by Maya Rodale
“Are you asking me out?” I asked coyly, flirtatiously tilting my head.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Sam replied with a grin and fleeting touch of my leg.
“Remember when you did ask me out for the first time?”
“Junior year. In the library after you had checked out War and Peace for me, which of course I never intended to read. I only wanted to impress you,” he said, and I burst out laughing. “God, I was so nervous.”
“Really?” I was incredulous. “But you were so popular and—”
He was good looking, kind, made the honor roll, and played for the football team. One of those rare, perfect guys.
“You were the pretty and brainy girl who I kept encountering in the stacks,” he said. “And it was the first time I had asked someone out.”
“Ah, memories,” I sighed, taking a sip of my drink, hoping it would chase away all the bittersweet feelings.
“But I guess it wouldn’t be a date now, if I asked you out. What with your engagement and all.”
About that . . . I twisted the ring around and around.
Should I take it off? Duke and I had left everything so vague tonight. I wasn’t sure if we were still pretend-engaged, or if we’d truly broken up, or if we were in some weird, endless, grey area.
“Are you seeing anyone?” I asked, even though I knew full well that he was. Curses to Facebook.
“Yeah. It’s not really serious or anything,” Sam answered, now looking grim.
“Anyone I know?”
“I’m afraid so.” He looked pained.
“You sound weird,” I said. “Like when you have news you don’t want to tell me. Like that time you broke the porcelain cat sculpture I inherited from my Grandma.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “And it truly was an accident. Even though it was the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”
I grinned and rolled my eyes. It had been ugly but it had sentimental value. “Who are you seeing, Sam? Don’t tell me it’s Kate Abbott,” I joked.
He didn’t say anything.
Involuntarily, I flexed my hand, remembering the time she slammed a door on my fingers so I wouldn’t be able to do the piano solo in our middle school recital. She got the part instead. She got everything—blonde hair that could be featured in a shampoo commercial, a gorgeous figure that would never need to be Photoshopped, and the adoration of everyone. More than once I heard her say she just didn’t get what Sam saw in me. Of course, she had wanted him for herself.
His silence was answer enough. It seemed she finally got him.
Of all the girls in the world . . . . Sam knew how I felt about her. More to the point, how she always made me feel terrible about myself.
“Wow. I was kidding,” I said dryly, sipping my champagne.
“You’re the one marrying a billionaire,” he remarked. My head snapped up. Was he dating my worst nightmare as some sort of revenge? Had I hurt him with my relationship with Duke?
Suddenly, things felt tense. What if we were with the wrong people? What if we were revenge-dating and were actually meant to be together? Such were the inevitable thoughts of an avid reader and romance novelist.
But why was I so attuned to my phone, desperate to hear from Duke?
“I never imagined this. Never ever,” I said.
“Me neither,” Sam said. He took another sip of his beer. “It feels intense to see you again. I thought I wanted something new. But I’ve missed you. And here you are, like the best of both worlds. Strange and familiar all at once.”
The love of my life was sitting here delivering the words I’d ached to hear. And all I could think about was Duke.
“But you’re with someone else,” Sam said.
Our gazes locked.
Was I? Or wasn’t I? Was I going to throw away a second chance at happiness with Sam because Duke may or may not want to keep up our grand fauxmance? Was this even my second chance, or was it just a case of a boy wanting what he can’t have?
Here’s what I knew: I had started falling for Duke.
Here’s what else I knew: To my great surprise, Duke was here, weaving his way through the crowds and looking around until he saw me.
Here’s the other thing I knew: When our gazes locked from across the room I felt it everywhere, body and soul.
“Hey,” Duke said with that grin that always made me think of the kind of rogue that made smart girls forget all sense and reason. He stood next to us.
“Hey,” I managed to say as two worlds collided right in front of my eyes.
“Hi, I’m Sam.”
“I’m Duke.”
“The fiancé. Congratulations.” Sam downed the rest of his beer. Duke rocked back on his heels and said, “Thanks.”
“I thought you were at your party,” I said to Duke.
He shrugged. “It got boring.”
I looked at him like he was daft. The biggest night of his life so far and it got boring? An hour ago “he just wanted to fucking enjoy his party.” Well, there was just no pleasing some people.
“All those people fawning over you. How tedious,” I said.
“Who knew that got old?” Duke asked, with one of his heart-melting grins.
I laughed. Sam smiled tightly as he looked from me to Duke and back again. Suddenly everything was super awkward, like there was a question hanging in the air of which guy I would go home with. Sam stood, and I watched the two guys size each other up.
“Well, I have an early morning,” Sam said. He signaled to the bartender for the check. He paid for our drinks and we exchanged awkward goodbyes. As soon as he could, Sam bolted.
“Do you want another drink, or do you want to get out of here?” Duke asked.
“Let’s get out of here.”
His driver and his Tesla were waiting outside of the bar to take us back to Duke’s spacious, modern penthouse apartment on the Bowery.
“I thought you were breaking up with me,” I said as the car slid off into the city night.
“I thought you were breaking up with me,” he replied.
“We say that as if we’re actually together.”
