She’s gonna regret one-upping me because I’ve got a good one planned for her this time.
“Hey, ladies,” I say as I saunter over, plastering a huge grin on my face. “How’s everyone doing today?”
Several of the girls blush and giggle, shooting heart-eyes among each other, but an already tense Violet snaps, “Um, hi. What happened—you lose your asshole hat today? Why are you being so polite?”
I place a hand over my heart, faking a pained expression. “Ouch! Oh, Vi, it gets me right here that you have such a low opinion of me.”
I glance to the girl at my right, a blonde whose name I don’t even know, and whisper conspiratorially, “She really hates me, huh? I don’t understand it. I’m a nice guy.” I swear the blonde’s eyes widen with my every word, and she’s nodding vacantly. I get that reaction a lot, and I hate it.
Violet scowls, not buying my nice guy act for a second, and then growls, “Sure, if that rotted thing you call a heart were capable of feeling emotion.”
Abigail peers at me suspiciously, glancing down the hallway to where my teammates are gathering around my locker. “Doesn’t our school’s resident top jock have better things to do than to harass us?”
“Sure, I do . . . but it’s a beautiful day,” I say, giving my sister one of my mega-watt smiles before turning my eyes back on Violet. “And I can’t think of a better way to spend it than with a sweet girl like Violet.” For good measure, I wrap my arm around Violet’s shoulders, giving her a gentle squeeze as I pull her to my side. Every jaw drops in shock, jealousy, or some combination of the two. Except for Violet.
“I, uh . . .”
For once, Violet is speechless, caught off guard by my flirting out of nowhere, her mouth opening and closing like a fish as she gawks at me like I’ve sprouted barbed horns on my forehead. It takes a lot of effort not to laugh. I’m sure she was expecting me to call her chicken legs or one of the other variations we tag each other with, but I like being unpredictable. Keeps her on her toes.
Besides, ‘chicken legs’ doesn’t describe Violet anymore. So, if I’m gonna use it, I have to make it good.
Abigail peers at me suspiciously. “What’s got you in such a good mood? Did you get a D- on your biology exam, instead of an F?”
“I came bearing a gift, actually,” I say. “For beautiful Violet.”
“What the hell—” Violet begins to say as she tries to unsuccessfully pull away from me, totally wary and expecting a punchline any moment. Smart girl.
“How about some frog legs to go along with those chicken legs?” I yell, pulling the not-yet-dissected dead frog I borrowed from Biology from behind my back and stuffing it down the front of Violet’s shirt.
Caught off guard, Violet lets out an ear-piercing scream, grabbing at her shirt as she tries to get the frog off her. Between the two of us, her shirt gets more than a little stretched out, and her red lacy bra flashes for a split second.
I’m shocked for a moment, not having expected to expose her. But then she takes off running for the girl’s bathroom, still screeching like a banshee, and like the immature asshole I am, I double over in laughter. Nearby, all of my buddies and boys up and down the hall are laughing and pointing as Violet’s screams echo through the hallway.
“Dammit, Ross, why do you have to be such an asshole to her? She’s my best friend!” Abigail hisses angrily, punching me in the chest. “Why can’t you ever just leave Violet alone?”
“Calm down, Abs. It’s just a joke,” I say defensively, surprised at how angry Abi is.
We play pranks on each other all the time like this, and Abi is usually a good sport about the casual warfare Violet and I have against each other.
But not this time.
It did go a little further than I’d intended, but Violet’s cool. She’ll be pissed and then come back at me just as hard. I’ll have to be on the lookout for her retaliation.
Furious, Abi lets out a disgusted huff. “Stuffing a frog down her shirt is your idea of a joke? Grow up, Ross! You probably just ruined her favorite shirt, the one her grandpa gave her for Christmas! And half the football team just saw her bra.”
For the first time in a long time, I feel a pinch of shame. Maybe I took my juvenile antics just a little too far this time. I look back to my boys and see them high-fiving each other and realize that I might’ve put a target on Violet that I didn’t intend.
