“How can I even know when you hovered all night like a third party on our dinner?” My eyes narrow. “And please don’t make a joke about threesomes.”
His gaze holds mine. “If it were an option,” he says, suddenly fierce, “I’d never be willing to share you.”
My heart stutters and then speeds up.
If it were an option. There’s a part of me—the stupid part that clearly hasn’t learned its lesson—that wants to ask why it’s not.
I don’t look away, and neither does he. We stand in silence, with the words he just said thickening the air between us. They could have meant a hundred different things, and I choose not to let myself consider any of them.
“Good night, Hayes,” I whisper, and then, without looking back, I walk the rest of the way to my car alone. He doesn’t try to stop me.
If it were an option, I’d never be willing to share you.
I can’t seem to move past that phrase as I drive home. Allowing myself to hope it could mean something is ridiculous and pointless, but the more I think about leaving California, the more it feels like I’m giving up something that matters and matters a lot.
By the time I start climbing the stairs to my apartment, I’m reciting a mantra with each step:
I want to stay.
I want to stay.
I want to stay.
I kick off my shoes as I enter and text my mother. We haven’t been in contact since that angry phone call before the luncheon, and I just need to know that it made a dent.
Hey Mom, I write. We haven’t spoken in a while and I need to book my flight home.
Which means: I need to know if I’m booking a roundtrip ticket. I need to hear you say you’ve pulled it together.
And I see that’s she read it. But she doesn’t say a fucking word in response.
26
“I have a favor to ask,” he announces the next morning.
And here I was hoping he might be a little penitent after last night. How completely unrealistic of me.
“And it’s something so big you can’t even demand it of me, the way you usually would?” I ask. “I can’t give you my liver, you know. I only have one.”
He runs a hand through his hair and it flops forward. I wonder if he knows my heart pinches a little at that small sign of uncertainty. Already the answer is yes. Fine, Hayes, take my liver. Anything you need is yours.
“It’s my sister’s birthday this weekend,” he says. “I want you to come with me.”
Less invasive than losing an organ but nearly as painful. “You need an assistant for a child’s birthday party?”
“No,” he says, sighing. “I need you to act like you’re my girlfriend. I did it for you with your ex, and now I need the same.”
My eyes go wide. So wide I probably look like a comic book character, but I can’t seem to stop. “What?”
“We should run a hearing test on you at some point. I. Need. You. To—”
I wave a dismissive hand. “Yes, I heard that part. I just can’t begin to imagine why you need me when you have half the women in LA begging for your attention.”
“I can’t ask just anyone to pretend to be my girlfriend.” He toys with the lid of his coffee cup. “I need someone they’d actually believe, someone...impressive.”
This I find even more difficult to grasp. “I’m a failed writer who dropped out of grad school, can’t pay back an advance and now works for you, which is—no offense—sort of hitting rock bottom. How am I impressive?”
“You’re attractive and smart, which is a rarer combination than you might think. Though it would help if you wouldn’t describe anything involving me as ‘rock bottom’ when you meet my family.”
I hitch a shoulder, uncertain. Not that I won’t do it. It’s simply that I’m not sure he’s thought this through. He should be taking a celebrity or a surgeon, not me. “What am I supposed to tell them I do for a living? They won’t be too impressed when they learn I spend my mornings getting rid of the women you bring home.”
His eyes narrow. “That hasn’t happened once in nearly two months but you’re still bringing it up. Just tell them the truth—you’ve got a book due this fall.”
“Oh my God,” I groan. “I told you that in confidence. I hope you’re not repeating it to anyone.”
He shakes his head. “Seriously, Tali—what the hell? How many people write well enough to get a major advance based on fifty pages of a book at age twenty-three? You think that’s so shameful? Ask all the women in this city who slept with a bloated old director to get a part. I’m sure they’d gladly trade sources of shame with you.”
I mostly got the advance because I was dating Matt, but I suppose he has a point.
“Fine,” I say. “What do I wear?”
