Stay put, I’ll be there in twenty minutes. This message was followed by a stream of emojis. I found myself laughing. Here was a grown man, rich and successful, and he was texting using a ton of emojis like he was a teenager.
Sure enough, twenty minutes later he arrived. I held up his coffee. “I know that you’re a coffee snob, but…”
To my shock, Laird turned right to the woman behind the counter. “How’s it going, Sara? Beautiful day despite the cold.”
Sara, evidently the name of the woman behind the counter, smiled. “It is, yes, a blue sky at last.”
Laird sat down next to me at one of the small, cramped tables inside the bakery and took his coffee from me with a grin. “This is my favorite bakery,” he confided, his voice low and warm like he was sharing a secret.
I bit my lip to avoid blurting out that this must be serendipity, then. That was the kind of thing you said when you wanted to flirt, and I didn’t want to flirt. Or, rather, I did want to flirt, but I knew that I shouldn’t. It was dangerous—for my heart. So I kept my mouth shut.
Laird winked at me and took a sip of his coffee. “Great as always, Sara!” he called.
I couldn’t help but feel, though, that there was something serendipitous about this. Even if I didn’t have the courage to say it out loud.
8
Laird
I had never gotten to play tour guide to anyone visiting the city before. I’d been in the United States for years but people always assumed that I was new in town given the accent and so sometimes they would offer to play tour guide to me—but nobody had ever asked me to show them around my adopted city. I felt flattered.
Not to mention, hey, I’d give whatever I needed to if it meant I got to spend more time getting to know Trudie. I couldn’t help but feel it was fate, or something like it, that had her going to my favorite bakery randomly like this. She had no idea of knowing that it was my favorite. Not even Jack knew about this. Not that I kept it a secret, it just never came up in conversation and why would it? Who has a discussion with someone about what their favorite bakery is?
Actually, that was exactly the kind of discussion I’d need to have with Trudie. I needed to write down all the things that were my favorite, no matter what the category, and I had to write down all of my habitual things, the place that I went to regularly and all that, because if she was really my wife then she would know all of these things. She would’ve learned them organically from all the time that we spent together.
Well, we were spending time together now. That was something.
“I’m warning you,” I told her, “we’re not going to touristy places. Well. We are, some of them, but you can go to The Bean any day.” I grinned. “And Anish Kapoor hates that we call it The Bean. So be sure to say it all the time.”
“Well, if you insist.”
“I do insist.” I offered her my arm again. Trudie seemed to like that. She took it, and I led her out into the city.
We probably didn’t have time to stop by the museums today, unfortunately. I did like a good art museum. But there were all the places that I usually went, places that Trudie would need to know if she was going to pretend to be my spouse. She’d know my favorite places, where I usually went, what my schedule was.
I showed her my post office, my favorite park where we took a walk around and I waved hello to some of the people that I knew there. “The nannies all know me,” I admitted. “Jack says they all want to date me but I think he’s just trying to boost my confidence.”
“You need confidence boosting?” Trudie replied, teasing me. I loved that she was growing confident enough to tease me like this.
“You’d be surprised,” I said. “I’m… not good at talking to women, never have been. That’s something you’d know if you were married to me. When my family asks, if you tell them I was confident then they’ll know you’re lying. I was a total idiot who took weeks to ask you out.”
“Oh, dear, aren’t you lucky I was so patient with you.” Trudie gave me a smile that made me melt a little inside.
I wish that you would be that patient with me, I almost said, but I kept it to myself. This happened every bloody time. I started to like a girl and I knew I’d say something stupid so my only option was to say nothing at all to keep from ruining my chances with her even further. Better to say nothing and stay friends than say something and ruin even that.
“This is the place I’d thought about taking my kids, when I have them.” I paused. It was a touchy subject, but I knew we’d have to talk about it. We would’ve discussed it before we got married. I wouldn’t marry someone that I couldn’t have an honest discussion with about our future and about what we wanted out of the relationship.
“I always wanted kids.” Trudie sounded quiet. “Um. My previous partner didn’t want them. I’m glad I didn’t have them, now. But I would like a couple. Someday.”
“I always imagined I would be the kind of dad who was successful enough I didn’t have to be in the office every day. I could leave that up to other people or maybe even retire so that I could spend time with my kids.”
“That’s sweet,” Trudie said. I’d heard that from other people, that phrase, oh that’s sweet. People were fond of saying that to me for some reason. But with Trudie it didn’t sound pithy or like something she was saying just because. It sounded like she was genuinely happy to say it, like saying that I was ‘sweet’ was the highest compliment that I could possibly have been given.
“So we’re agreed that… ah… for the family thing… we’re going to have kids at some point but not right away?”
Trudie nodded. “I think that’s a good idea. We’re only just married, right? Your parents didn’t say that we’d been married for years and you’d just failed to mention it.”
“Oh, no, definitely a newer thing.”
“So we’d want to get more settled before we had kids.”
