Accidental Fiancé

by R. R. Banks

  © Copyright 2018 - All rights reserved.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination. Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18.

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  Table of Contents

  Copyright and Disclaimer

  Title Page

  Book Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  A Note from the Author

  Exclusive: Accidentally in Love

  Becoming Daddy

  Hot Daddy

  Accidentally Married (Sample)

  The Wedding Proposal (Sample)

  About the Author

  Accidental Fiancé

  R.R. Banks

  “My cheating ex will be there. Please help me…”

  Roxie needed a date for a wedding.

  Bored with my billions, I agreed to play along.

  I'll pretend to be her boyfriend.

  One week, no strings attached.

  Sounds easy enough, right?

  Then I saw her for the first time.

  Sexy as hell with a fiery personality to match.

  I knew I had to make her mine.

  Claim every inch of her sweet curves.

  F*ck boyfriend. I'll take it even farther.

  I'll be the perfect fake fiancé.

  Tell her friends and family all the right things.

  Take care of her like no other man could.

  She’ll forget all about her lying ex.

  But Roxie found out my secret. And ran.

  I can’t let her go.

  Will she forgive my secret or will it cost me everything?

  Chapter One

  Roxie

  "I need you to take this in the most professional way possible. I need you to strip down and turn around slowly for me."

  The man standing in front of my desk stared at me blankly for a few seconds.

  "Excuse me?"

  I sighed, pausing the interview notes I was taking.

  "Look, we really don't have a lot of time here, so please forgive me if I dispense with the formalities and get right down to business. Please take off your shirt and turn around slowly. I need to see you from all angles. Although, to be honest, I'm not sure if you have the physique we’re looking for."

  He was taller than average, but with the body weight of a much smaller man, so all those extra inches seemed to stretch him out. The result was much like Silly Putty that had been pulled too thin. Pale, skinny, and kind of strange looking.

  "A degree in business, experience in a fast-paced office environment, self-motivated, and willing to take on tasks as they arise?"

  It was my turn to stare at him.

  "Excuse me?"

  Wow, this conversation has completely flipped.

  "That's what the requirements of the job description said."

  What the heck.

  "What?"

  "That’s the job description for the position I'm supposed to be interviewing for today," he said.

  I let out a sigh. " So, you’re not here to audition for the Night on the Nile fundraiser?"

  "No. At least, I don't think so."

  I rested my elbows on my desk in front of me and pressed my fingertips to my temples. I closed my eyes, pretending I was at the actual Nile River, floating away from this situation and into the reeds.

  "You're here for the administrative position?" I say with a groan.

  "Yes."

  "That does involve wearing more than a shendyt with no shirt?"

  "I hope. Wait. What's a shendyt?"

  I let out a long breath and leaned back in my chair.

  "It was the skirt Egyptian men wore," I said.

  This day had already kicked my ass, and it was only 9:30 in the morning.

  "I think slacks are more in favor," the man said more confidently.

  I gave him a tense smile.

  "Miss Delano?"

  I looked toward the door and saw Terri, the receptionist, looking in at me.

  "Yes?"

  "An urgent call for you on line two."

  "Oh, perfect. Thank you."

  And it just keeps getting better.

  I picked up the phone and balanced it on my shoulder as I reached for the resume of the man standing in front of me, who I had just remembered was Kevin Leake, a promising prospective employee funneled to me from a recent job fair.

  "Hello?"

  Kevin continued to stand exactly where he was, not moving an inch. I tried to gesture for him to step out of the office so that I could talk, but he just waved back at me with a friendly smile.

  Good job, Kevin.

  "Happy wedding dress shopping day!" Thea sang cheerfully.

  "Oh, son of a bitch!"

  My forehead dropped down onto the desk in front of me.

  "What?"

  My best friend now sounded distinctly less happy than a few seconds earlier. I sat up sharply and opened the bottom drawer of the desk, wrestling my purse out.

  "I...um...stapled my finger."

  "Oh, no! Are you OK? Why are you stapling? You aren't at work, are you?"

  She was beginning to sound frantic. Shit. I started around the side of the desk, and headed for the door, but was yanked back violently by the coiled phone cord.

  Who still had corded phones in offices, you might ask? The Under-funded nonprofit I was desperately trying to drag back from the brink of failure, that's who.

  "I'm fine," I said. "I'm not working."

  "Are you sure? Are you sure you're not working?"

  "I'm not at work."

  "You said you weren't going to work today, Roxie. Did you forget? It was a miracle for me to get this appointment!"

