Liv and I had been sent to a restaurant on the other side of the resort island. The place was apparently world-famous for its African, Indian and European-influenced fusion food, and it sat right by the edge of a cliff which overlooked the deep blue ocean surrounding the islands. The sun hung low in the sky, pink and gold glinting across the water. A little sign hung over the door, welcoming us to the restaurant. Soft jazz music drifted out the windows. All in all, it was a great place for a date.
I only wished it was a real date between Liv and me.
We’d been getting along much better over the last week or so, ever since our little chat after the hiking challenge. I wouldn’t say we were best friends, but there was a certain camaraderie between us now, and dare I say it…there was a hint of flirtation as well. But despite that, nothing had happened between us, and Liv had made it quite clear that it wouldn’t. When it all came down to it, I was technically her stepfather at the moment, and that made it too weird for her.
The restaurant door swung open, and a short man with salt-and-pepper hair greeted us. “Hello, Olivia and Dec! We’ve been waiting for you.” He had a thick island accent, but he was still easily understandable, and he waved his hands as he spoke. “I’m Chef Xavier. My humble staff and I are preparing our finest meals for the two of you, and we have the best seats in the house available for your enjoyment. Come, come!”
He led us through the restaurant, trailed by camera operators and one or two junior producers. The place was empty save for the staff members (I assumed the showrunners bought it out for the night for the ease of filming), and Chef Xavier finally stopped outside, just beyond a set of French doors that led out onto a large balcony. “Here is your table. Wonderful view, eh?”
The exquisitely-decorated table had a perfect view of the clifftop ocean scenery, and I nodded. “This looks incredible. Thanks, Chef.”
“Beautiful view for a beautiful couple.”
He pulled out a chair for Liv before I could get the chance. The junior producers and crew guys sat nearby, cameras at the ready. Great. Nothing like a bunch of stalkers to make a meal even more romantic. Or not.
Chef Xavier hurried off to continue preparing our meals, and Liv looked anxiously over the water, twisting her hands on the table in front of her.
“Okay, you two,” said Ben, one of the junior producers. “Here’s the deal. This episode is going to be about the eight remaining couples getting closer and revealing truths about themselves.” Great. “While you eat, you both need to list your three greatest fears, and give reasons why. Liv, you’re up first.”
Wait-staff began to bring out food, and Liv and I sat and awkwardly stared at each other, waiting for them to leave so we could begin our forced conversation for the cameras.
“Um. Okay. I guess my three biggest fears are failure, the ocean, and disease,” Liv finally said, playing with a cloth napkin.
“Failure is an obvious one, but why the ocean?” I asked, leaning forward with my forehead crinkled. “You keep going on about how you love all these island views, and you’ve been heading down to the beach with Shayla a lot.”
She nodded. “Oh, yes, I love the beach, and I love looking at the water. But I mean deep ocean. Like, imagine falling off a cruise liner or crashing a plane in the middle of the Atlantic. It’s freezing, isolated and dark, and there’s nothing but miles and miles of water around and underneath you. That’s what freaks me out.”
She cast another anxious look out toward the ocean, and I reached across and patted her hand. “That’s fair enough.” I hesitated. “As for disease, well I know that…er, I mean, I remember you mentioning on our first night here that your father died a few years ago. Is that what that’s about?”
I couldn’t mention that I also knew her younger brother was dead, because this was being filmed, and so far we hadn’t been seen discussing family on the show. Viewers needed to think we were strangers still in the process of getting to know each other.
Liv chewed on her lower lip. “Yeah. Sort of. He died of cancer.”
Ben waved his hand at me in the background and mouthed something like ‘keep this going!’ because of course, exploiting people’s emotional pain was good for ratings.
“Tell me about him,” I said. I already knew a lot about Liv’s father from my own experiences, but I was curious as to how she saw him when he was alive. “Good man?”
She was silent for a moment. “Well, he was my father. And he took care of me. So yes, he was good in that regard. But he was very rarely around. It sucked that I never got to spend time with him.”
“What did he do?”
“He was an anesthesiologist. He also happened to own the damn hospital he worked at, along with a ton of companies,” she said. “Old family money. I thought it was noble that he decided to help the world by becoming some sort of doctor even though he already had a massive fortune and didn’t really need to work, but between his shifts at the hospital and all the other work he did managing the family businesses, he was just never around.”
“I see.”
“But it was awful watching him die of cancer. We had a lot of advanced warning, so it wasn’t exactly surprising to us, but it was still…” Her voice trailed off.
“Still shocking when it finally occurs to you that your loved one might actually be dead soon. Gone forever,” I ventured.
She nodded. “Exactly. It was worse with my little brother. He died, too,” she said softly. “Two years ago.”
“I’m so sorry. Do you want to talk about that too?”
“Sure. It was really hard. See, at least with my dad, we knew it was coming. But with Callum, it was shocking. He’d been a bit sick in the months leading up to it, but nothing major. Just some nausea, tiredness and headaches. Then he got better for a few weeks, so we figured he’d just had some long stomach bug or something, and now it was gone. But then a few days later, I woke up at six in the morning to hear my mom screaming from the other end of the hall. I went to find her, and she was in his room. She’d just found him when she went to wake him for breakfast. He…his heart failed in the middle of the night.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry. That’s awful.”