“Do you really want to talk tonight, Jane?” His voice was low, rough with desire, and it sent shivers dancing up and down my spine. I thought about it for a moment. More specifically, the four glasses of champagne I had drunk considered the matter and determined a response.
“No.”
His mouth crashed onto mine. We kissed until the car came to a stop in front of his building. Once the private elevator doors closed behind us, Duke demonstrated that he wasn’t just a brilliant computer developer or savvy businessman. He could add expert lover to the list of his accomplishments.
Weak knees.
Feeling dizzy.
Forgetting to breathe.
The way he touched me set my body on fire. Once we were in his apartment, my little blue dress was pulled over my head and dropped on the floor, only to be joined by his Project-TK T-shirt. I toyed with the band of his jeans and he growled.
My black satin bra was unfastened with one quick movement. That hit the floor, too, adding to the trail of discarded clothing that stretched from the entryway to the king-sized bed in the master bedroom down the hall. His hands found my breasts, cupping them possessively. I moaned, arching my back.
We stumbled together, a mess of tangled limbs and a passionate kiss, until we hit the mattress.
He was my rebound guy. My pretend fiancé. Our entire romantic history was a series of Photoshopped Instagram pictures, fabricated tweets, hacked Foursquare check-ins and fictional Facebook statuses. Nothing about us was real . . . until my back hit the mattress and his weight pressed down on me. That was the greatest feeling in the world.
How could we be fake when this felt so good?
Duke pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss against my neck. My legs parted and I felt his hot, hard cock pressing against me. He could be aloof, unreadable, and totally inscrutable, but when we were alone in
the dark, there was no denying he wanted me.
Still, I had questions. The sort of annoying questions about feelings and where is this going. I may have only been with one other guy, but I knew that talking about Big Questions was a mood killer. Call me wanton, wicked, or just normal, but the only thing I wanted more than answers was him, inside me, and the intense orgasms that were going to follow.
After a quick pause for a condom, he was inside me with one strong thrust. I forgot about my questions and just allowed myself to get lost in all the sensations: his weight atop me, the slick heat of his skin, his mouth closing around my breasts to tease my nipples until they were unbearably stiff, the hot, hard length of him filling me up inside.
And then the orgasms: one after another, I couldn’t stop them if I wanted to. I cried out, calling his name and God’s until I was sure I’d lose my voice. I felt myself close around him, bringing him to his own climax. He shouted my name.
This was real. On some level, this was Something.
The next morning, my questions remained unanswered. We hadn’t exactly done much talking during the night.
“So now what?” I murmured, rolling over to nestle up against him. I pressed my cheek to the smooth skin on his muscled chest. The early morning light filtered through the floor to ceiling windows in his bedroom.
“Shower, breakfast, work,” he said. But he pulled me closer.
“No. With us. You have the money now . . .”
“And you’ve got your ex thinking about getting back together.”
“While that may or may not be true, it doesn’t clarify anything with us,” I pulled away and propped up on my elbow so I could look him in the eye. “Is this for real, Duke? Or is it time to give up the ruse?”
He just grinned. God, that grin of his.
“If I remember correctly, I promised you a hot date to your reunion. So until then . . .”
He pulled me into a tight embrace and rolled us over until he was on top of me, inside of me and I forgot all about those pesky questions because I had much more exquisite sensations to dwell on.
Chapter Two
* * *
258 West 15th Street, Jane and Roxanna’s apartment
ABOUT A WEEK or so passed between the night of Duke’s party and the Friday night that I walked into the apartment I shared with Roxanna and found her reading my book. She had curled up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and a stack of the three hundred double-spaced printed pages I had written of a historical romance novel based on my whatever-was-happening-with-Duke-Austen. Some were on a pile beside her, others were strewn about the floor, and still more were in her hand.
“Hey! What are you doing?” I rushed in and started picking up the pages, even trying to wrench away the ones she was holding.
Roxanna looked up, not even faking a guilty expression.
“Jane, this is just wicked.” She grinned. “I had no idea about you! You seem all prim and proper and dress like you live at a country club. But the things you write about . . .” She fanned herself with the pages.
“Are private. The things I write about are private!” I dropped my bag on the floor and clutched a random assortment of pages against my chest. “It’s a rough draft. It’s not finished.”
The story had a beginning, middle and end. By “not finished” I meant that I hadn’t revised it a thousand times (just a hundred). By “not finished” I meant that I wasn’t ready to share this part of myself with the world.
Roxanna shrugged and said, “Well, then you shouldn’t have left it on your desk for anyone to read.”
“I froze, mouth open, speechless. On the tip of my tongue there was a speech about respecting privacy and private property but I just couldn’t deliver the words.”
“What were you doing in my desk?”
“The point is, I just glanced at the first page and then I got kind of sucked in,” Roxanna said. “So tell me, how much of these sex scenes are based on real life experiences?”
“Roxanna!” I could feel my cheeks turning red.
“You’re right. I don’t really want to know. Major TMI. So when are you going to publish it?” I opened my mouth to reply, but she cut me off. “Do not tell me you’re not going to publish it.”
