From Best Friend to Fiancée

by Ellie Darkins

  ‘Well, good,’ Spencer said. ‘Because I’ve decided—I’m in. I already spoke with your agent, but I wanted to let you know in person. Now I’ve met you—and you, Lara—I see that you’re exactly the kind of person I want my business associated with. Now, I won’t keep you any longer as I believe you have some very important shopping to do.’

  Lara made polite goodbyes and Jannes shook Spencer’s hand, not quite sure whether he was more in shock about the sponsorship or the fact that he’d suddenly found himself engaged to Lara.

  They sat in silence for a few moments, watching Spencer leave.

  ‘Jannes, what the he—?’

  He returned her stare, eyebrows high. ‘Mormor,’ he said. ‘She must have done this.’

  ‘Why?’ Lara spluttered. ‘That’s completely—You don’t just announce someone else’s engagement without even speaking to them about it. Especially when they’re not actually engaged.’

  ‘She’s calling our bluff,’ Jannes said thoughtfully.

  ‘What bluff? We explicitly told her that we’re not together. She’s the one person on the entire planet who actually had all the information about what was going on with us.’

  Jannes shrugged. He couldn’t pretend to understand what Mormor thought she was playing at. ‘Maybe she thinks this will make it harder for us to deny there’s something really going on between us.’

  And maybe she had an endgame of her own in mind. Because, as much as this was a completely bizarre turn of events, Mormor had been right in a way. He had been prepared to let this pretence with Lara fizzle out. Anyone could see that it had been a bad idea to torch the very careful barriers they’d erected between them right from the very start of their friendship.

  * * *

  ‘So I guess we need a ring,’ Lara said at last. ‘Need to stick to our story.’

  ‘Lara, you don’t have to do this.’

  ‘You’ve helped me out. All the family stuff... And it’s not like we have much of a choice now. Spencer thinks we’re engaged. It’ll put your sponsorship at risk if we change our story now. You heard him. I’m part of your squeaky-clean image.’

  ‘Last night...’ Jannes started, and she wasn’t sure where that sentence was going but there was only one thing that they needed to say about what had happened, so she cut him off before he could hurt her.

  ‘We need to forget last night,’ she said. ‘It was a mistake.’

  ‘Well. That stings.’ Jannes looked startled, which he had no right to, considering they’d agreed all along that this was only for show.

  ‘You disagree?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Jannes said quickly. ‘Yes. I know we shouldn’t do it again. I know that if we give in to those feelings we’re going to end up hurting each other. And I don’t want that to happen. But I... I don’t take it back either. I don’t want to pretend that I didn’t have those feelings. I love you and I respect you, and it doesn’t feel right to lie to you and pretend that I don’t feel the way I do.’

  Lara looked at him for a long moment.

  ‘Okay,’ she said at last, her shoulders set in a straight line. ‘You’re right; it wasn’t a mistake. But it was a complication. One that we can’t afford to repeat.’

  Jannes nodded, and Lara breathed out a sigh of relief. ‘So, do we go ring shopping?’ he asked.

  Lara slumped back in her chair. ‘What on earth was Mormor thinking?’

  ‘That she knows what we want better than we do.’

  ‘You’re going to deal with this, aren’t you?’ she said hopefully. ‘Please? Because we cannot have any more curveballs like this. We need to be in control of this.’

  Jannes nodded. ‘I’ll talk to her. I promise. No more curveballs.’

  ‘Then I guess we’re going ring shopping. But this time we need to put an expiry date on what we’re doing. Because Mormor has just complicated things exponentially. Letting a vague dating thing fizzle out is one thing. That’s not going to work once everyone is expecting us to be making wedding plans. We need an exit strategy that works for the both of us.’

  He nodded. ‘You’re right. So we tell people we’re not making any plans until I’m back from the Transat.’

  She felt a twist of anxiety in her gut, and spoke without thinking. ‘In case you change your mind about me?’