“He was only fifteen. Apparently these things can just happen sometimes. Doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, though.”
She picked at a seafood dish in front of her, eyes on the table. I squeezed her fingers in mine. “No wonder you’re so afraid of sickness. I understand. You’ve been through a lot. More than most people your age.”
I saw Liv for what she truly was as I looked at her drawn face in this moment. She presented herself as tough most of the time, but she was still a very young girl. She was vulnerable. Sad. What she truly needed was protection and security. Someone to take care of her.
I wanted to give her that.
The mood was altered a second later when Ben rudely got in our faces. “Okay, enough from you, Liv. Got some great footage. Nice acting, by the way.”
She gave me an incredulous look, and I was about to give Ben a stern talking-to when she shook her head. “Don’t bother,” she mouthed at me, rolling her eyes.
I shut my mouth again, abiding by her wishes. She was right, anyhow. There was no need to cause a massive scene while the cameras were still on, because I didn’t want to embarrass her on national TV when they inevitably showed the footage.
“Okay, Dec. It’s your turn,” Ben said, casting his gaze on me.
“My turn?”
He nodded. “Time to reveal your fears. Your secrets. Liv opened up…so now it’s your turn to open up.”
Liv looked across the table, face pulled into an expectant expression, and I sighed.
Shit.
Here we go…
Chapter Fourteen
Olivia
I leaned forward, my fork poised above my plate as I waited with bated breath to hear what Dec had to say. I’d revealed my greatest fears to him, and now it was his turn. He was a hard-to-read guy, always crackin
g jokes instead of being serious, so now would be a good opportunity to learn some real facts about him, even if it was just for the show.
“I guess you and I are more similar than we first thought,” he finally said.
“Oh?”
He squared his jaw and nodded. “Failure…yeah, that’s a big one. And I’ve been through it, in a manner of speaking.”
My eyebrows pinched together. “Tell me about it.”
“My family are pretty successful. I mean…they were. My father and uncle controlled most of the businesses. We own—or owned—a bunch of stores, restaurants and nightclubs across the country. Mostly in LA, New York and Chicago. When I was old enough, I started working for them as well.”
He paused, and I nodded. So I’d been right the other week. He was someone when it came to the club we met at. The owner. Or a part-owner, anyway.
“Then my father made a mistake. He went into business with another man. A very unscrupulous man, as it turned out. The new business partner totally screwed Dad, who stupidly trusted him, and we lost a lot of the businesses to that man when all was said and done. Now there’s only a couple left. A club in New York and a restaurant in LA. They barely bring in enough to support the entire family, and everything’s sorta been in a tailspin for the last seven years or so because of that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But that’s not your failing, is it? Not really.”
He shrugged. “Well, sure, I guess in the end it was my father making poor business decisions. But that makes me afraid. Afraid I’ll do the same thing, and not be able to provide for my family. See…it’s not just that we have the usual expenses. There’s my half-sister as well.”
I raised my brows. “I didn’t know you had a half-sister.”
Dec nodded. “I do. Amelia. She’s twelve. Dad had her with his second wife. I love her more than anything, Liv. She’s an amazing kid.”
I smiled. “I bet she is. But what’s she got to do with what you were saying?” I knew there was more to the story. There had to be, given the hard look in his eyes when he mentioned his sister.
He chewed on a piece of bread before replying. “Like I said, you and I…we’re more similar than we initially thought. Fear of failure isn’t our only common fear. You’re afraid of sickness, death. So am I, when it comes to her. My sister.”
My heart sank. “She’s sick?” I asked softly.
Another nod. “Very.”
“I’m so sorry. Can I ask what’s wrong with her?”
“Rare form of pancreatic disease. There’s an experimental treatment that’s had very promising results, but it’s very expensive. Over six hundred grand over the next couple of years. As you can imagine, trying to pay for that along with all the family expenses cuts into the budget a fair amount. But it’s her only shot at living.”
I felt a little sick myself as I contemplated his words. Since I found out Dec had married my mother, ostensibly for money, I’d wondered what could possibly make him so desperate (or if maybe he just had no qualms about how he made his living).
Now I finally understood.
My mother must’ve offered to pay his younger half-sister’s medical bills in return for his services as her trophy husband. Dec wasn’t a selfish, lazy, gold-digger at all—he was just willing to do anything he possibly could to save his little sister when his own job couldn’t provide the immediate large sum he needed. And like he once told me, it was my mother who approached him in the first place. I was willing to bet my father was the unscrupulous businessman who screwed Dec’s family out of most of their businesses—my father had quite the reputation back in the day—and as a big ‘screw you’ once my father was in the ground, seeing as their divorce hadn’t exactly been amicable, Mom must’ve decided to help out some of the people he’d once screwed over using some of the money she got in the will. That included the Marin family. But in typical Ellen Esposito fashion, she couldn’t be entirely selfless: she wanted something in return.