  "I am not at work," I insisted. "Of course, I didn't forget about today. It took a miracle for you to get that appointment."

  I had resorted to essentially repeating everything she was saying to me, but it bought me some time while I hurriedly smashed my feet into the shoes I had taken off while sitting at my desk.

  "Oh, good," Thea breathed. "I just want everything to be perfect."

  "It will be," I said, starting to lean across the desk toward the phone cradle. "I promise. But I'm going to stop and get us some coffee real quick. I'll see you soon."

  "You don't bring coffee to a bridal boutique!" she shrieked.

  I winced and held the phone away from my ear. When I was confident she had finished, I pulled the phone back to me.

  "Right. All the white. OK. No coffee. Check. Water? Pastry? Is there anything I can bring you?"

  "I won't be eating another pastry until after my honeymoon. I have to look perfect
in my dress."

  That’s a lot of perfection.

  "Noted. Alright, then I will see you soon."

  "Hurry! Our appointment is in fifteen minutes!"

  Damn. Thea had only been engaged for two weeks, and I was already the worst maid of honor ever. Maid of dishonor, really. I sighed, thinking about my own permanently single status. Old maid of dishonor.

  I hung up the phone and rushed out of the office, leaving Kevin standing there expectantly. Terri looked at me with the skillful I-told-you-so expression she has cultivated over years of working in an office. She had, in fact, told me so.

  "I know, I know," I said as I ran by her desk. "You told me I forgot something today. You could have at least told me what."

  "Oh, no," Terri said, jotting something on a sticky note and smoothing it onto the edge of her desk in her own form of intra-office communication. "I wouldn't dare. You informed me in no uncertain terms that you hadn't forgotten anything and that you couldn't possibly have missed anything in the first place because today was the day you were working on the fundraiser and interviewing for the open position."

  I glared at her from where I stood in front of the world's slowest elevator.

  "I really hate you sometimes. "

  "I already have you listed as taking a personal day today."

  "I love you."

  "The stairs are faster."

  “Kevin, we’ll have to reschedule!” I shouted.

  I turned and ran further down the hallway toward the door to the dark, narrow stairs that wound down the back of the building. I always thought this staircase seemed to have been built with the cliché climactic chase scene common in horror movies in mind. I hated the stairs and only used them when absolutely necessary. More often than I would like to admit, I would be running late and sprint down them so fast I would lose control, trip, and end up on my ass with my skirt pushed up around my waist.

  Like right now. Shit.

  I scrambled to my feet, pushed my skirt down, and burst out of the stairwell into the parking lot. I berated myself the entire way across the pavement to where my car was parked in the far corner. I had started parking as far away from my building as possible to try and get some extra exercise during the day, a decision I was really regretting at this moment. How could I forget this appointment? It was the only thing Thea had been talking about since she managed to snag a coveted slot in the months-out reservation window that was usually imposed by the boutique. It was the only reason she had flown into the city this weekend. Maybe if she had let me pick her up from the airport and bring her to my apartment the night before instead of insisting on staying at a hotel because her flight came in so late, I would have actually remembered this morning. Maybe we could have hung out and had brunch together somewhere before the appointment. Too late for that now.

  What could have made me so freaking flaky that I forgot something this important?

  As I got into my car and skidded out of the deck, I realized that I knew precisely what had pushed the appointment out of my mind. There was something else occupying that space, and if I was going to get through my responsibilities as maid of honor, I really needed to get over it. I had to. I had been preparing for this event my entire life.

  I had also prepared to live out my adult years in a town where cars could actually make their way down the street faster than the pedestrians could, but that was all blown to hell when I impulsively decided to move to New York less than two years ago. I had adjusted fairly well to my new life during that time, but I still wasn’t comfortable driving in the congested, gridlocked city streets. I could feel time ticking past me and felt like the wheels of my compact car had barely moved an inch, even though I had been sitting with the throng of other vehicles outside of my office building for several minutes. Finally, we started moving, and I was feeling hopeful, only to slam on my brakes a few seconds later.

  Frantically, I looked around, trying to identify the source of the delay, even though I knew there probably wasn't one. An image of Thea standing outside of the boutique, her hopeful, love-filled eyes getting progressively sadder the later I was, suddenly flashed in my mind and I knew this wasn't going to work. I spied a parking garage ahead of me and willed the traffic to move forward enough that I could turn in. When the cars ahead of me inched forward, I accelerated and made a death-defying turn, screeching into the structure and spiraling through the levels until I found an available spot. When I did, I ran back out of the garage, around the corner, and down a block before I started flailing my arms to get the attention of a cab driver.

