He went stiller-than-still. Bingo. Lucas had an ex that he wanted back.
“I’m not a great liar,” I told him. “I don’t like lying as a general rule, so I’ve never really practiced it enough to get good.”
He smiled. “That’s ok. I’m just asking you to pretend that you like me for a few weeks. Hopefully you don’t find me too horrible to make that act convincing.” Lucas looked at me like he knew I was attracted to him. I swallowed hard. I must be such a terrible liar that I’d already made my crush crystal clear.
Lucas’ smile widened when I didn’t immediately reply, and I frowned at him. I needed to get my feelings on lockdown. That kind of arrogant smugness made Lucas simultaneously more and less attractive to me. I hated that he thought I was so easy to read and manipulate.
“I’ll have to brush up on my acting skills,” I told him with as much of a poker face as I could muster. His smile faltered after a moment. Good. There was no reason I needed to broadcast everything.
“I’m not asking you to make up your mind about this right now,” Lucas told me, changing the subject. He clearly didn’t want to talk about feelings, either—neither mine nor his, nor his ex’s, whoever she was. I pushed thoughts of her to the side, she was really irrelevant. Lucas’ plan was probably doomed to fail, but I could still get what I wanted: my promotion.
“I’m in.” The words were out of my mouth in an instant. This was too good an opportunity to pass up. “I’ll do it.”
He sat up abruptly. “What? You will?”
“Yes,” I told him with a smile. My mind was already running through the terms of the arrangement. This was a business deal like any other. And I may not be a genius, but I knew how to make a good deal, and I knew an opportunity when I saw one. “But first I think there are several details we need to work out.”
4
Lucas
Rae—Michelle Rachel Lewis—according to her LinkedIn and Facebook, had thrown me totally off my guard. She pushed her shiny hair behind her shoulders and pursed her ruby-red lips at me. Her blue eyes sparkled mischievously beneath long, long eyelashes.
“Details?” I echoed. I still couldn’t believe she’d said yes.
“Yes, the terms of our agreement to, um, date,” she said, pulling out a pad of paper from her purse and staring at me across the patio table like it was her own personal boardroom. “I think we need to work them out immediately, don’t you? Transparency of expectations is essential to any good deal.” Her subtle New York accent was unexpectedly exotic. I’d never found it to be a sexy accent before, but she made it that way.
“Alright.” If I kept my answers to a minimum, maybe she wouldn’t realize how utterly out of my depth I suddenly was. I hadn’t thoroughly thought any of this through yet. I was being impulsive when I made the proposition and had fully expected her to tell me to fuck off and die.
The truth was that Rae made me feel weirdly tongue-tied, and that wasn’t something I could remember ever dealing with before. She was phenomenally attractive, with a perfect, hourglass shaped body, long limbs, and a delicately beautiful, lightly freckled face. But it wasn’t just the way she looked that had me distracted. She was quick and witty, and clearly a strategic thinker. And now, she was about to be my fake girlfriend. If I could make it through this negotiation, that is.
“How long are we talking about for this whole fake girlfriend thing?” she asked, scribbling nonstop on her notepad.
Good question. “Until the deal closes, if absolutely necessary. Hopefully not that long.” I was flying by the seat of my pants here, so I made my voice sound as confident as possible. I smiled at her like I had everything figured out. Maybe she bought it. It was hard to tell.
“We’ve already established that I won’t be providing any of the physical girlfriend stuff, like sex, but I also want to make it clear that I won’t be doing your laundry, cooking, or even living with you or giving the appearance of living with you. I have my own life and will only be in town as needed before the closing. You already know the schedule of when I’ll be here.”
“I understand.” I felt myself smiling. Laundry? Good lord, I would never ask this beautiful, brilliant creature to do my laundry. Also, she’d probably demand my soul as payment if I did. I had a bad feeling I’d just entered into a negotiation that I was in no way prepared to have.
“What expectations do you have of me as your fake girlfriend?”