His tongue glides over his lower lip. He’s looking at me, but his mind is far away at the same time. “The beige dress,” he says, nostrils flaring a little. “Ella will fucking hate that.”
“What’s wrong with the beige dress?”
He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Nothing. That’s why she’ll hate it. When you’re in the beige dress, there’s nothing wrong in the entire world.”
I put far more effort into my appearance on Saturday than is called for, cutting short my visit with Jonathan and Gemma—adorably chubby and way more active than I realized she’d be—to see a hairdresser-to-the-stars friend of Ava’s.
I walk out with amazing highlights—subtle caramel and gold like I once got from the sun as a child—my hair falling over my shoulders in perfect waves.
I’m trying to live up to this idea Hayes seems to have that I’m somehow capable of impressing Ella and his dad, but perhaps I’m hoping to impress Hayes too.
When you’re in the beige dress, there’s nothing wrong in the entire world.
No one’s ever said anything like that to me before. Did Matt tell me I was beautiful? Sure. But with Hayes, it wasn’t simply the words. It was the way he said them, bitten off like they were a curse he’d pay for later.
“Look at you,” Drew says over video while I get ready, “putting on actual makeup for your date with your boss.”
I dab concealer under my eyes. “It’s not a date.”
“No, it’s just your boss who said you were the most impressive, hot woman he’s ever met, asking you to pretend you’re his girlfriend and meet his whole family.” Which is not what Hayes said, but I’ve already corrected Drew on this twice and she seems determined to believe her own version of the story. “I would kill to have Six say that. I just wish he’d give me some sign what he’s thinking, you know?”
It seems to me Six has given her plenty of signs what he’s thinking and she doesn’t want to see them. Was I any different with Matt? He showed me in a hundred ways that he wasn’t the right guy. He talked me out of going to my dream school, he persuaded me to drop out of my master’s program. Sometimes the only sign you need is that a guy cares way more about himself than you.
“I think you should find the hottest guy ever and have four amazing months with him,” I tell her. “Just go be your best self, and Six will be eating out of your hand when he gets home. Lipliner or no lipliner?”
She leans back in her chair, tapping her fingers over her chest like a vaudeville villain. “Oh, Tali, you’re in so deep if you’re finally gonna call attention to those yummy lips of yours.”
I groan. “I’m not. I just hate this woman, and she kind of fucked him up, you know? I want to do my best to twist the knife.”
“Wear the lipliner, then,” she says. “I bet you a hundred bucks it winds up on his dick by the end of the party.”
He pulls into the circular drive in front of my building and climbs from the car, eyes flickering over me once and again. He swallows. “The vomit came out of the dress,” he says quietly. “That’s good.”
“You flatterer you.”
He comes around to my side and holds the door. “You look amazing,” he says, his voice low and gravelly. “I’
m...never mind.”
The door shuts, and I decide to let it go. This whole situation is awkward enough without us opening up to each other on top of it.
“We should probably get our story straight,” I tell him when he climbs in, twisting my hands in my lap. How fortuitous Jonathan talked me into a manicure.
“You’re far too worried about this,” he says. “It’s a child’s birthday. No one’s hooking you up to a polygraph.”
I turn toward him. He’s skipped the jacket today and is wearing a deep blue shirt, collar undone, and khaki pants. His hair is a little fucked up, like he’s run his hands through it once too often. I’ve never seen anyone so handsome in my entire life. My gaze drifts to his neck, and I imagine nuzzling his skin there, like a pig after truffles.
“I’m not good at lying,” I tell him. “Otherwise, I’d lie to you all the time. I just need the basics.”
“Fine,” he says, pulling onto the street. “My cock is huge, and you can’t get enough of it.”
“Yes, that sounds like exactly the kind of classy thing your impressive girlfriend would say.” I roll my eyes. “How long have we been together? Where did we meet? Where was our first date?”
A muscle flickers in his cheek. “Just stick with the truth as much as possible. We met six months ago when you were tending bar.”