“First I’d need an agent, and then a publisher, and then I’ll probably have to do revisions. It’ll be years before it’s published, if I decide to publish it,” I said with a sigh.
“Or you could self-publish it this weekend,” Roxanna replied. “I’ll get some wine and whiskey. We’ll order take out.”
“Because copy editing under the influence is the best idea ever,” I said, picking up more pages and not even bothering to put them back in order.
“At least we won’t be driving or operating heavy machinery,” Roxanna quipped.
“I don’t know . . .” I said. I hadn’t really considered publishing it anytime soon. The main goal had been to just write the darned thing. Of course, I had fantasies of a bigwig editor at a New York publisher taking my agent and me out to lunch to discuss the terms of the huge advance and the national publicity tour they would arrange and pay for. I also knew that never happened to people like me. There was also a more plausible and terrifying situation to consider: “What if he reads it?”
“Duke Austen reading a romance novel?” Roxanna echoed. Then she burst out laughing. It has to be noted that Roxanna has one of those loud, throaty laughs that the neighbors could probably hear.
“Or Sam? What if Sam reads it? He’s a literature professor. And he was talking about my book the other night. He might read the book,” I said. “And that will be embarrassing and weird and awkward and a million bad things.”
“Or it’ll show him what he’s missing,” Roxanna remarked.
“What if my mother reads it?” I asked in a horrified whisper. “My mother can’t know that I know about sex.”
“OK, never mind the fact that you’re twenty-eight years old and the Victorian era ended some time ago, Your mom only reads the inspirational self-help books recommended by her book club and it’s doubtful they’ll pick yours. So you don’t have to worry about that.”
“You just have it all figured out, don’t you?”
“I’m a terrible influence, I know. But Jane, you wanted to write a novel and you wrote a damn fine one. Why not share it with the world?”
Because what I wrote could destroy whatever Duke and I had if anyone in the tech world read it. But then again—he’d gotten his huge investment. Did he really need the charade anymore? Or was I too pleased to hear my novel was “damn fine” to consider anything else?
Roxanna could also be very persuasive. And when she wasn’t being persuasive, she was downright devious. Roxanna was known to, say, take someone’s phone and post an engagement announcement on their Facebook page when said people were not engaged.
She also immediately developed this really annoying habit of reading sections of my novel to me.
“His eyes, dear God, his eyes. When his gaze rested on her, it felt like sunshine on her bare skin,” she said, while I was attempting to eat my take-out dinner of pork lo-mien, brown rice and vegetable dumplings.
“But she was aware—too aware—of the stupid wager he had made. She was aware that this wasn’t true desire, it was just the Ashbrooke affect and legions of women had been similarly afflicted. It wasn’t special,” she read, while I rinsed out the take-out containers and put them in our recycling bin.
“I have been haunted by fantasies, wishing to claim you, to ravish you, to possess you, to show you such pleasures you have never even imagined,” she said, as I was brushing my teeth in our tiny bathroom that really was not designed for two people, one of whom was holding a three-hundred-page manuscript.
It wasn’t that I was opposed to publishing the book. I just kept thinking about Duke reading it. Or Sam. There was too much of us in it; it wasn’t purely fictional. That was the problem with drawing inspiration from real life.
Roxanna, bei
ng intrusive and freakily able to read my mind, came into my darkened bedroom later that night and said, “Stop thinking about what the boys think, Jane. Jeezus. This is the twenty-first century. What do you want?”
I turned on the light beside my bed.
“What do I want? I’ll tell you what I want. I want Duke Austen to walk in here right now and say that he wants our relationship to be real. But I also want Sam to ask me to get back together and say that I’m the one and he was a fool to let me go. I want to publish my book and I want everyone in the world to buy it and read it—except for Duke, Sam and anyone I’m related to. I want it to get rave reviews and hit the New York Times bestseller list. At the heart of it, what I really want is to be liked and to be successful and to stop feeling like my life ended the day that Sam walked out on me.”
Roxanna, being Roxanna, did not bat an eyelash at my outburst.
“It’s a romance novel set in 1820’s England,” she said with a shrug. “I’m sure they won’t read it. What with them having penises and all.”
“Nine percent of romance readers are men.”
“And zero percent of them are your ex-boyfriends. Probably.”
“I want to care less about what people think of me,” I muttered, a soft and sad finale to my dramatic speech.
“I’ll get the whiskey,” Roxanna said. “And let’s get started.”
WE WORKED ALL through the weekend to polish, copyedit and format the manuscript. Fortunately, my new best friend and roommate happened to be a gifted and eagle-eyed writer who had no trouble with formatting and all other Internet-y things. She used her Photoshop skills to make a cover with an image we snagged off Shutterstock for a few bucks. And then at my insistence, she made one without Duke’s face superimposed onto a bare-chested model. However, the one we kept did feature a hot guy with his shirt off, rippling muscles to be exposed and drooled over.
Let’s just say we took a moment to appreciate it.
“Let’s call it The Duke Belongs With Me,” I suggested. “Like the Taylor Swift song.”
