by Lisa Daniels
He clicked on recent entries, scrolling through ones with bad grammar, and stopped when he saw the heading: I fucked up—pls help.
Amused, he clicked on it, and it spilled open to the image of a woman nervously taking a selfie in what appeared to be a library. He studied her face for a moment. Dark hair. Not really his type. Expressive brown eyes. A dusting of freckles under her eyes, heart-shaped face. Pretty cute.
So, how did you fuck up… ‘Lena Tate’?
The more he scrolled through her explanation and requirements, the more he smiled.
Lena Tate, apparently, had lied to her old school friends that she’d been having gratuitous sex with a dragon shifter, due to a sudden urge to talk about how wildly amazing her life was to her hideously successful not-friends. With a week to go, she now found herself in need of hiring a fake boyfriend to survive through the school reunion in her town.
Three other users are watching this profile. Oskar narrowed his eyes, deciding on the spot. Sure, why not? She seemed entertaining, cute enough, though he didn’t particularly appreciate liars. At least she was honest about lying, he supposed wryly, before accepting her measly offer of five thousand dollars. Most likely all her life savings. She needed to accept his offer as well, but he was confident one look at his profile would probably send her into a fit. The Wainwrights did carry some punch with their name.
Sure enough, within three minutes of his acceptance, she’d accepted back, and most probably was enduring a heart attack.
Perfect, he thought. Time to play the role of a fake lover on my now suddenly unscheduled week off. He called his PA to start adjusting the rota accordingly. He wondered if he’d get to sleep with Lena the first night. Or if she’d be demure and shy as hell. She did look like the type that’d be shy. He continued to stare at her picture, considering her beauty, her natural, comfortable attire that didn’t reveal anything scandalous, like half the other pictures on Date-Monsters. Pictures weren’t reliable, really. People used filters and extra effects to hide blemishes and lines, and make their skin sparkle like vampires.
Still engaged with his PA, Katie Hanson, Oskar arranged for a flight for tomorrow to Wyoming, intending to arrive in Geevor late afternoon. Now invited into a private chatroom with her, he sent the simple message. Hey. I’ll be flying over to Wyoming tomorrow, and I can meet you at your place, your work, or in a location most comfortable for you. I’ll stay at a hotel, so you don’t need to worry about accommodating me.
Her reply came around two minutes later.
Hey! Okay, that’s great you’re staying in a hotel, I don’t have room in my apartment, unfortunately, and the cat might kill you. I can visit you at the hotel after work. I’m busy until six in the evening. Attaching my number to this. Also, thanks again for saving my dumb ass. I really fucked up, as you probably can tell in my desperate plea for help.
He laughed to himself, reading over the message.
I could tell, he replied.
Yeah. She seemed bubbly enough. Maybe too eager, but he could handle that. He was sure there were far worse people out there to pretend to be a date for.
“Hey, boss,” Katie’s brisk, low voice said over the phone. “I’ve never seen you want to book up a woman for an entire week before.”
“Figured I’d shake things up a bit,” Oskar said, clicking off the site and closing down the computer. “And I liked her profile.”
“I’m also surprised you accepted five thousand. Usually you’re at least ten times that price.”
“Five—fifty. Same thing, really.”
“Uh, no. It’s not.”
He grinned, imagining his beleaguered PA face-palming herself. She had told him on one occasion that sometimes talking to him was like pulling healthy teeth. And sometimes she’d entertained the idea of killing him in a long, drawn-out and agonizing way, just so she didn’t have to hear about yet another one of his unscheduled time offs for his one-night stands.
That, to Oskar, just proved that she was one of the best personal assistants that money could buy.
* * *
Oskar’s hotel was four stars, because no five stars plus existed in the vicinity of Geevor, and it seemed to be going for an aquarium-type atmosphere. Green leafy plants lined the foyer, and the windows sported rippling rain patterns and a dark blue tint, giving the impression of an underwater paradise. As the only dragon shifter, he gained a lot of attention when he sat at the bar next to the lobby, so he instead retreated to his suite, lying on one of the twin king-sized beds and hauling out his laptop for some extra work check-ins. Katie was keeping him up to date and staying in a single room next to him, since according to her, he was “too useless to be trusted even to get a coffee for himself”.
