by Lexi Cross
“What’s on your mind?” she asked. We weren’t even fake-dating yet and she was already pulling out the girlfriend questions.
“Just thinking about all of this,” I told her.
“Well, don’t hurt yourself, Jake,” she joked. “I need an answer soon, but not right away.”
I tried to relax, but the fact was we both needed answers. I figured I had mine. She couldn’t do it unless we got married. I needed to decide quickly. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to plan anything between practice and the first game of the season looming over us.
“Hey, just try to enjoy the evening, okay?” She reached across the table to place one of her gentle hands on mine.
Her touch sent thrills over my skin. It had been so long since the last time she’d touched me. I was tempted to go ahead and agree to her terms just so I could get closer to her and see if everything still felt just as good as it had before. I decided that even if we couldn’t come to some agreement on the marriage question, I would still have to pursue her on the side of whatever we did end up doing.
I did enjoy the rest of the evening. We sat and reminisced over old times while we had a few more glasses of wine. We laughed and talked for what felt like forever. It felt good to have someone to talk to about something besides the game. I had forgotten what it felt like to have outside friends.
I was really starting to doubt if she was the best candidate. I didn’t want a business agreement to eventually come between us the way our goals had come between us before. At the same time, there really wasn’t anyone better suited for the job.
“I had a good night,” I told her as we pulled up to drop her off.
“I did, too. Regardless of what happens, Jake, we should do this again. Maybe if we find other people to help, this can be our scandal,” she said in a seductive tone.
I laughed. “Maybe, but give me a day or two to think it over. Let me sleep on it. You know, marriage is a lot to ask of someone, even if it is just pretend,” I told her.
“I know. Thank you for tonight, and I’ll talk to you in a few days.” She leaned over and wrapped an arm around my neck.
I put my arms around her narrow back and held her close as we embraced. She smelled like wine and the same intoxicating perfume that had lured me in back in high school. Some things never changed.
I watched her slide out of the car and walk up the steps to her beautiful house. She certainly was successful, and she was not afraid to show it off. It was a shame she had to live in a large house like hers all by herself.
Chapter Three
Brooke
As disappointed as I was that Jake didn’t agree with me right away, I was also impressed that he hadn’t just jumped at the opportunity. He told me he wanted to think about it because it was a big deal. It was a big deal, and I appreciated his consideration of that fact.
It did worry me when a few days passed before he called me. But when his call came in, I was quick to answer.
“Brooke, meet me at The Beanery Café. I’ll be there in an hour.” His tone was short and firm, which troubled me. I fully expected to be disappointed when I showed up.
I drove over to the café and found Jake sitting at a table in the back. The Beanery had a very open layout that featured a lot of outside light pouring in the windows. It felt like walking into an open-air café in a vineyard, which was the point of the whole shop. On one hand, I felt like we should have been meeting in secret somewhere, but on the other, meeting in public places helped us to establish our supposed relationship.
I sat down at the high table with my old flame—and hopefully husband-to-be.
“You always know the best places,” I told him. I knew we were just meeting to go over business, but I ordered a cappuccino anyway. If nothing else, I was at least going to enjoy our meeting.
Following my lead, Jake ordered a coffee as well.
“I take it you’ve given my offer some thought,” I said, starting him off.
“I have. Have you thought about it any?” he asked in response.
“What do you mean?”
“Is marriage the only way for you to get the company?”
“It is. My father won’t relent,” I told him.
“Damn.” He shook his head, and I felt myself deflating right there at the table.
“I guess that’s a deal breaker, huh?” I thought about cancelling my cappuccino and leaving him there. I was starting to feel embarrassed that I’d even asked him like I had. He’d been out of my life for over a decade, and as soon as he walked back in, I had asked him to marry me as a business proposition. Not exactly hello.
“No, it’s not a deal breaker. I came down here to tell you that I accept your offer,” he told me, blowing my pessimism right out of the water.
“Really?” My smile was returning. “You’re really agreeing to it,” I said again, looking for confirmation. I wanted to make sure I had heard what I thought I’d heard.
“Really. I gave it some thought, and I have to agree that marriage is the best option for both of us right now. You’re pretty much being forced to by your father, and it will look that much better to the new owner if I show up with a fiancée. I think that’s a much better deal than just some random girlfriend. It shows that we are really serious about it,” he explained.
“Oh, I’m so happy right now I could kiss you,” I blurted out.
“Go ahead. Something tells me we’re going to have to get used to that sort of thing once we get started.” He winked.
I just turned my head and cocked an eyebrow at him. I wasn’t sure about going too far with him just yet. We still had to work everything out before we really put on the act.
