by Maya Rodale
I had no thoughts of stopping to clean them up.
You don’t even know him! My brain shouted. But I just arched my back, let my head fall back and sighed with the pleasure of it all.
I could feel him, hard, pressing against me and I wanted him desperately. Didn’t know his last name. Didn’t know anything about him. Didn’t even care. I heard more sighs, more moans and I vaguely realized they were mine.
I ran my fingers through his soft hair. The stubble on his jaw was rough against my neck as he pressed hot kisses and gentle bites on my skin. I gasped in shock not just that he did that, but that I liked it.
I felt something vibrate against me and for a second I thought all my dreams had come true. But I realized it was just his phone in his pocket.
He pulled back, easing me down to me feet. I found my knees were weak.
“Sorry, Sweater Set, but I have to take this,” he murmured before kissing me and disappearing into the shadows.
Chapter Two
* * *
Bar Veloce—the next day
@TechCrunch: Duke Austen’s startup, Project-TK, is rumored to be seeking $150m investment at a $1.2 billion valuation. Here’s why it might not happen:
Is the third time a charm for Silicon Alley party boy Duke Austen? After the spectacular flameouts of his first two startups, he’s on the verge of a major win—as long as investors can overlook his reputation for hard-partying and worries about him paying more attention to the hot supermodels instead of hot new products. Even if he gets the funds, Austen’s prospects of remaining in charge of the company he founded are slim, unless he cleans up his act. Read More . . .
“THIS.” I SET down the damned invitation on the bar.
“What is this?” Roxanna asked, looking up from her iPhone. We often met here after work for drinks and supper before returning to our microscopic, claustrophobia-inducing Chelsea apartment.
“This is the invitation to my tenth annual high school reunion. In other words, I have just been invited to a party to showcase what an utter failure I am.”
“What are you talking about? You have ditched Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania, and your boring ex-boyfriend for the glamorous life of a single working girl in New York City.”
“I’m working as a library assistant, which is a step down from my previous job as head Librarian. I told everyone I was going to write a novel but I only have a word document that reads ‘Untitled Romance Novel’ and not much else. And I still love my ex-boyfriend, thank you very much. And he’s been dating. I saw it on Facebook. I have not been dating.”
“No, you’re just having hot and heavy hook-ups with strangers. Much better if you ask me,” Roxanna said with a grin. I had told her a little bit about what had happened at the party last night, leaving out the most embarrassing bits. Which is to say, I left out most of the story.
“One hook-up. Once. And while I was pawing at some random guy in the library like an adolescent, everyone else has gotten married and had children. Look—” I said, pulling up the list of my friends on Facebook, many of them from Milford High School. “Melissa, married. Has a baby. Rachel and Dan, married. Two children when some people don’t have any! Kate Abbott, who was totally horrible to me throughout high school is ‘seeing someone special.’ And it’s only a matter of time before Sam posts MARRIED! BABY! He keeps posting about dinners at all romantic places around town.”
“What, all three of them? You have to unsubscribe to his status updates,” Roxanna said dryly.
“I don’t know how,” I grumbled. “Technology mystifies me.”
“Here, let me see if I can do this on your phone,” Roxanna said. I handed it over without a second thought. “I’ll take care of this while you pine away for the days of card catalogues, horses and bayonets.”
“We were voted Most Likely to Live Happily Ever After,” I said glumly.
“Aww, should we go home and look through your yearbooks?” Roxanna asked, pushing her red hair over her shoulder.
She was tough as nails and just what I needed. In return, since she was a disaster at things like laundry, cooking, and paying bills, I helped make sure she had clean clothes, Wi-Fi, and didn’t subsist exclusively on bourbon and popcorn.
“No, it will only make me feel worse,” I said with a sigh. I knew because I had already looked through them. It was all the inscriptions that slayed me. Stay in touch. Don’t ever change.
Growing up, I had this idea of what my life would be like, and I did everything I could to make it happen. Good grades, good school, career in the library sciences, which would allow me some flexibility when Sam and I married and had kids.
We planned to get engaged after he finished his dissertation. Then he’d get a job as a professor at the nearby Montclair University.
We planned to have a house on Brook Street—I knew just the one—with great bookshelves and a yard for the kids. Maybe a couch from Pottery Barn.
Then POOF—fired. Then POOF—dumped.
Sam had coldly explained that he wanted to see more of the world. Date other people. Be with someone more adventurous. Someone who didn’t have every detail of her life already pre-ordered.
“Ah, this will make you feel better,” Roxanna said when the bartender set down our drinks: a glass of chardonnay for me and bourbon on the rocks for her. “Cheers.”
“I just had this idea of what my life would be like by now,” I said as Roxanna messed around with my phone. “And so did everyone else. I had already planned my wedding on Pinterest. Now he’s squiring some girl around town to all the romantic spots while I’m working at the low level job I had in college and I’m hopelessly single.”
“Personally, I wouldn’t give a fuck what my loser high school classmates thought of me,” Roxanna said, sipping her bourbon and still messing around with my phone.
“I know. I’m seething with jealously.”
Truly, I kind of was.
