by Elise Faber
They all cracked up, even Sera because though the laughter was about her, the tone was different and for the first time in forever, she felt as though the person she was presenting to her friends, to the world, was the person she was on the inside.
And her friends didn’t care.
They accepted her and moved on.
As the conversation turned to other things, movies and TV shows and most importantly, books, Sera wondered if perhaps Tate could accept her “as is” too.
Twelve
Tate
His walking into Sera’s office was becoming a regular thing.
Three times in as many days.
Though this was the first time she greeted him with a smile.
“Hi,” she said, standing up and rounding her desk. His mind took note of every detail of her appearance in a heartbeat. Blond hair tumbling down her back, white silk shirt with two buttons undone at the collar, the black pencil skirt that used to drive him to distraction as she’d climbed the stairs in front of him during the showings.
Yes, pig. Yes, she was fucking incredible.
But today it wasn’t her clothes that threatened his sanity.
It was her toes.
She’d slipped off her heels and was padding toward him in bare feet. Which was sexy as hell and probably made him some sort of weird fetish-obsessed freak, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from the slender lines of her feet, the pastel blue painted nails. It was like he’d been granted special access to a side of Sera that the rest of the world wasn’t allowed to see.
He liked it.
He wanted to know everything about her.
But this wasn’t about that. She was out of his league, deserved better than him.
“How are you?” she asked, coming close enough that he could smell the floral edges to her shampoo. She rose on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.
“Good.”
A single rasped-out word born of longing so intense he wanted to slam her office door shut and bend her over her desk. He’d yank up that tight black skirt and—
She dropped to her heels, took a step back. “Um . . .”
Tate cleared his throat. “Hi.”
Not exactly Shakespeare, but at least she wasn’t running screaming from the room or searching frantically for her car keys.
“How was your day?” he asked, finally putting on his semi-normal human façade. Go social skills.
She took his hand in hers, tugged him to the pair of chairs in front of her desk. He found he didn’t mind being led around like a puppy, so long as her fingers were laced with his and she was smiling up at him.
“Why are you being so weird?”
“I’m not—”
Blue eyes filled with mirth. Teasing him.
And somehow, he relaxed. Or maybe . . . it was just that Sera made it easy for him to relax.
“I am being weird,” he admitted. “You make me nervous. Especially when I suddenly start getting phone calls from Heather O’Keith and Rebecca Darden.”
Sera gasped. “They didn’t!”
He chuckled. “Surprisingly, or maybe not, I suppose, they both threatened to barbeque my balls with a flamethrower if I hurt you.”
Her cheeks went pink, and he found himself unable to stop himself from brushing his thumb along them.
“But after the threats, they were very helpful. Heather wants to meet to discuss FundHer.” He paused, waited for her eyes to meet his. “Thank you for that.”
She shrugged. “It’s nothing.”
“Not to me.”
There was a beat of quiet, not uncomfortable exactly, but filled with a plethora of unsaid things.
After a moment, he brushed her cheek again, her skin like silk against his thumb.
“Rebecca offered to write our prenup.”
She snorted.
He laughed. “I took her up on it.”
A grin that stole his breath. “Bec is the best lawyer around, and even though her specialty isn’t in the prenup-marriage-divorce-annulment portion of the law, my friends have given her lots of practice.”
“It pays to have good friends.”
Her expression softened. “Yes, it does.”
Tate didn’t have a great response to that. In fact, he didn’t know why he’d said that, exactly. He was a loner, aside from his best friend, Keith, and the bastard had gotten married the previous year, so if Tate was being honest, he was closer to his computer than anyone with real flesh and blood.
Fuck, he was going to turn into one of those weird inventors, a basement full of humanoid robots as his only company.
Or maybe you could not fuck it up with Sera. How about that?
He blinked, realized he’d been quiet for too long. Well, he wasn’t doing too well with that, was he?
“Here.” He thrust an envelope at her.
Startled, she scrambled to grab the manilla paper, but because he’d all but thrown it at her, the envelope fell to the floor.
“Sorry,” he said, lurching for it, managing to miss it completely, and cracking his head against Sera’s.
“Ouch,” they both said simultaneously.
Smooth, moron.
“Sorry,” he said again, grabbing the packet from the carpet. “I was—”
He glanced up, saw her face was very close to his, but instead of staring at him with derision in her expression, irritation that he could be such a bumbling fool sometimes, Sera’s eyes were soft.
“Why do I make you so nervous?” she teased.
He relaxed, but not enough to stop his signature blurt. “Because you’re so fucking beautiful that it takes my breath away.”
Her lips parted on a surprised inhale, eyes sliding away—
“No,” he said. “Don’t do that.”
Gaze back on his, the deep blue of her irises absolutely stunning. “Do what?”
“Don’t look away when I give you a compliment. People always do that when they don’t believe it, but if there’s one thing you can be certain of, it’s your beauty.”
