The Christmas Gamble

by Sienna Ciles

  “I could be a big donor to your agency,” Ransom suggested, just as I took a sip of juice.

  “No,” I said, once I’d cleared out my mouth and throat. “No, that would never work.”

  Ransom raised both eyebrows at me.

  “Why not?” He almost sounded offended.

  I gestured up and down along the shape of him.

  “Tell me how many people would believe that a tattooed guy with 1950s bad-boy hair is a super donor for an adoption agency,” I pointed out.

  Ransom chuckled. “Hey--people with 1950s bad-boy hair can be wealthy and have diverse interests.”

  “They can, but they usually don’t,” I countered.

  “Don’t judge a book by its cover, Bethany. Besides, what did you have in mind?”

  I thought about it for a few seconds, realizing--too late, again--that I hadn’t actually put all that much thought into my plot to have a fake boyfriend at my reunion.

  “I definitely think it should be through work,” I said slowly.

  “You’re not going to be my boss--that’s just too rom-com,” Ransom told me.

  “No, I wouldn’t want to be your boss anyway--that would sound incredibly unprofessional,” I agreed.

  “So, what’s something that could have brought us together, but where you’re not my boss?”

  I thought about it as I ate some bacon and some fruit. “You could have been someone working with the agency on an event.”

  “Like one of your banquets or donor drives or something?” he asked.

  “Yeah--like we have a bunch of events throughout the year to get donors to give money,” I explained.

  “Like any non-profit,” Ransom agreed.

  “You could be an independent contractor or something--someone doing something to help make one of the events happen,” I said.

  “I could be a chef,” Ransom offered.

  I snorted. “Just because you had a chef buddy and know how to make an awesome breakfast doesn’t mean that you could pretend to be a chef professionally for a whole weekend. Besides, how would you have worked with the agency as a chef?”

  “I mean a chef-caterer,” Ransom explained.

  “Go on,” I said, curious in spite of my initial rejection.

  “Maybe I’m a chef in charge of a catering company that your agency used for some big banquet type event or dinner for donors,” Ransom suggested.

  “And we met because I was in charge of that event,” I added.

  “Over the course of a few weeks I seduced you with my delicious food and exceptional professionalism, and after the event was over, we started dating,” Ransom finished.

  I set my fork down, considering that as our cover.

  “That actually works,” I said. “I mean, it’s a little cheesy but still in the realm of possibility. It’s something that people could actually believe.”

  “And it plays to your strengths as someone whose life revolves around her work,” Ransom said.

  I scowled at him, torn between feeling offended that he’d pegged me so accurately and amused that he was confident enough to make the comment--I had, after all, admitted I didn’t have much of a social life. “You’re going to make about a million jokes about me being a workaholic this weekend, aren’t you?”

  Ransom grinned slowly. “A million and one,” he said. “And what kind of long-standing relationship would we have if I wasn’t able to do that?”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “But only if I can make playful digs about...food. Or something.”

  Ransom snorted. “Maybe let me take the lead in the playful digs,” he suggested.

  “Whatever. We’ll make it work,” I said.

  “Now we need to come up with a name,” Ransom said. “I’m sure as hell not going to be Ransom for this.”

  “How about James? That’s...a name I’ve always liked,” I suggested. It was a first name that had belonged to one of my biggest college crushes.

  “James is fine. I can remember that,” Ransom said.

  “So, what do we do now?” I asked. For someone who’d actually had a plan to bring a fake boyfriend to an event, I hadn’t really considered the logistics of it that much.

  “We should figure out as much as we can about each other--or at least I should figure out as much as I can about you, and you should figure out as much as you can about my cover story,” Ransom said.

  “That sounds good,” I said. “How are we going to do that?” It would be like studying for a test--something I’d thought was long behind me.

  “If you feel up to clearing up the breakfast mess I made, I’ll go into town and get something decent to wear for tonight, and then we can get started,” Ransom suggested.

  “How much of a mess did you make?” I got up and looked at the kitchen more closely. I found, though, that Ransom had been surprisingly respectful: the dishes were pre-washed and piled neatly to go into the dishwasher, except for the things he’d used to make pancakes. It wouldn’t take more than maybe twenty minutes to get everything straightened up.

  “I’ll be quick--I know what I’m looking for,” Ransom said.

  “You’re sure you don’t want money for this? I mean, you’re spending money,” I pointed out. Ransom shook his head and finished off his coffee, rising to his feet.

  “I would have spent money while I was in town anyway, and I’m saving money on a hotel and all that,” he pointed out. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  He left the kitchen and I got to work on cleaning up the breakfast dishes, thinking to myself that for two strangers, we’d already managed to fall into an odd kind of habitual routine. It felt good--but I reminded myself that it was all fake. We were just two people working through a deal to benefit ourselves and each other, and that was all. After the reunion was over, and Ransom--James--got the information he wanted, we would probably never even speak to each other again. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but the fact actually made me a little sad.

