“Maybe you can find someone else to be your fiancé.”
She shook her head, her face still in her hands. “Not on this short notice. And especially not someone who can fly to Australia.”
“Doesn’t engaged usually mean you’re expecting to get married at some point? Won’t they wonder when the big day is?”
Holly dropped her hands from her face. “I was going to pretend to be engaged for a few months and then call it off. It’s not like my parents expect me to get married next week.”
“But won’t your mom go back to pushing Wilfred on you again?”
“Not right away. So that will buy me time to come up with something else…like never returning to Australia again if it comes down to it.”
“Are you sure there’s no other way to get your mom off your back about this Wilfred guy?” Holly had never come off as the type of girl who let others tell her what to do.
Which meant her mother had to be a force to reckon with—much like a freaking hurricane.
She shook her head. “No, Mum’s stubborn like that. She doesn’t care that I don’t love the guy. Love is irrelevant in her mind.”
Sounded like she and my father would get on well. He didn’t believe in love either. “Except I don’t do relationships and I definitely don’t meet the parents.” I inwardly shuddered at the thought.
“Which is why you’re perfect for this, Josh. And it’s not like we’ll have to hang out with my parents. I can show you around Sydney. That will give me an excuse for escaping. Plus, then I can introduce you to the nightlife there. Which will be another excuse for me to not be around so much. And…and I’ll pay for your plane ticket, so really you have nothing to lose.” She tilted her head to the side, the way girls did when they flirted—a look I wasn’t familiar with on Holly when it came to her and me. “Other than the funeral and meeting my mum for the first time, I promise you’ll have fun.”
I’d be lying if I said I never wanted to go to Australia. If a regular one-night stand asked me to be her fake fiancé, would I do it? Hell, no. But Holly wasn’t a regular one-night stand. We had no expectations between us—other than to continue being the friends we were before last night.
“Okay, I’ll do it, but with one additional condition.”
Holly blinked, clearly unable to believe I had agreed to help her. “What’s that?”
“The next time I need a fake girlfriend, you’ll do it.”
The smile that appeared on her face was enough to steal my breath. “Okay. Sounds fair.”
“Even if it’s five years down the road and you’re married.” You never knew when a fake girlfriend could come in handy. Not that I had needed one yet.
She held out her hand. “Deal.”
A devious smirk curled onto my lips. “You don’t need to give me a hand job. But if you want to…”
Her hand returned to her coffee mug. “We’ve already established last night was a mistake. So, there’ll be no more sex or kissing. Or anything else along those lines.”
My smirk hadn’t gone anywhere yet. It just widened at the way she sounded flustered once again. “So you’re telling me we won’t be fuck buddies?” Yeah, not sure why I said that given it was the last thing I wished to do—but it also sounded like she wasn’t interested in that either. Perfect.
“Exactly. We’ll go back to being just friends—with no benefits. And fortunately, my mother is anti-PDA, so we won’t have to worry about faking that. And since their house is almost a mansion, you’ll have your own bedroom.”
Rule #1 about one-night stands…they are exactly that. One. Night. Break that rule and you’re asking for trouble of epic proportions. Most girls thought that if a guy wanted to have sex with them again, it meant they were now in a relationship. And that was never a good thing.
But while that might’ve been the rule, my cock was thinking, “Fuck that!”
I let out a mental sigh. This was going to be one very long trip.
7
Holly
Flying first class to Australia was expensive—as in, sell-your-kidneys-on-the-black-market freaking expensive. The bereavement fare? Sorry, that didn’t apply to first class.
Which was why Josh and I had been crammed in coach for the past fifteen delightful hours. On the bright side…yes, I was still looking for that.
Josh shifted in his seat for the millionth time, his leg brushing mine. Again. And like every other time before it, the ache between my legs grew in intensity—to the point where I was ready to jump Josh if his leg or arm touched me once more.
It had been that way from the moment he had gotten into my car back in San Francisco when I’d picked him up on the way to the airport. My body got overly excited, remembering how it felt when his hands caressed my skin the other night.
I couldn’t blame him though, when it came to his incessant squirming. The seats weren’t designed for a six-foot-plus hockey player.
An hour later as I scanned the area in the airport where we were meeting my brother, my body was still fully aroused. And thanks to my no-sex rule, there was no relief in sight. At least not unless I planned to get intimate in the shower with my hand.
Why had I decided to torture myself with the no-sex rule? Because I had already done the friends-with-benefits thing.
Didn’t know about that?
Long story super-short—it happened while I was working on my MBA. With a fellow classmate. I developed feelings for him after five months. Silly me. I moved on and focused on my schoolwork.
He moved on—with another classmate.
“Over there,” I said, spotting my brothers strolling toward us.
Instead of my auburn hair and green eyes, they both had light brown hair and blue eyes. But that was where the similarities between them ended. Simon’s hair was cut short. Chris’s hair was wavy and hung an inch above his shoulders—a look Mum disliked on a man. Whereas Chris was long, lean, and muscular like a soccer player, bodybuilding was Simon’s sport of choice.