Some of the guys think the incoming freshmen are ‘fresh meat’, and I had to put a bounty on both Abigail’s and Violet’s heads to make sure no one would touch them. Just a big brother looking out, but I might have to refresh the guys’ memory about Vi being off limits after that little show.
Shit.
“Sorry, Abs. I didn’t mean—”
Abigail shakes her head, and I can feel the disappointment coming off her in waves, even as she glares daggers at me. “You never do, but sometimes, I wonder about you, Ross.”
I begin to argue. “I’m just having fun—”
“Yo, Ross, that was epic! Get your ass over here!” My best friend and buddy, Kaede, calls from my locker, laughing.
“Go and have your little laugh with your friends . . . at Violet’s expense.” The accusation burns, but she’s not remotely done. “But I expect you to give Violet a sincere apology after school . . . or else,” Abi threatens, letting me know she’s going to tell Mom, who can be absolutely ruthless in making me apologize whenever I get too out of line. I might be an asshole to most, but not to my mother.
Once she’s sure I understood her threat, Abi walks off in the direction of the girl’s bathroom in search of Violet.
As I watch her go, I keep telling myself that Abigail’s full of shit.
I didn’t take it too far, did I? It was all in fun, and Violet’s fine. Hell, she’s probably plotting her vengeance right now. She’s good like that, exciting, challenging, likes to give as good as she takes. But I’ll apologize to keeps Abs off my back. Probably have to guard my balls so Violet doesn’t rip them off, though. She can be a badass bitch when she wants to be.
For some girls, that’d be an insult. For Violet, it’s a compliment.
* * *
Present day
“Another gossip spread from In Style News magazine!” my father, Morgan Andrews, seethes, slapping a glossy tabloid rag down on the board room table and sliding it in front of me. He stabs a hairy finger at words printed across the top while leveling a scowl that could cut through a mountain at me. “When the hell are you going to grow up, Ross?”
“When hell freezes over,” my youngest sister, Courtney, who doubles as our father’s assistant and my antagonizer, cheerfully supplies. Dressed in a tight black skirt, white dress shirt, and matching glossy heels, she’s perched on the edge of the obelisk-like board room table, her arms crossed over her chest and a huge smirk on her face.
I don’t have to guess at what’s got her so chipper. She never misses an opportunity to witness Dad laying into me. Even in a professional setting.
She calls it karmic revenge for all the hell I gave her as a kid.
I call it Annoying Little Sister Syndrome, even if I was a bit of a shit to her when we were younger. Nothing serious. I’m not a monster.
But I might’ve convinced her that chicken nuggets were made of zebra meat once upon a time, which wouldn’t have been so bad, except she was going through a phase where that was one of the few things she ate. After days of only eating cheese sticks, she finally told Mom what I’d said and I’d been forced to apologize and tell her the truth, and I’d been grounded from chicken nuggets myself for an inordinate amount of time.
And that’s only one instance of the childish shit I pulled with my sisters.
Fun times, I think fondly. Before everything got so damn serious.
“What am I guilty of doing this time?” I ask my dad wearily, afraid to look down at the page.
Being somewhat of a local celebrity is weird. When I was younger, the media would try to get pictures of ou
r family because my dad is a bigshot in the business world. And then overnight, when I turned eighteen, I went from ‘rebellious wild child football star’ to ‘hottest bachelor on the market’, and that’s a damn weird thing to hear about yourself when you’re barely out of high school and feel like a kid muddling his way through college. My love life, sex life, and private life have become fodder for consumption and it’s exhausting. Always on show, always be pulled together, always represent, always be an Andrews . . . like I give a single, solitary fuck about what some past her prime trophy wife in the grocery line thinks about me when I can’t even run to the store in grungy jeans because it’d cause some sort of scandal that would hurt my family’s company.
Like now.
“Look and see for yourself,” Dad growls.
