

  Then it progressed to imagining what I wish would happen in those office after-hours meetings. I’d picture him shutting the office door behind me and instead of starting to complain about regulatory guidelines, he’d pin me against the door and kiss me, telling me he just can’t keep his hands off me for one second longer.

  Eventually, I started to write out some of the fantasies. Just a couple of them. Just for myself.

  Then I found this site, and posted one of them, only to suddenly gain an enormous following. Now I have readers begging for another installment.

  I have other readers begging me to just make a move already.

  If this Liam—that’s my pseudonym for Luke online, to protect his real identity—is anywhere near as hot as you say, girl, you need to get on that before somebody else does. That’s the most recent comment on the story I posted a few days ago.

  I do another quick check around the office and scroll back up to the top, to reread what I wrote.

  “Cecily.” Liam reaches up to tuck a single strand of hair behind my ear. But his hand lingers on my cheek, for just a beat too long, his gaze fixed on me. “How long has it been?” he asks, his voice a low murmur.

  Behind us, I’m all too aware of the empty floor, our colleagues long since checked out for the night. The lights are out, everywhere but here in his office, where he has a single lamp burning beside his desk. It’s not much illumination. Just enough for me to make out the searing heat in his eyes. “A year,” I say.

  “A year of working with you.” His hand slides down my cheek to cup the back of my neck. He tugs me closer, and I can’t help it. I step toward him, my hands sliding up to rest against his chest. I savor the warmth of his body, the feel of his muscles underneath my fingertips. “A year of torture.”

  My lips part in surprise. I start to step back, hurt, but his other hand slides around my waist and holds me close. Pins me against him, until my supple body melts into his muscular one.

  “Because I haven’t been able to touch you, Cecily. I haven’t been able to tell you how I really feel…”

  My head tips back, my eyes fixed on his. “Liam, we can’t. There are rules—”

  “Fuck the rules.” He kisses me, and it’s everything I’ve ever wanted. His mouth is soft and sweet and tastes faintly of smoke, just like the cologne he wears. He spins me around, and my back bumps up against the desk. Then he’s lifting me onto the edge of it, the wood digging into my thighs, as his hands slide down my waist to the bottom of my skirt. It’s office appropriate attire, but the second he gets his hands on it, it no longer feels like it. He hikes the skirt up my thighs, and slides a warm hand between my legs, caressing the sensitive skin in a way that makes me shiver from the top of my head all the way to my toes.

  “Cecily,” he whispers again, against my mouth. “I want you so fucking badly I can hardly stand it. Every single day we’re in this office together—”

  “Celia?”

  I jump so badly I nearly spill my coffee all over my desk. I slap the button to darken my desk monitor and leap to my feet all in one motion, heart in my throat. “Luke! I thought you left for your 12:30 already.” I plaster on a huge, fake smile, and pray he doesn’t read too much into my flushed cheeks. I wonder if he can hear my heart pounding. It’s deafening to me. If he can’t, it’s a miracle.

  “Sorry.” He’s grinning, amused. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “You didn’t,” I lie. God, I’m a terrible liar.

  He glances away from me, and nods at the monitor. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your, ah… alone time.”

  Alone time. Did he see my screen? Oh, god, did he guess what I was doing? “I just didn’t hear you coming. Did you need something?” Deflect, deflect. Anything to keep him from asking too many questions about why I just panicked and turned off my computer screen.

  “Actually, yes.” He nods past me toward his office. “It’s a bit… sensitive, though. Could we talk in private?” He doesn’t wait for my response, just strides past me into the office.

  I cast another panicked glance around the floor, but there’s nobody else here, no one who can spare me from this. My heart sinks. Luke never asks me to speak in private, much less about sensitive issues. He’s normally an out in the open kind of boss. The only time he shuts his door is if he needs to tell someone they’ve done something wrong.

  Which means this is it. He knows I’ve been writing dirty fantasies about him. He caught me reading them at work—what was I thinking? —and he’s about to tell me he needs to move me to another department.

  Heart in my throat, I step into his office. The second I shut the door behind me, Luke gestures to the chair across from him. Oh no. Worse and worse. We don’t normally stand on ceremony, not between us. If he wants me to sit, it must be bad news.

  I perch on the edge of the chair, too nervous to sit back or relax. “What is it?” I ask, eager to get it over with. I’ve never liked waiting, especially for bad news. I’d rather just rip this band aid off straight away.

  But Luke leans back in his chair and considers me for a long moment. Dragging it out. His gaze drifts past me to the windows and back again, like he’s double-checking that we’re alone. Finally, he sighs. “There’s no easy way to say this, Celia.”