He glances at me and I worry I’m flushing. I sometimes think about how it might have gone if he hadn’t rushed out. But we are closer to a relationship now than we ever would have been had he tried something. And if it were a relationship, it would certainly seem like a good one. As if we’d really begun to care about each other.
“Where was our first date?” I ask.
“You’re not being interviewed for Cosmo. No one’s going to ask you that.”
I don’t know how he’s so relaxed about this. He’s the one who’ll look like an asshole if we mess this up. “They might. Or they could ask you why you asked me out.”
He rolls his eyes. “Anyone who sees you in that dress will know why I asked you out. Though if you’re as mouthy as usual, they might wonder why I kept asking.”
Hayes’s father and, um, stepmother live on a magnificent estate in Newport, surrounded by fields and trees, completely private. The house itself looks like an English castle, massive and stone-fronted. It even has ivy growing up the sides.
“Oooh,” I say delightedly, smiling wide. “I see why she chose him now.”
He levels me with a stare. “Yet you call me Satan.”
We walk inside, and a maid in full uniform takes the gift Hayes has brought—purchased and wrapped by me, of course—and offers us champagne before leading us to a backyard drenched in late afternoon sun, where there’s an elephant alongside the standard moonbounce/trampoline/swimming pool set up.
He gives me a quick half-smile. He’s as beautiful and confident as ever, but I see something uncertain and young in his eyes that breaks my heart. I’m going to be the best fucking fake girlfriend in the world today, just for him. My hand slides into his, soft to rough, small to large. He squeezes gently as his thumb skims across mine, and my body responds to his touch like it’s starved for attention. I want to memorize every callous, the pressure of it. Sure, I’m doing this for him…but I think I’m going to enjoy it more than I should.
A little girl, blonde and leggy like Ella, springs at him, throwing her arms around his waist. “What did you bring me?” she demands.
“I made a donation in your name to the NRA,” he replies, swinging her into the air. “Happy birthday.”
She grins. “Liar! You did not!”
“Hudson,” says a chiding voice, “that’s enough.”
I glance up to see Ella and Hayes’s father approaching. His father is nearly identical to who Hayes will be in twenty years, and Ella’s beauty is every bit as ethereal and delicate as it appeared in her photos, though there’s something a little icy in her blue eyes. Maybe it’s simply that I know who she really is.
“Tali, this is my father, Michael, and my stepmother, Ella.” I enjoy watching Ella wince at the word stepmother.
“Tali, it’s so nice to meet you,” Michael says, shaking my hand. “I was beginning to think Hayes would never bring a female over.”
My eyes widen. I’m not sure if he’s making a terrible joke about the last time he got introduced to one of Hayes’s girlfriends or if he’s put it so far out of his head, he’s forgotten what he did.
Ella colors prettily. “What a nice surprise. Hayes has never mentioned you.”
Acid begins to drip, drip, drip in my chest. After everything she did, is she really trying to sabotage the first relationship she’s seen him in? Dear God, I’d love to put this woman in her place.
“When would I have mentioned her?” Hayes asks calmly. “I haven’t seen you since the holidays.”
Her smile fades. My hand squeezes his. Well done.
“Has it been that long?” Michael asks. “Madness. We really need to see more of you. Come get some food.” He turns toward the buffet, walking beside us.
“I assume you’re an actress,” he continues to me. “Hayes might have mentioned I’m doing a remake of Roman Holiday.”
Hayes never mentions you, ever. “Oh, I didn’t know. But I’m not an actress. Have Hayes tell you about my amazing British accent, though.”
Hayes smirks at me. “She sounds like a pirate, and all her knowledge of England appears to have come from Mary Poppins and Harry Potter.”
“I quote My Fair Lady a good bit as well,” I agree.
“I wondered where you got it from. Top o’the morning guv’ner,” he adds, in a hardcore Cockney accent that makes me cackle in a very non-classy way.
