I wrinkled my nose. “Ew. That’s awful.”
“Exactly. So who cares if you act a little shady? They’re shadier.”
“Well, I’m as bad as them if I do. And you know that saying—two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“Screw that saying!” she insisted.
I looked expectantly at my brother, waiting for him to back me up. Instead he smiled and shrugged. “Sorry, Indi. I’m suddenly sooo into this plan.”
“What?”
“It would be fun!” he said. “Morals be damned. C’mon, Indi, I wanna see you on TV.”
I rolled my eyes at him. Traitor. “Again, even if I agreed to this, where would I get a fake husband?” I said in an exasperated tone.
“That’s where this comes in,” Cinta said with a smug smile, pointing to her laptop. “I think the easiest thing to do is find guys you know and ask them to do it with you. Split the profits. So let’s start Facebook stalking to find some choices.”
I chewed on my lip. I couldn’t believe I was actually considering this ridiculous idea. And yet I was….
“I don’t really have any guy friends,” I admitted. I’d always been more of a girl’s girl. “Except you, Dawson. And Drew.”
Dawson snorted. “Well, you’re not taking Drew. He’s mine.”
“What about guys you’ve known in the past?” Cinta cut in again.
I grimaced at the thought of the guys I’d dated over the last few years. “Hell no, we’re not going down that road.”
“I don’t mean exes. Think about it, Indi. The most convincing fake husband would be someone who knows you and vice versa.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t follow.”
She sighed. “For a smart girl, you sure are dense sometimes. I mean Lakewater, Indi!”
I groaned at the thought of our hometown two hours east of Seattle. It was a lovely little town set in a valley amongst the mountains and forests, but the talent was rather lacking in the men department. I could only remember three decent guys who went to school with Cinta and me, and they’d probably been snapped up by other women already.
“Oh my god,” Dawson said with a gleeful grin. “Yes! That’s such a good idea. Guys you went to school with will know stuff about you, and you’ll know stuff about them. You can act like you were childhood sweethearts, and you married after college finished.”
“I can take fake wedding photos of the two of you together,” Cinta butted in. “Because they’ll probably want photos to show the viewers. And I’m a photographer, so they won’t look all cheap and terrible. This is perfect.”
“And, and, and!” Dawson continued. I was sure he was about to have a seizure. “Drew works at the Department of Health! They issue birth, death and marriage certificates. He would totally be in on this with us. He could slip a marriage certificate out of his office and we could fill it out and backdate it. It would be a real document, so the showrunners would have no need to question it.”
I held my hands up. “Um. Hold up, guys. This really feels like fraud…”
“It’s just a show, Indi. It’ll be fine!” Cinta said. She gave me pleading puppy-dog eyes. “So can we start stalking guys we went to school with in Lakewater?”
I let out a long and heavy sigh, then waved my hand. “Fine. Go ahead. I’m in. Very reluctantly, though.”
She squealed with excitement. “I’m gonna look up Ben Shirowsky and see what he’s been up to.”
My face brightened. “I forgot about Ben. He was actually pretty hot.”
“Yeah.” She tapped away at her keyboard. “Okay, I found his Facebook. I’m kind of offended that he’s never added either of us.” Her face fell a few seconds later. “Oh. He’s living in New York, and he has a girlfriend.”
“So he won’t be keen to help with the plan,” I said with a nod. “All right…maybe try Eric Li?”
Eric was a boy who grew up two doors down from my house, and he’d walked me to and from school quite a lot when we were kids. I’d never had any attraction to him back then, but now that I thought about it, he had been pretty cute in a boy-next-door kind of way, and he was sweet and smart. He’d make a great fake husband.
“Eric lives in Australia now,” Cinta said with a disappointed look on her face a moment later.
My shoulders sagged. “Um. Connor Morgan?”
“Ooh, the bad boy of our grade,” she said with a smile. She tapped at the keyboard again. “Oh, jeez.”