  I clench my fists in my lap and resist the urge to shut my eyes, to brace for the blow.

  “Will you be my wife?”

  2

  My jaw drops. I feel like the floor is tipping out from under me. Like I’ve just fallen headfirst out of reality and into a daydream.

  But then Luke catches my expression and adds quickly, “Pretend to be, I mean. Only for the weekend.”

  I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. I’m pretty sure my face is bright red, and hot enough to light a cigarette off of. “Um… what?”<
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  He laughs softly. “It’s stupid, I know. It’s just, I have this weekend trip planned with my friend Paul and his fiancée, out at the DelMonte—”

  “That new hotel with the five-star chef that everyone’s been talking about?” I interrupt.

  “Out on the shore, yes, that one.” He smiles. “Anyway, my friend and I had a bet going, a few years ago, about who would get married first. He kept insisting it would be him, because I’m married to my job.”

  I blink and bite back my instinctive response, which is Aren’t you? I can’t help but think about the fact that, in one whole year of working directly with Luke, day in and day out, I have never seen any evidence of him dating. And I handle just about everything for him, all the way down to scheduling his barber shop visits and sending out his dry cleaning. If there were girls in the picture, I’d have seen evidence of it by now.

  Unless he’s hiding it from you. Unless he knows you have feelings for him, so he makes sure to hook up on the down-low. Unless…

  Okay, so there’s a possibility he has hookups. But nobody long-term, not in all the time I’ve been here.

  “So…” I narrow my eyes, trying to follow Luke’s train of thought. “You want me to pretend that we’re married, so you’ll win the bet.”

  Luke grins. “Now you’re getting it. Since Paul’s wedding is in just a couple of weeks, I don’t have much time left to beat him to the punch.”

  I sigh and cross my arms, pretending to deliberate, or at the very least to be hesitant about this proposition. But deep down, I already know what I’ll say. I can’t remember a single time I’ve managed to say no to this man. Especially not when he’s looking at me the way he is now, with that huge, charming grin of his, his gaze focused on me like I’m the only person in the whole wide world he sees.

  “It’s just for two days, Celia, I promise. We can have whatever we want at the restaurant every day—I hear the menu is seasonally themed and rotates based on whatever the chef selects from the neighboring farms. Plus, the DelMonte has its own vineyard…”

  “Okay, okay.” I burst out laughing. “It’s like you know my weaknesses are food and wine, or something.”

  “Well, we have spent a decent amount of time together.” His eyes sparkle with amusement.

  I lean forward and have to catch my breath when he mirrors me. “Is that why you’re asking me to do this?” I arch one eyebrow. “Because we can fake a relationship easily?”

  Some expression I can’t quite read flickers across his face. But it’s only for a split second, there and gone. Then he grins. “But of course. Who better? You know more about me than anyone on the planet, Celia.” He sits back in his chair, palms flat on the desk. “But it’s a big favor. I won’t pressure you. If you don’t want to—”

  “I accept,” I blurt out, before he can rescind the offer. Or worse, before he can ask someone else to do it. The last thing I’d want is to spend the weekend here in the city, picturing him off gallivanting around this gorgeous new hotel with a hot young bimbo on his arm, taking her out to fancy meals and then back to their big shared hotel room, where he’d probably have her for dessert.

  I pinch the underside of my arm to keep myself from getting too distracted by my imaginary jealousy. Or by the fantasy it turns into, when I picture myself there with him instead.

  “Wonderful.” Luke hesitates for a second, like he thought this would be a longer conversation. “I’ll drive. Can I pick you up Saturday morning, first thing?”

  “I’ll add it to both of our calendars today.” I smile in response.

  “Be sure to pack your bathing suit. And I’d say dress well, but of course, your style is always impeccable. Actually…” He glances at me sideways.

  I laugh. “Yes, I can put together a wardrobe for you as well, if you’d like. Your favorite suit should be back from the cleaners by then.”

  “Perfect.” Luke stands up, still smiling, and crosses around the desk to touch my shoulder. I freeze, wanting nothing more than to linger there, his hand on my bare shoulder, his fingertips strong and smooth against my skin. “Thank you, Celia. I promise you won’t regret this.” He winks. “Even if you’re stuck with me, a weekend at a luxury beachfront hotel should be worthwhile, I hope.”

  His hand lingers so long that I finally work up the nerve to reach my own hand toward his, about to touch my fingers to his. But at that moment, he releases my shoulder, and my hand touches my own skin instead. I let out a faint sigh, hoping he doesn’t notice. But he’s already crossing the office behind me to open the door.

