Fake Fiance Christmas Collection: Countdown to Christmas

by Taylor Hart

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Let me give you the money. And you can save me from myself.” He laughed. “Do you know I even recently registered for one of Cooper Harrison’s online dating programs about how to keep the girl once you find her?”

  Zoey frowned. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

  “I’ll tell you later.” He pulled his hand back. “Just say yes. Say you’ll be my Christmas girlfriend.”

  For a beat, she didn’t respond. Then a smile played at her lips. “I’m not gonna lie. I do need the money.” She let out a light laugh. “Fine. Let’s do this.”

  He punched the air. “You won’t regret this.”

  She moved to the kitchen table and stuck her hand inside the bag, taking out a fry and tossing it inside her mouth. “I already do.”

  He chuckled. “You need to pack a swimsuit.”

  “Why?” She frowned.

  “You’ll see.”

  “Just so we’re clear, this will never be more than a paid date.”

  “Right. Yeah.” He didn’t know why, but he felt embarrassed, like she knew he was attracted to her. “It’s the deal.”

  She nodded. “The deal. That’s all. I mean it. I gave my heart to Josh, and he took it with him when he died in that war zone.”

  Sympathy flooded him for all that she’d been through. “No problem.” He surrendered his hands. “This will be a business deal, and I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

  “Plus, I won’t be able to stay any longer, because—” A huge smile washed over her face. “—I’m going to Salt Lake City to audition for The Voice on the twenty-seventh.” She laughed. “With your money.”

  He was confused, then intrigued. “Really? You sing?”

  She grinned. “It’s the thing I love.”

  Chapter 6

  The next morning Zoey sat in the passenger side of Mike’s truck and felt grateful. Last night, they’d talked for a while, but she’d felt a bit nervous and turned in early. This morning, true to his word, he’d helped find a mechanic down the road, and he towed her car, which saved her a couple hundred bucks. He went a step further and discussed what might be wrong with the car. It was simultaneously helpful and annoying that he’d taken over the whole issue.

  “What are you thinking over there?” Mike asked just as they got on the highway that would take them to Snow Valley.

  They had an hour-and-a-half drive, so she guessed it would be a good time to get everything in order. Order was what she liked. In school, in life, she liked order as much as possible. Lately, she hadn’t been able to control anything. “You didn’t have to act like you were in charge back there with the mechanic.” She sighed. “I’m grateful you did, though.” Casting a sideways glance, she met his eyes for a minute, then focused on the snowy, albeit plowed, road. The snow wasn’t bad this morning, barely coming down.

  Mike drummed his fingers on the side door to the beat of the country song playing. He pointed at the radio. “Wait, is this a Texas Waters or Sloane Kent song?”

  His tendency toward happiness made her smile. “I think it’s Sloane Kent.”

  Mike hummed to the tune. “Man, those Kent brothers. They’re crazy.”

  Of course she knew who the Kent brothers were. They were a sensation. “I seriously am obsessed with Sloane Kent. He’s one of the guys on The Voice now, did you know that?”

  Mike cocked an eyebrow at her. “No.”

  “He’s amazing.” She shook her head, thinking she would die to be on his team. She glanced back to Mike. “I’m serious. You don’t need to feel like you’re responsible for my car repairs.”

  He tapped her shoulder in a playful way. “I’m your boyfriend for the next four days, and you’re my girlfriend, so suck it up.”

  The term girlfriend felt better than she had thought it would.

  “What?” he asked.

  Playing with a string on her pants, she confessed. “I’ve been called a widow for the past year. It made me feel old and sad and horrible.” She tugged the string out triumphantly. “I guess girlfriend is better.”

  He grinned back at her, then wagged his finger. “And listen, you shouldn’t hitchhike.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “I mean it. And you shouldn’t stand on the top of buildings in a blizzard, either, for that matter.”

  She blew off his comment. “Desperate people do desperate things, okay?”