And so she got Dec to marry her, be her trophy husband for as long as it was convenient to her.
A million different emotions swept through my mind as I stared across the table at Dec. He met my eyes, a mixture of sadness and anger at the world burning in his. He knew that I knew.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I really hope the treatment works and your sister is okay soon.”
There was nothing more I could say, not while we were being recorded. But there was so much I wanted to say, so much I wanted Dec to know. I wanted him to know I understood now, and that I was deeply sorry for all the bitchy, presumptuous remarks I’d made when I first found out about his sham marriage to Mom. I wanted him to know I was rooting for his sister to pull through. Most of all, I wanted him to know how I truly felt about him now that I knew the full story. Every dark detail.
Ben waved his hands at us in the background and held up three fingers. “Move it along,” he mouthed.
“I guess we have to discuss your third fear now,” I said, feeling awful for even bringing it up. After everything he just revealed, surely Dec didn’t want to talk any more. But he did. He pulled himself together and nodded.
“I suppose my third major fear is typical for a lot of guys. I worry about commitment. Ending up with the wrong person, when someone else out there could be the true one for me.”
The way his eyes flashed as he looked right into mine…I knew where he was going with this.
“Are you still worried about that now that we’re here?” I asked timidly. I almost didn’t want to hear his answer. Didn’t want everything out in the open, real and raw.
Dec shook his head and grabbed my hand. “No,” he replied. His voice continued in a low rumble, and my heart skipped a beat. “I’m not worried at all. I think I might’ve finally found the right girl for me.”
My breath caught in my throat. For one crazy moment, I wondered what it would be like to kiss Dec again, just like I had that night in New York. I wondered what he would do if I launched myself across the table and buried my head in his chest, ran my hands all over the hard lines of his muscular body.
But then Ben interrupted us again. “Excellent work, guys! The viewers will love this! It almost looked real. Ellen will be proud.” He winked. “All right, finish your dinner, and then we can get out of here.”
I didn’t dare look into Dec’s eyes again for the rest of our meal. The moment had passed, but that didn’t mean it was actually over. Not by a long shot. Something had been brewing between us for weeks, whether I wanted to admit that to myself before now or not, and now it felt like things were almost coming to a head. Real feelings toward each other were obviously building, but considering the circumstances of our relationship—or whatever it was you’d call it—things were going to be hard. Very hard. But I knew we couldn’t stop. We were like two runaway trains, veering off the tracks and heading straight for each other.
Sooner or later, we were going to crash.
Chapter Fifteen
Olivia
The days were dragging by endlessly now. I was almost getting sick of the salty air and sea breezes greeting me every morning when I woke up, but nothing beat the view from the resort room Dec and I had to share for as long as we were on the show. It might take a while before I finally got tired of that. Seeing Dec shirtless and sleeping soundly on the couch each morning when I woke up wasn’t exactly the worst view in the world, either…
The show had kept us busy with all sorts of ridiculously contrived situations—group dates, challenges, games nights, dinner parties. It was all designed to simultaneously pit the couples against each other and build drama, and hell…it was working. There’d been more than a few punch-ups and catfights between contestants in the last couple of episodes.
Two more couples had been eliminated now. I was surprised that Dec and I were still on the show—our only real job was to get kicked off as soon as possible—but at the same time, I guess it made sense. Our popularity since the bridge rescue incident sti
ll hadn’t waned, and it seemed the viewers wanted us to stick around. Mom had told me that we were always close to the top of the online polls, along with Andrew/Yvonne and Shayla/Paul. Surprisingly enough, Isobel and her husband Mark were also quite popular. Apparently viewers liked Isobel’s domineering personality clashing with Mark’s meek mildness. They thought it was cute.
When I spoke to Mom about the situation, she didn’t seem to care too much that Dec and I hadn’t been voted off the island yet. We were getting her good ratings, which was by far the most important thing for her, so as long as we didn’t stick around till the finale, it was okay for us to stay a while longer.
I didn’t tell her about my feelings towards Dec. I couldn’t. Hell, I couldn’t even tell him. I knew he had an idea of how I felt, but he also knew I wouldn’t say or do anything about it. Not while we were in such a messy situation.
Maybe one day. But not now.
At the moment, I was hugging a cardigan tightly around myself as we all waited on the docks. This week’s challenge was a doozy—all eight remaining couples had to spend three nights on a luxury mega-yacht. From what we’d been told about the yacht, there was a Jacuzzi on the top deck, swimming pool on the dive deck, and even a cinema down below. There was also an open bar inside the middle deck, massive buffet available at all times…and plenty of potential drama at the nightly dinner parties. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to spending three days out on the ocean seeing as I wasn’t the biggest fan of open water, but as long as I kept myself busy and distracted, I knew things would be fine.
“You okay with this?” Dec hoisted up one of my bags as we prepared to board the yacht, quizzical expression on his face.
“Yeah. Just make sure I don’t go overboard, and we’ll be golden.”
Daddy's Fake Bride (A Fake Marriage Romance) Page 9