  ‘Christ, Lara.’ She could see from the expression on Jannes’s face that she’d hurt him, that she’d said the worst possible thing. But she hadn’t really thought it; asking had been a protective instinct, one that she couldn’t shake. ‘Is that really what you think of me?’ he asked. ‘Why would you say something like that?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Just, I wouldn’t be the first girl you changed your mind about while you were racing. I’m... I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘No. Get it all out. Tell me what you really think of me. Better to hear it all now.’

  ‘I didn’t mean anything by it,’ she tried to lie. ‘It just came out.’

  Jannes shook his head. ‘That’s not true. You meant that you can’t trust me. That you think I’m the kind of person the papers paint me as. That you find their version of me more believable than the person you’ve known for the last three years.’

  She laid her hand on his arm, which was tense under her fingers.

  ‘Jannes, I’m sorry. I was trying to be self-deprecating and I screwed up. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

  He shook his head, twitched his arm from under her hand. ‘I can’t believe you think I’d do that, even to a fake engagement. Like you weren’t the most important—’

  He cut himself off, and she thought that that was probably for the best.

  ‘It’s just that...it’s not like I’m not easy to leave, is it? It was a terrible joke about the terrible men in my life who have found me all too easy to disappoint.’

  Jannes’s hand came up to cup her jaw and she drew in a sharp breath, the feel of his calloused hands on her soft skin sparking a hundred memories of the night before.

  ‘Lara. No one should treat you like that. I’m sorry that you could even joke about that. You deserve better. So much better. Which is why I won’t let myself hurt you.’

  She met his gaze and held it for a moment, before leaning back and breaking the contact.

  ‘Come on,’ Lara said. ‘We should go buy a ring if we’re going to go through with this.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  JANNES WALKED BESIDE Lara down the main street of the town, his hair damp from the sea mist that had rolled in that morning. They drew to a halt outside a jewellery store on the corner of one of the side streets and looked at the diamonds sparkling under the bright spotlights.

  He glanced across at Lara. ‘What do you think?’ he asked, looking along the rows of ice-white diamonds. Lara’s forehead was furrowed, a line appearing between her eyebrows.

  ‘This isn’t really me,’ she said, and Jannes nodded. He couldn’t argue with that.

  ‘I spotted this place yesterday,’ Lara said, linking her arm through his and leading them further down the road. She pulled him into a vintage store he had somehow never noticed, and they both gravitated to the glass case of jewellery in the corner by the window.

  He sneaked a look at Lara, and saw a quiet smile turning up the corner of her lips.

  ‘This more like it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah. Much more like...me,’ she said.

  ‘Am I a terrible fiancé for making you choose your own engagement ring?’ he asked.

  She bumped his hip with hers. ‘As far as I’m concerned it makes you an excellent fiancé. Imagine having to wear something the rest of your life that you didn’t get to choose yourself.’

  In the end she chose a vintage opal, milky white with flashes of colour, set in old yellow gold. It was warm and full of character.

  ‘Do you wa
nt to wear it now or do you want it in a box?’ the shop owner asked them, snipping the thread of the price tag as Jannes handed over his credit card. Lara looked up at Jannes, a question in her eyes.

  ‘Up to you,’ Jannes said.

  ‘Then I definitely want to wear it,’ she said, holding out her left hand. Jannes felt a surge of possessiveness that he absolutely was not entitled to as he slipped the ring onto her wedding finger.

  ‘It looks good on you,’ he said, and before he knew what he was doing his fingers were brushing the nape of her neck and he was touching a gentle kiss to her lips and then to her knuckles. It was just to make their story look real, he told himself as he was doing it. If anyone was to approach the owner of the store about them buying their engagement ring, he would have no reason to think that this was more an arrangement than a relationship.

  The owner cleared his throat, and Jannes realised that they were still staring at each other, their lips just an inch apart. Lara caught her bottom lip between her teeth and then turned away from him and turned to the owner of the store with a beaming smile.

