by Emma Lyon
I didn’t have Cassie’s single-minded thirst for payback. I didn’t even resent Bryce for inviting me, which Cassie took as proof that I still wasn’t over him.
Maybe I wasn’t. Just because the guy was getting married didn’t mean I couldn’t still have feelings for him.
God, I really was pathetic.
“Listen.” Cassie’s voice softened. “This dating service is legit, I swear. My sister hired someone last year for her firm’s holiday party. They’ll set you up with some hottie, you’ll have fun and drink too much, and maybe that will be enough to get you over this asshole already.”
I wished I had her confidence. “It’s still insane.”
“The whole world is freaking crazy. Why can’t you have a little of that crazy for yourself?” she said, with no logic I could discern. “Anyway, isn’t he supposed to be there by now?”
I glanced at the clock and swore. “Fuck. Yes.” I was only half dressed, my pants and shirt on with my tie hanging loosely around my neck and my jacket hanging somewhere. My phone took that moment to buzz, and I saw it was the front door of the building. “Aaaaand, he’s here.”
“Have fun,” she cackled before ending the call.
Fuck. The time for calling it off had passed, though maybe I could pay the guy anyway and go alone. Make up some story about my plus one not being able to make it…which would be seen through in about ten seconds. Showing up with a fake boyfriend couldn’t possibly be more pathetic than showing up alone, could it?
The knock on my door forced me across the room, and good manners kicked in even as nerves tried to pull me in the other direction. I opened the door and….
Stared.
After a few seconds, the guy cleared his throat. The gorgeous guy standing outside my door. Seriously, the hottest guy I had ever seen standing outside my door.
Six feet of fit, well-proportioned perfection. Thick dark hair brushed smoothly off his face, a little longer on top than the sides. Hazel-green eyes, perfect jawline, and just the right dusting of stubble to be devastatingly sexy.
“Uh.”
He smiled. His eyes had widened slightly when I opened the door, like he’d recognized me—which was possible, since my picture had been on a couple of media sites along with my father’s. But he was otherwise the picture of ease, his hands in the pockets of his well-tailored pants, a grin on his face that made my knees wobble.
I dug a name out of my addled brain. “Zach?”
“The one.” His smile burned a path to my groin. I hoped my reaction to him wasn’t obvious. “Can I come in?”
“Oh, yeah, of course.” I stepped back, and Zach went past me into the apartment, brushing by closely enough that I caught a tantalizing whiff of his aftershave.
“Lane, right?”
“Yes. Sorry.” I pulled my brain back from admiring how Zach’s gray suit fit him to a tee, hugging his broad shoulders and the curve of his back, not to mention his ass…. “I need a few more minutes to get ready. Do you want something to drink?”
“I’m good. Take your time.”
Zach wandered to the windows overlooking the red brick and stone historic houses of the neighborhood. I took the opportunity to disappear through the open door of my bedroom to look for my jacket.
“Nice place,” Zach said from the living room.
Like a lot of the buildings in this part of the city, my apartment was in a converted block of older, three-story rowhomes, two bedrooms and fully renovated in a mix of industrial and modern. It was more than what I needed, but my parents had insisted on buying the place as an investment. I paid them rent, of course, but it probably wasn’t anywhere near what they could get for it otherwise.
“Thanks.” I found my jacket and stood in front of the full-length mirror on the closet door to fix my tie. When I went back out to the living room, Zach turned and gave me a lingering up-and-down appraisal.
“You look good.”
My stomach fluttered at the frank appreciation. I wondered if he was flirting with me. The service had been clear that their dates did not include happy endings, which was the only reason I’d agreed in the first place. I didn’t need my name—or rather, my father’s name—caught up in potential scandal. And I had no interest in sex with strangers. Though maybe….
You’re paying him to be here. He’s just being polite. “Thanks,” I replied awkwardly. “So do you.”
We stood there staring at each other until Zach said, “I take it we’re dating?”
I groaned and shoved my hands in my pockets. “I’m so sorry. It’s just this wedding—”
“Hey, don’t apologize.” Zach rocked on his feet toward me, quickening my pulse. “That’s what I’m here for. Want to give me the run-down here or on the way?”
I checked my watch. The wedding was outside the city, and even on a Saturday traffic could be a bear. “The car should be here soon. We should probably wait outside.”
“After you,” Zach said, and the back of my neck tingled as I grabbed my wallet and keys, and as Zach followed me out the front door, I swore I felt every inch of him burning at my back.
Well, I’d wanted to make Bryce jealous. I just hoped I’d make it through the day alive.
4
Zach
Lane freaking Garrett.
I’d gotten his first name from Max but hadn’t put two and two together until I saw him on the other side of the door.
I still remembered him from that night at the bar. Up close he was even more mouth-wateringly gorgeous. Dark blond hair with natural gold highlights, clear gray eyes, and the kind of full lips I could kiss for days.
Not that I would, considering Lane was my client and I was here in a professional capacity. But for the first time, I deeply regretted the no-sex-with-clients rule.
“So, who’s getting married?”
