Single Mom Wanted for Fake Marriage: A Billionaire Romance

by Aubrey Dark

  Thank you cards? Spa day? My head was reeling.

  “You’ll come with me on a honeymoon for a week, destination to be determined later. And after that you will have monthly familial brunches with my close family, and will attend all corporate functions if the functions demand social attendance. Such as cocktail parties, merger mixers, etc. You’ll be responsible for weekly charity work; we’ll both do that of course—”

  He was racing through this stuff off faster and faster, and I was getting lost.

  “What about my work?” I asked, interrupting him with a hand on his arm. “What do I do for money while I’m busy doing all of these necessary matrimonial ceremonies?”

  He looked up.

  “I’ll be providing you with an allowance, of course.”

  “Allowance? What am I, ten years old? Do I get to spend it on candy?”

  “As much candy as you can handle,” William said calmly. “You’ll be added as a joint owner to my credit cards, with a monthly limit of twenty thousand.”

  “Twenty—”

  “That’s a soft limit, although if you overspend every month, I’ll be forced to put a hard cap on the cards. Understood?”

  “Understood,” I whispered. Twenty thousand dollars? I didn’t think I could spend that much if I tried.

  “As part of your compensation at the end of the year, I’ll be putting two million in a trust account for Kit. Of course, upon our divorce, that trust will fall to you to manage.”

  “Stop!” I cried out.

  He stopped. He looked at me patiently, waiting.

  “Two—two million. Are you serious? Two million dollars?”

  “Every term here is negotiable,” William said. “Whatever you think is worth your while for a full year of pretending to be my wife. I thought two million would be enough—”

  “That’s—no, I mean, that’s fine,” I stammered. “I just… I didn’t…”

  “Excellent. There’s another provision that, upon the conclusion of our marriage, I will fully fund a 529 plan for your daughter.”

  “What’s that?”

  “College,” he said. I stared at him. “I’ll pay for her college expenses.”

  My throat felt like it was swelling up, and tears scratched the back of my eyes. I looked over at Kit, who was currently having a nonsense conversation with Clifford, the big friendly dog, on the last page. She reached out and pet the picture with her hand. I swallowed hard.

  “That sounds… that sounds fine,” I said.

  “The wedding will be at the end of this month, twenty-nine days from now. Before then, we’ll need to pretend to be dating, then engaged.”

  “A whirlwind proposal,” I mumbled.

  “That’s right.”

  There was still a roaring in my ears. Two million dollars? A college education for Kat? I hadn’t had the time or money to go to college. My dad spent every dollar we made, or gambled it away on various sure things he told me were necessary for our future wealth. A college education was unnecessary for the daughter of a thief, anyway. Nothing like the school of hard knocks. Everything you could learn, you learned on the street.

  But with Kit, it would be different.

  I’d walked into this house expecting to be dragged into some vaguely sexual proposition. But now… Now…

  “Oh. Look at that.”

  I lifted my eyes. Kit had crawled over to the floor near Will, and she was chewing on the end of his shoelace.

  “Kit, stop it,” I said. She opened her mouth and the shoelace dropped down, a string of drool gleaming over his leather shoe. “I’m sorry about your shoe.”

  “That’s alright. I always wanted a golden Lab. This is the next best thing.” Will lifted his shoe away from Kit, who gurgled happily and crawled off to find something else to chew on.

  “Okay,” I said, my voice trembling.

  William looked up from the pages. His eyes were a soft gray, and now they searched mine, quizzical.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll sign it.” I grabbed a pen from his desk and turned the pages, skimming the legalese. Tears burned at the corners of my eyes, but I blinked them away. I wasn’t about to cry in front of this guy. This guy, who could throw away thousands and think nothing of it.

  “If you want to take your time—”

  “It’s fine,” I said, scribbling my name at the bottom of the last page. “Not like I have a legal leg to stand on, anyway.”

  As I signed, the worry that had accompanied me into the house suddenly jumped front and center.