“What?”
“Looks like he was a bit too much of a bad boy. There’s all these memorial posts on his Facebook wall. Apparently he died of a drug overdose two years ago. And his best friend died, too. Remember Simon Corbett? Died the same night.”
“Oh my god. That’s awful.”
“Yeah.”
I stood up again and began to pace around the lounge set. “How is it that we’re only twenty-four and the men are already dying on us?” I asked. “At this rate, not only am I probably never going to find a husband, I won’t even be able to find a fake husband!”
“Stop being so dramatic,” Dawson said, swatting at me. “Twenty-four is practically still a baby. Keep searching, Cinta.”
The next twenty minutes dragged by with search after search on social media. Every guy we remembered from our grade in high school was either taken or living too far away to warrant asking. We even tried a few guys we remembered from the grade above us, but it was the same story there. None were available.
“All right, time to give up,” I said. “Clearly this isn’t the way to find a fake husband.”
“There has to be someone,” Cinta insisted. “What about guys who were in your grade, Dawson? Do you still talk to any of them? Remember any names?”
“I remember names, but I don’t really talk to any of them,” he replied after a moment of hesitation.
I knew why. Back when we were kids, I always knew my brother was gay. It didn’t bother me a bit; why would it? But small towns could be cruel to anyone who was ‘different’ to the norm, and I knew the idea of coming out frightened Dawson back then. So he’d overcompensated instead and become a total jock. It was easy for him, given his All-American good looks and muscular frame, but I knew that nowadays he regretted being ashamed of who he really was back then, and so he didn’t have much to do with his old friends and acquaintances back in Lakewater.
“Oh. My. God,” Cinta said, enunciating every word. “I just remembered someone who you used to be friends with, Dawson. He’s totally perfect. Hot as hell.”
“Who?” I asked, tilting my head to the side.
“Blake Marsden,” she said with a devious smile.
Dawson grinned as well. “Wow, Blake Marsden. Haven’t heard that name in a while. Look him up on Facebook, Cinta.”
“No!” I said, my face turning hot. I remembered Blake very well, and I would rather jump into a volcano than marry him. Well, fake-marry.
Blake was in my brother’s year at school, so he’d be twenty-eight now. He was one of Dawson’s best jock friends back in the day. Captain of the football team and a player to boot. He went through girls like most people went through underwear, and he got away with it because he was cocky and handsome with just the right amount of roughness. Everyone knew he didn’t come from the best background, and that only added to his rugged bad-boy appeal.
He didn’t appeal to me, though. Hell no. I couldn’t stand man-whore players like him.
“Do it,” Dawson insisted. “Last I heard, he moved to Seattle to work at the port around the same time you moved here for college. So he might still be living here.”
I sat back, watching with annoyance as Cinta searched for Blake. Clearly, she and Dawson were on a roll here, and they didn’t really care whether or not I liked the guy they wanted me to marry for the show. Then again, they’d only come up with this plan to help me out of a tight spot, so I couldn’t be too mad.
“Did you find anything?” I asked, feigning interest and vaguely hoping Blake had been abducted by
aliens years ago. How unfortunate, I would say.
“I think I found an old profile,” Cinta replied with a nod. She squinted at the screen. “It looks like he hasn’t used it since 2012. But it’s definitely him. And it says his location is Seattle.”
“He might’ve moved since 2012.”
“Yeah, but he might not have. Send him a message, Indi!”
I raised an eyebrow. “Wait, you want me to message him?”
“Yes. You’re the one who needs a fake husband. The proposition is best coming from you, right?”
“I guess,” I said reluctantly.
“None of this ‘I guess’ crap,” she said. “Do it now. I’m sending you the link to his profile.”
I sighed and pulled out my cell phone. A notification popped up from the Facebook messenger app to let me know Cinta had sent me the link, and I clicked on it and waited for Blake’s profile to load. My heart skipped a beat as I took in his main profile picture. Cinta was right. It was definitely him. The photo had been taken long after he graduated high school, but he looked just as I remembered, only even more handsome now that he was a full-on adult.
