I take her hips in my hand and pick her up, and she wraps her legs around my sweetly as I lay her down on my bed, the blue and white moonlight tattooing her shoulders and her lips playing up into a sweet little smile.
And my heart clenches. Because I want her. All of her. And I need her.
And not just for pretend. Not just for show.
Anna
You ever get a last-minute invitation to a wedding, and know that you weren’t on the original guest list? Maybe because you never got a save-the-date, and you get the invitation super close to the day of the wedding, and you know some of the other guests and you know that they’ve had their invitations for a while.
That’s not the best feeling in the world, to be on the back-up list like that. Couple it with the fact that even though I do like glitz and glam, I think the wedding industrial complex is getting a bit out of hand. And never mind the fact that I’m a part of that machine.
It doesn’t feel good to be someone’s second or even third choice.
But I just met Liam, so I can’t be mad about having received a last-minute invitation to this party.
“It’s black-tie required,” he explains to me as I sit at the tall island in his kitchen the next morning. “That means a gown. You have one of those?”
He arches an eyebrow at me over his shoulder as he fries up some scrambled tofu and veggie bacon for us. Apparently this guy is also a vegetarian, which is not traditional in the least. I expected him to be all grr-man-meat if and when we would break bread together, but no, animal rights is apparently one of the causes he gets behind. Not, like, the radical or crazy stuff, but just simple, everyday vegetarianism.
“I don’t have a gown of my own, no,” I say as I crane my neck to see what he’s doing over the stove, “but did you see where I work? I’m sure Maggie will be able to let me borrow something.”
“That’s perfect,” he says, scooping some of the fake scrambled eggs and bacon onto two plates. “Ketchup?”
He opens the fridge and grabs a bottle, knocking the door closed with his hip.
“Definitely,” I say. “The more the better. You can’t have eggs without ketchup.”
“Let’s see,” he says, “you’re pretty, you’re kind, you’re smart, and you’re a ketchup enthusiast. Is there anything wrong with you?”
“What’s your favorite brand of ketchup?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him with a smirk. “This is the real question.”
“Well,” he says, “even though I don’t use my kitchen often, I do try to have it stocked with some good breakfast items. And, along with that, I gotta have my Heinz. You a Huntz girl? Oh god, if you’re a Huntz girl, I don’t know if this is going to work.”
“No,” I say as he puts the plate down in front of me, “I have zero brand loyalty to either Heinz or Hutz, or any other brand. It was a trick question.”
“So you’ll just eat any ketchup? You’re a ketchup slut,” he says, sitting down next to me. “That’s sexy.”
I look at my plate, and it’s actually hard to tell there’s no meat on here.
“This looks good, I have to say. And it smells awesome too.”
“Salt. You gotta have salt. And the ketchup of course. That’s what makes it taste so good. And you get used to not having meat.”
“So if you love animals so much, why no pets?”
“I wish I could,” he says, “but I don’t have the time to really take care of my own animal. I’d love to adopt a rescue dog though, once things get a little quieter with work. Though with my father retiring and me wanting a bigger role in the firm, I don’t know when things are going to get quieter.”
“I hear that,” I say. “I always feel like a calm period at work is right around the corner. But then it always feels like it’s the busy season, you know?”
“Absolutely. I imagine with weddings it’s always really busy, even though most people hold the actual event in the springtime.”
“Exactly. During the actual wedding season, we have-last minute alterations, we have fittings, girls coming in for shoes at the last minute. And then in the off-season it’s even more busy, because that’s when the brides are shopping for their gowns and prepping everything. I’ll tell you, it’s crazy.”
I push my tofu eggs around on my plate a little before spearing a few bits onto my fork and taking a bite.
“Well?” Liam says, taking a bite of his crispy veggie bacon. “As good as the real thing?”
The scrambled tofu is hot, smooth and fluffy, and salty, and pairs perfectly with the cold, sweet, tart ketchup.
“Mm,” I manage to say, “I think it might be even better than the real thing.”
“Good,” he replies, taking a sip of his coffee. “I can show you better than real any time, baby.”
And he winks at me.
It’s sexy and silly and just crazy.
And this isn’t what I thought having a boyfriend would be like.
It’s better. It feels natural and easy and the way he kisses me just sweeps me right off my feet.
“So what color gown you think I should go for?” I ask, taking another bite of my scrambled tofu. “Black?”
“If you’d like you can do black. Lots of the women do black for these kinds of weddings. I’ll be wearing a tux and a navy-blue tie, so you could do navy blue instead if you’d like. Or whatever color you want.”
“Anything except white,” I say. “You don’t want to commit the ultimate sin and wear white to a wedding.”
“Unless you’re the bride,” he says smartly.
“Whose wedding is this, anyway? I don’t think you ever told me.”
“It’s my cousin’s wedding,” he says. “He’s actually part of the company too. It’s my dad’s brother’s kid. He’s a nice guy too. I think you’ll like him.”
“And what if I don’t?” I ask. “Do I have to pretend to like him?”
