by Jill Shalvis
She couldn’t help that her eyes darted covertly to his crotch. If she remembered correctly—and she did—either of those names were appropriate. Oh, geez! Chloe hunched her shoulders, hoping her nipples wouldn’t betray her gutter mind.
Clearing her throat, she pressed on. “Or are you into more generic innuendo? Like, ‘Hey, baby. I’ve got a package for you’?”
Ben’s face was scrunched up with disgust, which she found kind of endearing. “I’m trying to eat here,” he protested. “Why are you talking about dicks?”
Chloe dragged her spoon delicately along the top of the ice cream until she had a perfect curl. “Because the creepy delivery guy who dropped off our new Valentine’s Day signage asked if I wanted to go in the back room—”
“Jesus, did he try anything? Are you okay?”
Chloe was taken aback by Ben’s sudden intensity. “I’m fine. That’s why I’m trying to tell you the funny story of what happened to me today.”
He stared at her for a long moment before his muscles relaxed.
“What’s going on with you?”
Ben shook his head. “Nothing.”
She gave him a hard look to let him know she wasn’t buying it.
“It’s nothing. Finish your story. He wanted you to go into the back room…” he prodded.
“Because he wanted me to play with his trouser snake.”
Ben froze. “He did not say that.”
“I swear on Ben and Jerry’s lives.”
They stared at one another for a moment in shared horror before bursting into laughter.
“So if you have some cutesy name for your lower anatomy, I need to know now. Because I discovered something important about myself tonight—I can’t live with a man who says things like that.”
“I don’t. But for the record, after that speech, I wouldn’t tell you even if I did.”
Chloe smiled. “For fear of constant and merciless mocking? Or because you don’t want me to leave?” she asked, putting her spoon in her mouth upside-down, applying the ice cream directly to her tongue.
Ben sobered and glanced over at her. The smile slipped from her lips as awareness hummed between them. Her nipples tingled as she slipped the spoon from her mouth and forced herself to swallow. “Okay, seriously though,” she said, barging through the moment in the interest of self-preservation. He’d been kind of a jerk to her at breakfast. She was not going to fall right into bed with him. “What’s your penis’s name? Because I feel like that’s something a wife would know. What if your boss asks?”
Ben took her cue, dispelling the remainder of the tension with a grin. “I like your moxie, Masterson. You’re taking this seriously, preparing for every eventuality.”
“A good hostess always has a bevy of conversation topics at her disposal.”
“Yes, she does. And speaking of conversation topics, I have something I need to tell you.”
Chloe went still at the serious note in his voice.
“I watched some of your makeup videos.”
“What?” The blood drained from her face. It was like she’d been soul-jacked. A ridiculous reaction, she knew, since she’d posted her soul on YouTube herself.
“They’re great. You’re very natural on camera.”
“Thanks.”
Ben laughed. “Your words say ‘thank you’ but your tone says ‘fuck you, Ben.’”
That was probably true .
“I just do it for fun.”
“I think that’s your first mistake. Makeup by Chloe has the potential to be a big deal. It could be a brick and mortar business—I mean, you did your sister’s wedding makeup for free, obviously, but people pay big money for that. Or you can keep the business online. If you write anything like you speak in those videos, you could branch into a blog and it could lead to sponsorships, or just new audiences. You could even do a little of both, kind of dovetail them together, depending on your vision.”
Ben’s lecture was starting to feel like the speech her dad had given her before she applied for law school. “You will do this and you will go here.” Before she’d realized it, all her choices had been taken away.
She knew Ben was just trying to help. That his suggestions came from a good place, but…Makeup by Chloe was hers. And Ben didn’t have the right to make these decisions for her. That was the whole reason she’d started her YouTube channel in the first place.
“…I mean, just talking with Kenley resulted in a huge spike in your numbers. Imagine if—”
“Hey, Ben?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Right, I know, I’m getting ahead of myself, but it’s not as intimidating as it sounds. Even just linking to the products you use could result in an impressive amount of affiliate revenue and—”
“Ben!”
He started at her brusque tone.
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fine. I get it.” His voice belied his words. He wasn’t happy. She’d hurt his feelings.
Well, join the club.
“I’ve got some work to finish up anyway. I’ll be in the office.”
“Okay.” It was all she could say as she watched him leave.
It wasn’t that she didn’t feel badly about cutting him off. He talked a good game. Made her consider things she usually dismissed as fanciful. But Makeup by Chloe wasn’t ready yet. She wasn’t prepared to put it out in the world until she learned more techniques, and saved more money. Until she felt like a businesswoman, not an imposter. Doing makeup made her happy, sure, but she had so much more to prove before people would pay for her services. Before she could really make use of his advice.
She looked down at the ice cream in her hand. It had melted a fair bit during their chat. She put the lid back on it and headed into the kitchen to put it away, dropping her and Ben’s spoons in the sink as she passed by.
It was only the second night since he’d tracked her down, but they’d already started fighting and stopped having sex. Real life was intruding on their fantasy more quickly than she’d expected.