If I was being perfectly honest, he looked like a damn god. Tall, broad-shouldered, muscular. Light eyes that grew even more startlingly-blue as I zoomed in on the picture. An expression that made me weak at the knees.
Now I remembered why I couldn’t stand Blake. He’d always been like this, even when I was a young teenager. He exuded some sort of masculine power which made my body melt; made me want to submit and let him do whatever he wanted with me. I didn’t like it. Didn’t like knowing a man could so easily have me with just a wink and a casual smile with zero promises.
Just like every girl who went before me.
“Indi? You okay?” Cinta asked. “Your face has gone red.”
“It’s just a bit hot in here,” I said, flustered. “So what am I meant to say to Blake?”
“Honestly, just tell him how desperate you are. Men love to hear that,” Dawson said with a snicker.
“Shut up,” Cinta said, playfully elbowing him. “No, just be honest yet vague, Indi. Tell him you have a very important proposition for him, and then ask if he’s still in Seattle and if he’d like to meet up. Keep it basic for now. The worst he can say is ‘no’.”
“Okay.” I let out a shaky sigh as my heart began to race. All these years later, and the thought of having a conversation with Blake still made my head spin. I lowered my index finger to the keyboard on my touch screen, and slowly but surely, I began to tap out a message. “Here goes nothing…”
Chapter Three
Blake
I wiped several beads of sweat from my forehead as I waited for the elevator to arrive on my office floor. When the door pinged, I stepped out with a yawn. My early-morning workout in the gym on the ground floor had taken it out of me today, but a man’s work was never done.
My secretary Jessica rushed over to me. “Morning, Blake.” She gave me a once-over. “I hate to be rude, but why are you dressed like a—”
“Like a hobo?” I cut in with a grin. She blushed and averted her eyes. “It’s okay, Jess, you can say it. I was just down in the gym. That’s why I’m wearing these ratty old workout clothes. Besides, you know much I hate dressing up to impress people. Who do I have to impress anymore, anyway?”
She shrugged. “I guess. I thought you weren’t coming in today.”
“I was going to take the day off, yes, but there’s some files I forgot to grab from my office before I left yesterday, and I want them at home. So I decided to come grab them after my workout, seeing as the gym is so close.”
“Don’t you have your own gym at home?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
I grinned. “It’s being renovated. And technically, the gym downstairs is mine too,” I said with a wink.
“I suppose so. Well, I have a pile of letters to file and even more emails to respond to. Have fun with your day off, boss.”
I headed into my office and closed the door, sitting down as another yawn escaped my mouth. There was a good reason for me to take most of the day off today. After working pretty much non-stop for the last year, I was in desperate need of a break. The last break I took was over a year ago, and it was a short weekend camping trip I took by myself.
Maybe I’d take more than one day off. Hell, maybe I’d go and take my yacht out for a whole month. By myself, of course, or maybe with a select few friends.
Once upon a time, I would’ve had a giant boat party with plentiful booze and busty ladies if I had access to a yacht. But now that I actually had one, I didn’t do that. I simply wasn’t the party animal I used to be. Too risky. Too many annoying people in the business world watched every fucking move I made now that I was heading up Marsden Shipping at such a young age, so I tried to keep a low profile these days. As such, most people wouldn’t recognize me on the street or even know who I was if you mentioned my name to them.
I couldn’t find the files I needed on my desk, so I logged onto my computer and went through the company archives to locate them. While I waited for them to print, I checked my emails. I’d already checked them this morning, but I usually received three per minute, and so I probably already had several hundred new ones by now.
I listlessly scrolled through them. It was all just shit my staff could reply to. Then something caught my eye, and I leaned forward, certain I was imagining things.
