Fool Me Once

by Williams, Nicole

  “I’d like to recommend you keep this idea to yourself,” I suggested, but he was already talking.

  “If I had my old high school girlfriend with me on tour—rekindling an old flame with a small-town country girl—how could that not clean up an image?” He motioned at me. “You’re exactly what I need to show fans I’m getting my life back on track. A wholesome, down-to-earth girl who gets up at five to water the horses instead of going to bed at that hour after drinking the town dry.”

  My head whipped in his direction, finally looking at him to determine if he was being serious. My god, he was.

  “Not a chance in hell,” I said, enunciating each word slowly.

  Chase didn’t blink. “Even if that proposition was tied to a sum of money?” When I opened my mouth to argue, he added, “A large sum?”

  “My principles aren’t for sale.”

  He shuffled a little closer, still kneeling. Damn. He was just as attractive in person from three feet away as he was on the cover of Rolling Stone. My stomach knotted again, but this time for a different reason.

  “I don’t want to buy your principles.” One brow lifted. “Just six months of your time.”

  For a minute, I sat there silently, part hypnotized by his presence, part contemplating his ridiculous offer. There were few people I disliked more than Chase Lawson, but I also had big plans for my future. Plans that necessitated money.

  “How much?”

  My head shook when I heard my question out loud. What was I saying? What was I actually contemplating doing?

  “One hundred thousand a month,” he replied.

  My hand curled around the arm of the bench. “Six hundred thousand dollars?” I shrieked, giving him a look like he was crazy.

  “Fine. Six months. One million dollars.” He exhaled. “Final offer.”

  My hand was dangerously close to ripping the handle from the bench. “One million dollars.”

  My mind raced with everything I could do with that money. Restoring the farmhouse the way I’d dreamed, turning it into a quaint B&B with an agrarian twist. Spoiling my parents with a fancy cruise and a new farm truck. Finally getting to travel to some of the places I’d only imagined through the pictures of a magazine.

  All it would take was six months with Chase.

  It wasn’t exactly an easy decision, but it wasn’t a hard one. I’d given two years of my life to him already, and it had cost me more than I’d been prepared to pay. This time, he’d be the one paying for it. One million dollars to be exact.

  I couldn’t answer quickly enough. “Deal.”

  2

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” My mom glanced across the stable at me.

  “I’m positive,” I replied, hoping my answer sounded more convincing than I felt on the matter of spending the next half a year with Chase.

  “You wanted to burn the man at the stake yesterday and this morning you’re leaving with him to pose as his girlfriend?”

  I focused on mucking out the stalls instead of meeting my mom’s all-penetrating stare. She could see a lie coming from me before I’d even conceived it. “I’m doing it for the million bucks. That’s all.”

  “And I wouldn’t have thought you’d do it for a billion with the way he left you.” She grunted, muttering something under her breath. My parents weren’t what you’d consider big fans of Chase Lawson—the star or the man. “What are you going to tell all of your friends?”

  “Well, I can’t tell them about Chase’s and my agreement like I told you and Dad. The whole point of this thing is for everyone to think the perfect Chase Lawson reunited with his high school sweetheart after getting sober and putting his life back on track. If anyone found out he was paying for me to pretend . . .” I set the pitchfork aside to lay some fresh straw. “Pretty sure that would do the opposite of shining up his reputation like he’s hoping for.”

  “It’s not like Chase ever had a decent reputation to being with. Why’s he so concerned about it now?” Mom moved down to the next stall.

  Both of us were moving quicker than normal since a car would be coming for me soon.

  “Don’t know. Don’t care. I’m just in it for the money.”

  “As your mother, half of me winces when I hear my daughter agreed to pose as a man’s lover, and half of me is proud of her for being so industrious.”

  I chuckled as I spread the hay. “Same goes for me exactly.”

  “But really, honey, you’re going to have to tell your friends something. Soon. Before they hear it in the tabloids and start a petition to have you involuntarily committed.”