  Chapter Six

  Ransom

  By the time I got back from a shop I knew about in town, about an hour later, the dishwasher was running and Bethany had managed to change into normal clothes--jeans and a tee shirt. I came into the house to find her sitting in the living room, the TV playing The Tudors, and with her laptop in front of her.

  “You’re not seriously working on your vacation, are you?” I tossed my bags into the guest room and sat down in one of the chairs in the living room, not too far but not too close to the couch where Bethany sat.

  “No--I was getting started on what we should know about each other,” Bethany replied, setting her computer aside.

  “You were writing an outline?” I shook my head, thinking that it was no real surprise that she didn’t have much of a social life, considering how intensely she’d taken on the task of creating a fake relationship with me.

  “Well, kind of like a list of things--not really an outline,” Bethany explained. “I thought about the kinds of things people tend to talk about with someone they’re introduced to as a boyfriend or girlfriend, and sort of...went from there, I guess.”

  “That sounds thrilling,” I said. “Really.”

  “Stop being so sarcastic! This is important to me,” Bethany said.

  “What I mean is that people aren’t just going to ask the questions you think are ‘normal’ for them to ask a boyfriend or girlfriend,” I pointed out. “They’re going to ask left field questions that you can’t even think of, because--and I want you to keep reminding yourself of this--people are human beings. They’re irrational and weird.”

  “I know that,” Bethany said irritably.

  “So, the thing to do would be to treat this as spontaneously as possible,” I explained.

  “And how are we going to do that?” Bethany crossed her arms over her chest, which of course made me notice the way her cleavage showed at the neck of her shirt. She’s not going to want to do anything physical--not really, I reminded myself.

  “Make a ga
me out of it,” I suggested.

  “Make a game out of it?”

  I grinned at her. “Look. There is no way that you and I are going to find some method of knowing everything about each other that two people dating for a year would know,” I said. “People hold onto weird things about the people they’re dating.”

  “You’re talking like I’ve never dated anyone before,” Bethany complained. “I’ve dated people.”

  “See? That’s spontaneous,” I said, grinning even more. Bethany grabbed one of the cushions on the couch next to her and threw it at me, and I managed to catch it as it hurtled toward my head. “And now I also know you’ve got pretty good aim,” I added.

  “So what kinds of things would you know about me, after dating me for a year?” Bethany raised one eyebrow, and the color in her cheeks looked so adorable, paired with her twitching lips that told me she was trying not to mirror my own grin.

  “I have no idea,” I admitted. “But I can guarantee that I probably wouldn’t know half the things that are on your list.”

  “You wouldn’t know what my favorite color is?” Bethany almost pouted.

  “I probably would--but that’s just because it’s something I’d have filed away,” I said.

  “So give me an idea of what you would know,” Bethany insisted. “You keep tearing down my idea, but I don’t see how yours is any better.”

  “I’d know something like--you always cry when the Cheerios commercial comes on, but you try and cover it up,” I replied.

  “I do not,” Bethany countered.

  “I mean, if you did, I would notice that,” I explained, rolling my eyes. “That’s the kind of thing people know about the person they’ve been dating for a year.” I thought for a few moments. “What’s the longest you’ve dated someone?”

  “Nine months,” Bethany admitted. I let out a low whistle at that.

  “I had a girlfriend in high school that I was with for two years,” I said. “I couldn’t tell you what her dog’s name was, but I knew she loved mint chip ice cream whenever she was on her period.”

  “How is it possible that you’ve dated someone for two years and my longest relationship has been nine months?” Bethany frowned at me and I pretended to be offended at the question.

  “Just because I’ve got tattoos and a--what did you call it? A 1950s bad-boy hairstyle, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a romantic heart,” I said, putting my hands across my chest and pretending to swoon. Bethany rolled her eyes again, but I saw the smile twitching at the corners of her lips.

  “Fine. You win. So, we’ll play a game.”

  “Let’s make it like truth or dare,” I suggested.

  “Like truth or dare?” Bethany looked doubtful.

  “We’ll each come up with questions for each other to answer, and then halfway through we’ll switch. For every question that one of us gets wrong about the other one, there’ll be some kind of...forfeit. Like if I don’t remember your favorite song later on, I have to tell you something embarrassing and true about myself,” I explained.

  “As opposed to embarrassing and fake,” Bethany said sarcastically.

  “Well yeah. A lot of what I’m going to be telling you about ‘James Keller’--I came up with a last name--is going to be fake because I’m not actually a chef,” I pointed out.

  “Okay, so we’ll come up with things the other person should know about us--silly things, stuff that people would know after a year of dating, and then quiz each other on them,” Bethany said. I nodded. “And if we can’t remember we have to do embarrassing things, or something like that.”

  “Let’s just get started, and we can shake out the details on the other part later,” I suggested.

  “So how do we start?”

  “Let’s see that list you made, and I’ll tell you what I’d remember from it,” I told her. Bethany handed me her laptop and I looked over her notes.

  She’d been pretty exhaustive, and I knew right away that more than half of what she’d thought I would know about her was superficial stuff, the kind of thing that people use for online dating questionnaires and stuff like that. It was like she’d pretended I was going to interview her for a Time magazine article or maybe Cosmopolitan.