Nope, there it was. An email from Facebook telling me I had a new message. Apparently it had been sent yesterday afternoon, and I’d completely missed it.
Nowadays, I didn’t actually use the same email address that I did when I was younger, but I had everything forwarded to my current business email from the old one just in case. Didn’t want to miss anything. Especially something like this.
I hadn’t used social media in years—who gives a fuck about it, right?—but this email from Facebook was making my heart pound and my cock stand to immediate attention. You have a message from Indi Marlowe! Log in to see what Indi has to say.
Indi fuckin’ Marlowe. Jesus.
I sat back, furrowing my brows into a frown. Why the hell would she be messaging me? Not that I was complaining.
I guess I was gonna find out.
It took a while to access my old Facebook, because I couldn’t remember the damn password after neglecting it for so long, but finally I got in, and I quickly clicked on the message. It was short and rather to the point, but still confusing as hell.
Hi, Blake! I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Dawson’s younger sister. I’m living in Seattle now, and I see that you are as well. At least you were last time you used Facebook, apparently.
Anyway, I have a proposition for you, and I’m very keen to meet up to tell you about it and see if you’re interested. And no, don’t worry, I’m not trying to recruit you into a cult or pyramid scheme. So if you’re still in the city and want to meet up, please let me know ASAP. Here’s my contact details. - Indi
Below the message was her cell number and email address. My frown deepened. She’d made it clear that she wasn’t trying to drag me into some ridiculous multilevel marketing scheme (as if I’d be dumb enough to fall for that anyway), but what on earth could this ‘proposition’ be? Surely she hadn’t found out what I was up to these days and wanted a handout.
After leaving Lakewater for the city six years ago, I’d been quick to shed most aspects of my old life. I guess I still looked the same, but I wasn’t overall. I wasn’t the kid from the wrong side of the tracks anymore. No way. Thanks to the more affluent side of my family from Seattle, I’d become something. Something big. But I’d been warned what could happen to people like me who came into sudden wealth. They’d get hit up by all their old acquaintances for cash, and old friendships would be destroyed.
For me, it was easier to let it all go and keep a low profile once I got to the city. It wasn’t hard. My friends back in Lakewater had been just as shallow as I was back then, aside fro
m a select few guys. And out of those few guys, I’d drifted apart from them anyway when they all went off to college and I stayed behind, working odd jobs until the year I turned twenty-two.
The year I simultaneously lost and gained everything; a blessing and a curse the size of fucking Everest.
I shook my head and re-read the message, trying to push all the negative thoughts out of my head. Indi Marlowe was a nice girl—a girl I’d frequently wondered about ever since I left town all those years ago. Even if she’d somehow managed to figure out that I was the head of Marsden Shipping these days, I doubted she’d be the sort to try and shake me down for a donation to whatever her cause was. At least she never used to be.
I clicked onto her profile out of curiosity. Was she still the same, or had she changed?
I had some vague memories of her shy smile and developing curves when she was just Dawson’s little sister, but I had far more vivid memories of her after she turned seventeen or eighteen. By that stage, Dawson was long-gone for college, but Indi was still in town for school, and I was there too, working a casual gig at a local mechanic’s shop on the end of Main Street. I saw her whenever she walked home from school with that Eric kid, and I committed every inch of those curves to memory.
She had the sort of rounded hips, ass and breasts that could make a grown man cry, along with hazel eyes and an angelic face that Michelangelo would kill himself to paint or sculpt. To top it all off, she had a mane of shiny chestnut brown hair I desperately wanted to fist while she wrapped her long limbs around me.
Goddamn.
I located her profile pictures section, and I groaned as I saw that absolutely nothing had changed, at least in the physical sense. Indi was as sexy as ever, if not more so now that she was a few years older. She still had the same curves and the same beautiful face, but upon closer inspection, she had a new look of determination in her eyes in all the most recent photos. That old shyness was gone.
Husband For Hire Page 2
