Bad Engagement (Billionaire's Club Book 10)

by Elise Faber

  He’d never actually seen that many emojis in a row and had spent a good amount of time going one by one before he’d been able to translate the gist of the message.

  And when he’d texted back

  Please spare the old man so many emojis. It took me way too long to figure that out.

  She’d simply replied with another chain of the tiny pictures. Though at least he’d been able to deduce the meaning of the hearts and kissing face emoji and had replied with

  I like kissing you, too.

  Long minutes had passed before he’d seen actual words.

  You really don’t use emojis.

  Is this an emoji? :)

  A beat

  Nope.

  Then. Nope, I guess I don’t.

  Hmm.

  Do I need to read up on emoji etiquette?

  Only if you want to understand my messages.

  He’d laughed out loud at that but then had needed to slip his cell into his pocket and get down to work, otherwise he wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting out of the clinic on time.

  Jaime had focused on getting through his patients, on returning calls and following up on lab work, but when he was on lunch break, he’d downloaded an Emojis for Dummies Guidebook, screenshotting the cover and sending it to Kate, along with a message.

  Prepping for my crash course.

  She’d replied almost instantly.

  Smart. *thinking emoji*

  (see, he’d already learned something)

  Then

  You said, you’re an old man. How old exactly? I may need to rethink my plan.

  Snorting, he shoved a bite of salad into his mouth and typed back.

  Thirty-two. Birthday is August 2nd. You?

  A long, long silence.

  Don’t you know that’s an impolite question?

  Don’t you know that fiancés know these things? *sad eye emoji*

  And okay, now he saw that the tiny and weird little pictures might truly be worthwhile, especially when her reply came through.

  Not the sad eyes. Dear God, my heart can’t take the sad eyes.

  Noted. *another sad eye emoji* Now, tell me. Please?

  I’m alternating between sighing out loud and giggling in my cube, and my coworkers think I’ve gone crazy.

  He frowned.

  Didn’t you eat lunch?

  No time today. Not if I want to be on time. I’ve got a big project that’s due. Note the deliberate use of *sad face emoji* in payback to you.

  Turns out, I’m immune. How old, Red? Then I’ll let you go.

  *eye roll emoji* Thirty-two, but the painful truth is that my birthday is July 22nd.

  Jaime grinned.

  So less old man and more old woman?

  Blasphemy! *cursing emoji*

  The tech came in as he was laughing and told him his next patient was there, and he quickly shoved the last bite of his salad into his mouth.

  I know. It’s terrible. *sad eye emoji* That’s so you’ll forgive me. But I’d better let you work.

  Unfortunately, yes.

  A beat before another message came through.

  I like texting with you, Jaime the Vet.

  He could imagine her looking up shyly as she said that, the same way she’d looked up and said No, I’d rather kiss you the previous night, right before she tugged him down and kissed him within an inch of his sanity.

  I like it, too, Red. See you in a few hours.

  A chain of hearts and flowers and strange little yellow faces was his only reply, but it turned out that he quite liked emojis, especially when a gorgeous little redhead with curves for days and pretty whiskey-colored eyes sent them to him.

  Sparing another minute before pulling his lab coat back on and heading to the exam room to see one of his temperamental feline patients, he opened the app on his phone and ordered lunch to be delivered to Kate’s office.

  He knew her favorite meal. Or at least one that had been featured on her Instagram page more than once—a pear and walnut salad and an apple turnover.

  See? His social media spying had paid off. He knew where she worked and what food she liked and her favorite beach and—

  Pausing, because that sounded creepy, even in his own head, he forced himself to focus and completed the order for a salad and pastry from Molly’s, a city staple that made even the healthiest of meals taste good.

  Not that the pastry was healthy, but he figured Kate deserved a treat, especially when paired with the green stuff, and anyone who was anyone got a pastry when they ordered from Molly’s. Handmade every day by the owner, plumb full of deliciousness, someone would have to be an idiot to not pick one up, especially given how often Kate waxed poetic about them on her page.

  Not that he didn’t agree, but the fact that it was another piece of information from her social media was probably semi-creepy. Regardless, he was chalking it up to paying attention to key details about a woman he wanted to win over.

  Pastries. Not a bad way to start, he could imagine his sister, Tammy, telling him.

  And, considering he’d been well-trained, Jaime knew his instincts on that front were right at least. He might have fucked up with Lori and had his confidence dinged, but he knew after one date with Kate that she was one hundred percent different from his ex.

  She teased but in a sweet way. She’d fought him over the bill (though he’d won, Jaime thought with a self-satisfied smirk). She’d leaned into his touch, rather than shying away.

  Lori had been beautiful, but with a streak of mean. She’d never offered to pay, had hated if he wanted to hold her hand in public.

  Silly, small things. Well, not the mean, but the rest of it hadn’t been obvious at first, or at least not enough to have propelled him into ending things. But then again, Lori had been good at manipulating him, good at giving him just enough affection that he clambered after her, wanting more, starved for more contact, more time with her.