By Lane’s grimace, it was a more loaded question than I’d meant. At least we had some privacy from the driver; the hired sedan had a divider, like a limo. “A friend of the family.”
I waited. Friend of the family couldn’t be enough to cause Lane’s pained look.
“And, uh, he’s a guy I used to date.”
“So, the two of you are friends now?”
Lane fiddled with the sleeve of his shirt. “Not really.”
“Huh,” I said, and Lane shot me a suspicious look.
“What does that mean?”
I blinked back. “Just wondering why you’re going to his wedding.”
Lane groaned and thumped his head on the back of the seat. “Why does everyone ask me that?”
I bit back my immediate response and schooled my face to something more sympathetic. Lane was wound tighter than a slinky, and I needed him less so if we were going to pull this off. “Hey. Listen.” Lane rolled his head toward me, and having those piercing gray eyes so focused on me made me lose my words a second. It was like a burst of sunlight on my face. “You did the right thing, calling me.”
Lane’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Because I am the absolute best at making ex-boyfriends jealous.”
Lane huffed a laugh and relaxed on the seat, which was what I’d been after. “I don’t doubt it.”
The pleased glow I felt from that was a little too dangerous to linger on.
In the few months I’d been doing this, I’d discovered, somewhat to my chagrin, that Seth had been right—I was pretty good at fake dating. Not because I was shallow but because I genuinely enjoyed making clients happy. I liked putting them at ease and watching them have fun. Sure, I’d gotten the occasional asshole who thought that the no sex rule was just a front, but on the whole, the clients were just ordinary people looking for someone to spend time with. It was exactly what Max had said, the first time I met him.
Actually, the first thing Max said was, “I’m disrupting the sex industry.”
“By taking the sex out of it?” I hadn’t known what to expect from Max, but it wasn’t a thirty-something-year-old with Californ
ia good looks, an MBA, and an ocean full of entrepreneurial aspirations.
“Exactly! People don’t want sex these days.” I profoundly disagreed, but hadn’t wanted to interrupt. “They want companionship. They want someone who listens and is present for them.” I actually heard the italics. “Besides, it’s cheaper than therapy.”
“Is it?” I said skeptically.
Max waved that away. “More fun, anyway. We’re giving people what they really want. Real, in-person connection.”
The fact that Max had any clients at all must mean there was some truth to that.
“So, let’s talk basics,” I said to Lane. “We’ll need to know a little bit more about each other if we’re going to convince people we’re dating.”
Lane wrinkled his nose. “Is that what we’re doing?”
Patiently, I said, “You want to show this guy you’ve moved on, right? Make sure he sees everything he missed out on when he let you get away?” I didn’t even know Lane’s ex, but I was going to make damn sure the guy regretted his dick move in inviting Lane to his wedding. “To do that, we need to be convincing.”
Lane sighed. “Fine. Shoot.”
“Okay, first question. Where are you from?”
Lane shifted on the car seat. “Only a few miles north of here, actually, in Maryland. I came down to the city for both undergrad and grad. How about you?”
“New York born and bred.”
Lane cocked his head. “City or state?”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Both.”
Lane rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”
I grinned. “Yeah, I do. I grew up in Queens, stayed in the city for undergrad, but came down here for law school.”
It was Lane’s turn to raise his eyebrow. “Law school?”
“Just finished my second year. Why, you don’t think someone as hot as me can be a lawyer?”
Lane shook his head. “You’re ridiculous.” But he’d relaxed enough to stop fiddling with the cuff of his shirt, and the tense lines around his mouth were easing, so I counted it a victory. Not because a relaxed and smiling Lane was gorgeous enough to take my breath away, but because I was a professional.
Right.
I couldn’t help but tease, “You didn’t answer the question.”
And right there I got the full heat of Lane’s attention again. The gray eyes that were going to burn a hole right through me. Or in my pants. Lane really needed to put a warning on them.
Lane said dryly, “I’m sure you’d have any jury eating out of the palm of your hands.”
I shifted on the seat as casually as I could to hide the growing interest in my groin. “That’s the idea.” I cleared my throat, needing to pull this back to something resembling professional. “So, we need a plausible reason for knowing each other. Did we just run into each other, or did a friend set us up?”
Lane considered that. “My friend Cassie’s sister is a lawyer, and she is responsible for us meeting, if indirectly. Don’t they say the best lies have a grain of truth?”
“Works for me. Cassie’s sister set us up, you took me out on a whirlwind first date at the Ritz-Carlton, followed by rooftop drinks and a magical kiss overlooking the city, and I was immediately smitten.” I stopped because Lane was smiling at me. “What?”
“Literally no one is going to believe that.”
I turned on the seat to face him and propped my chin on my hand. “What you do on first dates instead?”
I couldn’t deny I was flirting, and by the faint flush on his cheeks, Lane was fully aware of it. “I…don’t, I guess.”
“Don’t date?”
Lane shrugged. “Not really.”
That’s a shame, I almost said, but it would just come out as smarmy when I meant it sincerely. And maybe Lane just didn’t like dating. I was the last person to judge him for that, even if I did it professionally now. “So…something more low key. Dinner and drinks at the local pub?”
