Intimate Mergers

by Raleigh Davis

Of all the excuses… I’d like to throw something at his too-noble profile, but there’s nothing close by. “So somehow it’s my fault? Wrong place, wrong time?”

  He gestures to one of the chairs, silently asking me to sit. I shake my head. I’m too keyed up to restrict myself to a chair. I’d rather start pacing.

  But I won’t. It would be bad form to start doing that. At least I can stand and wrap my arms around myself and tap my toes in my shoes. I’ll allow myself that much agitation.

  Paul sighs at my refusal. He starts to cross his arms, then stops himself.

  He wants to sit, but he can’t until I do. The realization dawns on me when his shoulders slump, exhaustion radiating from him. In spite of what he’s just done, I actually feel sorry for him.

  So I take one of the chairs, the one nearest to the atrium. The sight of all those orchids and ferns and greenery is soothing, and I definitely need some serenity right now.

  Paul takes a chair across from me, leaning in so close that our knees almost brush. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have sprung something like that on you unless it was necessary.”

  I fail to see how a fake engagement could ever be necessary, but I soften in spite of myself. It’s his eyes, so imploring, dark and bright as polished obsidian, pulling me in no matter how mad I try to stay.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “First tell me about the Pixio interview.” He’s trying to do his usual smile—and failing.

  I don’t smile back. “I already talked to January after she talked to the lawyers. I know it’s all hopeless.”

  I hate the way my voice breaks on hopeless. Hate it more than I’ve hated anything before. Apparently I can pretend to be engaged, but pretending my fight isn’t already lost is beyond me. I’m just so tired of it all. So tired.

  Being deported might almost be a relief at this point. At least it would be over.

  Paul walks over to the bar against one wall and pours me a stiff drink. When I shake my head at him, he forces it into my hand. “If there was ever a moment to take up drinking, this is it.” His smile is almost crooked, a charming one I’ve never seen before. “And it’s not hopeless. Not yet. So, bottom’s up.”

  I take a small sip just to be polite. I know whiskey is supposed to be delicious, and I’m sure Paul has nothing but the best, but I never really developed a taste for it. I like neon-pink drinks with more sugar than alcohol. Which is probably not something I should admit to him.

  He nods when he sees me take a drink. “Feeling better?”

  I’m not actually. I set the glass down and fix him with a look. “So, why is it so necessary for us to lie to your mother about something as big as an engagement?”

  He actually turns pink. Not red or flushed or any of those manly ways to describe embarrassment. No, this is definitely an ashamed you-caught-me-out pink.

  He still manages to look wickedly handsome doing it though.

  “My mother just arrived today. And she brought a fiancée for me.”

  My eyebrows shoot up to my forehead. So that’s the Amelia his mother left at the hotel then. I’m not against parents having a say in who you marry—maybe even a little bit more than a say—but just showing up at the San Francisco airport with a fiancée? That’s a little bit much.

  Okay, that’s a lot much.

  I grab the glass and take another sip. It’s burn-y and marsh-y and the opposite of what I’d want to put in my mouth. But the one good thing I can say is that it’s already going straight to my head.

  “You don’t want to marry her?” I ask. I doubt his mother picked out someone horribly unsuitable.

  “It’s not that…” Paul lifts his hands. “I mean, I don’t particularly want to marry her, but Amelia wouldn’t be a bad wife. She knows everyone I know, our families are friends, and she’ll know how to deal with all the crap I have to put up with.”

  I don’t let myself make a face. She sounds like quite the paragon. She’s probably someone who’s exactly the right height and exactly the right weight according to the fashion magazines and says and does exactly the right thing all the time.

  A pulse of jealousy spears my heart. It’s silly, because I’ll never be that woman, and I don’t particularly want to be, but the way he makes her sound so perfect…

  “So why can’t you marry her again?” It sounds like he doesn’t really have any strong feelings about her, good or bad.