Anxious, I slowly peer down at the attention-grabbing headline.
Notorious Playboy Ross Andrews Nicks out of Nightclub with Wife of Mega Pastor.
The alliterative words are positioned over top of a blown up shot of me and a woman. In the picture, you can see me trying to hide her face, but in doing so, I gave the photographer free reign to take clear pictures of my disheveled mug and wrinkled dress shirt that’s got one too many buttons open at the top.
“The hell?” I gawk in disbelief, remembering the night.
I’d met a woman in the club who said she was lonely and wanted someone to talk to. I’m no fool. That’s totally code for only wanting one night, and she was hot in a broken doll sort of way. And we had talked. She’d been touch feely, the one to undo that extra button, but that was it. Later, as the night wore on and we both realized that nothing beyond conversation was going to come of the evening, she became adamant that she had to go home and no one could see her at the club, so I snuck her out the back . . . and accidentally into the waiting lens of the press. I’d done my best to help hide her face, though I didn’t know why.
“I didn’t know who she was or that she was married!”
“It’s your business to know!” Dad snorts, pacing the room back and forth like a caged tiger. I can see his mind whirling just as fast as he makes laps from the window to the wall. He turns around to address me once he reaches the front of the table, placing both hands upon it and leaning forward. “What the hell were you thinking, Son? A pastor’s wife? Joeden Snow’s, no less?”
“Like I said,” I say firmly. “I didn’t know. She didn’t even give me her name, just started talking.”
“Sure,” Dad says acidly. “Was that before, or after—”
I interrupt him, standing and placing my hands on the table, mirroring his stance because I’m not some intern he can push around. Hell, I’m annoyed that I’m being forced to defend myself about a private matter. “Let me be clear. I didn’t sleep with her. She obviously needed someone or something, but all we did was talk, and then I had the driver take her home and then me home.”
Dad pauses, brought short by the anger in my voice and the challenge to his authority. He stares at me for a long while, scowling, but then relaxes. Some of the tension eases from my body. “It doesn’t matter if you slept with her or not,” he finally says with a sigh. “The damage is done. We have shareholders who are members of Pastor Snow’s church . . . including the pastor himself. They are not pleased.”
“Except nothing happened!”
Dad shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. Bad optics is bad optics. And your track record doesn’t help matters.” Another dig that stings.
“What I do in my private life is no one’s business,” I growl. “Our shareholders should concern themselves with what we put in their pockets, not what I choose to do in the bedroom.”
“Except for the fact that when we took their money, we made a pact. A pact that stated that we, as a family-run business, would uphold the values of our investors,” Dad argues. “Something you’re woefully failing at, Ross.”
The room grows so silent you can hear a pin drop.
Even Courtney’s amused smirk has vanished. There’s playing the good daughter and getting jabs in on me. Then there’s shit hitting the fan, and this is for sure one of those times.
“Are you for real? Who the fuck are they to dictate what I do with my personal life?”
“They’re the people making all of this possible,” Dad says, holding his hands out to his sides, encompassing the entire boardroom and the skyline behind him.
“Say whatever you want about me, but I’ve done a lot for this company, and I’m committed and work hard—”
“You want to know what’s really being committed and hard work?” Dad growls swiftly, making me feel as if I walked right into a trap. “Settling down. Being happily married for thirty-five years. All while raising three children and giving them a good life. So, if you want to know what takes real commitment and hard work, try standing up, being a man, and finding someone to have a meaningful relationship with.”
“So that’s what this is really about?” I ask acidly as a conversation we’ve had multiple times begins playing on automatic loop. “You’re using this incident as an excuse to make me fall in line—”
“It breaks your mother’s heart to see you strutting around like a cocky, arrogant peacock that endlessly sows his oats,” Dad snarls. “You could have any woman you want, and what do you do instead? Carouse around, squandering precious time that could be better used to start a family.”
I stare at my Dad like he’s lost it. “You’re a piece of work.”