“Sure,” Lane said, but I could tell the line of questioning was undoing all my hard work from before.
I tried for something a little less fraught. “What else should I know about you?”
That made Lane tense up even more. “My father’s a congressman.” The look he turned on me was just short of challenging. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
I didn’t bother denying it. “Yeah. Actually, I saw you once before, where I work as a bartender. The Quill?”
Lane blinked. “You work as a bartender and an escort, and go to school full time?”
I grinned. “Law school isn’t cheap. But seriously, it doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you. I try to stay as far away from politics as possible.”
“You picked the wrong town to move to.”
“So I’ve been told.”
In the silence that followed, I wondered how I was going to get Lane back to the easy-going banter we were enjoying before. Dating habits and family were apparently out. Lane’s skittishness wasn’t what I would have expected from a prominent politician’s son, but maybe that was what happened when one member of the family got all the attention and the rest lived in his shadow.
Either way, the last thing I wanted to do was freak Lane out. Especially because of the other matter we hadn’t talked about yet. “How comfortable are you with physical contact?”
Lane stiffened. “What do you mean?”
I picked my words carefully. “I mean that if we’re going to be believable as boyfriends, we’ll probably need to touch each other. I’m just trying to get a sense of what level you’re comfortable with. Holding hands? Casual touching? Kissing?”
At kissing, Lane flushed. “To be honest, I hadn’t thought about it.”
I, on the other hand, had spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about kissing Lane. “Want to test it out?”
Lane cocked his head at me. “You want to kiss me.” It was a question and a statement in one.
I shrugged. “Better the first time now than when we’re in front of a dozen strangers, don’t you think?”
Lane turned slightly toward me and mimicked my position of elbow on the back of the seat and chin in hand. “You think you can make it convincing?”
Maybe Lane wasn’t so skittish after all. Maybe he just knew how to play the long game. “Try me and see.”
I half-expected Lane to laugh it off, make a joke to diffuse the tension, but instead he leaned in, put his hand behind my head, and drew me forward.
The shock of Lane’s full lips on mine traveled down my spine and settled into an insistent ache in my balls. I parted my mouth instinctively. Lane tasted like mint toothpaste and coffee. He tasted like fucking heaven. It took about two seconds of kissing Lane for me to go from mostly coherent to dazed and very much aroused.
My hand went to his waist and I shifted on the seat, half tempted to straddle him right there. His warm hand on the back of my neck sent tingles of pleasure down my back, and whatever was going on here, I was all in. All rational thought fled. I clutched at his suit jacket for purchase as every glide of our tongues sent me that much closer to the edge.
When Lane pulled back, still close enough to feel the warm tickle of his breath, I swore I heard a whimper escape me. “Convincing enough?”
I could only stare into those gray eyes, trying to restart my brain enough to say something sexy and witty, something I was sure was on the tip of my tongue.
Lane turned his head when the car pulled into the drive in front of the clubhouse of a very grand, very expensive country club.
“We’re here,” Lane said, straightening on the seat and putting his hand to his tie as if it might have gone askew.
I took a deep breath and tried to get my shit together before the car dropped us off and the play started for real, like nothing had happened.
Like Lane hadn’t just blown my fucking mind.
5
Lane
Fuck.
I got out of the car with my lips still burning from that kiss.
All I’d wanted to do was throw a little bit of Zach’s flirting back at him. Deliver some payback of my own after sitting for an hour in the car with Zach’s Grade A hotness sprawled casually next to me, so hyperaware of him I was like a too-taut bow about to be plucked.
But all the kiss had done was make me that much more aware of him. A fact Zach didn’t help with the casual hand he splayed on my lower back as we went through the clubhouse foyer to the large glass doors leading to the wedding venue in the back.
“Bride or groom?” the usher asked, when we approached the white foldout chairs set up in the flat, grassy area overlooking the lake and golf course. A large white trellis and platform were at the end of the aisle, decorated with pink and white roses. There had to be enough chairs for three hundred people, which didn’t surprise me—Bryce had always been about the numbers.
“Groom,” I managed, and the usher led us to our seats, accompanied by the unobtrusive chamber music of the quartet next to the dais. The sun had gone down behind the trees, but it was still brutally hot. Sweat trickled down my spine and pooled in the small of my back as we were seated.
Zach leaned over and murmured, “Nice set up.” Unlike me, he didn’t appear to be sweating at all, as cool and collected out here as he’d been in the air-conditioned car.
Shivering at the tickle of Zach’s breath in my ear, I said, “Hope’s family is fairly well-known in the area.”
“You didn’t actually tell me your ex was marrying a woman.”
I had an overwhelming and highly inappropriate urge to laugh. I managed to turn it into a strangled cough as quiet descended over the crowd when the officiant, groom, and groomsmen ascended the side of the dais and took their spots.
My stomach dipped. I’d been so distracted by Zach that I hadn’t had time to think about the fact that I was about to watch my ex-boyfriend get married.
I felt a nudge on my shoulder, and when I glanced his way, saw Zach had put his hand out with his palm up in invitation.