“But since you clearly do care, why don’t you show up with a totally hot, successful date?”
I sighed and smiled. “It would make everyone jealous, wouldn’t it? No one would ask me if I missed my old job, why Sam and I broke up or how my novel writing is going. The problem is your plan requires me knowing a hot, successful guy. The only guy to ask me out since I moved here is José at the bodega.”
“Speaking of hot, successful guys, why do you have a friend request from DUKE AUSTEN?” Roxanna looked up at me, her blue eyes wide and her mouth open in shock.
“Hey, why do you still have my phone?”
“Jane! Is this the guy you hooked up with?” Roxanna held out my phone showing the Facebook profile of That Guy. All dark eyes, tousled hair, unshaven. Like a pirate or a highwayman or some rogue up to no good. Yeah, that was the guy.
“I think so. It was dark. I had a mask on,” I said. I figured he was just some charming but scruffy guy who was probably a struggling actor who tended bar at some hipster dive in Williamsburg. Totally un-dateable.
“OMG,” Roxanna said. Gasped, really. “OMG.”
“What?”
“Jane, this is DUKE AUSTEN,” she practically shrieked. Then she looked around as if someone might overhear this conversation. As if he were Somebody.
“I can see that. But who is he?”
“He’s only the billionaire co-founder of Project-TK. See, you do know someone hot and successful. OMG do you ever!”
“He didn’t look like a billionaire.”
“Why? Cos he didn’t wear a suit and grey tie and wave around fat cigars and a bottle of 26-year Macallan? Welcome to the startup world, Jane. Where the billionaires look and act like the guys next door.”
OMG, indeed.
“He caught me on my hands and knees,” I whispered, horrified. “And shushing people at a party.”
“And then he hooked up with you. I spent all day working on a story about him, in fact,” Roxanna said. She grinned wickedly before launching into everything I needed to know about him. “His company is seeking
a series C-round of financing but everyone is freaking out because he’s a brilliant disaster and they’re afraid he’ll blow it like he did in his first two companies. Even if he gets the money, the investors might force him to step down. He can code and he can sell anyone on anything. But then he was always getting wasted and missing work or getting embroiled in all sorts of scandals with models. And there are rumors of drug use. He’s all kinds of bad news.”
“Why can’t I just find a nice guy with a steady job and benefits?”
“Oh, the romance. Oh, be still my beating heart,” Roxanna said dryly. “I have an idea.”
Roxanna grinned wickedly and started doing something on my phone. I reached for it, and she lunged away. “Hey, Jane, watch the drinks.”
“Roxanna, what are you doing?”
“This.”
She held out the phone.
Heartbeat: stopped.
Breathing: stopped.
My life: Over.
Duke Austen was tagged in Jane Sparks’ life event
Jane Sparks and Duke Austen got engaged
Everyone would see it. My mom, my dad, my sister. Everyone from Milford, my co-workers at the library, everyone I had ever known that had an Internet connection. Sam. He would see it.
And then all those people would see that it had been a joke, a prank or the desperate and wishful thinking of a lonely girl. Haven’t I had enough mortification?
I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t answer all those people saying sweetly (or not so sweetly) “I thought you were with so-and-so. What happened?” It hurt too much to always say I don’t know when things kept going wrong.
Instead, I shrieked and lunged for the phone knocking over my class of chardonnay. It shattered, spilling all over the bar and dripped down into my nude patent pumps. My life was in shambles. And there was wine in my shoe.
“What have you done?” I gasped.
“I just got you a hot date for your high school reunion. You’re welcome.”
“No, you just got me a fiancé!”
“Even better, right? I hope he gets you a giant diamond ring,” Roxanna said dreamily. “Although, he’s probably only a billionaire on paper—or he will be once Project-TK has their IPO. But don’t worry, I’m sure he’s got a few actual millions tucked away.”
“How do I undo this?” I frantically jabbed at the screen. It was so unsatisfying.
“I have no idea,” she said with a shrug. “Facebook settings are impossible to figure out.”
“Roxanna!”
My phone dinged with an incoming text message from a number I didn’t recognize.
917-123-4567: Meet me at Soho House in ten minutes for celebratory drinks.
Jane Sparks: Who is this?
917-123-4567: Your fiancé
Chapter Three
* * *
Soho House, the roof—twenty minutes later
if (pretendFiancé === “Jane” || fauxmance === true){
console.log (“There is hope for me yet.”);}
else {
console.log (“I’m screwed. Again.”);}
“HELLO, SWEATER SET.” The infamous Duke Austen leaned against the bar and murmured the words with one of those devastating smiles that were most often found in the pages of romance novels.
This smile, however, was real. In spite of my best intentions, it made my heart skip a beat.
“My name is Jane,” I corrected, as befitting someone who was in fact wearing a dove grey sweater set. They were comfortable, classy and part of my work wardrobe. I looked totally overdressed next to him, in his broken in jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt that said “Friendster.”
Duke didn’t reply—he was checking his iPhone and ordering himself a bottle of Becks and a chardonnay for me. I sat there thinking it was ridiculous we were even meeting. This could have been dealt with over email. Or the phone. Or Facebook, if I could figure out how to delicately and kindly break up with someone over that technological marvel.