“Good idea.” I nodded towards a beautiful old building on the right. “That’s my library. They’re closed on Sundays, otherwise I’d show you inside. It’s absolutely beautiful. Murals all over the ceiling. I like to go there and borrow books—I want to have my own library but I’m so picky about what I want so I just go to the library and borrow the books first.”
“I’m sure the librarians appreciate you supporting the institution.” Trudie paused. “I should get a library card. I don’t really have… um… space right now to own books but I can borrow them and take them back. That would work. I used to read all the time growing up, I got out of the habit the last few years.”
“It’s hard, with the internet and all, and work, to find time to read. I’ve really had to work to carve that time into my schedule.”
Trudie smiled at me, like once again I had said the right thing. I felt like talking with her was a bit like navigating a minefield. Not in the sense that saying the wrong thing would have her exploding on me, not like that. More like there were things that would make her withdraw, trust me less. Like I was still, in a way, being tested.
“Before I let you go,” I went on, “I have to introduce you to the best deep dish pizza in town. You can’t live in Chicago and not try deep dish pizza.”
“Isn’t it just like regular pizza but with an extra thick crust?”
“Oh, you poor deprived darling,” I said, sighing and shaking my head like this was a travesty.
Trudie laughed, blushing. “Are… are pet names going to be a thing?”
“Oh. Um.” I hadn’t even realized I’d done that. Bloody hell. “I tend to do that with people. It’s a thing in my family. You’re going to be called darling, love, lamb, all those things. If you’re all right with it, I mean. I don’t have to call you anything if you don’t want me to.”
Trudie’s blush deepened. “Well, if it’s natural for you… and it would be weird if your family was calling me all these names and then you weren’t. And it’s nice, I mean, to be called things like that. It’s a way of showing affection.”
“You’re so thoughtful,” Trudie said, again sounding almost surprised. What kind of people had she been hanging out with that common human decency was such a delightful shock to her?
She had just mentioned a previous partner. My curiosity was piqued. I didn’t dare ask for fear she’d clam up. Her private life was her own and I wasn’t going to barge in on that. Not even for the sake of maintaining this façade. But I wondered. I couldn’t help but wonder, who wouldn’t?
“It’s right down this way, the pizza, I mean,” I said, stumbling my way into changing the subject. “And before you say anything, I’m paying. I insist.”
Trudie looked simultaneously frustrated and grateful. She was a little thin. I worried about how much she was eating—how much she could afford to eat—on her current salary. A coffee shop kind of job… well, any kind of job should pay a person enough for them to live off it. But that wasn’t how our world worked right now and unfortunately a job at a coffee shop was not going to be enough to cut it financially. She needed to work somewhere else, a better place that would support her properly.
Not that I could tell her that. She’d probably tell me to shove it up my arse, and right she’d be, too. It wasn’t my business.
On a Sunday, later in the day, nobody was in the pizza place. Everyone had already had lunch and was going to have dinner later on, so we found a good table and I told her to order whatever she wanted off the menu. “Literally, everything. If it’s too much for us to eat now then you can take it home and warm it up for later.”
“Are you sure?” Trudie asked, her eyes scanning the menu.
“I’m sure. I want you to enjoy all of this.”
“Or we could just come back and I can try the things I didn’t try this time,” she replied.
“Should we make this the place we had our first date?” I suggested. “And we have regular dates here?”
Trudie smiled. “I like that idea. You’re really on top of this whole thing, aren’t you? I feel like I’m flagging.”
“I run a business, I’m used to being on top of projects and sort of steering them.”
“You’re very good at it. No wonder you’re so successful.”
I blushed under the praise. It probably came as a surprise to people who heard it, but I wasn’t really used to people praising me like that. People would talk about my ‘business smarts’ and other buzzword sort of things, but nobody ever looked at me like… like I was just a really great person who had done something great. Nobody looked at me in awe like that.
There was something special about Trudie, I decided. Something about the way that she looked at me and spoke to me that was unlike the way anyone else had ever looked at me and spoken to me. I wasn’t sure what it was just yet. The definition of it eluded me. But fuck if I didn’t want to get more of it. Fuck if I didn’t want to get more of her.
We ordered, and the sound that Trudie made when the pizza came and she bit into it shot heat right through me. She sounded ecstatic, overwhelmed, like she was swallowing back a moan. I shifted in my seat, my pants feeling tight. I wanted to hear her make those noises in another situation. A more intimate one. I wanted to be the reason she made that noise, as I bit down on her neck, as my hand worked between her legs.
Buggering fuck, I had upgraded to sexual fantasies. Great. This was going to spell nothing short of doom for me if I kept this up. What if the poor woman thought that because I was paying her so much I expected her to actually provide… well, what certain ladies of the night would call a ‘girlfriend experience’?
I would just have to be careful so that she wouldn’t think I expected anything. I didn’t want to put her in an uncomfortable position or take advantage of her. My… my stupid attraction to her was my fault and mine alone. I’d deal with it.