I took a sip of my drink before answering to buy myself some time.
“I feel like it would be better to keep the agreement open ended and not enclosed by a set of defined objectives and activities, but I recognize that wouldn’t give you enough of an idea what I’m wanting. I would want you to help me create a believable record of our ‘relationship’ on social media, accompany me to social events when your schedule allows, and otherwise pretend to be in a relationship with me when you’re in town and not working.”
“I don’t want my coworkers to know about any of this.”
“Of course not.”
“And I would expect that you would keep the truth about this arrangement to yourself as well.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’m ok with the rest of what you suggested, but I’m not going to make out with you in public or anything like that.”
A vivid, adolescent fantasy of kissing Rae, crushing her curves against me and teasing her mouth until she was breathless shot through me. The thought was made all the more visceral by the fact that she was staring at me, pouting those lips in my direction. Blood rushed below my belt, making me glad we were sitting down. It had been so long since I’d felt this sort of sexual attraction to anyone that I was surprised by it.
This isn’t about Rae, I informed my suddenly reawakened body. This is about getting Victoria back. My cock disagreed, and I tried to ignore it.
“I’m not asking you to do anything beyond your comfort zone, but we will need to be… convincing. Some posed pictures should do the trick. And I might need you to dance with me.”
“Dance with you?” She looked suddenly nervous. I seized on the shift in her mood. The power imbalance slid my way again.
“You don’t like dancing?” I smiled encouragingly at her, although my voice was teasing. I bet she looked incredible on the dance floor. Her body was full and curvy in all the places I liked to see moving when a woman dances. The way her pencil skirt nipped in at her waist and then gripped her full, round ass was not something I could miss.
“You ought to know upfront. I’m a fucking terrible dancer.” She bit her full bottom lip with her pearly white teeth.
God, that little mouth on her. And I wasn’t referring to naughty language.
I gave a little strangled laugh at her expression. “Neither am I. Trust me. I’m just talking about the middle school slow dance thing. We’ll need to attend a wedding together in a couple of weeks.”
“A wedding?”
“My friends who own this bar, Ward and Emma, are getting married.”
She blinked. “Emma the bartender in the other room?”
My jaw dropped open. “You already met her?”
“Uh, she was the one who gave me the EpiPen for Cliff. She seems nice.”
“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. I think Wendy, one of the waitresses, keeps one around for her peanut allergy.” Wendy was the Lounge’s newest waitress, and granddaughter of the bar’s founder and original owner, Willie Smith. Ward and Emma were under strict instructions from Willie to keep her out of trouble. And away from peanuts.
“So, you want me to attend a wedding with you? I can do that.” Rae nodded and then frowned. “I’ll dance if I have to, but just understand that I will look stupid if I dance. What else?”
Fuck if I know. I shrugged, and then a stray thought occurred to me.
“There’s one other thing,” I ventured, “and it’s not a deal breaker if you don’t want to do it. I guess it’s just more of a request…” I trailed off uncertainly. I looked at her, already
feeling guilty.
“What is it?” She looked curious, if not a bit wary.
My words spilled out in a rush. “Will you dye your hair a different color red? More red?”
Her hands flew to the strands flying free around her ears, and her face fell. “You don’t like my hair?” Her voice was suddenly very soft and small. I saw hurt flickering in her expressive blue eyes.
I swallowed hard. “I didn’t say… I do like… it’s just… look, you don’t have to do it. I’m sorry I asked.” I wished I could go back in time and kick myself.
Unlike my two best friends, I was a good liar and a great bullshit-er. Cole was too genuine and reasonable of a person to ever mislead someone convincingly. Ward was too blunt—his methods were always direct, sometimes even rude. Usually, I would have come up with a better way of telling Rae that I thought I just wasn’t able to handle her hair color being so similar to Victoria’s, but I wasn’t up to it at the moment. And now my words had backfired.
She shook her head. The vulnerability that I’d seen disappeared in an instant. Walls went up behind her eyes and her next smile was confident. “I’m happy to dye my hair whatever color you’d like. You can pick out the shade yourself if you want.”