  I’d told William that I didn’t have a husband. I’d told him that I was divorced.

  Which wasn’t, technically, exactly true.

  I’d separated from Justin, that was true. Or rather, I’d kicked him out on his ass once I found him in the back of the warehouse he worked at, balls deep in his coworker. He hadn’t cared. He didn’t even care about Kit.

  Sometimes, I thought that he’d cheated on me so that he wouldn’t have to deal with Kit anymore. A baby was too much for him to handle, especially for someone so immature. When Kit cried, he yelled at her to shut up or threw her into my arms and walked out. There had been a few nights, after coming home from the hospital, when he would leave the apartment and not come home at all. After I caught him, I realized that he had probably been with little miss ass-on-the-loading-dock all those nights.

  And I’d sent him the divorce paperwork. Without the money to hire a lawyer, I’d printed out all of the forms and filled everything out myself, then sent it directly to his work. All he’d had to do was sign the damn thing and turn it in. But he wouldn’t. I threatened to sue him for child support, but by that time he had been fired from his warehouse job and wasn’t making any money on the books. He knew it was a bluff, and he didn’t want me to go off and marry someone else.

  I’d never thought I would want to marry someone else, so I’d managed to forget all about it. I didn’t have the time or mental energy to track him down and make him sign the papers.

  Now, though, I had a deal in front of me that could change my life. That could change my daughter’s life. I looked up at the man leaning on the desk, the one with soft, intelligent gray eyes. The one who’d pinned me down and told me I had to marry him. A strange twist went through my heart as I thought about living with him for the next year. Living here, being able to give Kit everything she wanted or needed.

  I would have to find Justin, and find a way to make him accept a divorce. The conviction formed in my heart, and I steeled myself. I would do it. I had to do it.

  But I only had a month to get it done.

  Chapter 9

  I straightened my tie again, standing in front of the door. I didn’t know why my pulse was racing faster than before a quarterly sales report. I mean sure, it was a first date. But it wasn’t really a first date.

  I glanced down at my watch. I still had two minutes left. Should I be early? It didn’t matter. Really, it didn’t matter. I should knock right now. Two minutes wasn’t anything, was it?

  “Who’s there?”

  A voice from behind me made my heart jump. I turned around to see an old woman glaring out of the hallway at me. She looked to be four feet tall and dressed in a loose flowered robe, but as she stared up at me from under bright pink rollers, I thought that I had never met anyone so sure of themselves.

  “My name is Will,” I said.

  “You a salesman?” Her eyes squinted under her white eyebrows suspiciously, looking up and down at my suit.

  “No,” I said.

  “You selling insurance?”

  “No,” I repeated. “I’m not a salesman.”

  “You a census taker?”

  “What? No.”

  “I ain’t got nobody in the apartment ‘cept me. Unless you count Frankie.”

  “Frankie?”

  “My cat. Frankie. Used to be Frankie and Johnny, you know, like the song. Only Johnny died. My husband died too. Nobody here but me, and I’m eighty-fou
r. Mark that down on your report, will you?”

  “I’m not a census—”

  “I miss the cat more, I think,” she muttered. “At least Frankie could sleep in the same bed without snoring. I’m eighty-four and still have all my hearing, God save me. I always did say the Lord takes away our hearing so that we don’t have to hear all the nonsense the young people are spouting. And the music! Don’t get me started on that stuff they play on the radio!”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  “Nothing good on but the classical station. You listen to classical music?”

  “Sometimes,” I said, glancing down anxiously at my watch. One minute past. “Listen—”

  “Down the hall next door is Bill, he’s seventy. Thinks he’s better than anyone, that man. I know I’m no spring chicken myself, but you think you’d give the lady the time, wouldn’t you?”

  “I—”

  “And the door you’re in front of, that’s Sierra and her little baby.” The old woman’s face lit up, crackling with a smile. “Sweet little demon of a child. The rooftop garden used to have these awful yellow daisies in there all up and down the walkway. Daisies! Like they can’t afford roses for us, even if it’s our last years on earth. So you know what I did?”