  I swallow hard and manage to recover some of my vocal abilities. “I’m sure it will be lots of fun.” I force myself to stand and smooth down my skirt, before I turn to face him. I wonder if I imagine the way his eyes jump to mine, as if he were just looking somewhere else a second ago. Probably. “Even if I have to spend it with my boss,” I add with a wink, before I cross out of the office ahead of him and point to the clock nearby. “You’d better hurry if you want to make your 12:30 at this point,” I call back to him.

  There’s a long silence. Long enough to make me turn back around to watch Luke as he walks to the elevator, his gaze never leaving mine. “Thanks, Celia,” he repeats. A refrain I’ll never get tired of hearing. “As always, I’d be lost without you.” The elevator arrives, but he barely seems to notice. His eyes stay fixed on me, and he opens his mouth again, about to say something.

  I lose my nerve and look back at my computer screen, only risking turning it back on now that he’s on the other side of the office, too far away to accidentally glimpse what’s currently pulled up on it. When I look back up, Luke’s already gone.

  3

  At 8am sharp on Saturday morning, I hear a car horn tapped lightly outside my window. I stick a hand out and wave to signal that I’ve heard and I’m on my way. Then I grab my weekend bag and sling it over one shoulder, casting one last glance around my apartment and praying that I’ve remembered everything.

  The bag weighs about a thousand pounds. I wasn’t sure what exactly to bring—careful research of the DelMonte’s website told me it’s a lot fancier than the type of restaurants or resorts I usually visit with friends. Those are more of the budget-resort-in-the-Caribbean variety, and even then, we normally only go if there’s some kind of package discount deal.

  I’ve never been somewhere like DelMonte. And Luke’s compliments about my style aside, I’m not sure the outfits I own are fancy enough for this place, no matter how well-coordinated they might be. Rich people can spot knockoff designer clothes from a mile away, I’m told.

  I don’t know many ultra-rich people aside from Luke, and he’s not that kind of person. He barely even notices if his own socks match, let alone if someone else’s outfit is particularly posh or not.

  Finally, I decide I’ve packed as well as I possibly can, and I close the door shut behind me and head downstairs. I threw on a cute sundress and hope it’s the right thing to wear to something like this.

  On the curb, I pause. Luke brought the Tesla. That means he’s really showing off today. I suppress a smile and wonder who exactly this friend of his is. I’ve never heard Luke mention a Paul, but if his other close friends and acquaintances are anything to judge by, he’s probably from one of the other big competing tech firms.

  Luke has a one-track mind, and that track is work. If you ask me, Paul made a smart bet with him years ago, gambling that Luke would never commit to anything other than his office.

  The thought makes my heart sink a little, at least until I hear the driver’s side door open. Then my heart stops altogether.

  Luke looks resplendent in his favorite suit, the one I had pressed and steamed for him the other day. He comes around to my side of the car to take my bag, before opening the passenger door for me with a wink.

  “Don’t you think you’re exaggerating a bit?” I ask, even though I have to suppress a grin to do it. “Husbands don’t really open doors or carry their bags for them anymore.”
>
  “Yours does,” he replies, in a low, confidential voice that makes my chest constrict. As I step past him to slide into the car, his hand brushes my arm, just for a second and lightly enough that it could be a casual mistake. But it’s a mistake that makes my belly tighten and my thighs clamp together.

  What am I doing? For the first time, the full weight of what I’ve agreed to do this weekend hits home. Do I really think I’m going to be able to conceal my feelings for Luke all weekend? Especially in such close quarters, when we’re pretending to be married. My heart races as I watch Luke in the rearview, loading my bag into the trunk and then coming around to his side and settling in behind the wheel.

  “I could have driven myself, you know,” I babble, before my face flushes. “I mean, thank you, but—”

  “Husbands drive their wives.” He hesitates before he puts the car in gear and turns to face me. “Celia, I just wanted to say, before we go… I really need to go all in on this charade. Is that all right with you?” He smiles, a hint of mischief sparkling in his eyes. “If you want to back out now, I won’t blame you. Like I said, I know it’s a lot to ask.”

  I square my shoulders, ignoring the rabbiting of my heart. No matter how worried I might be about my real feelings showing this weekend, there’s no way I’m backing out now. The last thing I’d do would be to leave Luke in a lurch. Especially one like this.

  His hand is resting on the gear shift. Tentatively, I reach out to touch it. He flips it over and catches my hand in his, threading our fingers together. It’s a more intimate touch than we’ve ever shared, and I catch my breath at the sensation of his strong fingers between mine. It makes me imagine what they’d feel like on other parts of my body. Sliding up my arms and then down my curves, following them around my waist to cup my ass and lift me up off this car seat…