  “She’s in love with someone else. She has been for a long time, except her family would never accept him. Marrying me would make her miserable.”

  And what about you? Would you be miserable with her? But I don’t dare ask. It’s clear that if there wasn’t this other man in the picture, he’d be perfectly happy to marry this woman to make his mother happy.

  I take another sip and shiver as the whiskey travels down my throat. I think that’s more than enough of that.

  I set the glass back with a firm thump. “So instead you pretended to be engaged to me? Why can’t you just tell your mother how Amelia feels?”

  He slumps deeper into the chair, his legs spreading wide. The soft fabric of his pants pulls tight against his thighs, lovingly outlining them.

  I swallow hard and most definitely do not let my gaze travel any higher up his legs.

  “If I tell my mother,” he says, “she’ll tell Amelia’s mother, and then all hell will break loose. Amelia is miserable now, but if her mother finds out, she’s going to be somewhere beyond miserable.”

  So he’s going to use me to save the feelings of this other woman. I know I’m supposed to be grateful to him for helping me, but that hurts. It hurts a whole lot. I don’t want to just be a tool for him to use because I was handy.

  He can find some other girl to pretend to love him—with his wealth and looks, he could find a million girls. It doesn’t have to be me.

  I’m halfway tempted to tell him that I don’t want to help him, that he needs to find someone else for his little charade, but then I remember everything he’s done for me. The lawyers, dealing with USCIS, all the job offers I’ve gotten, including the one at Pixio: that was all Paul. I never asked him to do any of that—he did it to help me.

  And now he’s asking me to do this.

  Really, it’s not that big of a deal. We’re not actually going to be married. I pretend to be in love with him—considering how hot he is, it won’t be much of a stretch—and then in a few weeks or so I leave at the request of the US government. Oh, Paul’s said it’s not hopeless, not yet, but it is. There’s a definite end date on this.

  Of course, I’d be lying to his entire family, but if Paul’s okay with it, then I suppose I can be too.

  There’s just one tiny problem… “I’m not at all the kind of woman your mother would want you to marry.”

  I’m not ashamed of my background or my family, but it’s still worlds away from his. I’m not a paragon like Amelia.

  Paul sits up, no doubt sensing I’m about to give in. “That’s why we’re going to make you over. And I’ll give you a crash course on everyone in my family while we do.”

  Oh no. I’m good at exams—you have to be in order to make it through the Chinese education system and then on to America. But this kind of test sounds like absolute hell.

  “Your mother won’t suspect?” I ask. Because I’m pretty sure she wasn’t buying what we were selling earlier.

  “Oh, she already suspects.” He shrugs. “But this will buy me enough time to get Amelia back home and figure something out.”

  That doesn’t sound like much of a plan. “Maybe you can find someone else to marry?” I suggest. “Like, for real.”

  He makes a face. “There’s no way in hell I’m getting married right now. My mother wants to retire and have me take over the family holdings, but she’s insisting that I need a wife. Someone to help me navigate the social situations, the business deals, the family. All of it.”

  Paul doesn’t agree with that at all, and his expression invites me to see it his way. />
  But… his mother isn’t wrong. I can see her point about him needing someone to lean on as he handles that. It sounds daunting, dealing with business and family and having to do it entirely on your own.

  I know too well how fraught family connections can be.

  Still, it’s his life. I’m not his mother, and I can’t force him to marry. His plan is still flawed though. “Once I’m gone, she’ll just forget about you getting married?” I ask skeptically.

  “I wasn’t really thinking it all the way through.” He smiles, mostly to himself. “She just showed up, insisted that I needed to propose to Amelia immediately, and then I saw you in the atrium. The plan formed itself.”

  “You’re being way too generous in calling it a plan.”

  His eyes narrow as he studies me. “Maybe this will work out. I’ll go home to take charge of the family business, but you’ll stay here or…”

  I finish it for him because I’m too depressed to dance around it any longer. “Or I’ll be deported, you mean.”