“Your mother and I aren’t getting any younger, Ross,” he continues as if I hadn’t said anything, “And neither are you. When are you going to grow up? Think about the example you are setting for your younger siblings and this company.”
“This is all such bullshit—”
Dad’s next words, though quiet and resigned, are like a stab in my gut. “There’s a board meeting coming up, and your behavior and its impact on the company have already been added to the agenda. You have two weeks to get your act together and make this storm you’ve created for our company’s image go away. But if you keep this behavior up, even I won’t be able to protect you, and they can vote to remove you from the board, demote you, or even force your resignation.”
It’s a struggle to control the fury emanating from my core. Demoting? Firing? Me?
Never has my father threatened me so boldly, even if he’s hiding behind the board. Or maybe he really is as much at their mercy as I apparently am.
Even Courtney, who usually loves when Dad shits on me, is pale faced at his words.
Piling more on the shitshow, Dad proclaims, “Also, it’s our anniversary this weekend. We’ll be having a family dinner tomorrow night before we celebrate it. I expect you to attend. I’m sure your mother will have something to say about this situation as well.”
Is he serious?
The man has a lot of balls telling me what he expects of me after just threatening me.
Out of spite, I want to tell him to shove the dinner up his ass. But eating with my parents on the eve of their anniversary has been family tradition as long as I can remember. Skipping it seems like a toddler throwing a tantrum, even if there’s a part of me that wants to do just that.
“Now, if you two will excuse me,” Dad says, walking over to the door that leads to his office, “I have the Rosenberg report to go over before I head home to your mother.”
The urge to face off with Dad over his bullshit threat is overpowering, but I squash the feeling before it can take root. When my father’s done arguing, he’ll walk away and won’t listen, no matter what you say.
Like father, like son, I suppose. I’ve been accused of being stubborn a time or two . . . okay, maybe more, as well.
If I want to get in a rebuttal, it’ll have to be at another time, because I have other problems to worry about.
“Very well,” I say sharply, adjusting my suit and rising to my feet. “Maybe we can further discuss this issue when you’re not so . . . frustrated.” Dad huffs, knowing I’m just getting
the last word in, but as he turns away, I swear I see sad disappointment on his face.
I stalk from the room and head to my office. Behind me, I hear Courtney’s heels click across the floor as she hastens to follow me out the doors.
“You know,” she says breathlessly as she catches up with my long stride, “normally, I love it when Dad sticks it to you, but that was brutal. Total bloodbath.”
“You think?” I ask sourly, stopping to scowl back at the boardroom. “The old man’s gone too far . . .”
“But really, a pastor’s wife, Ross? A shareholder’s wife?” Courtney interrupts, looking at me incredulously. “What in the hell were you thinking?”
“Like I said,” I growl, “I had no idea who she was.” When I see Courtney’s doubtful expression, I add, “and I wasn’t lying. I didn’t sleep with her. The one time I didn’t fuck the woman throwing herself at me, and it’s gotten me into more trouble than if I had thrown her the bone she wanted.”
Courtney’s face screws up. “Firstly, eww. Secondly, are women really throwing themselves at you left and right?”
I lift my brows in answer but feel the need to clarify. “All the time, but don’t get the wrong idea. Sleeping with them isn’t the norm. I know they’re only after me for my last name and bank account. I’m not a saint by any means, but I’m not the playboy the media and Dad think either.”
“Okay. I believe you,” Courtney says. After a moment, she bites on her lower lip, her expression softening. “Don’t be mad at Dad, though. I may be the youngest, but even I can see he only wants what’s best for you. He’s going about it all wrong, but I don’t think he’d really let the board demote you. He’s just trying to scare you into the right direction, that’s all.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re Dad’s favorite,” I grunt. “You’re not the one shouldering half the responsibility of the company on your shoulders. I’m starting to think Abi had the right idea and we’re the fuckwits.”
My Big Fat Fake Wedding Page 3