Mostly, he knew Katie just wanted to watch over him. Werewolves did have a reputation for being loyal, and Katie was about as dedicated as they came. Tapping away on his laptop, he heard a key click in his suite door, and picked up the familiar, vanilla scent of Katie as she strode in.
“Okay, so I’ve contacted Lena, and she’ll be at this hotel at six-thirty sharp, which gives you precisely…” Katie made a show of checking her watch, though she’d probably memorized the time already, “two hours to do shit-fuck all. Oh, and your brother’s mad that you took yet another holiday without talking to him first.”
“Garren’s a hypocritical idiot,” Oskar replied evenly, rolling on the red satin sheets to face Katie better. He disliked satin, because when you sweated, it clung to the sheets worse than cotton and linen. “He took an entire year off just to screw his way through Europe. In all my time working, I haven’t had nearly that much time. Since we schedule for the weekends, usually.”
“It would be nice if you didn’t consistently piss off the other Wainwrights, though. I barely manage to keep your head above water as it is.”
“Ouch,” Oskar said, pretending to be wounded by her words. “You think so little of me. I’ll have you know I’m perfectly capable of tying my own shoelaces.”
Katie’s pale yellow eyes narrowed as she regarded her boss, and her lips thinned. Oskar recognized the look. Katie was on the verge of reprimand, probably about to tell him yet again why he shouldn’t be doing this. “You know, I hate to admit this, but your father does have a point.”
“Really.” His voice came out flat. “That’s how you’re starting this?”
“I’m willfully ignoring the grandchildren part and choosing to focus on the fact that you are in your early thirties now, and the women’s magazines keep wondering if you’ve finally found someone to settle down with. They also think you’re in some kind of illicit relationship with me, because I’m the only constant in your life. It’s getting old.”
“Who says that this Lena person isn’t someone I’ll choose?”
“She won’t be,” Katie replied. “She’s some nobody human in a nobody town, and your new project just so you can spend some time away from the office and avoid your father foisting yet more attractive women whose names he can’t remember on you.”
“How well you read me,” Oskar sighed, raising up an airy hand. “I need a drink.”
The smartly dressed werewolf pointed at his room service button, which he pressed accordingly. “Boss, my sincere advice is not to get drunk before you’ve even met the girl. We can’t even be sure she isn’t some kind of assassin.”
“Please,” Oskar laughed, finding the very idea ridiculous. “She’s just some single woman who lied like an idiot to people she’s desperate to impress. That doesn’t scream ‘killer.’”
“It could all be an act,” Katie said softly. “It’s well known you’re a fan of Date-Monsters. People will try to get to you this way.”
“Check her out if you’re so concerned,” Oskar said. “Though I’m sure you have already.”
“I have,” Katie reluctantly confirmed. “I don’t see anything unusual about her. No criminal record. No known medical illnesses. Never left the town, never traveled, seems to have worked as a libraria
n. Doesn’t have much of a social media presence, which worries me…”
“Not everyone feels the need to splash their lives all over the internet,” Oskar said. Personally he preferred that. He found the happiest types of people he’d ever met tended to not have that much social media presence. Too busy being happy, he supposed, rather than posting about it.
“I still don’t think you should be here. Everyone’s advised against it.”
“I’ve always liked to do things people tell me I can’t,” Oskar said, giving a thumbs-up to Katie. “Finally,” he added, when there was a knock on the door. “I was waiting for that damn room service.”
Chapter Three – Lena
Standing outside the hotel, Lena’s insides resembled scrambled yolk. She had no idea what to think or expect, except that this man, this shifter, had responded barely two hours after she put her ad up, and the moment she saw the Wainwright name, all brain functions failed her.