  Some people hail a cab. I flail.

  The gods of failed maids of honor must have smiled down upon me at that moment as an empty cab slid up to the curb. I jumped in and grabbed the headrest, leaning around toward the driver.

  "Drive!" I shouted.

  I gave him the name and address of the boutique and sat back, willing the traffic to move faster. We were only a few blocks away when I reached for my phone and sent Thea a quick text, so she would know I was almost there. When we finally less than a block from the boutique, I had the driver to pull over, threw all the cash I was carrying in my purse at him and jumped out of the cab. I jogged down the street toward the boutique, scanning for Thea among the people wandering the sidewalk. When I finally saw her, I waved, and she smiled back. Thea was a tall, tan-skinned, beauty with a curvy body and ample breasts. She was as gorgeous as ever. A surge of happiness filled me as I realized just how much I had missed her in the months since we last saw each other. We really needed to do better at making time to see each other. I rushed forward and gathered her into a tight hug, squeezing her close to me.

  "I'm sorry I'm late," I said. "I had such a crazy morning. I didn't know what to wear, and then you said I shouldn't bring coffee, so I had to drink it, but it was scalding hot, so that took me a little while, and by the time I was finished with that, the traffic…"

  "You realize I called you on your office phone earlier, right?"

  "Damn it," I said, sighing in exasperation. Thea laughed while I glared at her. "And you just let me babble like that? Why didn't you tell me you knew that I was at work?"

  "Well, first of all, I thought you would realize the gig was up when your secretary transferred my call to your office phone, and you picked up. When I realized you were trying to lie your way out of it and pretend you weren’t at work, I figured I would just see how long it would take for you to get here. See what kind of excuse you would come up with this time."

  "That is such a terrible thing to do to your best friend."

  "So is forgetting a wedding dress appointment, going to work and then trying to pretend you weren't there."

  I thought about this for a second.

  "I guess we’ll have to call it even then."

  She grinned and reached out to wrap her arm around my waist, pulling me close and starting toward the door to the boutique.

  "OK. We're even."

  "I really am sorry for lying, though."

  "It's fine. I lied, too. Our appointment isn't for another half hour."

  I stopped and stared at her, open-mouthed.

  "Are you serious? I nearly killed myself trying to get here. I'm not even entirely sure where I left my car. And I very likely wildly overpaid the taxi driver. Or possibly underpaid him."

  "And I've been your best friend since we were toddlers and you forgot my wedding dress appointment."

  "You're just going to keep bringing that up, aren't you?"

  "Even."

  I had to hug her again. I knew I had my reasons for moving away from our hometown of Maple Grove, Massachusetts, but when I saw Thea, it was hard to justify being without her. We had always been inseparable growing up, and I still felt her absence in my daily life every day, even after nearly two years. I took her hand in mine, and we walked into the boutique together. I knew I needed to make the most of every second Thea was with me, and part of that was making sure ev
ery single one of her fluffy, princess-style wedding gown dreams came true.

  Thirty minutes later I was sitting on a white sofa which had been positioned so that I could see at least six reflections of myself in the curved bank of mirrors surrounding a circular raised platform. I assumed that platform was designed to showcase a bride in her dress. Right now, it reflected nothing. It hadn't the entire time we had been there. I picked up the glass of champagne that one of the highly caffeinated sales clerks offered me when we first walked in and squinted through it at the mirrors. I could see tiny versions of myself floating in the bubbles.

  I wasn't allowed to bring in coffee for fear of accidentally staining a gown, but it was perfectly fine to ply us with copious amounts of alcohol before noon. Seems reasonable, especially when I thought about the price of said gowns.

  I was stunned at how long it was taking Thea to come out and show me even one dress she liked enough to do so. To be fair, before heading into the dressing room Thea warned the clerk she was very picky about the details of the dress and that this wouldn’t be easy. She then proceeded to list off every wedding dress detail imaginable. I couldn’t even imagine the nightmare of trying to narrow that down to a starting point. That poor sales clerk. A blurry image appeared in the sparkling pale gold liquid, and I lowered my glass just in time to see Thea step up onto the platform. She was wearing a truly astonishing amount of white lace and tulle. So much, in fact, it looked like it was swallowing her whole. A large teardrop shaped pearl dangled from a headpiece on the middle of her forehead, and her ample breasts threatened to spill out of a sweetheart neckline that was a little less than sweet.