“What do you do, Tali, if you’re not an actress?” Ella cuts in more forcefully. Her tone has a mocking edge, as if she already knows my answer will be porn star or “I’m between jobs”.
“Oh.” I really hate discussing it, but for Hayes’s sake, I will. For his sake, I’d claim to be an astrophysicist or world leader if I could get away with it. “I’m actually working on my first novel.”
“How lovely,” Ella says. “An aspiring artist in our midst.” She says it as if I’m a child, waving a stick-figure drawing in the air, and this time, it’s Hayes’s hand squeezing mine.
“Actually, Tali received a rather large advance for this book when she was still in graduate school,” he says, a warning in his tone. “There’s nothing aspiring about it. If you’ll excuse us, I’m going to introduce her to Grandmother.”
His arm wraps around my waist, steering me away from them. My hand goes to the small of his back, and it’s entirely for Ella’s benefit that I then let it slip as low as it can reasonably go.
“Sorry,” he says quietly. “I know you didn’t want to talk about the advance. I just couldn’t stand the way she was trying to belittle you.”
“You can tell them anything you want, true or false, if it puts that bitch in her place,” I reply, my voice laced with venom. “But honestly? She’s a total dick. I’m not sure why you even care about making her jealous.”
“This isn’t about making her jealous,” he says, holding me tighter as we start down the hill. These shoes were not made for walking in grass—or walking, period—and he appears to realize it. “Do you have any idea how miserable it is to attend these things on my own? With every single guest seeing me standing alone and thinking, ‘Oh, poor guy. He never really got over her’? Now they’re all thinking, ‘Well done, mate. You got over her in a big way, didn’t you?’”
I feel myself blushing, embarrassingly pleased, as he pulls me toward an older woman, bending low to kiss her on the cheek. “Grandmother,” he says, “let me introduce you to my friend Tali.”
She peers up at me. “Well, well, well,” she says. “This one’s much prettier than Ella, isn’t she?”
Hayes laughs quietly, holding a chair for me and taking the seat on the other side. “Yes,” he whispers, “but you’re not supposed to say th
at aloud.”
“I’m old. I can say whatever I’d like,” she replies. “And how did you manage to find this fine young specimen?”
I smirk at him. This isn’t a Cosmo interview, my ass. I’ll let him solve this on his own.
“She sat on my doorstep and refused to leave,” he says. “Eventually I figured I might as well allow her inside.”
She smacks his arm. “You’re not as amusing as you think. The truth now, please.”
Hayes’s eyes flicker over my face. “I saw her photo on Jonathan’s desk and started looking for her all the time, because she worked at this bar I’d pass on my way home,” he says. Weirdly…it doesn’t sound like a lie. “I saw her reading while she was walking in, even though it was raining. And I thought she was the loveliest thing I’d ever seen in my life, so I followed her.”
He stops, and my heart thuds loudly in the resulting silence. All this time, I thought he wound up at Topside by accident, but perhaps it was no accident at all. Because it was raining the night we met. And I can still remember the book I was reading as I walked in. Maybe he’s embellishing this for the sake of our fake relationship…except it doesn’t feel embellished.
His grandmother clasps her hands together. “And you’ve been together ever since!’
His gaze meets mine. “Not exactly. My assistant got wind of it and begged me to leave her alone because she’d had a hard year and I wouldn’t be good for her.” There’s a tiny note of bitterness, regret, in his voice. “But it worked out eventually.”
I swallow. If this is all true, then Hayes, with his reputation for being careless and selfish, walked out…for me. Is that why he felt so blindsided when I showed up as Jonathan’s replacement?
“I’m glad,” his grandmother says. “You deserve a nice girl, darling. I always thought you could do better than Ella.”
It would never have worked out, of course. Odds are, he’d have hit on me and I’d have shot him down in the rudest way possible. Or he’d have realized I’m generally not a one-night-stand kind of girl. But that what if is still ringing in my brain.
A Deal With The Devil: A Steamy Enemies-to-Lovers Romance Page 16