CHAPTER 11
CHLOE DIPPED HER roller into the blue-gray paint and rolled a trial stripe of it onto the wall, excited at how well everything was coming together.
It hadn’t started out that way.
Ben had already left for work by the time Chloe got up. After last night, it felt odd being alone in his place. She wasn’t sure if it was the residual effect of their sorta-fight or just the inherent emptiness of the condo, but it had to change. Fast. They were only days away from the business dinner that could make or break Ben’s career.
And right now it looked like they were faking their entire relationship. Well, except for the sex. No faking required there. But orgasms weren’t the kind of proof they needed. As things stood, no one would walk into this empty bachelor pad and believe a happy couple lived here. Hell, she barely believed Ben lived here.
Ben didn’t think redecorating was important. He thought saying he had a wife was enough to convey stability, but Chloe knew better.
She might have rebelled against that life, but she was intimately familiar with the world of business dinners. It was all about appearances, about projecting a certain lifestyle. Every detail said something about what was happening inside a house.
Ben didn’t understand that yet, but he was going to when he saw the magic she’d worked today.
It had started with the modest hope of finding somewhere in the condo a throw for the couch or a photo for the wall—anything that would loan his place a little hominess. Instead, she’d found a trunk full of amazing stuff just sitting out in the open in Ben’s makeshift office.
It had contained a few fishing trophies that she’d displayed bes
ide the TV, a homemade quilt in shades of blue that she’d draped over the back of his couch, and her favorite find—a bunch of incredible pictures from Ben’s youth.
She couldn’t decide which one of the photos she loved best. The one of a young Ben and his dad fishing at a beautiful lake with an amazing log cabin in the background, the picture of the two of them making faces at the camera from the box of a beat-up red pickup truck, or another of a teenaged Ben in his cap and gown with his father’s arm around him and pride shining in the man’s eyes.
That’s when she’d decided to go all out, because these beautiful memories deserved a room that suited them. She’d picked up some paint for a feature wall in the living room and an inexpensive bookcase that she’d assembled herself. She’d even swung by her place for a couple of throw pillows, some books, a box of candles, and a few framed pictures of her and her friends to add to the mix and help sell the illusion.
She set the roller back in the tray and took in the rest of the room while she waited for her test patch to dry.
She was proud of how much personality she’d imbued in the room for a mere sixty-seven dollars and a couple of hours of her time.
And once she finished painting this feature wall, she could hang a few more photos and they would have a hope in hell of convincing his bosses that this relationship wasn’t a sham.
Ben might be the ultimate ad exec, but if being raised by Fiona Masterson had taught her anything, it was how to be the woman behind the man.
And everyone knew that was the important part.
* * *
“CHLOE? I’M HOME, and I’ve got pizza!”
Ben’s meeting had gone really well and he’d managed to tie up things at the office more quickly than he’d anticipated. It was only seven o’clock and he was already done for the day.
The door had barely shut behind him before he was struck by two things: the distinct chill in the apartment and the unmistakable smell of paint.
Chloe glanced over her shoulder, and pulled the bud from her ear. “Sorry. Music.” She removed the other earbud. “Didn’t hear you come in. Surprise!”
Ben walked right into the middle of the room, the pizza forgotten in his hands. “That is…blue. Like, blue-blue. I’m talking really blue.”
“You’ve got a real way with words, Masterson. You should write poetry in your spare time. Flight attendants the world over will swoon. More than they already do, that is.”
“Why are you painting my wall blue?”
“It’s not blue, it’s arctic mist.”
“Why are you painting my wall arctic mist?”
“Because it’s going to look great.” Chloe set her roller in the paint tray and turned to face him. “This is an intervention. I’m trying to save you. I mean, I consider it a miracle that you haven’t shriveled up and died of beige yet!”
His eyes flitted through the room, barely able to track all the changes. “Where did you get my grandmother’s quilt? And my dad’s fishing trophies?”
Then he caught sight of his graduation photo. On a bookshelf he’d never seen before. “What have you done?”
Chloe looked taken aback. “I redecorated.”
“What the hell for?”
She frowned. “This is what I wanted to talk to you about over breakfast yesterday. Your bosses are never going to believe we’re married.”
“Sure they will. A lot of people already do.”
“Right, but we were out. Maybe they’d believe us if we were having the dinner at a restaurant. But they’re coming here,” she said in a tone that suggested he’d just been checkmated in the argument.
“So?”
“So? This is not the house of a happy couple, Ben. It’s the house of a robot. You have a couch, a TV and a gaming console. Even frat boys put up some pictures of naked ladies making out!”
“That still doesn’t give you the right to go snooping in my personal stuff. These pictures? The trophies? This quilt? Did you ever consider that they were in that trunk for a reason? You had no right to do this. Any of this.”
“Ben, I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”
“No. You didn’t think. You just did. You never make a plan, you just act.” Ben raked a frustrated hand through his hair. “I can’t deal with this right now.”
He dropped the pizza on the counter as he walked back out the door.
Ben pulled out his phone, dialing as he took the elevator down to the lobby. “Hey, you busy?…Yeah, great. I’ll meet you there in about ten minutes.”