A sad smile. “Except, beauty is the one thing that doesn’t really matter.”
“On the outside, yes,” he said. “I agree. It doesn’t make one damn bit of difference. But yours is on the inside, sweetheart, and that’s why it’s so fucking distracting and wonderful and . . . oh shit,” he hurried to add. “I didn’t mean to imply that you’re not gorgeous on the outside because—”
Fingers to his lips. “Tate.”
“Yeah?” he asked, though it sounded a lot more like “Shmah?”
“What’s in the folder?” She dropped her hand.
“The Monroe listing,” he said carefully.
“And is that the only reason you came by?”
He could have lied, probably should have to keep it strictly platonic. But Tate was way beyond that now, and pretending that his being there had nothing to do with the fact that he couldn’t seem to get Sera out of his mind wasn’t working for him.
“No.”
A stiffness he hadn’t even realized was in her frame disappeared at that one word.
“I came because I wanted to see you.”
Her lips curved. “Good.” A nod. “I wanted to see you, too.”
His smile was dopey. He knew it. He accepted it.
“So along that vein, can you do two things for me?” she asked
His grin slipped, memories of Priscilla demanding one thing and then another and another invading his brain.
“First, can you kiss—” She froze, eyes intense. “Tate?” she asked. “Why’d your face do that?”
“Do what?” he asked, shoving it all away, focusing on the fact that her first request was a kiss.
Because, of course it was.
Sera wasn’t Priscilla, and he wasn’t the gullible boy he’d been back then.
“Why did your face go all dark?”
“It’s nothing,” he muttered.
“It’s something.”
“What were you going to ask?”
&
nbsp; She didn’t deny him the answer. “For a kiss and dinner.”
“Oh.”
Then silence. A long halting moment before Sera said, “Look at me, Tate. Before, you wanted me to understand how you see me.”
He nodded, though it wasn’t really a question.
“Now, I need you to know this: I don’t want your money. I can buy my own things. I don’t know where we’re heading or what the future holds.” Her face softened. “I just know I like you and want to spend more time with you.”
This woman.
Damn. How had he ever existed without this woman in his life?
“I want that, too,” he said.
“Good.” A pert grin. “So, where’s my kiss?”
Tate didn’t need to be asked a third time.
“So,” Sera said, over the top of her menu. “Are we going to talk about it?”
He glanced up from his own menu. “Talk about what?”
One brow lifted. “Why your first inclination is that I’m going to ask you for something.” She set the menu on the table. “I know a little of what it’s like to be viewed as a meal ticket, know how devastating it can be to not know if someone likes you for you or for what you can give them.”
His fingers went limp, the paper menu dropping to his plate. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Put my experience into words that make sense when I can’t even begin to articulate them myself.”
A corner of her mouth tugged up. “Because I’m brilliant?”
He laughed. He actually laughed when thinking about Priscilla and his parents. “Yes,” he murmured, reaching across the table and squeezing her hand, “you are.”
Her skin was soft beneath his, her eyes gentle, and so even though he’d never admitted this to anyone, had barely admitted it to himself, he found that with Sera looking at him so kindly, he couldn’t not tell her the truth.
“You already know I was a nerd,” he said.
She scoffed.
“No,” he told her firmly, “I’m not saying that to be funny or self-deprecating. I was such a nerd. I didn’t fit in with anyone and when I began skipping grades, it got even worse.”
“Because you were so much younger?”
“I—” The waiter came over and they spent the next few minutes ordering their food and drinks.
Sera touched his hand. “You were saying about being so much younger?”
Tate shrugged. “Just that, yes, that was tough. I was scrawny and so much less emotionally mature than the kids in my grade, but that wasn’t the worst part, I guess.”
“What happened?”
“Little stuff, really.” Another shrug. “I got a scholarship to a great private school, one my parents would have never been able to afford to send me, and the kids, as kids do, made fun of my used uniform as well all the other stuff.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Kids can be such assholes.”
“Yes. Exactly that,” he said, “But the teasing was easier to get over. It was my parents that made it tough.” He paused as their server brought their drinks then answered the question in Sera’s gaze when he’d gone. “At first it was just comments here or there, supposed teasing about them putting so much effort into driving me across town to the school because I was their meal ticket and how I’d better make a lot of money so that they could retire early.”
“Ick.”
“Yeah. And then I went to college, invented the app, and the comments never stopped.”
“They became more?”
He nodded. “They became asks—to borrow money for a bill, a car payment. I didn’t care about that. I wanted to help them.”
“Of course, you did.”
“I bought them a house, cars, then a vacation home because they’d always wanted to live on the beach.” He tugged at the collar of his shirt. “I figured it was the least I could do. But it never stopped.”
She reached across the table, laced her fingers with his. “I know something about parents not stopping.”
Yeah, she did.