  He doesn’t flinch at the word deported, which I have to give him credit for. “No, no matter what happens, we’re not going to end up in the same country ever. I’m definitely leaving for Taipei, and you might be leaving. Might.”

  I nod tiredly. Suddenly I’m just exhausted by it all. By fighting to stay here, by even considering his proposal, by trying to decide what to do with everything I know about Corvus and their illegal methods. It’s all just too much.

  I only wanted a normal job, to work my five years, then get my green card. I never wanted to cause trouble. I know all too well what happens to troublemakers. That was never going to be me.

  “All right,” I say, quiet and dull. “I’ll do it.”

  “Are you sure?” The concern in his voice makes my heart trip. I tell it to knock it off. It’s not anything personal on his end. “You can say no. I’ll tell my mother… something.”

  “You can’t tell your mother that you lied.” I give him a small smile. “I know how well that’ll go over.”

  He reaches over and takes my hand. It’s a friendly gesture, and of course we’ll have to be even more intimate than this if we’re pretending to be engaged, but my body snaps awake anyway. He’s never touched me before, and now he’s done it twice in several minutes, and this is totally going to fail if I can’t keep my reactions under control.

  His mouth is open like he wants to say something, but instead he stares at my hand. The one that he’s holding.

  Then his expression slides back into his usual distant but polite mask. “I promise this won’t be as bad as it sounds. We’ll have a few family dinners, and…” His jaw tightens. “Oh shit, I forgot all about that.”

  Whatever that is it sounds horrible and torturous. Something I definitely don’t want to do.

  “What?” I asked warily. I kind of want to pull my hand free of his, and I also kind of don’t want to.

  Maybe I’ll have to go play mah-jongg with his mother and aunts or prepare dinner for them or… or… or….

  I can’t think of anything worse than that, actually.

  Paul drops my hand, steeling his expression. Oh no.

  “There’s a gala my family puts on every year,” he explains. “Well, the foundation my family supports puts it on, with all the proceeds going to the medical research the foundation funds. It’s coming up in a month, and my mother was expecting me to announce the engagement to Amelia there.”

  My nerves are starting to shake because I can see where this is going. All right, there was something worse I hadn’t thought of. I wet my lips. His gaze follows my tongue.

  “So instead we’re going to announce our engagement there?” I point between the two of us to emphasize how horrid I find that.

  “It’s what they’re expecting.” He at least has the grace to look apologetic. “And this way, you won’t have to worry about the press until after the gala.”

  My cheeks go numb. “The press?” I squeak out.

  “You don’t have to worry about them,” Paul says quickly. “We’ll keep the news just in the family for now, make it public at the gala.”

  Right, because he’s famous and in the press a lot. And I will be too, apparently, at least after this party. I run my hand over my face. It’s a ball, or rather a gala, and if I were Cinderella, it would be perfect. The perfect cap and ending to my fairy tale.

  Except I’m not Cinderella. I’m just Grace, unemployed, about to be deported, and mixed up with a man who’s way too wealthy for me.

  If only a missing shoe was the worst of my problems.

  Chapter Five

  I might have sounded more confident about making over Grace than I actually was.

  To be honest, she looks fine to me, perched in one of the chairs in my office. More than fine in a pencil skirt that hugs her hips and thighs and a silky top that clings to her breasts. She’s sexy in a prim and proper, buttoned-up way, which drives me crazier than it should.

  I need to be thinking about making this deception work, not about how her waist dips in just so, the peep of her bra strap at the edge of her collar, or sliding that skirt up her thighs. None of that stuff should be in my brain. Except I can’t shake it loose now.

  Shit. This is going to be tougher than I thought.

  “Chanel,” I say, my brain finally connecting to something more than Goddamn, Grace looks hot.

  Grace, who’s taking all this way better than she should, gives me a look of polite confusion. “Sorry, I don’t think there’s any Chanel in my closet.”