“No way,” he replies. “If you don’t like him, you can roll your eyes when his best man gives him his toast.”
“How about I just play it cool instead?”
“That’s another way to play it,” he says.
Liam
Oh, she is a fucking sight for sore eyes.
“You went with black and blue,” I say, taking in the sight of the girl in front of me.
I’m picking her up at her small apartment on the Lower East Side. The wedding is at Battery Park’s most opulent hotel, and she will fit right in.
Because even more than appearances, these people like things that are pretty and perfect. And those are two things Anna most certainly is.
“I wanted to match you,” she says, turning around in her dress. “You said you had a tux with a blue tie. I liked how you decided to make it a little bit personalized.”
“Well, I don’t like looking like a total penguin.”
“Just a penguin with a blue tie then?”
I laugh as she walks toward me, all curves and a smile.
“Something like that.”
The dress is formed to her curves like it was absolutely made for her, even though I know it’s probably right off the rack. That’s how perfect she is. When designers make dresses, they should use her exact measurements for their garments.
Every girl is perfect the way she is, but she is the girl who makes me harder than a diamond. She is the girl who makes my heart set ablaze. She is the girl I want to make smile over and over and over.
The dress is perfection on her, and why would it be any less than absolute perfection? She is perfection, so everything she touches is perfect. The bottom portion is dark, inky navy blue, the color of the sky on a cloudless, starry night up in the country, and it conforms to her hips like she’s a damn goddess and then sweeps out into a little skirt at the knees. The top is black and has a halter top that shows off her pretty shoulders, and the back is cut low and covered with delicate lace.
“Anna,” I say, slipping her hands into mine, “you are beautiful.”
She looks up at me and says n
othing, but her eyes tell a different story.
There is a pain hidden there, somewhere behind the thick black eyelashes and the light brown irises flecked with gold. What is it behind her eyes? Do I dare to ask?
“Thank you,” she says sweetly. “You look pretty good yourself.”
“Is everything alright?” I ask, pulling her closer to me. “We can blow off the wedding. We can just tell them one of us is sick and we want to stay in and watch TV tonight.”
“We can’t blow off the wedding,” she says, “the whole reason I’m with you tonight is so that you can show me off to your family.”
I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut, but when she smiles up at me, I know she’s full of it.
“That’s not why, Anna. I think we both know that.”
She gets closer to me and I take her face in my hand, leaning down to kiss her delectable, candy-red lips.
We both say nothing. But the look in her eye tells me something.
It is the unspoken confirmation that she’s mine.
“Come on,” she says, “we have a wedding to get to.”
Anna
He kissed me sweetly in the back of the limo on the way to the wedding. He held my hand during the ceremony. When the pastor announced you may now kiss the bride, Liam put both of his hands into mine and held them, so surely, as though he was trying to tell me something.
I am getting swept up in him, and I don’t know this man at all.
But I feel like I do.
After the ceremony, Liam brings me across the hall into the room where the cocktail hour is being held. The venue is large, but there is only one wedding happening right now. We make our way over to the bar, where Liam orders us two drinks.
“I love a good signature cocktail,” I say. “Sometimes when I’m at work the brides ask me my opinion on different aspects of the wedding, but I never disagree with anything they ever say. I just have to smile and nod and pretend to like everything.”
“What’s the most outlandish signature cocktail you’ve heard of?” he asks, taking a sip of his pineapple mojito.
“Hm, that’s a good one. Definitely the toasted marshmallow espresso martinis I heard about.”
“Wait, you think that’s outlandish?” he says, putting his drink down, a sexy grin spreading across his face. “That sounds fucking good.”
“I didn’t say it wouldn’t be good,” I say, “but it is a bit outlandish, isn’t it?”
“I don’t care how crazy and over the top that is, it sounds delicious.”
“Outlandish doesn’t mean bad necessarily,” I say, taking a sip of my drink and looking around the venue.
“Listen,” he says, lowering his voice, “my dad’s over there. He’s gonna come over, so just act natural. Act like you actually like me.”
He throws me a cute smile and puts his arm around my shoulder.
Oh, that feels nice.
I train my eyes on the man walking over to us. I recognize him from the photograph in Liam’s apartment.
His father seems nice. He has kind eyes, and a smattering of salt-and-pepper hair, and he looks old, but not frail at all.
“Liam,” he says, putting out his hand when he gets to us, “I’m glad you made it tonight. The vows were lovely, weren’t they?”
“The absolutely were,” he agrees, pulling me in closer. “Dad, I’d like you to meet Anna. She’s my girlfriend. We’ve been together for about three months.”
His words come out somewhat wooden, surprisingly. Gone is his cool-guy edge, his confidence. He’s just a man right now, trying to please his father.
I look up at Liam’s dad, and put my hand out to shake his.
“Very nice to meet you Anna,” he says. “Where has my son been hiding you?”
“Oh, you know how it is with his line of work,” I say, tilting my chin up to Liam and swatting him playfully on the chest. “All those other girls? He has appearances to keep up.”