Before I could even say G’day, Simon swooped me up in his arms and hugged me, squeezing the air from my lungs. As soon as he released me, Chris did the same. Well, that explained why both of them were still single. They’d probably hugged their last girlfriends to death.
Chris released me and I laughed. “Glad to see you missed me.”
“It’s not the same without my little sister underfoot.” He ruffled my hair before I could bat his hand away.
“But what are you doing here? Mum only mentioned Simon would be picking me up. Not that I’m not happy to see you.”
He winked at me. “Let’s just say she has no idea I’m here.”
I stepped back and turned to Josh. “Josh, these are my brothers, Simon and Chris. Chris is the black sheep of the family.”
Chris laughed. “Well, that might not be the case after your little announcement.” He grinned at Josh like a crazed man. “So you’re the Yank who stole my sister’s heart. Good luck with that.”
Should I tell my brothers the truth or keep them believing I was really engaged?
Or the real question was, should I tell Simon the truth?
When I was ten, I had been climbing a tree and fell. Was I injured? You’d better believe it. I sprained my ankle. My mum frowned against girls climbing trees so naturally, I couldn’t tell her what really happened. If I had broken my leg, that would have been harder to explain—not so with a sprained ankle.
But before I had a chance to tell her my version of what happened, Simon blurted the truth. He hadn’t planned to—it just happened.
When I was twelve, I kissed a boy. It wasn’t a big deal—until Simon accidentally blurted it at the dinner table that night.
When I was fourteen, my first boyfriend broke my heart when I caught him kissing my classmate. This was the same boyfriend my parents hadn’t known about until, well, you guessed it…Simon blurted out what had happened.
As much as I loved my brother, history was a bitch. And this bitch was war
ning me to lie to my brothers for the sake of my sanity.
Now, before you go all judgmental on me, I’m not normally a liar. I value honesty and do my best to uphold it. But there are times when twisting the truth is best for all concerned. I was just saving myself, my brothers, my parents, and Wilfred a lot of grief. And yes, it was easier stretching the truth than telling Mum that it would be an icy day in hell before I married someone I didn’t love.
Not convinced that I was stretching the truth versus telling a flat out lie? I had slept with Josh, so when you thought about it, that wasn’t much different from being married. And being married was only a step up from being engaged.
All right, it was a far stretch, but it still counted.
“That would be me,” Josh replied, answering Simon’s question about Josh being the one who had supposedly stolen my heart.
“Well, I’ve got great news for you two,” Simon said, seeming a little too happy, given that Nanna’s funeral was in two days.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You remember Mum’s rule about no boyfriends or girlfriends allowed in our bedrooms?”
I nodded, not that the rule mattered anymore now that the three of us were no longer teens.
“Since they have a full house because of the funeral,” he explained, “Josh will share your room. So you won’t have to go sneaking around to have the naughty.”
The corner of Josh’s mouth jerked up. “Have the naughty?”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s slang for having sex.”
Josh laughed, and my girlie parts got excited again. “I figured that’s what it meant. But thanks for the translation.”
The panic rolling around in my stomach? It was absent from his face.
Which meant one thing—Josh wasn’t experiencing the dilemma of being fully aroused like I was.
But I had my no-sex rule to uphold, which would be a lot harder to do now that we were sharing the same room.
Naturally, my tired brain made a beeline for the gutter when I thought about Josh and harder. My body fired up to a thousand degrees at the memory of his hard length inside me.
No. No. No. So not happening again.
I had no idea if the message got through. My body could be so goddamn stubborn at times.
But at least I didn’t have to worry about Josh wanting to have sex again. He and I had already agreed that what happened between us was nothing more than a one-night stand. As in only one night. Plus he was a hockey player who no doubt made one-night stands part of his career. Wasn’t that what hockey players did? That’s why they were players—so to speak.
The four of us walked to the parking lot where my brothers had left their vehicles.
“I’m guessing you won’t be joining us?” I said to Chris.
“The welcome mat hasn’t been extended if that’s what you’re asking. Plus I have a job later this afternoon that will take me out of the city until the funeral.”
“Chris flies helicopters,” I explained to Josh. “But that’s not the career my parents had planned for him. He was supposed to take over Dad’s position in the telecommunications company our grandfather created. And Mum thoroughly disapproves that he’s a pilot. Apparently it’s not a dignified enough career.”
“And that’s why you’re the black sheep of the family?” Josh asked Chris.
Chris nodded.
“Never mind that he has saved lives when he assists with search and rescue missions,” Simon pointed out. “Something our dear sweet parents can’t claim for themselves.”
“But that of course only makes him hotter to the girls,” I said, grinning. Yes, Chris and Josh had that in common. And like Josh, I couldn’t see Chris ever settling down.
Oh, who was I kidding? I couldn’t see Simon settling down either. When you grew up in a family where your parents didn’t love each other, they were just together for convenience, you didn’t exactly yearn to replicate their mistakes.
So, you’re probably wondering what Simon does for a living. He’s a corporate lawyer…for my father’s company. Which is why he’s still welcome at my parents’ home.
