“Your innocent act doesn’t cut it. Stick to magazine running and don’t become an actor.”
I laughed, as Trudie looked into another store, got a satisfied air about her, and went inside. I followed, watching as she perused the racks again and then nodded to herself. Apparently, she had found the store she liked best.
“Here, do something useful,” she said, putting some clothes in my arms. “Hold these.”
I snorted but held the clothes for her, watching as she moved through the racks. She didn’t seem to care about the size, although she would look carefully at the price. There was a slight hesitation to her, like she was still unsure if she was even legally allowed to be doing this, but she seemed to be a person who knew her taste and knew what looked good on her.
“You know that most people find this fun, right?” I said. “They find shopping fun. They do this for laughs.”
“I’m not most people,” Trudie replied, her voice unexpectedly soft.
No, you’re not, I found myself wanting to say in reply. The words stuck in my throat. They were far too close to revealing the dangerous emotions that I felt whenever I was with her, whenever I looked at her.
“Good, if you were most people you would’ve learned not to put up with me by now,” I teased.
“Maybe I’m just more determined than most people,” Trudie replied, selecting another outfit and putting it in my arms. “Or maybe I’m just better at dealing with your bullshit.”
“Maybe you just don’t know when to quit,” I pointed out.
Trudie gave me this fond, exasperated look, and I saw someone else who was shopping nearby, an older woman, give us a smile as she walked past. I felt pride well up in my chest. We were doing well enough that this woman thought we were a couple, and a cute one at that. That was how it should be. Some of the tension went out of me—we could do this.
I held the clothes for Trudie as she tried them on. She seemed to favor a lot of blues and greens. They went well with her skin, her eyes, and her hair, but more than that, I wondered why those were the colors that she liked the most. Trudie was this odd combination of being a very vibrant person but also shy and withdrawn, so I would’ve expected her to go with either reds and pinks, or with soft muted neutrals. Blue and green were such peaceful colors.
“What do you think?” she would ask after trying on each item. She was picking a good variety, not just skirts or dresses or pants, but combinations so that she really did look like my wife who had a full wardrobe at home.
I was starting to think that Trudie could just wear a trash bag and she’d still look good. “Amazing,” I would tell her.
“You’re saying that to everything,” she told me at one point, a hand on her hip. “That’s not very helpful, you know.”
“It’s not?” I grinned at her. “I can’t help it if you just look good in everything. That’s hardly my fault.”
Trudie blushed, looking at herself in the mirror at the end of the dressing room hall. “You have to let me know if I’m picking out things that are inappropriate for the trip,” she warned me. “I don’t want to get there and look ridiculous.”
“You’re doing just fine,” I assured her. She had a good variety of clothes picked out and she looked lovely in all of them.
She did try on a few things that she didn’t let me see. “What, a girl can’t have a few surprises?” she said when I mock-complained about it.
Then she finally walked out in the dress that she said she wanted to wear tonight.
I swallowed, my throat dry. It was a dark blue, lacy thing that hugged her body, capped sleeves and a back that was all lace, showing a tantalizing look at all the skin underneath, completed the look.
“What do you think?” Trudie asked. “I know my hair and makeup aren’t done, but…”
“No, you look fantastic,” I assured her. “Seriously.”
If I had seen her looking like this at a charity function or a bar, I never would’ve approached her. I would’ve assumed right away that this woman was too sophisticated, too confident, for the likes of me. I would’ve thought that I would stumble over my words and mess things up for sure, and so I wouldn’t have even tried.
But now I knew Trudie. I knew that she was shy and struggled a bit with her self-esteem. I knew that she was sassy and had an adorable giggle and that she was a hard worker. I wasn’t intimidated by her, at least not so much that I couldn’t talk to her.
God help me, though, I still didn’t have the bloody balls to tell her how much I wanted her in that moment.