  Glancing at her, he let out a breath. “Am I the next desperate thing? Is that what this is?”

  She shrugged. “Pretty much, but if you didn’t notice, you sounded desperate last night too.”

  He grunted.

  She tried to focus on the reason she was really doing this: so she could go try out for The Voice. “So let’s go over everything I need to know so I can keep this girlfriend thing alive for you.” She swallowed. “You told your parents I was coming, right?”

  He shrugged. “Not yet.”

  “What?”

  “It’ll be fine. I’ll just tell them you flew in last minute.”

  “Great.” Now she was even more nervous. “Tell me who I am.”

  “Right. Ann and I met at a debate tournament we were both judging.”

  “What?” Zoey hadn’t considered she might have to be called another name. “Ann?”

  Mike nodded. “Ann.”

  “It sounds so … proper.”

  Mike laughed. “She was that. Very prim. Proper. She liked to write poetry.” He sighed. “I’ve read Mom and Dad some of her poetry before.”

  “No!”

  “She was pressuring me to.” He averted his eyes back to the road. “But your hair color was the same, so that works.”

  This mortified her. “What?”

  “Hey, it was. And she would never let me take pictures of her face, because she felt like the Native Americans had it right, and anytime people take pictures of themselves, it takes a piece of their soul.”

  Baffled, she shook her head. “I can’t be this girl, even with the same hair color.” That detail annoyed her, and she didn’t know why.

  “It’s fine. Really, it won’t be hard. She has no social footprint.”

  For a few moments, she had to think about if she could do this. She cringed and thought of the money and the audition. “What kind of poetry?”

  “Annoying stuff. Classics. Byron. Yates. I don’t know.” He let out a laugh. “The truth is, she broke it off with me because she didn’t think I was cultured enough. I never wanted to do her hoity-toity things.”

  Zoey thought about this. “Okay, so I’m a boring, snooty person.”

  Mike pursed his lips. “Pretty much.”

  “Why did you date me?”

  “Exactly.” He pounded out another song with his hands on the steering wheel. “Oh, this is that Texas Waters song about being born to live.” He rocked out to the song.

  She laughed. “I can’t believe you’re in the Harvard Business School.”

  He turned down the radio and looked offended. “Hey, top of my class at MSU. You should have seen my project, too. That’s what really got me into Harvard. A scholarship.”

  “Ohhh. What was the project?” she challenged, interested.

  He gave her his full attention. “There are these people all over the world that need wheelchairs. And access is tough. There are resources through the government, but people aren’t in place to distribute them. What I did was create a viable business plan to take advantage of government resources to get the wheelchairs into the right hands to give out, if the people meet the restrictions, and still make money to pay the workers.”

  She was impressed. “That’s cool.”

  He snorted. “It was cool. Truthfully, I couldn’t have done it without my dad. I had the idea, but he helped me take it from concept to reality. My dad, he’s like a business guru. You want to know anything, you ask him. He consults for companies and helps them get the right processes in place.”

  “Great, now I
’m not intimidated or anything.”

  Mike laughed. “No, he’s not like that. Not a jerk. He’s the coolest guy. Very dedicated to growing his business and helping me and my sister and her almost new husband and whoever else in Snow Valley needs help, and his first priority is my mother.”

  Her heart softened. “That is cool.”

  “They have a really amazing love story. I’m not going to get into it all, but it’s part of what makes them so wonderful.”

  Their love story sounded interesting, but she tried to focus. “So what are you going to do after you graduate from Harvard?”

  “I don’t know. My dad wants me to go to California and manage his business.”

  “You don’t want that?”

  He looked a bit annoyed. “I didn’t say that.”

  She tried not to get too invested. “You just looked like you didn’t want to when you were talking about it.”

  He was quiet. “I don’t think I want to live in a big city.”

  “Why? There’s a variety of places to eat.”

  He laughed.

  “I’m serious.”

  “You want to go to a big city?”