“And so what happened?”
He winced.
“That bad?”
“I was engaged before.”
Both brows came up. “What happened?”
“I’d gotten used to the asks, but with Priscilla, they never stopped,” he said, remembering the way she’d pouted when he didn’t buy her something, how she’d given him the silent treatment for days or even weeks afterward. “She was the first girl to show any serious interest in me. I was young, stupid, too focused on thinking with my dick.”
Sera lifted her glass, took a sip of the fruity cocktail. “So she was beautiful and pursued you.”
“There you go again, putting my words into actuality.”
She smiled. “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s talking.”
He lifted her hand to his mouth, pressed a kiss to her palm. “But yes, that was it. And the asks were so small at first, so innocuous, and between Priscilla and my parents and the long-ass days, I didn’t really process, I guess, that things had gotten so out of control.”
A squeeze of her hand. “How did things implode?”
“I didn’t want the huge five hundred guest wedding soiree with swans and gold leaf ceilings and floating handmade crystal lily pads in the aisle and she freaked. Broke every dish and vase in the house, threw my clothes in the swimming pool, and stormed out. Only . . .”
“Only what?”
“Only that time I didn’t chase after her.”
Sera leaned back as the server brought their dishes. “I’m guessing she came back.”
He nodded. “A week later, after having been photographed with the CEO of a rival company. She begged me to start over, said she was just stressed with the wedding plans, but I’d had enough. I knew that we could never go back, that though things had mostly seemed good and normal before then, they weren’t. And I . . . I just couldn’t do it all over again.”
“I think that’s really mature.”
“I pulled back from my parents, too,” he murmured. “I didn’t want to but—”
“You had to start fresh.”
A nod. “And most of the time, computers are a lot easier to deal with than people.”
She laughed then mirrored him when he picked up his fork and began to eat. “Did you—?” She broke off. “Never mind. You already talked enough heavy stuff for one night, I think.”
He put down his fork. “What were you going to ask?”
“Just that . . .” She bit her lip. “Did your parents . . . ever come around?”
“No,” he said softly. “No, they didn’t.”
They exchanged a look that spoke of difficult parents and hurt-filled childhoods and then Sera reached over and cupped his cheek. “No asks from me, okay?” She said. “I promise.”
His heart pulsed and he put his hand over hers, let her see how deep his feelings for her ran. “The thing is, sweetheart. You’re so different from Priscilla that it’s not even funny. I want you to ask. I want our relationship to have give and take. I just—”
“May need reassurance that I’m not her every once in a while.”
“Brilliant woman.” He turned, let his lips brush her palm. “Yes. Exactly that.”
“Good.” She popped a bite of her dinner into her mouth. “Also, this just in, Priscilla is a stupid name anyway.”
He snorted, the twinkling in her eyes making his cheeks crease. “I’m not sure she’d agree with you.”
“I’m not sure we give a damn what Priscilla thinks.”
He tapped a finger on his nose. “Touché.”
With that, they shifted the conversation to lighter topics, and despite how much he’d revealed, how raw the topic normally made him feel, Tate didn’t feel flayed open.
He was starting to feel . . . put together. More whole than he’d felt in a lifetime.
Because of the woman sitting across from him.
And somehow, that wasn’t t
errifying.
Thirteen
Sera
She’d been blindsided.
By her mother.
And organza samples.
Organza.
Barf.
Barely more than a week of a fake engagement, and Sera was losing her mind. Phone calls. Emails. Buckets of flower samples on her front porch. Binders of stationary samples on her kitchen counter—
And how in the hell did her mother get into her house anyway?
She’d purposely never given either parent a key for exactly this reason and . . . she sighed and crossed over the threshold into her office, facing the gauntlet ahead.
“What do you think of this white for your dress?” her mother asked, holding up a swatch. “No. This one is better.”
Sera knew weddings, had been obsessed with them for the better part of her life, and even she could see absolutely no difference between the two samples. She also, and more importantly, had no intention of allowing her mother to have any say in the wedding.
Fake wedding. Or semi, sort of fake, sort of real.
Yeah, couldn’t forget that.
She moved around her desk to stow her purse in her bottom drawer, ignoring her mother’s one-sided soliloquy. Then she made a mental note to have a discussion with Hector about allowing people into her office. She was really tired of being blindsided.
Sera unlocked her computer, scanning her emails as her mother monologued her way through planning a wedding that wasn’t going to happen.
Or not the way her mother wanted.
Her phone buzzed.
Still on for dinner?
Tate. She’d seen him every day over the last week—two dinners, one lunch date, three coffees, and that evening they were going to her favorite restaurant on the waterfront.
God, yes. Get me out of here.
A beat before her cell vibrated again.
Annoying clients?
Her lips twitched.
If only.
My mother.
She added an angry face emoji for good measure.
Well, this is convenient then.