  “Okay, so there are like, four things on here that I would actually care about,” I said, handing the laptop back to her.

  “Four? I wrote like twenty,” Bethany protested.

  “I really would not care even a little bit about the fight you had with a professor about whether you earned an A- or an A,” I pointed out.

  “But that’s not superficial!”

  “It’s also not anything anyone else would care about, and it would never come up in a conversation,” I countered.

  “So, what are the four things, then?” Bethany huffed and I pressed my lips together, thinking about the situation for a moment.

  “Why don’t we make this interesting? You’re already trying to turn the game into like--a study session,” I said. “It’s one o’clock on a weekend. I think we can have a beer while we talk.” I got up and went into the kitchen, grabbing two beers.

  “How is drinking going to help us remember?” she asked, her voice suspicious.

  “Well, in the first place we’re likely to be drinking at least a little bit at the reunion events,” I pointed out. “These kinds of things tend to run on alcohol.”

  “Fine,” Bethany said. “But if I forget something…”

  “You’ll sound like anyone’s girlfriend who isn’t an obsessive, jealous beast,” I finished for her.

  “So, what are the four things?”

  I opened one of the beers and handed it to Bethany. “First thing: why did you take the job you’re in?” That actually was something that I’d thought--from the list--showed an actual understanding of how people in long-term relationships related to each other. The bigger question is why a girl like her hasn’t dated anyone for longer than nine months, I thought absently, even as I opened my own beer and raised it to Bethany.

  “Because I knew someone in college who’d bounced around the foster care system her whole life, and I thought it would be great if there was some way I could help kids find real homes,” she replied.

  “Very admirable,” I said. “Also, kind of a job interview response. What’s the real reason?”

  Bethany looked at me for a long moment and then drank down two big gulps of her beer.

  “Sarah killed herself, the week before graduation,” she said. “She’d gotten back into contact with her birth parents, I guess, and they were just as bad as they’d ever been. And I thought...I’d thought that if someone had found her a real family, she’d have been able to deal. She’d have had someone to care about her for her.”

  “That’s pretty fucking heavy,” I said. I took a deep breath. I hadn’t expected something like that--and from the way Bethany spoke, she’d been pretty close to her friend Sarah. Maybe she doesn’t have a boyfriend because she’s into chicks? But then--if that was the case, she’d just have brought a girlfriend instead. Something just didn’t add up about her situation. But I figured it was none of my business. My job was to pretend to be her boyfriend, not to find out why she didn’t already have one.

  “Yeah,” Bethany agreed.

  “We’ll get to the other things from your actual list later,” I suggested. “How about this: what do you always crave when you’re PMSing?”

  Bethany raised an eyebrow. “You’d know that about me?”

  “Any boyfriend who wanted to turn shark week into blowjob week would know it about his girlfriend,” I said with a grin.

  Bethany’s eyes widened. “You--you seriously think a woman would go down on you during her period?”

  “I know she would, because I’ve had girlfriends who have,” I said. “Because I believe in treating a woman well.” Bethany looked--if anything--more surprised. “We all like to be loved and appreciated, Bethany. I’ve found that a little attention on a guy’s part reaps big dividen
ds.”

  “I’ve only really ever given blowjobs out of...guilt, I guess,” she said, almost to herself.

  “That is the worst reason to give a blowjob in the entire world,” I told her. Then I raised my beer to contradict myself. “No--the worst reason is because you want to end a fight, or manipulate a guy. But a guilty conscience is definitely in the top three for worst reasons.”

  “What are good reasons to give a blowjob?” Bethany’s voice trembled with her laughter at the idea--I guessed--that there could be good reasons for it.

  “Because you enjoy it. Because you want to make your boyfriend feel great. Because you love his cock.” I shrugged. “Lots of good reasons. But answer the actual question.”

  “I crave steak,” she said, smiling wryly. “Steak and sautéed spinach.”

  “That makes sense,” I told her. “And during your actual period? What’s the one thing you can always eat even when the cramps are at their worst?”

  Bethany’s eyes widened and she looked at me in surprise that I would know something like that. “Donuts from Krispy Kreme,” she said. “Plain glazed, and they have to be fresh.”

  I grinned. “Good to know about you,” I said. “Now, for fairness’ sake, your turn to ask me a few things about myself--or at least, about James Keller.”

  Chapter Seven

  Bethany

  I fell into the pattern of exchanging information with Ransom in a game instead of the ordered method I’d had in mind. It felt strange in a certain way--telling Ransom random things about myself, and hearing things from him, without knowing how much of what he was telling me was actually about him, and how much was the character he’d invented for himself.

  “What culinary school did you go to?” That seemed like the kind of thing that I would know about my boyfriend--especially if we’d started dating after I’d hired him to cater an event for the organization I worked for.

  “I went to Le Cordon Bleu, of course,” Ransom replied. “What was something that you always wanted to do when you were a kid but never quite got up the guts to do?”

  “Ride a horse,” I said. “I always wanted to, but whenever I got the chance to try it, I always found a way to chicken out.”