Liam could’ve. If Liam had seen a woman he was attracted to in a dress like that he would’ve told her right away, no questions asked. But then again, Liam wasn’t in a situation where he was pretending to be married to the woman. What if I made Trudie uncomfortable? What if she didn’t want that, didn’t like me that way, and now we were stuck with each other?
I wanted nothing more than to slide my hands over her body in that lace, to tease her, to shove her back into the dressing room and make her moan my name. But I couldn’t. I absolutely couldn’t.
“You sure?” Trudie asked. “Because you’ve got a weird look on your face.”
“Joke’s on you, love, I always have a weird look on my face. You’re going to have to be more specific.”
Trudie laughed, and I saw the attendant for the dressing rooms look up from where she was doing some sorting, and she smiled at us before going back to her work. It filled me with pleasure again, that warm focused feeling in my stomach, to know that people liked us as a couple.
Because—because it meant we would pass, to my family. That was all. No other reason, or so I told myself sternly over and over.
“Seriously,” I told her, “you look fuckin’ fantastic. I think it’s perfect. Liam’s going to be driving himself nuts wondering how the hell I landed a girl like you when I can never get up the courage to ask someone out.”
“I’ll tell him that I took pity on you,” Trudie replied with a smile.
“He’ll believe that, is the thing,” I pointed out.
Trudie laughed.
Once she had all of the items she wanted and returned the ones that she didn’t want, Trudie carefully examined all of the price tags and then grinned up at me triumphantly. “The total comes to one thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars.”
I felt myself fucking melting inside as she wiggled her eyebrows, clearly pleased beyond all belief at herself for managing that.
“You sure you don’t need anything else?” I asked.
Trudie put on a thoughtful face, tilting her head to the side. “Y’know, I sure could do with a new Lamborghini right about now, the old one is from 2005 and I think it’s time I traded it in.”
“Ah ha ha, very funny, you’re just a laugh riot.”
“You love it,” Trudie shot back, without a second’s pause.
“I suppose it has some charm to it,” I conceded, instead of saying you’re right, I absolutely love it, don’t ever stop.
God dammit, I was so bloody soft for her. How did she even manage it?
We bought her things, which included some new shoes and a new purse as well, and then I took it back with me to my condo. “I don’t have any room for it where I’m staying,” Trudie admitted, starting to sound soft and withdrawn again.
“Hey, don’t even worry about it, I’ve got plenty of room.” We brought her clothes in and stuck them in the empty closet in my guest bedroom. I had never used that bedroom—I never had guests over.
“Liam’s going to meet us here soon,” I warned her as I went into the kitchen to get myself some water, feeling out of place. I knew it was weird, to feel out of place in my own home, but I had never been aware, before, of just how fucking nice it was.
Trudie was living… well, somewhere. Somewhere she obviously felt so ashamed about that she didn’t want to show it to me or let me near it. I worried that she would be intimidated by where I was now. I hadn’t ever felt that way before—but the
n I’d never been confronted before by someone who was so very much from a different place in the world than I was.
“Oh no, really?”
I froze. “…yes?”
Trudie emerged from—when had she gone into my bedroom? “I’m sorry, I meant, oh, no, really, to… well, your house, this place, did it not occur to you that—look around you!”
I looked around. My place was very nicely decorated, thank you. I had lots of art up from all of my travels, I had photographs of my family, I had a few bookshelves with the books I liked to read on them. Sure, maybe the color scheme could use some work, I’d been told a few times that I had too many dark colors at play, but whatever. Who the bloody hell cared about that kind of thing?
“Looks fine to me,” I said.
Trudie shook her head. “There is nothing in here that says two people are living here, Laird. There’s only one toothbrush in the bathroom. The closet is only full of men’s clothes. All the stuff here is yours. There’s no photographs of the two of us, there’s no books or art of mine, nothing!”
…oh fuck. She was right. I hadn’t thought about that. I doubted Liam was going to go through my bloody bathroom and see the lack of two toothbrushes, but Trudie was right about the things like the art and the books. These all screamed ‘me’ at the top of their lungs. There was nothing about that had Trudie’s energy, her presence, her taste.