Oskar Wainwright. One of the sons of the founder of Date-Monsters, using the site. It wouldn’t be a false identity, the site would badly punish identity theft. As for his profile photo, and her subsequent Google search, she came to one horrifying conclusion. He was completely out of her league in every possible way. It wasn’t even funny, the kind of social gap that existed between them. She might as well have been dirt, and him the stratosphere. She also saw that his regular payment acceptances were completely out of her budget as well. Five thousand was about the most she could scrape up without accidentally ending up homeless, and a necessary consequence if she wanted to maintain her fiction to her school buddies that she was somehow having the best life ever, and experiencing lots of hot, mind-blowing sex with the apex shifter.
Really, she’d put her foot in that one. About four people had come into the library earlier today, asking about the boyfriend she was supposed to have, and she’d tittered like some brainless airhead and told those customers that she was meeting up with her man later.
Maybe he misread my payment, she thought desperately, hovering outside the hotel to gather her courage. Maybe he saw it as fifty thousand, not five. Then she reminded herself with a laugh how absurd that was. No, someone like Oskar Wainwright didn’t worry about money. A man, no, dragon shifter like him was made of it, and grew up with a damn silver spoon in his pointy little lizard mouth. If she was a rich, single person who enjoyed one-night stands (she wasn’t completely naïve, she had done her research), then someone like Lena probably added up to some amusement project to him. A “why-not,” and a “who-cares?”
She also wasn’t stupid enough to ignore the fact that he’d probably try to bed her that very evening, because that was simply how he operated.
I’ll have to refuse him, somehow. But what if the others start asking about our sex lives? What if I don’t? Shit. Dilemma of a lifetime. But did it have to be a problem at all? I did pay five thousand for him, she thought, with a surge of something else churning in her guts. Not a familiar emotion, not something she wanted to think about too closely. Why can’t I have some fun?
Yeah. She’d paid for this man. Regardless of whether or not it was a measly sum, he’d still accepted. Somehow. Though she still struggled to wrap her head around it, because Oskar Wainwright. In a hotel. Waiting to play the part of her fictional dragon shifter boyfriend.
Before she lost her nerve, or risked being spotted by someone who recognized her from town, she pushed through to the entrance foyer, heading over to a rather stern, stiff-backed receptionist who took one look at her dress and apparently found it wanting.
Sure, it cost her something like forty dollars, but it was good for her. Blue with floral pink flower patterns on the edges, form-fitting, not revealing too much… maybe it did make her look younger, but seriously, it was a good dress.
“I’m here for… Oskar Wainwright,” she said, with a slight squeak to the end of her sentence.
“Are you, now?” the man said, in a voice that suggested she was some kind of annoying, buzzing fly in his company. “And you are…?”
“Lena Tate. We’ve arranged to meet here,” she said, trying her absolute hardest not to snap at this guy. “You can check with him if you want.”
The man, who wore the nametag J. Hollis, gave her a supremely disdainful once-over, and she gritted her teeth to stop herself from just punching him in the face and ruining her date before she’d even started. Five thousand dollars. Don’t fuck this up, Tate.
She instead imagined Chloe’s astounded face, brought on as a result of Lena turning up with Oskar hanging off her arm. She imagined all the stares, all the I didn’t think she was serious, and hoped that reminder would be enough to keep her temper in check. The receptionist called into Oskar’s room, then very slowly lowered the corded phone.
“It seems… he is waiting for a Lena Tate,” the receptionist said, scowling as if he couldn’t believe someone like Oskar Wainwright would possibly intend to associate with someone like her. “He’ll be down in the foyer shortly.”
The dress didn’t look that cheap, did it? Or was it simply because she wore no brands, like Louis Vuitton or Gucci or something? Maybe he only judged by the worth of someone’s outer layers. The whole boys with their toys, girls with their expensive handbags and sun-tanned skin thing, maybe.
She stood there, awkwardly, occasionally making evil eyes with Hollis, until the sound of two sets of footsteps clacking on a hard surface drew her attention, and her eyes rested for the first time upon Oskar Tate, dressed up in a neat, tight-fitting blue suit and a blue bow tie, with slight darkened stubble upon his chiseled jaw. Her eyes went wide, and every single logical function in her brain stopped working, encountering blue-screen error.