The air was frosty as he stepped out of his building and followed the sidewalk north. Ben jammed his phone and his hands, in the pockets of his jacket and tried to concentrate on the traffic rumbling along beside him, because if he didn’t keep his mind occupied he found himself ruminating on what an ass he’d just been.
She’d just caught him by surprise. He hadn’t seen a lot of that stuff for years, had kept it out of sight in that trunk because he didn’t want to think about the people he’d lost. He felt enough pressure to perform, to achieve, without constant reminders of them everywhere.
Ben pulled open the door to O’Malley’s Pub & Grill and stepped into the cozy restaurant with all the enthusiasm of a prisoner headed for the gallows. Calling Oz had been instinctual. Just what he always did. In the moment, it hadn’t felt weird. Now, with the meeting imminent, he was acutely aware that he hadn’t seen his best friend face-to-face in over a year. A couple of texts and the odd phone call. That was what twenty-five-odd years of friendship had deteriorated into.
The bar was dim, your typical brass-rails and dark-wood dive, with stained-glass dividers, beer ads lining the walls, and the requisite pool table and dartboard. There were four large-screen TVs mounted strategically throughout the room, and each and every one of them was tuned to a different sports channel.
Oz was at their usual table in the back corner. Well, it had been their usual table when they used to get together to watch Seahawks games regularly. Ben returned his wave of welcome and headed over. The waitress made eye contact with him as he was pulling off his coat, and Ben motioned toward Oz’s beer. She nodded.
“How’ve you been, man?”
Oz stood and shook Ben’s hand, punctuating it with a slap on the arm. “I was surprised you called. I thought you’d forgotten about me now that you’re Mr. Hot-Shot Business Man.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. Work has been crazy. I’m up for this big promotion and the hours are insane.”
“Oh, yeah? Good for you.”
“Haven’t got it yet but it comes with a raise and a nice bonus. I was going to use it to put a down payment on the cabin.”
“Are you serious?” Oz grinned. “Man, I used to love it when your dad took us to the lake to fish!”
Ben had, too. Of course, they hadn’t been on the ritzy side of the lake, the one with the big rustic cabins. They’d been on the public side, casting into the water and hoping for trout. From their secret spot, they had the perfect view of this gorgeous cabin—the biggest one—across the way, and Ben’s father would spin tales about how great it would be if they lived there. He spoke of silly things, like fishing from the balcony, and encouraged Ben, and Oz when he joined them, to add their own fantastical details, as well. Those were definitely some of Ben’s happiest childhood memories. They’d kept up the tradition until he’d started college and been too busy to join his father.
Too busy doing things he couldn’t even remember anymore. That’s how unimportant they were. And now Ben would have traded almost anything to go back and make better use of the time that had run out too soon.
The waitress appeared with his Heineken, and Ben took a long swig.
“The girls miss you.”
Oz’s reference to his daughters brought a sad smile to Ben’s face. “I miss them, too.”
“Also, Jill made me promise to invite you to Amy’s birthday dinner tomorrow.”
“Oh, my God. She’s what, five now?”
“Yeah. And a real handful.”
“And? How’s the team doing this year?” The flash of hurt in his friend’s eyes made Ben realize he should know. A real friend would know.
“I like our odds for making the playoffs. I’ve got a good bunch of kids this round.” In addition to teaching chemistry, Oz was the junior varsity men’s basketball coach. “But you didn’t invite me here to talk high school basketball.”
“Yeah, it’s… I just didn’t know who else to talk to. I did something intensely stupid on that business trip in Buffalo…”
Ben hit the high points of the past week and a half, and by the time he got to Saturday night’s looming dinner party, Oz was laughing at him, as he always used to do. It felt good. Like the relief of finding something you didn’t even realize you were missing.
“Are you messing with me? Your bosses actually think you’re married?”
“What can I say? Go big or go home, that’s my motto.”
“Well, as far as fuck-ups go, this one’s pretty major.” Oz scratched his chest. “But it’s pretty cool that this girl had your back during such an epic caper, despite barely knowing you.”
Ben couldn’t help his smile. “Yeah. It kind of is.”
“So apologize, man! Who cares if she moved some stuff. I’ll bet that fancy high-rise condo of yours still looks exactly the same as it did the day I helped you unpack your couch and flat screen.”
Ben scratched his eyebrow. “Not anymore. Now the wall is ‘arctic mist.’”
“So you’re pissed that she painted your wall?”
Ben realized how feeble that sounded. “And she opened the trunk.”
“Can I be honest?”
“Sure.”
“Ever since that thing with Mel, you’ve been different. No—” Oz cut Ben’s protest off before he could make a sound. “Hear me out. Before Mel, you were easygoing, you laughed, and you never missed our weekly one-on-one game. Then she shut down your proposal and it fucked with your head. Of course it did! But you’ve been a different guy since then. And I’m not saying that’s all bad. You’re making good coin, you’ve got nice things, that’s cool. But it sounds like this Chloe is helping to put some color back in your life, and that’s great. You need that. I mean, your dad, your grandma, what good are their memories if you lock them up in a box?”