  “Yep. Get out of Montana, see the world. I can be a nurse anywhere. They even have travelling nurses where you can be in different places sometimes and get to see a lot.”

  He grinned at her. “And you can sing everywhere.”

  Her head bobbed in a nod. She hadn’t slept well; she’d been too excited that she might actually get to that tryout. Would she get picked? “I’m hoping.”

  He shut the radio off. “Sing for me.”

  “What?” She didn’t like being put on the spot. “No.”

  “Why? You need to practice.”

  It was true, but now, she felt nervous. “Another time.”

  He flipped the radio back on. “Okay.” He glanced at her. “So you want to travel around. Where is home? Billings?”

  She shrugged. “After my parents passed, nothing has felt like home.”

  “How old were you?”

  Dang, this was worse than a first date. Not that she’d dated at all since Josh. She hadn’t. But there was nowhere to run, and she was getting paid for this. “They got killed in a plane crash when I was eighteen. They had taken a hopper plane from a small town in Montana back here so my dad could check on one of the rural schools he used to be an administrator at.” She shrugged again. “I’d just graduated.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She looked out the passenger side window. “That’s how it goes.”

  Silence reigned between them.

  “You lived in Billings with your husband?”

  Might as well spill the whole enchilada. “Yeah, we met the first year I started at MSU. He was catering a freshman dance. The event bombed, and he ended up asking me to dance the rest of the evening. We met and were married within three months. Then he enlisted. I found out a year ago right before our one-year anniversary that he’d been killed.” Her shoulders drooped. “So we weren’t even married a year.” She changed the subject. “What else do I need to know about being Ann?” She said the name in an English accent.

  Mike laughed, then sighed. “I told you we were only together about three months. Let’s see, she was from Boston. Her dad was a professor at Harvard.”

  This made her think she was in over her head. “Oh man, I can’t do that.”

  “It’s not like you have to say much about it. His name was Professor Smith.”

  “How MIB of him.”

  Mike laughed. “You know, I said that same kind of joke, and they didn’t even know what I was taking about.”

  Zoey smiled at him, feeling a connection. “That’s just wrong. Classic movies.”

  “Right.”

  She waved him along. “Keep going.”

  “She was an English major.”

  “That fits, since she wrote poetry.”

  “Right.”

  Zoey was getting a feel of this. “So you were together three months and met judging a debate tournament. What did you like about her?”

  Mike shrugged. “She was pretty, like you.”

  His compliment was nice, but it made her bristle all the same. “What do you mean, like me?”

  “She was a redhead.”

  “What else did you like about her besides your weird red-hair fetish?”

  He laughed. “It’s not a fetish.”

  “What’s your type?”

  “I don’t have a type. Ann was the first girl I’ve dated since I left Montana.”

  Interesting. She didn’t want to get too invested in this guy. After all, it was a paid thing. “Who did you date before that?”

  He hesitated.

  “I should know if we’ve dated for three months.”

  Tilting his head to the side, he said, “I was on-again, off-again with a girl in high school. We went to different colleges. I didn’t date anyone steady in college. I focused on MMA fighting and schoolwork.”

  “Really?” This was intriguing.

  “But I don’t fight now.” He cracked a grin. “Even though I know my almost brother-in-law is going to want me in the ring in the next couple of days. He’s Air Force, but special ops, so he knows his stuff.”

  Zoey struggled not to be overwhelmed with everything she had to keep straight. She opted for an easy question. “What kind of food does Ann like?”

  “Caviar.”

  “Fish eggs?” She’d only heard the term, never eaten it. “You’ve gotten to be kidding.”

  Mike nodded. “That’s probably what broke us up too. I’m just an American food guy, and she always wanted to eat squid and crap like that.”

  “Ew.”

  He pointed at her. “Right?”

  She punched the seat. “So I’m Ann. I write poetry, and I like to eat fish eggs.”

  “Not even just fish—like, expensive food. Snails.”