“So, what’s the next step?” he asked.
“I guess we break it to my father and start planning the wedding,” I told him. I wasn’t really sure of what to do next. I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. I honestly hadn’t expected him to say yes.
“Well, I’m thinking we should just go down to the courthouse and not do anything special since this is just business,” Jake suggested.
“I guess that will be okay,” I said slowly, preparing to argue my case. “I know my father will probably want a big ceremony, but I was thinking about trying to talk him down to something small. I know it’s not a real wedding, so I don’t want to go all out, but it’s still a wedding. We’ll still be getting married, and since it is for show, we should put on a show, right?”
“I guess,” he agreed begrudgingly. “We’ll just have to see how it goes with your father. It does make sense to have some sort of ceremony, but it will make the news either way. Trust me.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but I was getting mixed up with a different type of lifestyle now. A pro athlete’s life was much more public than what I was used to, which was precisely why he needed a steady girlfriend to portray a positive public image. Well, he was getting a wife, and I was going to be getting a lot more publicity.
“The real question is how to tell my dad,” I said after a moment.
“Do I need to ask him for your hand or something?” he asked me with a shocked look on his face.
I laughed. “No, nothing like that. I think he’ll know on some level that our marriage is simply an arrangement. It’s not like we were dating prior to this. He knows I don’t have a boyfriend and haven’t had one in ages.”
“That’s a relief. I didn’t know just how real we needed it to be.” He chuckled and wiped his hand across his forehead in an exaggerated gesture.
“I’m glad you can find humor in all of this. My nerves are shot,” I told him.
“This is what you wanted, right?” He looked at me with those intense green eyes over his cup of coffee.
“Yeah, but I didn’t expect to actually get it. I figured needing to get married meant I was going to lose out on my father’s company.” I tried not to blush. I wasn’t the bashful type, and confidence certainly wasn’t a problem for me, usually, but when I was around Jake, I turne
d into a little high school girl all over again. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but for whatever reason, he had that effect on me.
“Well, now you’ve got it, so it’s time to start figuring out what to do next,” he said in a stern, professional voice.
“I guess I should just come right out and tell my father. He’ll probably want to have some sort of announcement dinner to make our engagement public.” I froze as the last couple of words left my mouth.
Jake looked at me with ice in his gaze, as if the same thought had occurred to him. “An engagement ring,” he said simply.
“Yeah. I think I can cover that. Don’t worry about it. Since the marriage was my idea, I’ll take care of it before I talk to him, or at least before the dinner.”
My mind was racing a million miles an hour, trying to figure out what I was going to do about an engagement ring without my father realizing I had bought it myself. Realizing I was going to have to cover it put a damper on things. Suddenly, this grand idea to get married to Jake didn’t seem so grand. It was merely an arrangement, so the ring didn’t really matter, but it still stung to realize he wasn’t going to be getting me one.
“I’ll call you after I talk to my father,” I told him as I got up from the table and went to throw down a couple of dollars for my coffee.
“No, keep your money,” Jake said, grabbing my cash and handing it back to me. “I’ve got the coffee. It’s the least I could do.”
It really was about the least he could do, but I wasn’t going to argue.
“Call me when you’ve got it all figured out. Let me know where we go from here.” He put an arm around me and hugged me again.
It felt like we should have been shaking hands, not hugging. Again, I wasn’t going to argue. His strong arm around my waist, pulling me to him, felt very comforting. I wanted to let him hold me against his strong, bulging chest, but I couldn’t. Everything had to just be for show. Otherwise, we would blow the whole thing.
“I’ve got to go,” I said, pushing myself gently away from him.
“Right. Keep me in the loop.” He dropped his arm and sat back down as I walked away. I felt his eyes watching me as I walked out of the café.
Attachment was definitely not part of our arrangement. I didn’t need to allow myself to get attached to him, and I needed to do what I could to keep him from growing attached as well. I had to remind myself it was just a business arrangement as I left the café and got back in my car.
It hit me that I had left abruptly as I started to pull away from the curb, but I had a lot to do, especially if everything was going to rest on my shoulders. I had to come up with a story that my father would believe. Why had this guy just popped up out of nowhere? And how did we realize so quickly that we wanted to get married? Had he been pining after me all these years after our unceremonious breakup back in high school?
I laughed to myself. My father would see right through any story I could come up with. He would know right away that I was just making something up. It would be obvious that I had just made an arrangement with Jake because we had a history and we both needed it.
I had to make it believable. I couldn’t show up with a ring on my finger, but I needed to go ahead and pick it up on my way to talk to my father. I needed to be able to present it at the announcement dinner I knew my father would make me schedule.