The sudden shift in her mood made me nervous. I’d clearly offended her, and although that hadn’t been my intention, there was no walking it back. The damage was done and now she was on her guard. I was an idiot. “I don’t need to pick the color. I was going to suggest a shade that’s more red than blonde but just… never mind. It’s not important. Don’t feel pressured if you don’t want to change it.” My response sounded more like an apology than anything else.
“Don’t be silly,” she told me, still wearing that fake smile. “It’s just hair. I’ll have it dyed by the next time you see me. Anything else?”
I shook my head guiltily. She must have seen my weakness, because she sat up straighter and set her hands on the table in front of her. She leaned forward and pounced on the opportunity to change the subject. She was in control once more.
Rae smiled sweetly when I tensed. “Now that we’ve worked out what I’ll do for you, we can talk about what you’ll do for me. I’ll need you to give me some kind of assurance that you’ll keep your word to me about the sale. And you need make it clear to Azure Group that you’re only going to work with them if you get to work with me.”
“I’ll have my lawyer draft some sort of an agreement.”
“There’s no way to make a fake relationship legally enforceable,” Rae told me. “I’m not a lawyer yet, but I do know that.”
I blinked. She was right. “Well, you’re closer to being a lawyer than me. What do you recommend?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not a lawyer yet, and this is not really a legal question anyway.”
“How about a handshake?”
Her eyes narrowed and then she rolled them. “That might be how you do things in Texas, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I’m not going to just believe you. Right now, there’s nothing to make you keep up your end of the bargain to me. I could go through all this trouble and then you might choose not to sell.”
Clever. She was right again. Not that I would lie to her, but she didn’t know that. I nodded.
We sat in silence for a second while we both puzzled over it.
Suddenly inspiration struck. “How about I give you five percent of the stock ownership certificates right now. Then, when the deal is signed with Azure Group, you can give them back to me and I’ll give them to Azure group. If it seems like I’m going to go back on my word to you, you can just walk and keep the stock. Then you’ll personally own a stake in the company and can do whatever you want.”
She looked at me in obvious disbelief. “You’d do that? I’d have the power to completely fuck you over at any point. Even minority shareholders can stop a deal.”
“I’m going to just believe you. I will demand a handshake, but that’s how we do things in Texas.” I knew I was wearing a confident face, but inside, I knew this was a risky move. But somehow, I trusted Rae. She wasn’t the type to fuck someone over just because. I could tell that she didn’t have it in her.
You’ve been wrong before, a negative voice reminded me. I squashed it. I wasn’t wrong about Rae.
She stared at me for a long moment. “You must really want her back, whoever this woman is.”
Victoria. Just an offhand remark about her made me feel lightheaded and weak.
“Yeah, I do.” It’s not like I could lie about it. I saw her face every time I closed my eyes.
“Alright, I agree to your terms.” Rae seemed full of emotions, but I didn’t know what they meant. She was so beautiful, and that could be dangerous. I would need to be careful around her. I couldn’t afford the distraction. I did my best to be businesslike.
“Great. I’ll have the stock certificates sent to your hotel room.” I smiled at her. “I’ll take my handshake now.”
Rae extended her small, pale hand over the table to me, and I shook it. Her hand was dwarfed by mine, but I knew better than to underestimate her. Her strength was evident to me, and she would soon have the power to make or break my entire life. I prayed that I wasn’t making a huge mistake. I had good feeling about this though. I was smart enough to pull this whole thing off. Wasn’t I?
5
Rae
“How do I feel? I feel like dog shit, Rae,” Cliff grumbled. “I probably look like dog shit. too.” He was wearing one of those horrible, backless hospital gowns and looked uncomfortable atop the lumpy, industrial-looking hospital bed. Wires and tubes extended from his arms and hooked into machines, turning him into a reluctant, foul-tempered cyborg.