We ate in silence for a while, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable. So many people acted like sitting in silence was a bad thing. A sign that you didn’t know what to say to the person that you were with, that you weren’t comfortable with them, that you couldn’t open up. Personally—well, my family was bloody insane. Always talking over each other, filling up the space, yammering on. It made me appreciate the ability to be quiet. To just sit together and be.
Trudie smiled at me as she finished up another piece of pizza. “You probably think that I’m boring. I’m sorry. I haven’t really been saying much.”
“No, no, you’re fine. Honestly. I don’t mind the silence. Once you meet my family you’ll understand. They’re loud and boisterous as fuck.”
Trudie looked a little intimidated, so I reached across the table and took her hand, squeezing it gently. “You’ll get used to it, don’t worry. They’ll all be happy to meet you.”
“I feel bad, if they’ll be happy to meet me—maybe I should be horrible so that they all hate me and are glad when we get our fake divorce.”
I snorted with laughter. “We can do that if you want, but I don’t want you to have to pretend to be an awful person. I like you just the way you are.”
Trudie’s blush at that made my day.
Afterwards, I took her back to the coffee shop. I wanted to offer to take her home again, but I was worried after last time. She seemed to be ashamed of how and where she lived, and I didn’t want to rob her of her dignity by insisting on taking her home.
“We’ll get lunch tomorrow,” I said. “Bring your list.” I already had a long list ready to go of things that she needed to know. I hadn’t realized how mad my life could be until I had to write it all down. Suddenly I had so much more going on than I had realized.
Trudie nodded, looking wary again. She would get like that at times and I didn’t know what triggered it, only that I wanted to make sure that I never did anything that made that wariness segue into outright anger or fear. I never wanted her to be scared of me. Dealing with Trudy honestly sometimes made me feel like I was handling a feral kitten and getting it to trust me—although that could just be how protective and fond of her I already was.
“Have a good walk home,” I added.
Trudie softened again at that, and smiled. “You too.”
I watched her go, and then made myself walk in the opposite direction, ignoring my desire to follow her and make her stay.
9
Trudie
Writing down my life had never felt so… pathetic.
When I put everything down on paper, I realized just how little there was about me to share with people.
I couldn’t put down anything about Pete. I could, I supposed, it wasn’t like I legally couldn’t but… could I really trust Laird that much? He seemed like a great guy but I had just met him. Could I honestly let him know about that dark part of my past? And what if telling him somehow… some way… made it so that Pete found me? I couldn’t know for certain of course but what if? I just didn’t know. And besides all that, it was embarrassing. Oh, sure, I knew intellectually that it shouldn’t be. I’d read the articles. But it still felt… raw and vulnerable, like I was ripping part of myself open for him to see.
No, I just couldn’t tell him about Pete. Not just yet.
But when you took Pete out… there was very little to tell him about my life. At least with Pete in there you understood why there was so little—Pete had kept me from my friends, from going out and doing fun things, from forming hobbies—he had constricted my entire life like a python. As I stared at my list, reading the sadly few entries, I felt humiliated. Laird was going to read this list and realize just how little I had to offer, what a sad choice I was to pretend to be his life partner. What would he think of a woman who was a non-entity?
I told Laird on the list about losing my parents, about not having anyone else, about losing friends. I talked about how I bounced around for a while before settling in Chicago, and not ever really even having a career. I hadn’t even finished college. Compared
to Laird, with his big, loving, crazy family, his success and his social status… I was truly nobody. It was pathetic.
Good thing this whole marriage thing was fake. Laird would never want to really marry me. Not when I had so little to offer him. It was depressing, honestly. Not that—I didn’t want him to want to really marry me, did I? Sure, we had done some light flirting yesterday. I’d been tucked into his side for hours while he showed me around Chicago, took me to the edge of the lake and to the library building, showed me his neighborhood including his favorite park. And the way he’d looked at me while we’d eaten our deep dish pizza… But lightly flirting with someone, a bit of attraction, that wasn’t the same as wanting to marry them. And the moment he saw this list and realized what a sad person I was, he would be glad to get rid of me once his cousin’s wedding was finished. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It made me sadder than it should have. I had known this man for barely a week. I couldn’t be developing feelings so quickly.
It was absolutely freezing on my way to work this morning. I had picked Chicago partly because I wanted to be somewhere with proper snow, but it was going to be tough to walk to work if a blizzard hit. I drew my coat tight around myself, grateful that I had warm weather gear. I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like if I couldn’t afford proper boots or gloves. Edith had helped me pick it all out and find good deals in thrift stores, thank God.
When I got into Buzz it was just Red, as usual. He was always the first one to arrive since he was the manager. “So?” he asked with a knowing grin.
I shook my head at him. “No, don’t you dare.”
“What? I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re smiling at me.”
Fake Bride: A Fake Marriage Billionaire Romance (Forbidden First Times Book 2) Page 5