  “I know. I will.” I took a deep breath once I’d finished the stall. Morning chores were officially done—and in record time too. “I’ll call Jesse and tell her some story about Chase and I reconnecting the night of the reunion and that I’m going to, for once in my life, be reckless. I’ll ask her to spread the word to the others, then when I return in six months, fresh from a breakup, they’ll get back to trying to set me up with anyone under the age of sixty who isn’t married.”

  Mom came up beside me, tugging off her leather work gloves. “Sounds like you’ve got it all planned out.”

  “At least some of it,” I said, ringing my arm around her as we left the barn.

  I’d miss this place. A lot. I’d miss the morning and evening chores, the smell of the air after a light summer rain, and the sounds of farm animals bringing in twilight. I’d miss my little apartment, meeting for Saturday night BBQs, and swimming in the creek outside of town.

  I loved this small patch of earth where time moved slower and people cared about the strength of their relationships more than the balance in their bank account. It was because I loved this place so much that I was leaving. I’d be back. Seven figures richer.

  “You know, you could always get a loan from the bank to get the money you need to renovate the old farmhouse.” Mom’s chin lifted in the direction of the house built by my great-great grandfather in the 1870s. It hadn’t been lived in for decades, and even though it looked like the setting of a potential horror film right now, new paint, windows, and a loving touch would change the whole image.

  “I could, but my grandkids would still be repaying it. This way, I don’t have to repay anyone.”

  Mom made a face. “But you have to give up six months of your life to that man.”

  “Who said achieving your dreams was going to be easy?” I bumped my hip against hers as we headed toward where Dad was finishing refilling the watering troughs.

  “Fine. Point taken. Just . . . be careful.”

  “Promise.”

  Dad must have overheard our conversation because he pointed at me. “That boy hurts you again, Em, and it won’t matter how much reasoning you or your mama throw at me, he’s going to be picking my shotgun shells out of his hind end for weeks.” Dad grunted, shaking his head as he closed the livestock gate behind him. “He’d write a song about it no doubt. Capitalize on getting shot by the father of his ex-girlfriend. Title it, ‘Break Her Heart, Get Shot in the Ass.’”

  Mom and I laughed.

  “It would probably be a number-one hit too,” Mom teased.

  The sound of a car crunching up the long driveway caught our attention. They were early.

  “It’s not too late to back out.” Dad nudged me before waving at the pasture where the horses were. “Old Sonny can outrun that big, shiny tank.”

  “Not backing out.” I loped toward the small house the limo was stopping in front of. There wasn’t a place within fifty miles where a person could rent a limo, so they must have gotten someone to come all the way out here from Tulsa.

  The driver was already opening the back passenger door by the time I made it over. A petite blond woman in a smart black suit popped out of the backseat, staring at the house as though it were contaminated. My grandparents had had this smaller home built after the original farmhouse became uninhabitable without some significant repairs, and this was where my paren
ts had brought me home from the hospital. I didn’t like some big city woman giving it the stink-eye.

  “Morning!” I called, waving to get her attention.

  “You’re Emma?” When the woman’s attention diverted to me, her stare at the house had seemed warm by comparison.

  I flicked the bill of my hat. “That’s me.”

  Her eyes wandered down me, a deep line carving between her brows when they fell on my boots. “I’m Dani, Chase’s PA.” Her throat cleared, her eyes still fixated on my boots. “Do you need any help with your bags?”

  “I’ve only got one, so I think I can manage.” I jogged up the porch steps and retrieved my suitcase from where it was resting beside the porch swing. “Is Chase in there?”

  “He’ll be waiting for us on the airplane.”

  “Smarter than he looks,” I said, winking at my dad, who’d made his way with Mom toward the limo.

  “What’s that?” Dani asked, her tone as pleasant as her survey of me had been.

  “Just an inside joke between my dad and me. And his shotgun.”