I had never seen her read a book but then, I’d never seen her in a situation where she’d be reading a book. I had taken her to the art museums, though, and I knew what she liked, and that was Native American and Central American art. None of which was present here. It was all my antiquities stuff from Rome and Greece, my Japanese wall prints and my copies of Renoir that I’d gotten at the museum when they did a special exhibit.
“You’re right,” I said, blowing out a breath. “Good catch. We’ll have him and his wife meet us at the museum then—I’ll text him.”
Trudie stared at me. “That’s—that’s it?”
I looked at her. “Well, yes. We can’t go out and buy a bunch of stuff to rearrange my house. I mean, we could, sure, but we don’t have that kind of time right now.” I grinned. “Maybe if we had another couple of hours. Besides, I don’t feel up to moving my couch around, do you?”
Trudie gave a small laugh and then tucked some of her hair behind her ear. “I just… sorry. I’m used to people who don’t really do well when plans are changed or… mistakes are pointed out to them.”
“Well, I’m not one of those people. If I couldn’t handle people pointing out my mistakes I wouldn’t be a very good company owner, would I? And plans change all the time. It’s just how life works.” I winked at her. “Do whatever you want to do to get yourself ready, I’ll talk to Liam. It’s not a problem at all.”
I made a mental note to do some shopping with her at a later date for household supplies—things she’d like to decorate the place with. Okay, sure, there wasn’t strictly a need to do that. I could find ways to avoid people coming over to my condo. But what if we couldn’t avoid it? Wouldn’t it just be easier to have all of this ready?
And then you could have it ready in case this became real, the bloody traitorous voice at the back of my mind whispered. I tried to ignore that voice. It was going to bring me nothing but trouble. All of this… this shopping together, her making me hold things for her while she tried clothes on, teasing each other, it felt extremely domestic and natural. Like we were falling together, without even having to think about it, just two puzzle pieces finding their place.
Trudie looked relieved, and I wondered again what kind of people had been in her life, and where she had been living, to make her so worried about how I would react to a hiccup like this. I didn’t know, of course, and I knew that I shouldn’t pry—but I was also dying of curiosity, if only so that I could find whoever these buggers were and go after them for making her so skittish. There was a bright, hilarious, shining person in Trudie, and that person kept retreating because of whatever her scars were, whatever those fears were. I wanted to hurt the people who had put them there.
Liam, luckily, was a laidback guy and agreed to meet us at the restaurant. I put on my suit and tried not to choke on my own spit when Trudie emerged. Her dress looked just as lovely on her the second time I saw her in it as she had the first time, and now her hair was done up and some light makeup was applied.
“No jewelry?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I didn’t get any. That would’ve taken us way too long at the mall.”
“You look lovely without it,” I assured her. “But if you want to get any, just say the word.”
“I was never much of a jewelry person, although I do love necklaces on occasion,” she admitted.
I made another mental note—this one to get her a couple of beautiful necklace she could wear on the trip. Definitely one to go with whatever she’d picked out for the wedding. She hadn’t let me see the dress, of course, so I would just have to get a few different options and she could pick the one that best went with the dress.
Goddamn, when Liam found out how much I wanted to spoil this woman, he was going to die laughing. Jack was already wanting to die laughing at this whole thing. He thought Trudie was delightful and kept making jokes to me about adopting her as his little sister. If he found out I was planning to buy her jewelry and décor for my condo, I really would never hear the end of it.
“Shall we?” I asked, offering my arm. Yeah, yes, sure, it was a little old-fashioned of me to do that every time. But it seemed to help Trudie feel safe and cared for, and that was what mattered.
When we got to the restaurant, Liam and Alana were already at the table. Alana was a lovely woman, a courtside reporter, which was how she and Liam had met. She was one of the few people who could put Liam in his place and she hadn’t been all that impressed with him compared to his swooning fangirls, which had impressed him. Their courtship, to use another old-fashioned term, had been fucking fast if you asked me, and now, bam, he was married and the pressure had doubled for me.