On the drive to my parents’ house in Simon’s Jeep Cherokee, Simon and I caught up on the past five months. But not in a way that excluded Josh—who was sitting up front with my brother.
“You should’ve seen Holly as a kid,” Simon said to Josh. “She was nothing like the princess she is now.” His laugh? Proof that one of us had been adopted. Why couldn’t I have inherited the same laugh as him and Chris—just the feminine version?
“I’m not a princess,” I said with a faked huff. “I can’t help that I like looking good. It’s not as if I’m delicate like one and need the staff to cater to my every need.”
“That’s because Nanna refused to let you be one.” To Josh he said, “Our grandmother was convinced Holly was better off as a tomboy than dressed up like royalty and paraded in front of our parents’ friends whenever our parents hosted a party.”
“I bet if Mum had known that,” I said, “we wouldn’t have been allowed to stay with Nanna. Or at least I wouldn’t have.”
“That’s right. Plus Mum would’ve married you off at a much younger age.” Simon looked briefly at Josh. “Our parents don’t believe in love. Just status.”
By the time we pulled up to the security gate of my parents’ mansion, Josh knew a lot more about me than I would’ve preferred—thanks to Simon. Like when I was a toddler, I had escaped our nanny and run naked into the party my parents were hosting. To say they were mortified was like saying the Sahara Desert was nothing more than a sandbox.
When I was eight, I broke my leg when I fell off my bike. Did I mention I’d been trying to fly off a ramp and land in the lake?
And then there was that unfortunate incident at my sixteenth birthday party involving my bikini top. Simon swore Wilfred had never been the same after that.
“That’s not true,” I said as the two men laughed. “I’m sure my boobs weren’t the first ones he’d seen naked.”
That just made Simon laugh harder as he attempted to identify himself into the speaker so that security would open the gate.
Once we were permitted onto the property, he drove along the driveway, and I tried to imagine what Josh was thinking as we approached the house. The horseshoe-shaped, Mediterranean-style mansion, with the red terracotta tiled roof and balcony running along the entire length of the second floor, tended to impress visitors.
Me? I had always felt like a prisoner growing up here. You know how some teenage boyfriends climb the tree outside their girlfriend’s window so he can sneak into her room? Let’s just say that fantasy had never been a possibility for me.
Guard dogs would’ve been unleashed.
And guard dogs plus boyfriends didn’t mix.
Not even a little.
“This is where you grew up?” Josh asked, his eyes in danger of popping out of his head.
I grimaced—feeling like kangaroo shit on the bottom of a shoe. His father had abandoned him when he was young, as had his mother. He’d never had the opportunities I did growing up.
And while I had viewed the house as a prison, Josh would have seen it as something else.
Simon parked his jeep in front of the house, next to a BMW I didn’t recognize. As we exited the vehicle, Mum stepped from the house with a man wearing a white shirt and dark gray trousers. He looked vaguely familiar…and a lot hotter than I remembered. Where was my father? No doubt still at the office.
“Ohmigod, is that…?” I asked.
Simon grinned the mischievous grin I was more than familiar with. The one he usually wore right before he pushed me into the pool.
On instinct, I glanced behind me. Nope, a pool hadn’t magically appeared there in the last thirty seconds.
“Yep, that’s Wilfred,” Simon replied.
“That’s the geeky guy you were talking about?” Josh asked. “He’s not quite what I was expecting.”
That made two of us.<
br />
Wilfred’s light brown hair hadn’t changed. Much. It was short with a slight curl, and now he had a light beard. His thick glasses? Replaced by contacts—or he’d had laser surgery. And his body was definitely not what I remembered. His arms were well developed like Josh’s, and even though he had trousers on, it was clear his lower body matched the top half.
“Holly,” my mother said, “you remember Wilfred.” It wasn’t a question and the warmth in her tone was manufactured. Possibly in China.
“Yes, I do,” I said, my tone the polar opposite of hers. And it had nothing to do with his looks. “It’s nice to see you again, Wilfred.”
“You too, Holly. But I now go by Drew.”
“Drew?”
“It’s short for my middle name, Andrew.”
Drew was a much better fit. He looked neither like a Wilfred or a Fred.
Although from the way my mother was looking at him, I didn’t think she agreed with me. To her, Drew didn’t have the same impact as Wilfred the Third. Wilfred spoke of tradition—Drew, not so much.
“This is my fiancé, Josh.” Because as good looking as Drew was, I still wasn’t interested.
San Francisco was now my home.
Granted, I wasn’t an American citizen yet, or even a permanent resident. The company I worked for had sponsored my green-card application—which I needed before I could be a U.S. citizen. Now I was just waiting for the U.S. government to approve it.
And waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
“Nice to meet you,” Drew said, appearing slightly taken aback by the news of my engagement. Guess no one had filled him in on that part.
My mother? How was she taking it?
You know what they say about the eye of the hurricane? Meet the eye.
Drew and Josh shook hands. But other than the initial surprise at my news, Drew seemed genuinely happy to meet Josh.
“How come Holly hasn’t mentioned you before?” dear old Mum asked Josh.
Decidedly With Baby Page 5