  Dad took my suitcase and loaded it into the trunk of the limo despite the driver offering to do it.

  I felt tears wading to the surface, so I had to make the goodbye quick. It wasn’t like I was leaving forever or wouldn’t be able to call them whenever I wanted. But still. It was the longest I’d been away from the farm and this town ever.

  After giving each of my parents a long, suffocating hug, I took a deep breath and climbed inside the limo. Dani was already waiting inside.

  “Oh. I thought you might want to change first.” She scooted farther down the seat.

  “Why? Are we going straight to some fancy event or something?”

  Chase hadn’t gone into a ton of detail about what the six months would fully entail, but I knew appearances, dates, charity events, and a couple of awards shows were part of the job.

  “No, we’re just getting on an airplane. A private, luxury G-6 with ivory interior.” She was back to staring at my boots.

  “Chase grew up country too. He’s no stranger to muddying up boots.”

  Dani pursed her lips. “No, but he doesn’t typically traipse around with cow shit on his boots in public.”

  “Probably because the only cow he comes in contact with is the filet on his dinner plate,” I muttered, inspecting my boots again. They really weren’t that bad. But for a girl whose heels were so shiny she could see her reflection in them, I guessed my boots were a rural crime scene.

  The driver had climbed inside, and I made sure to roll down the windows and wave at my parents as we headed down the driveway. The distraction kept me from saying something I’d regret to a person who I’d obviously spend a lot of the next six months around. She might not have liked me now because I had callouses on my palms and dirt under my nails, but she’d warm up to me eventually.

  “Don’t worry—this is more mud than it is manure. Two substances Chase has got to be used to after being in the public eye for a decade.”

  Dani was quiet for a few minutes, tapping around on her tablet like she had a thousand-item checklist to complete before nine o’clock. “So you two were really together? High school sweethearts?”

  “For two years, yeah.”

  She made a sound with her mouth, still typing away on the shiny tablet in her lap. “You seem like an unlikely pair.”

  I pulled at my old T-shirt, feeling a piece of straw stuck inside. “Unlikely. Disastrous. Volatile. Pick your adjective.”

  “Yet that didn’t stop you from agreeing to fake as his girlfriend.”

  I took that as a rhetorical statement and left it at that. “You said you were his PA? What does that stand for?”

  “Personal assistant,” she replied, clearly not going to expand upon that unless pressed.

  I pressed. “Well, you know, I’m a dumb hick who doesn’t know their femur from their frontal lobe. What does being a PA entail?”

  She cracked her window then rolled it back up when the wind blew through her flawlessly styled hair. “Personal. Assistance. In any and all capacities.”

  “Any and all?” I repeated.

  “I’m basically his spouse, without the exchanging of vows.” She looked up from her tablet, her brown eyes drilling into mine. “Does that clear things up?”

  “Completely,” I mouthed, wondering if there was a clinical term for someone who’d had a stick shoved so far up their butt they’d become poisoned by it.

  We rode in silence until the small airfield outside of town came into view. A person usually never saw anything fancier than a crop duster or, every once in a while, a private single engine, but today was different. Chase’s jet dwarfed the others dotted around the airstrip, gleaming in the early morning sun.

  “The last private jet I was on was nicer, but this is acceptable.”

  Dani either didn’t get my sense of humor or have one at all.

  The instant the limo came to a stop, she was out the door, her tablet tucked into her buttery leather briefcase. I crawled out the other door and heaved my suitcase out of the trunk before the driver had made it out of his seat.

  “Thanks for the ride.” I waved at the driver before following Dani toward the plane, my old suitcase teetering like it was about to bust a wheel.

  A woman in a navy suit similar to the one Dani had on took my suitcase at the base of the plane’s stairway. Her smile was genuine though, and she even called me ma’am after saying good morning.