  “Snails?”

  “Sorry.” Just then, Mike’s phone rang, and he answered it on Bluetooth. “Hey, Mom.”

  “Sweetie, hey, are you alright?”

  “Right as rain, on my way. Uh, Mom, I need to tell you and Dad something. I hope it’s okay Ann decided to come with me. She flew in last night.”

  “Oh. Oh, that was the complication you told your dad about yesterday?”

  His eyes flashed to her, and then he grinned. “Yep, that was the complication.”

  “That’s great. Maybe she likes to arrange flowers, because that’s what the rest of the day will be, along with you and your father getting all the Christmas trees up in the tents. Your father is almost done clearing out the snow. The Moon brothers, the Porters, and a couple of other guys were here helping put up tables and chairs and the wood floor for the dancing.”

  Zoey shifted in her seat, intimidated. Mike wasn’t kidding about Snow Valley weddings.

  “Perfect.”

  “Okay, see you in a bit. Stop by the shop downtown so I can meet Ann first.”

  “Great.”

  “Bye, love you.”

  “Love you, Mom.” He pressed end.

  Her heart rate kicked up, and she suddenly felt self-conscious. She’d worn skinny jeans with some holes, a tight shirt with a sweatshirt over it, and her black army boots for the snow. “I am not ready to meet your mother.”

  Mike reached out and took her hand. “Don’t worry. My parents are cool, and you look great.” He shrugged. “You can be an urban kind of poet girl.”

  She frowned. “Because I have on combat boots?”

  Chapter 7

  As Mike pulled into Snow Valley, he was a lot more excited to be here than he had been yesterday.

  “Holy moly,” Zoey said, pointing to a sign that marked all the activities this week. “A tree lighting tonight, a Polar Express at the town center all the time? What is this?”

  Mike laughed. “I know. Snow Valley is like that Hallmark movie where Christmas is way, way, way over the top.” He grunted and thought of how he wasn’t re
ally in the mood for all of it. It would be enough to get through his sister’s wedding. “It’s kind of annoying.”

  She gave him an incredulous look. “What are you talking about?” she laughed, gesturing to the sign. “Hamilton Toy Drive. That’s you guys. You’re on the sign.”

  “Yep.” He pointed out the diner as they walked past. “There’s Big C’s. Oh man, the best fries and fry sauce. We might have to stop and get some before we head out to the ranch.”

  She nodded, and he could tell she was a bit overwhelmed. “Wow.”

  He pointed. “The hospital is there. We can go to the tree lighting if you want.”

  “For sure.”

  The middle of the road was closed off. He had to detour his truck onto the back roads. “That’s right. They had the 5K and the pancake feed this morning.” He grunted. “I wonder who won this year. Usually, the Moon brothers try to take each other down.” Someone caught his eye, and he waved out his window and called out, “Hey, Porter, I heard you’re coming out to the place to help.”

  The men yelled back and waved.

  Mike laughed, loving Snow Valley. The center of his heart warmed. He’d missed it being in Boston. He realized now, more than ever, he didn’t like the big city.

  “It seems you fit in well here.”

  For a second, he’d forgotten the situation. “Sorry, yeah, I was just thinking about how much I love this place. Boston is just so big and feels so impersonal.”

  “How so?” she asked.

  “Nobody knows each other. I mean, they do if you go to a party or something. But walking down the street, everyone is busy. There’s no chitchat. There’s no going grocery shopping and getting the town gossip from Tracy.” He pointed to the grocery store. “That’s Dove’s, and Tracy is the best cashier. There’re barn dances every month, and there’s …”

  “Community.” She looked around as they wove through the streets.

  “Exactly.”

  “So are your sister and Dom staying here after they get married?”

  Mike shook his head. “He has another couple of years in the Air Force, so she’s planning to go with him. Then they’ll come home. I know Dom and my dad have already been talking about their house. There’s some property down the road that is Lacey’s.”