It seemed like an awful lot of work just to earn my rightful place in my father’s company. I needed to get used to putting on a show though. I was going to be doing a lot more of it as the new head of the company and as the wife of a celebrity.
I drummed on the steering wheel as I turned it all over in my head. While it was certainly stressful to start with, it was going to work out in my favor. I was going to come out on top once it was all said and done. I just needed to get the ball rolling and not lose my head as everything went along.
As the heiress to a small fortune and a sometimes-socialite, I had my own jeweler in town. He ran a private business dealing specifically with the most elite clientele in the city. I knew he would be able to help me get just the ring I needed for my engagement, and for the right price, no one had to know I picked it out and paid for it myself.
That was step one—get the ring. Step two, once the ring was in my possession, was going to be to tell my father. The plan was coming together. Once my father announced the dinner, I would be able to tell Jake. At the engagement dinner, we’d have to tell everyone we hadn’t decided on a date yet; we were going to have to try to work around each other’s schedules. Then, we’d come up with a date on our own and figure out how to make the wedding itself work.
I wanted something small. He wanted to go to the courthouse. And my father was going to demand something extravagant. We were going to have to compromise somewhere, somehow. Then, we were going to have to decide whether to postpone it far enough out so that we would end up calling it off after everything worked out or to get it over with quickly to move our goals right along.
My head was spinning again by the time I pulled up to my jeweler’s private office. There was no time to think that far ahead anymore. I needed to focus on the current step and what was next. One foot in front of the other.
Chapter Four
Jake
The night came for the big announcement dinner hosted by Mr. Scott, Brooke’s father. The dinner was hosted on his estate. Mr. Scott’s story was an impressive, real-life rags to riches story. He had come from nothing, started his own company when he was still relatively young, and grew his small operation to a large, successful national corporation, making him one of the wealthiest men in the city.
The Scott estate sat on a large plot of lush green land behind a low wall that completely circled the grounds. My driver pulled through the gate and followed the driveway up to the house. It looked like a star-studded gala as cars pulled to the front of the house and unloaded well-dressed socialites to attend the dinner.
I had expected a few members of the Scott family and some close friends, but it seemed Mr. Scott was really going all out for his daughter’s engagement announcement. The dinner attendees looked like they were attending a charity event instead of a private dinner.
My stomach sank as I realized what I was getting into. I had amassed my own fortune as a pro athlete, and I was used to being hounded by the press. But I had never been to an event quite like this one before. Everyone was in tuxedos or evening gowns.
As the car stopped in front of the house and one of Mr. Scott’s men opened the door to let me out, I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. I was one of the guests of honor for this event. I knew I was going to end up having to stand in front of the people I saw arriving for the dinner and probably address them to say something about the engagement.
Brooke and I had rehearsed the story several times already. I had it memorized. She had decided to tell her father that I had looked for her all the years that we had been apart. Once I ran into her the other day at the grocery store, I had decided I couldn’t let her slip through my fingers again. She was the one who got away. I was satisfied with that story, and apparently her father was, too.
Brooke met me at the door as I walked in. She was gorgeous in a form-fitting blue gown with thin straps and a low front that showed off just enough skin to hold my eyes. Her golden hair spilled down over her shoulders. She greeted me with her warm smile and beautiful blue eyes.
“Relax,” she said, taking my arm as I approached.
“Let me see the ring,” I whispered in her ear before we walked into the dining room.
She held up her hand to show me the exquisite diamond ring she had purchased for herself as a sign of our faux-engagement.
“Wow! It’s beautiful,” I told her.
“I should hope so. It’s the one you gave me.” She winked as she turned to lead me to our places at the main table.
The way the room was situated, we were seated at the front of the dining hall in the center of a long table with her family. The rest of
the room was populated with round tables covered in white cloth spaced around an open section of the hardwood floor, set apart like a dance floor. It wasn’t a dinner. It was a party!
“You have to forgive my father,” Brooke said quietly in my ear as we approached the table. “He can be a bit extravagant at times.”
“A bit?” I asked her, joking.
“I tried to talk him down. I don’t want all of this to scare you off.”
I laughed. “He’s not going to scare me away. I’ve been to clubs bigger and wilder than this,” I assured her, patting her hand.
As we approached our seats at the table, we heard the distinctive ting of someone tapping a champagne glass with a piece of silverware. Though the room was full of people talking and laughing, and music filled the air, the sound was able to cut through it all and silence everyone. The room quieted down almost immediately, and all eyes were on the man standing at the head of the table.