Alana and Liam stood as we approached. “Well, well, well, look who decided to turn up,” Liam teased, pulling me into a hug. We were a touchy family, and he pulled Trudie into a hug immediately afterwards.
Trudie went stiff for a second, and I saw genuine terror cross her face, before she seemed to come to her senses and relax. Odd. I had noticed previously that she didn’t really touch people a lot, but she let me touch her, so it hadn’t been something I’d dwelled on too much. Hmm.
Alana and I hugged, and then she hugged Trudie. “You are stunning!” she said, taking Trudie by the shoulders to look at her. “My God, how did he ever deserve you?”
“Glad to know what you all think of me,” I grumbled as we sat down. It was only fair, though. Alana was a beautiful, statuesque blonde, whip smart, and with a kind heart. I’d made plenty of jokes to Liam about him not deserving her, back when they’d announced their relationship, so really this was just revenge.
Trudie sat down next to me, on Alana’s left side. Alana smiled at her, then glanced down—and paused. “Gee, Laird, how shotgun was this wedding, you don’t have a ring on her finger?”
I nearly smacked myself in the face. Buggering fuck, Jesus tap-dancing Christ, how had I forgotten the number one damn sign of a married couple? Rings on the left fingers.
Trudie laughed lightly. “Out for sizing,” she said with a smile, easy as anything. She seemed so relaxed. If I hadn’t known better, I never would’ve guessed that she was lying. “Laird is great at the big picture but not so much the details—I’m sure you know that,” she added with a wink to Liam. “The rings were too loose, I almost lost mine on day one. Luckily he knows I like things simple so there’s no fancy design to mess up with the resizing.”
Alana and Liam chuckled. “Yeah, that sounds like him,” Liam said. “God knows how he manages to keep running a publication with his head in the clouds.”
“Fuck you too, Liam,” I
replied lightly. I knew Liam respected my work, just like I respected his.
“I have to say,” Trudie said. “I never would’ve pegged you for a basketball player. What’s that like?”
Liam was more than happy to launch into talk about his career. The man had been mad for sports ever since he was a kid. I was into the outdoors and sports, obviously, given my magazine, but I wasn’t like Liam. People thought I was crazy until they got to talk to him. Trudie kept asking prompting questions that would send Liam or Alana—or both of them, doing that thing where they would talk on top of each other and finish each other’s sentences—into another long story or explanation. It ended up so that Trudie and I barely had to talk at all.
“Clever of you,” I murmured as I leaned in so that my mouth was right by her ear. I didn’t want there to be a chance of Liam and Alana overhearing. And, well, it was an excuse to get right up close to her. I could feel the warmth radiating from her and the temptation to lean in all the way and brush my lips against that soft spot behind her ear was maddening.
“I’m good at thinking on my feet,” Trudie replied, turning her face so that she could whisper just as quietly back to me. It meant that our faces were only inches apart. It would’ve taken me next to no effort to close the space and kiss her.
Liam and Alana wouldn’t even have minded. They would’ve expected something like that from a newly married couple. But I hadn’t really discussed PDA with Trudie. Would she appreciate it? And I wouldn’t be doing it to sell the bit—I’d be doing it just because I wanted to. And that wouldn’t be fair.
“So,” Alana said, smiling. “Tell me how you two met?”
Here we went. This was the one thing we had definitely planned for. “I saw this lovely barista every morning when I walked through the coffee shop on the way to work,” I said. “And I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to know more about her. I even ordered a bunch of coffee that I didn’t drink, just so that I could say hi to her and get to know her a bit.”
“He was so abrupt when he asked me out,” Trudie said with a laugh. “I only learned later it was because he was so nervous.”
Fake Bride: A Fake Marriage Billionaire Romance (Forbidden First Times Book 2) Page 8