But I couldn’t, and it seemed that breaking up with one’s faux fiancé ought to be done face-to-face. I hadn’t consulted Emily Post, but I was sure she would agree. And I had to ask him what the hell he meant by celebratory drinks.
Also, he asked me to meet him at Soho House, which had a fabulous rooftop bar and was members only. This was likely my one chance to go.
“So,” he said, leaning against. “How’ve you been?”
“Since last night? Worse and worse. You?”
“Better and better. Especially now that you’re here.”
“You sound like you plan to continue this engagement. You know that it was a stupid prank by my friend? I didn’t actually mean it. We are not actually engaged. We hardly even know each other.”
“We’ll get to know each other, Sweater Set,” he said in one of those low, shiver-down-the-spine kinds of voices, and I knew exactly how he’d earned his bad reputation. The murmurs. The gaze. The devastating smile. It was appalling.
I couldn’t make this stuff up.
“I was hoping we could break off this ‘engagement,’” I said. “If we changed the settings now and I posted a status update to the effect of ‘Haha, drunk friends!’ I could play this off as a prank and everything will be fine, though I already have eight missed calls from my mother. I thought maybe you could help me with the damned Facebook settings. I’ve heard you are knowledgeable about this sort of thing.”
If he was some brilliant tech guy, I figured he could help a girl update her Facebook privacy settings and undo the most disastrous status update ever.
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because—” Then I stopped, flummoxed. “Why wouldn’t you?”
Duke leaned in real close. That grin again. The one that made me think of clichés about butterflies and racing pulses . . . and rakes and rogues and a slow, torturous seduction. In my defense, I’ll say that really, you had to see this man lean. You had to see his smile and the dimple in his left cheek and the flexing muscles of his forearms.
I hadn’t noticed these things last night in the dark. But oh, did I ever notice them now.
My mouth went dry. I took a sip of wine and thought about how I hadn’t had any physical affection since Sam and I had broken up months ago. Well, other than last night. And to think, I’d never expected to see this guy again. He was supposed to be my one time wild fling. And he was here, murmuring my name.
“Janet.”
“Jane,” I said with an exasperated sigh.
“I didn’t have to accept it,” he said. “I didn’t have to share it, either.”
“You did what?” I gasped. He ignored me.
“I didn’t have to ask you to meet me here. Do you want to know why I did?”
“Because you have a warped and twisted idea of fun?”
“True, but no. Your prank—”
“My friend’s prank.”
“—has possibly solved a major problem for me.”
“I’m so glad,” I said dryly.
“Hear me out. One drink. Out of the kindness of your heart. You seem like the kind of girl who does things out of the kindness of your heart.”
“Fine,” I sighed. Because I was. Because it was a gorgeous early summer night on the roof of Soho House and maybe I’d see a celebrity.
“Project-TK is growing fast but to get big enough to IPO we need to raise another round of funding first. If we can go public, a lot of people stand to make a shit ton of money, myself included. But investors are nervous about me and it’s negatively affecting our ability to raise funds at the valuation I want. I seem to have earned a reputation for—”
“For drinking, possible drug use, excessive partying, and orgies with models. And for generally being unreliable. A ‘brilliant disaster’ my friend said.”
“You’re informed,” he said dryly.
“My friend works for Jezebel.com.”
“That explains so much,” he said.
“So no one wants to give you money bec
ause you have demonstrated that you’re completely unreliable . . .” I prompted. If nothing else, I could glean some good gossip, break the engagement and sell the whole story to Roxanna for a month’s rent.
“This is big, like Google or Facebook. Or it could be. I’ve got two major fails behind me and I can’t let it happen a third time. Do you know why they really call me the bad boy billionaire? Because I made and lost a billion bucks. Project-TK is a chance to redeem myself. I have to raise the money and make sure the investors don’t get ideas about forcing me to step down. Isn’t there something or someone you would do anything for?”
“Maybe.” Yes, but he didn’t want me to. Damn you, Sam.
“I would do anything,” Duke said softly, and he was earnest as hell now. His eyes darkened as he looked at me. “And what says mature and responsible like marriage? Especially to a goody-two-shoes like you.”
“What makes you think I’m such a good girl?”
“To start, you were shushing people at a party.”
“That was just one little thing.”
“You’re right. What about what happened after you shushed me?”
“A one-time lapse in judgment,” I said stiffly. “I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Well, for me it was just another Tuesday.”
I gasped.
“Exactly. I need you, Janine,” he said with pleading expression. “Just for one weekend.”
The words that should have come out of my mouth: “No” or “You belong in a mental institution” or “Go to hell” or “MY NAME IS JANE GET IT RIGHT.” Instead, I opened my mouth and what came out but a question.
“One weekend?”
“A bunch of us are flying out to the valley to meet with potential investors and bankers about the deal. It had been made clear to me that if I’m not on my best behavior, I’m out. As I said, I’ve got two major busts behind me and I’ll be damned if it happens again.”
I wanted to ask what happened. But it seemed bad. Like, doesn’t talk about it bad. Like, I was better off Googling it later.