  When I stepped inside the plane, I froze. I’d flown a few times in my life, but coach class had nothing on a private jet. The fancy hotel I’d had lunch in with Mom in Oklahoma City didn’t even boast the level of class found inside this flying tin cylinder.

  I noticed him, rising from his seat, from the corner of my eye.

  “The devil pays well,” I greeted, making my way into the cabin.

  I’d thought Dani was exaggerating about the ivory interior of the plane, but she wasn’t.

  “Yeah, well, my soul wasn’t worth much to me, so it was an easy decision.” Chase stepped out into the aisle, looking frustratingly gorgeous for this early in the morning. Here I was, ripe from early morning farm chores, and he looked as though he was freshly minted at the deity treasury.

  I’d just started sliding out of my dirty boots when Chase interrupted. “Don’t worry about it. I can’t make it through a flight without spilling coffee or making some kind of mess, so my team’s a bunch of pros when it comes to stain removal.”

  I went ahead and kicked off my boots anyways. If I’d tried stepping foot inside Mom’s house with them on, I would have gotten what for. “My junior prom dress still bears the punch stains of your grace impairment.”

  His brow cocked. “Just the punch stains?”

  I made it a point of staring at Dani, who was getting herself settled into one of the back seats, a laptop joining her tablet on the table in front of her.

  He broke the silence with an amused grunt. “I was referring to the hot sauce stains from the order of wings we got after the dance and took out to the creek. What were you thinking about, perv?”

  “Did you seriously call me a perv? So much for maturing.”

  A low-timbered chuckle echoed in his chest, his gaze unapologetic as I wound down the aisle. A corner of his mouth lifted when his inspection ended on my messy ponytail, my old farm supply hat resting low on my head. “You’re a sight for these Oklahoma-roots eyes, Emma Young.”

  “Oh yeah. I’m sure you’ve missed the itch of straw falling inside your shirt and the scent of manure permanently embedded in your nostrils.” I eyed his boots that looked fresh out of the box, right on up to his white tee that was so bright it was almost blinding.

  “The straw and manure I definitely don’t miss. But those proud country girls who would just as soon shoot you as they would kiss you, I do miss.”

  One of my hands settled on my hip. “You don’t have to tell lies in some attempt to woo me. This is a business tran
saction as far as I’m concerned.”

  He took his seat, indicating the empty one beside him. “I’m paying you seven figures. Don’t think I’m stressing out trying to think of the right thing to say at the right time. If I tell you something, it’s because I want to and it’s the truth.”

  “Glad we got that cleared up.” Settling into the plush seat beside him, I couldn’t believe the difference between this plane seat and the ones I’d been in before. The chair was twice as wide, and it came with a recliner feature that leaned back so far a person could sleep if they wanted. There was even a massage button.

  “Having fun?” Chase interrupted my fiddling with the chair, but not before I found the heated seat option.

  “You are a true rags-to-riches story,” I said, shaking my head in awe as the plane taxied.

  “If only my old man could see me now.” Chase grunted. “He’d probably still tell me I was a worthless piece of shit.”

  My teeth worked at my lip as I debated how to respond. Chase’s dad had been that in title alone, making your typical bad father seem like a candidate for parent of the year. “I heard he passed on a few years ago.” I couldn’t bring myself to express sorrow for that demon of a man’s death.

  “It was the most selfless thing he’d ever done.”

  As the plane was about to take off, Chase sighed when he saw my seatbelt unfastened. Leaning over, he secured the belt over my lap, cinching it so tightly a puff of air came from my mouth.

  “You’re not wearing yours,” I noted, looking away when I realized I was staring at his lap. He was wearing a different pair of jeans than he had on last night, but they were just as snug, more highlighting rather than hinting at his package.

  “So?” His shoulder lifted as the plane’s wheels lifted.

  “So why was it so important I have mine on?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, his head inclined toward the window, staring at the small town we’d grown up in together as it faded into non-existence. “I wasn’t sure you were going to show.”