“I know,” his father says, smiling kindly at me. “I’ve been telling him for years to get off the internet, stop giving all those followers a false impression of him. And to stop showing off for the camera.”
“Dad, I’m a ham, I can’t help it,” Liam says, pushing his hand through his hair. “I like being in the spotlight a bit. Plus, the girls love me.”
“See, this is what I’m talking about,” I say, knocking my hip into him gently. “Mr. Harmon, please tell your son that I’m the only girl he should be sending pictures to.”
“Hey, it’s not all for selfish reasons. Someone has to post all the good guacamole recipes,” Liam says, putting his arm around me tighter.
Mr. Harmon shakes his head, but keeps smiling.
“For a girl like this, I think you’d want to eschew all those other girls,” he says.
“You know what dad, you might just be right. Maybe. A little. But I’m not gonna get off the internet. Doesn’t mean I can’t give my heart to just one girl, though.”
“How did you two meet, anyway?” Mr. Harmon asks, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“I work for a media group myself,” I say, “I’m the...one of the financial analysts for a small startup based out of San Diego. That’s why I haven’t been around very much. But I’ve been begging Liam to let me meet you.”
“Analyst? With a background in business and finance, you could probably work for a bigger company, Anna,” his dad says.
“Oh,” I say, “I know, but I like being more involved from the ground up. I actually was able to work on the valuation of one of the bigger Silicon Valley tech firms. We were able to flip it and we made quite a chunk of money doing it.”
“That’s my girl,” Liam’s dad says, winking at me.
“I should have introduced you two sooner,” Liam says, “I didn’t know you guys would be thick as thieves so fast.”
“You know me,” I say, smiling up at him, my heart feeling full and warm, “I’m good at this.”
My comment is so vague, so non-committal, and I don’t know if he understands what I’m trying to say.
I’m good at playing a part. I’m good at getting along with anyone.
I’m good at being what people want me to be. What people need me to be.
“You keep this one around,” Mr. Harmon says to his son. “I haven’t seen you with a genuine smile on your face in the longest time. Any girl that makes you smile like that...you must have something real here.”
He shakes his son’s hand again and goes off, back into the crowd of wedding guests, and shakes hands with a few older men like himself in impeccable suits and perfectly-shined shoes.
Liam wraps me up in his arms, pulling me close to him.
“Sweetheart, how the hell did you do that? He freaking loved you.”
“I was actually a finance major in college,” I say. A waiter with a tray of mini grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches with the crusts cut off walks past us, and I take a couple of them for Liam and me.
“Why are you working at the dress shop, then?” he asks, taking one of the grilled cheese. “I mean, it’s a cool job, but it’s not exactly what you went to school for.”
“I don’t know,” I sigh, “I actually had an internship at a finance firm downtown when I first graduated. I didn’t like the long hours, though. I didn’t like getting out of work at nine at night and having no energy to do anything but go home and microwave a burrito. Plus, I’m a natural extrovert. I like being around people. I don’t like being glued to a computer screen all day.”
“Well, whatever you do, you’re the best at it, I’ll tell that that much.”
“Like I’m the best fake girlfriend you ever could have asked for?”
“Something like that.”
He takes my drink and puts it down on a nearby table along with his, and taking my face in his hands, he slowly traces his thumb along my jawline, against my ear, and down to my chin.
“Anna,” he growls, “I know I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it until
I am blue in the face. You are beautiful. You are incredible. I...I really fucking like you.”
He leans down and takes my lips with his, captures them with his, and pulls me oh-so-close to him, wrapping his arms around me deeply.
I really fucking like him too.
And I’m good at being anything people need me to be.
Liam
“Just wait until you see this view,” I say, taking her by the hand as we arrive on the top floor of the hotel connected to the wedding venue. “The last time I stayed here I was by myself. It is going to be so much better this time, now that you’re here.”
We leave the elevator and walk down the hall to the last door, where I’ve booked the best suite in the hotel for us.
The last time I was here, I was alone.
I was alone, even though my phone was blowing up with messages. I was being assaulted with pictures of girls who wanted me to see them in just their bras and panties, and I snapped pictures back to them, and it was almost my abs or my eyes or my smile. I wanted to turn them on and I wanted them to want me.
But I was alone.
When I met Anna, I learned that you can be alone even if all eyes are on you. Even if everyone in the room is vying for your attention.
When we get to the door of the hotel room, I quickly slip my keycard into the lock, but we are already all over each other.
“Pretty,” I groan as she breaks away and walks into the room ahead of me, delicately unzipping her dress as she sways her hips. “Come over here.”
I pounce on her from behind and spin her around, roughly pushing her dress down her shoulders as she shimmies out of it.
“Don’t walk away from me,” I growl, pushing her into the room and putting her back against the wall. “Now turn around and let me see that sweet ass.”
She turns and I pull her dress past her curvy hips, down to the floor, and she steps out of it, bending over so her round, perfect ass is in my face. My pants are tented almost obscenely as I take them off quickly and grind myself against her.
Insta-Hubby (A Billionaire Fake Relationship Romance) Page 6