  She leaned out of her doorway, and I couldn’t help but lean down to listen.

  “I told that child that she could pick all the daisies. Picked them all clean, right off the bush, then picked off the leaves with it!” The old woman cackled in triumph. “They replaced all the daisies. Course they got geraniums, geraniums are cheaper than roses, but it’s a step in the right direction anyway.”

  It was five minutes past.

  “It was lovely to meet you,” I said, trying to bring the conversation to a close. “I didn’t get your name?”

  The old woman went from smiling to frowning in a millisecond.

  “You ain’t getting it, neither!” she said. “I don’t hold no truck with your kind of nosy government! The census ain’t ever getting my name, not now, not ever!”

  She slammed the door.

  Behind me, the door opened. I turned around. Sierra was standing in the doorway, a sleek dark red dress clinging to her curves. Her hair seemed a shade darker than before, too. Her lips were dark red, and in her heels she stood up to my chin.

  “I see you met Mrs. Granger.”

  “Don’t tell me her name,” I said, a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. “That’s sensitive information, and I am a government official.”

  “Not a salesman? That’s a step up. For the first month after we moved in, she thought I was trying to sell her magazine subscriptions every time I said hello in the elevator.”

  I laughed.

  “Can I come in?” I asked.

  Sierra’s eyes dropped back to the apartment as she stepped forward into the hallway.

  “Actually, that’s probably not a good idea. It’s a mess in there.”

  “It can’t be that bad.”

  “Uh—”

  “Come on,” I said, walking by her despite her putting her hand on my arm. “I have to see where my future bride lives. Give me the grand tour.”

  “You asked for it,” Sierra said. “Watch the Lego—”

  But I’d already tripped over the construction that was in the middle of the floor. Lego pieces tumbled across the carpet.

  “Good thing I wasn’t barefoot,” I said. “Sorry about the, uh…”

  “Castle. Don’t worry, I’ll tell her a dragon came through and destroyed it. She’s at war with a dragon currently.”

  “Sounds epic.”

  “Well, here’s the grand tour.”

  Sierra swept her arm across the room with a single gesture.

  “This is the bedroom slash living room slash playroom slash kitchen. Bathroom is through that door if you need it.”

  I looked around at the cramped apartment. A twin bed was shoved up against the wall, a well-worn crib pulled up next to it. The “kitchen” consisted of a single burner and a microwave on top of a bookshelf half stuffed with cereal boxes. The mini fridge had a magnet on it with a fake cross-stitch pattern that read: Come in, sit down, relax, converse. Our house doesn’t always look like this— Sometimes it’s even worse!

  “You don’t have to say anything. I know you’re overwhelmed by so much elegance.”

  “This is where you live?”

  “Yes. And?”

  Sierra crossed her arms. I immediately regretted asking the question. I simply couldn’t believe that she was able to live here with a kid. Where did she ever go to relax?

  “I didn’t mean—I’m sorry.”

  “It’s alright,” Sierra said, her tone quiet, her shoulders still tense. “I know it’s not much. But we don’t have much.”

  At that moment, I wanted to sweep her up into my arms. I wanted to tell her that I would give her anything, everything that she could possibly need. I wanted to say that everything would be okay in the end.

  Instead, I turned toward the houseplant that had googly eyes glued to every leaf. Underneath the googly eyes, someone had drawn on a wobbly smile and a monster mouth with a Sharpie pen.

  “Your daughter is very creative,” I said.

  “That’s actually my artwork,” Sierra said, the tension dropping from her shoulders as she teased. “Bet you didn’t know I had that kind of talent.”

  “You’re an artist. That’s impressive.”

  “I work almost exclusively with ficus plants and googly eyes.” She arched her eyebrow in an exaggerated expression. “It’s found art.”

  “Let me guess,” I said, putting my chin in my hand and staring at the houseplant as though in deep concentration. “The anthropomorphizing of the plant represents the humanization of the environment.”