Desperate to save herself from gaping like some hillbilly, she snapped into her professional customer service manner, dragging her mind out of blind panic to some semblance of calm. “Ah, it’s good to meet you at last!” And yes, her voice was higher pitched than normal. She stuck out a quick, awkward hand, and he took it with amusement twinkling in his amber, almost orange-colored eyes. Shit, she could feel the dragon emanating from his body. The temperature of his hand was hotter than hers, and everything in his demeanor and attitude made her want to submit to him, but she kept herself ramrod straight, her smile fierce and bright. “I was having trouble getting it through this guy’s head that I was to meet you. Apparently I look like a tramp or something.”
The receptionist, well within hearing range as she intended, went rigid and slack-jawed with fear.
“Is that so?” Oskar turned his intense gaze upon the receptionist instead, and there was a burst of something from him—a scent powerful, with a faint ashen taint to it, that made the receptionist shrivel into himself. Lena locked her jaw, hoping her eyes hadn’t gone too protuberant. “I hope he didn’t keep you waiting too long before he called in.”
“Not too long,” she said, fully aware they were still grasping hands. She tugged lightly, and he let go, though not without a sly thumb rub against her knuckles. The unexpected gesture sent molten liquid through her arm, and she had to take a very long, slow breath. Oh boy. Dragon pheromones. Was not expecting that. They were fogging her brain slightly, making it hard to concentrate. “Though I was considering punching him at some point.”
“J. Hollis,” Oskar said, reading the nametag. “Do you think Lena looks like a tramp?” He made a show of presenting her to the receptionist, who was as white as milk, most likely shitting bricks. Lena checked out the woman next to Oskar, who had her arms folded, amusement tugging at her lips. Yellow eyes, like Chloe’s husband. It took a moment for Lena to place her.
Right. That’s the PA, I think. Katie something. Werewolf and proud.
“Oh no, not at all. She looks… lovely.” The receptionist gave an unconvincing smile, and a very convincing swallow of whatever lump was in his throat. “Very lovely.”
“So you don’t think I look like a sack of shit?” Lena asked innocently. “Or smell like one? Because your nose was up
here.” She gestured to the ceiling.
Oskar made a choking noise, and she turned to see him stifling a laugh. The receptionist, meanwhile, seemed to have run out of words, and only stared in that panicked way a victim had, begging for someone else to save them from the situation.
Served him right.
“Let’s get you out of here before you wreck him more,” Oskar said, now politely holding out his arm, which Lena locked into, feeling as though she walked on springs. Something about that defiance and the sheer, intoxicating presence of Oskar right next to her, meaning that this was indeed real, and not some kind of cruel hoax, made everything in her float, and her mind giddy.
“I’ve got some places lined up for dates,” Katie said, slipping into step next to them as they left the hotel. “All of them central locations within Geevor so that you can be seen with one another in sight of anyone who cares to look.”
“Trust me,” Lena muttered. “Everyone cares to look. Not much going on that people don’t know about. This town is tiny like that.” It was true. Small towns had people who didn’t stir the little pond they lived in, because everyone knew everything about everybody. Which was also why Lena’s little lie was utterly dumb, and why she’d just spent five thousand dollars desperately trying to cover up her lie instead of admitting to it, and therefore humiliate herself in front of her old school buddies.
“I do recommend you two find out more about each other first,” Katie said absently, “just so if you do bump into anyone, and they ask questions, you’re ready to answer.”
“Oh,” Lena said, gaping at Katie, suddenly feeling shy. “Right. That’s—that’s a thing that needs to happen.” Jesus, she hadn’t even thought that far ahead. A few cars flashed by on the small road outside the hotel, rumbling as they moved over gravel and potholes that hadn’t been fixed for years. The faint smell of wet asphalt lingered in Lena’s nostrils from the rains earlier that afternoon.