  ‘Thank you so much. I love it.’

  ‘Well, I do like to see people fall in love,’ the owner said, giving Lara a wink. ‘I actually follow you on Instagram,’ he continued. ‘I just adore your feed.’

  Lara fixed him with a radiant smile that almost made Jannes feel jealous.

  ‘That’s so nice of you to say. I’m going to follow you right back.’ And she pulled her phone from the back pocket of her shorts as she was speaking. Three taps later and she turned the phone to him. ‘There. Done. I’m going to tag you as soon as we make an announcement on there. But we’re off the grid for the weekend...’

  ‘Of course you are,’ he said, smiling at them both. ‘Now go celebrate that ring. Champagne all round.’

  ‘Join us?’ Lara asked, and Jannes had to suppress a laugh at the irrepressible way that she made friends.

  ‘If I had someone to mind the shop I’d be there,’ he said. ‘But you’ll just have to have one for me.’

  After Lara had hugged him and snapped pictures of some pieces she wanted to feature on her feed, and had negotiated hard on the price of a pair of vintage platform sandals, they finally made it out of the store.

  ‘Shopping with you is quite the experience,’ Jannes said as they walked back on the main street. ‘I never asked you how work is going.’

  ‘It’s going well,’ Lara said, seizing on the safe topic of conversation and running with it. ‘I’ve been doing some training so I can open my own social media consultancy. There’s only so many brands I can partner with, but if I can train others to do what I’ve done, I can help more people to grow their businesses.’

  ‘Sounds like an interesting pivot.’

  She smiled. ‘Well, I’m not going to stop what I’m already doing. I love the community that I’ve made too much for that. Actually, we probably need to talk about that. It’s going to look weird if I don’t post anything about the engagement. Do you mind if I post a picture of the ring?’

  ‘You’re doing it to save my sponsorship,’ Jannes said. ‘Of course I don’t mind. I’m grateful.’

  ‘No time like the present then,’ Lara said, positioning them so that the sea was at their backs and pulling Jannes in for a kiss, her left hand up to his face so that it was facing the camera lens. He glanced at the screen when she was done, at the ring catching the light where her knuckles rested on Jannes’s cheekbone, sunlight flaring at the side of the frame. Something inside him ached with wanting it to be real. They looked so happy, so right together, that he had to remind himself that it was all for show. That he could never really have the fairy tale that they were presenting to the world.

  ‘You know,’ Jannes said as they got back to his house, ‘we never had a chance to talk about why you even agreed to go along with this engagement charade. I don’t want to make you change your mind but I feel like I should be asking why.’

  ‘Was I not supposed to?’ Lara asked, tossing her tote back to one side as they walked through the house, heading for the deck at the back. ‘I thought you wanted me to go along with it. It wasn’t like I had much choice under the circumstances. I couldn’t really argue with a notice in The Times in front of Spencer.’

  ‘I know that,’ Jannes said, pulling loungers into the sun and arranging them facing out over the water. ‘But now we bought a ring and you’re talking about it on your feed—’

  Lara frowned, and he didn’t think he’d ever seen her do that as much as he had this trip. It didn’t take a genius to work out that he was already hurting her, despite every intention not to.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re having a go at me for going along with it,’ she said. ‘Did you want me to make things harder for you?’

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ Jannes said, returning from the fridge with a couple of cold cans of lemonade and sitting on the edge of one of the sun loungers. ‘I’m not saying I’m not pleased you’re doing it; I’m just saying that I would like to understand why. You’re my friend and I guess I’m just...concerned. I don’t know.’

  Lara collapsed in the lounger next to him, all-out scowling now. ‘You’re concerned by the fact that I’m doing the thing that you want me to be doing?’

  ‘I’m interested in why you’re okay with lying to your family,’ Jannes clarified. ‘To your community, who you just told me mean so much to you.’