  Is she being sarcastic? I’m not quite sure. She’s never been sarcastic with me before.

  “We’ll fix that,” I say, picking up the phone. A quick call to my assistant will settle everything.

  Once I’m done arranging it, I study Grace. There’s not enough time to brief her on the entire family, but we can start with the basics. Thank God she’s got a quick brain.

  “So, you met my mother.”

  She nods. “Lillian Tsai.”

  “You know her?” I ask. She rolled that off faster than I was expecting.

  “Yes.” She cocks her head. “Don’t you know how famous your mom is?”

  I know she’s famous back home and among the international business community. I didn’t think she’d be famous enough to come to Grace’s attention. “She’s my mother,” I say. “I don’t really think about it.”

  “How did we meet?” Grace asks.

  “We met when…” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Shit. I guess our actual meeting isn’t going to fly as a romantic encounter.”

  I was so focused on getting her up to speed on the family I didn’t think about what they’d ask us. And the lies we’ll have to produce on demand.

  “How should we meet?” I ask. “I’ve never read a romance.”

  “A man who sneers at romance—how surprising.”

  Okay, that’s definitely sarcasm. And I wasn’t sneering. “Sorry, we business titans usually choose The Economist for some light bedtime reading. No fake engagements there.”

  Although there have been more than a few political marriages that I’ve been suspicious about. There’s no way the French president’s wife is that in love with that asshole.

  “We met…” She taps her chin. I’ve never noticed it before, but there’s the tiniest cleft there. Hard to see with the eye, but I bet I could totally find it with my tongue.

  Settle down, I order my libido.

  Grace snaps her fingers, almost making me jump. I need to quit fantasizing about her if I’m going to be able to think fast enough to lie tonight at dinner.

  “Mark and January,” she says. “It’s so simple—we met through Mark and January. Which is true; we’ll just have to add some extras. He’s your best friend, she’s my best friend, and when we met, we just knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  Grace stares at me. “Knew we were meant for each other.”

  Right. That. “Okay, we met through Mark and January, an
d it was love at first sight. That’s easy enough.” Now that’s settled, we can get down to the family tree.

  “How did you propose?”

  I blow out an exasperated breath. I forgot about that little detail. That’s going to be the first thing Lucy asks me.

  “We have to tell my sister,” I say. “There’s no way I could make her believe this. Her name’s Lucy, by the way.”

  “What will she say?” Grace isn’t happy about that idea.

  “She’ll tease me, threaten to tell our mother, and then take the secret all the way to the grave.”

  Grace smiles as if she can’t quite believe it. I wonder if she has any siblings.

  Another detail I’ll need to know. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No. It’s just me.”

  The lingering wistfulness in her tone hits me right in the chest. I want to tell her my sister is mostly a pain in the ass, but I don’t.

  Before I can say anything, there’s a knock at my office door. And then the clerk from Chanel is wheeling in an entire rack of clothes.

  Because I don’t know the first thing about what Grace should wear tonight, I fell back on my mother’s favorite designer for an emergency shopping session.

  It’s a little bit cliché to dress your fiancée—fake fiancée—in your mother’s favorite designer in order to impress said mother, but I’m running out of time. So Chanel it is, even though I’m not a particular fan of theirs. Those tweed suits remind me of too many Sundays spent in church or afternoon teas with aunts who loved to squeeze my cheeks and scold me. Also, the tweed suits strike me as kind of ugly.

  But I don’t tell Grace any of that. She’s got to be excited about Chanel, or at least pretend to be, if this is going to work.

  When she sees the rack of clothes, Grace’s eyes go wide. “That was fast.”

  The sales clerk smiles ingratiatingly at me. “Anything for Mr. Tsai. Will your mother be visiting us while she’s here?”

  I have no idea how she already knows my mother is in the City. Maybe from my mother’s Instagram feed. Considering how much my mother spends at Chanel, it would be a good move to stalk her on social media.