  “Trees are people too. I’m impressed you understand the nuances of this piece of plant art. Most people don’t appreciate that.”

  “I’m glad I’m on your artistic wavelength.”

  “That must be why I agreed to marry you.” Sierra grinned. A weird warmth flowed up through my chest as she smiled, her full lips stretching into brightness. She pushed back a lock of hair from her cheek and I turned away, my mouth suddenly dry. I coughed.

  “This is a very subtle, intriguing piece. If you’re ever thinking of putting it up for sale…”

  Sierra lifted her chin haughtily.

  “My art is not crassly commercial,” she said, a twinkle in her eye. “Anyway, Kit would kill me if I ever got rid of it. She’s given every leaf a name already.” She touched one of the plant’s leaves and smiled fondly.

  I held out my arm.

  “In that case, let’s head out to dinner. I want to get to know my future wife.”

  Sierra’s smile was relaxed and easy until I put my hand on her lower back. Then she stiffened, all her muscles tensing up again under my palm.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Hm? Nothing’s the matter.”

  She glanced up at me.

  “I need to be able to touch you in public without you tensing up. People will notice.”

  “I didn’t even notice,” Sierra said, frowning. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to guys touching me like that. Unless, you know, they want something.”

  My jaw clenched as I remembered how Frank Oliver had gripped her arm at the party. I wondered how many men had tried to push her around. It couldn’t have been easy.

  “We’ll go slow,” I said, forcing my voice to be casual. “Just try and relax.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Remember, I’m not going to try to do anything with you that you don’t want. You’re safe with me.”

  Her eyes flickered up to my face, then back down. She bit her lip slightly, but her muscles visibly loosened. Gently but firmly, I put my hand again on her back and led her carefully around the Lego castle.

  Once outside, Sierra’s eyes widened at the sight of a sleek black limousine waiting for us on the sidewalk.

  “No way,
” she said, grinning like a little girl.

  “Way.” I opened the door for her, and she climbed in. To my satisfaction, there were already a few people staring at the limousine, some taking pictures.

  “Is this how you always travel?”

  “No,” I said, settling into the seat next to her. “But I wanted to get some attention for tonight.” I slid my hand under hers, grasping her palm lightly. She tensed up slightly, then remembered and forced herself to relax. Her hand was small, her skin cool and smooth in mine. And despite my insistence that she relax, I found my own heart beating a bit faster.

  “Attention?”

  “So that people will see us out and about. We’ll have a drink at a popular club, then head to my brother’s house for dinner.”

  “Your brother?” Her eyes flashed with worry and her hand gripped mine. A pulse of desire shot to my core. I ran my thumb over her skin, trying to calm myself as much as her.

  “Not the one you tried to steal from. We’re going to Dexter’s house.”

  “But your other brother, he’ll be there?”

  “Probably. It’s a family dinner.”

  “You didn’t tell me I was going to meet your family!”

  Sierra’s eyes were wide, and I couldn’t help notice the flecks of gold running through her brown irises. Like tiger eye jewels. She really was beautiful. If she had been any other woman—

  “Do we really have to go?”

  “We need to establish that we’re dating. And I want everyone in my family to think that our relationship is already farther along than it is. Otherwise it’ll seem even stranger that we should get married within a month.”

  Sierra puffed a breath of air out through her lips. I remembered the way she’d pressed them against mine, teasing, tempting. A full flush of heat ran through my body. I loosened my tie but I couldn’t shake the feeling.

  “Alright,” she said. “I can do this.”

  “Of course you can do this,” I said. She seemed really nervous, and I wasn’t sure why. I squeezed her hand, and she smiled up at me. God, that smile. I wanted to kiss her again. Sanders had told me once about how he’d made love to a woman in the back of a limousine. That memory sent an instant image of Sierra, lying naked right here while I kissed her, not only on her lips but on her neck, her breasts, her hips…