  ‘I told you why. You would have lost your sponsorship. I didn’t want that on my conscience.’ She crossed her arms, and he knew he was pissing her off. He knew equally that this was a conversation they absolutely had to have.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been your fault,’ he told her. She didn’t have to take responsibility for his failings, as much as he was grateful for her help.

  ‘I don’t get why you’re making a big deal out of this,’ Lara said, pulling her sunhat down now so that it hid her features. ‘Are you going to start talking about my commitment issues again? Because this looks pretty committed to me.’ She flashed him her left hand. She was right; it absolutely did. It looked committed in a way that struck him deep in his bones, making him wish that he had put a ring there for real.

  ‘Maybe we should talk about them,’ he said gently. ‘Because—and I don’t know if you know this—most people would find a fake engagement quite extreme, even as a way of helping out a friend.’

  ‘It’s convenient,’ she said, shrugging, but he wasn’t fooled by the casual gesture. ‘It will save me a whole load of hassle with my family if I can pretend that we’re together. And it doesn’t cost us anything—it’s not like you even have to turn up to things. But when they try and set me up with cousin Sandra’s brother-in-law’s son, or whoever it is this time, I just have to play the engaged card.’

  He tried to stare her down, but it was impossible with the sunhat and the glasses. She knew what she was doing when it came to avoiding a deep and meaningful talk, he had to give her that. ‘Some people might find it a little constraining—especially given what we’ve said about not doing anything that might undermine our story.’

  ‘But it’s not—it’s the opposite.’ Lara took off her sunglasses and finally looked him in the eye. ‘We both know where we stand. We have all our cards on the table. Neither of us can do anything to hurt the other because we both know it’s all fake from the start. It’s safer, when I know that it’s a lie. It’s better than something like that taking me by surprise.’

  He frowned. ‘Because I can’t hurt you.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Because you’re not vulnerable,’ he pressed.

  ‘Now you’re getting it.’ She put her glasses back on and looked back over the water.

  ‘But once this is over, pain-free with no surprises, aren’t you going to find it hard to be with someone without being vulnerable?’

  Lara still refused to look at
him, so he knew he was on the right track. ‘So I go back to the casual thing I was doing before. No big deal.’

  Except she’d told him she was tired of that. And the reason she avoided anything serious wasn’t because she didn’t want it, but because she was scared of getting hurt.

  ‘This needing the cards on the table thing. Is it to do with your dad?’ he asked, knowing that this was sensitive ground.

  Lara’s gaze was determinedly fixed ahead. ‘Why would you ask that?’

  ‘I’m just trying to understand why you settled for this. For me. When you could have so much more.’

  ‘I don’t know. Why are you settling for me?’

  ‘I’m not settling.’

  He stared at her, knowing he should take those words back, or at least clarify what he meant, but he couldn’t. Being with Lara, even temporarily, even pretending, even if he didn’t have her for real, could never be settling.

  ‘We should drop this,’ Lara said at last, and he could tell from the stiffness of her shoulders that they’d crossed the line and got too close to the truth of what was going on between them.

  ‘So you’re going back to London today,’ Jannes said, and then bristled at his own words. It sounded too much as if he was trying to get rid of her. ‘I think I should come too. I need to talk to Mormor.’

  Lara laughed, and he was relieved at the familiar sound. ‘Because that worked so well the last time that we tried it.’

  His eyes crinkled into a smile. ‘She doubled down so I guess now I have to as well. You don’t have to come with me.’

  ‘Oh, no, I have a few things I want to say to Mormor.’

  ‘Excellent. More fireworks.’

  * * *

  Lara drove them back to London—it seemed stupid to take two cars—and he’d deal with how to get back to Harbourside later. With her eyes fixed on the road in the exodus of cars following the regatta, he could sneak glances across at her.

  ‘What?’ she asked, her eyes never leaving the road.