God, I hate hospitals. Just being in the room reminded me of when my dad was sick.
“I’m sorry Cliff,” I told him. He huffed dismissively in response. His mop of gray hair shook aggressively, free of its usual oiled style. I’d long thought he was wearing a toupee, but now, I wasn’t so sure. Nobody would have a toupee that ugly. No way. That hair was real.
As obnoxious and painfully hard to take as Cliff was, there was no dignity or comfort with being in a hospital. I’d spent more than enough time in hospitals when I was a kid. The smell was exactly the same as I remembered; it was the scent of strong chemicals mingled with sadness, sickness, and death. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I imagined Cliff felt the same way.
“When are they going to let you out?” I asked, and he shrugged.
“Ask that heifer of a nurse they gave me.” He dropped his voice conspiratorially. “None of the nurses here are even remotely attractive. That used to be the one upside to being sick! Now they just let anyone be a nurse. Even men. It’s disgraceful.”
It took some effort on my part, but I managed to avoid lecturing Cliff that nurses were medical professionals and not around for his entertainment or sexual titillation. To Cliff’s right, Annie and Kyle exchanged a disgusted glance. Usually I tried my best to insulate them from the worst of Cliff’s opinions. Tonight, there was no way to do that. They were getting the full Cliff treatment.
“The doctor said that as soon as his echocardiogram came back they would consider discharging him,” Annie explained since Cliff seemed unduly fixated on the nursing situation.
“I didn’t need an echocardiogram,” he groused. Annie rolled her eyes.
“Just like you didn’t need an injection of epinephrine to open up your airway so you wouldn’t choke to death?” she challenged.
“Did I ask your opinion?” he snapped back at her. “How about you keep your commentary limited to the job.”
“That’s—” Annie started.
“Excuse me—” Kyle tried.
“Why don’t you and Kyle both wait outside?” Cliff interrupted, speaking over them. “I didn’t realize until tonight how annoying you both were. At least Rae is rational.”
I knew it was pointless to try and defend them. It would only make Cliff turn on me. The best way to help
them was to get them out of his line of sight. Neither seemed particularly put out to be banished to the hallway. “I’ll tell you guys everything later,” I said in a low voice as I shut the door. They looked relieved to be away from Cliff. I could hardly blame them.
“Alright, how’d it go?” Cliff asked me now that we were alone. “Is he as much of a genius as they say?”
“It’s hard to say whether he’s a genius, but he’s interested in selling,” I told Cliff. “The meeting went well. I think we’re in business. We can start due diligence tomorrow.”
“I hope you unbuttoned a few of those buttons like we talked about,” Cliff told me, staring unabashedly at my chest. He was really laying it on thick today. I tried to chalk it up to his experience with the allergic reaction and some kind of mild-altering drugs he might be on, but it was hard not to take offense. Besides, this wasn’t all that much different than his usual behavior.
I didn’t rise to his bait. “Once we get you discharged, we’ll need to talk about the management agreements,” I told him, trying to steer the conversation back towards business. “I’m not sure that Stevenson will like our standard terms. He seems very independent.”
Cliff shook his meaty head. “Azure Group won’t budge on that. I’ve tried before, but unless you’ve got something on McKenzie, Stevenson will be signing the same deal as everyone else.” He shrugged. “They fuck everybody over equally, at least. So you can’t say it’s unfair.”
A light knock on the door interrupted us. A man wearing a stethoscope stuck his head in. He evaluated the situation in an instant and recoiled.
“May I come in?”
Cliff nodded at the man reluctantly. “I suppose. I hope you’ve got my discharge papers in that folder.” He eyed the folder in the doctor’s hands.
The doctor, a forty-something-year-old with a shaved head and bright, caramel brown eyes shook his head. “I’m afraid not Mr. Monroe. You’re going to have to suffer through our hospitality for a few more hours. My name is Dr. Alverez. Do you mind me discussing your health information in front of your…” he looked at me curiously, “daughter?”
Lie With Me Page 3