  Look, he understood her wanting to have her own life. He was independent, himself.

  But he wanted more in a relationship.

  He wanted a partner, someone he could share funny news stories or memes or inside jokes with. He craved a connection that didn’t have him second-guessing every motivation and undercurrent.

  Which was why it had been almost refreshing to get the message from Kate.

  Will you pretend to be my fiancé for a week?

  No subterfuge. No hiding.

  Just a request and an in—a way for him to get closer to the fascinating woman he’d been lusting over.

  He was mercenary enough to take it, selfish enough to want to tie her to him, smart enough to know that if he had any chance of success that he’d need to utilize a charm offensive the world had never seen before.

  One glance, and he’d known that she was special.

  One night, and he’d known he was hooked on the drug that was Kate.

  So, he had a plan. A plan that involved several errands after he was done with his clients.

  Speaking of which, a bark in the room next to him startled Jaime into motion. He shook himself, put away his phone, hurried to clean up his lunch. Because yes, he had a plan to make Kate fall for him, but that plan would only work if he didn’t actually fuck up this fake fiancé role.

  And the first step in that was being on time.

  Six

  Kate

  It was 5:56 and she was pacing back and forth along the narrow entryway of her house south of San Francisco.

  One side had an opening to a small kitchen.

  The other opened up into an equally small living room, packed with her too big but cozy microfiber couch. It was soft. It was fluffy. It was a deep, deep shade of violet, and she loved it most of all her belongings.

  In fact, she loved it as much as she loved the back yard.

  And that had taken blood, sweat, and tears to get to its current state. Though, she supposed, the couch had also taken blood and sweat to get it in through the narrow hall. But no tears.
Plenty of cursing, especially from her brother and dad, who’d helped her move in, but no tears.

  She’d smiled at the memory.

  Her parents were so damned proud that she’d managed to scrimp and save enough to buy a house in the competitive Bay Area housing market, her mom only making one comment about how she could sell when she met her future husband because surely, he would want to be part of the house-buying-decision-making process that Kate had been able to easily ignore.

  She loved her mom, but damn, could that woman be a dog to the bone.

  Still, she had inherited her green thumb from her mom and grandma, her taste in clothing that had notes of trendy but had given her the skills to build a wardrobe with classic, tasteful pieces that had lasted years.

  Like the dress Jaime hadn’t been able to tear his eyes off last night.

  That was one of her favorites—sexy, flattered her curves, showed just the right amount of tits and ass to make her appetizing but not cross that line into nip slip.

  Tits and ass?

  Clearly, she’d been watching too much bad reality TV, because that particular vernacular had never been in her vocabulary until she’d begun watching a behind the scenes reality show of strippers and their personal lives.

  Most of the time, reality TV was fascinating.

  Sometimes her consumption habits reminded her that perhaps she needed to throw in a documentary every once in a while, in order to balance out the brain-melting. Still, it was a guilty pleasure, and one she couldn’t feel too guilty for, given that Kate was in advertising. She found people and their habits fascinating.

  What she didn’t find fascinating was the amount of nerves currently swirling around her stomach.

  She should call it off.

  But then she’d miss out on spending the night with Jaime, miss out on his sweet, miss out on the way he’d held her hand, and how he’d kissed her until she thought that her clothes might just melt off into a puddle, not giving one damn that they were on a public street and anyone might see them.

  Public indecency charge? Meh.

  She’d had Jaime the Vet’s lips on hers, his body pressed against hers, his fingers on her jaw, his tongue in her mouth.

  Yeah. Indecency charges would have been worth it.

  But eventually he’d released her mouth, had cuddled her close to his side, and had walked her to her car. She’d been enshrouded in a haze of desire, one she’d wanted to hold on to tightly because it was so potent, but one she’d been forced to pull herself out of because she needed to identify her car.

  He’d made it easier by telling her about Barry the Chicken.

  Who was apparently a rooster, but his original owner hadn’t known that until she’d ended up with a series of very loud, very abrupt early mornings.

  Barry had been rehomed and his current owner lived on a small patch of land with much more understanding neighbors and a love for being up when the sun rose. She’d trained Barry to walk on a leash, and her feisty, feathered companion had become a regular at the clinic.

  A rooster named Barry who walked on a leash.

  “The man is kryptonite.”

  Shaking her head, she gave herself one final glance in the mirror she kept inside her hall closet for just this case—a last-minute outfit check—smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle out of her pretty emerald green fit-and-flare dress, slipped on her flats, and then slicked on one more coat of her Firecrotch.

  Heh.

  Never got old.

  Eyes flicking to the clock and seeing it was a minute until six, she grabbed her coat but didn’t put it on because she wanted Jaime to see her in the dress. Smiling and hoping he’d like it as much as the black one from the night before, she closed the closet door.

  Ding. Dong.

  Her pulse skittered, speeding up, butterflies emerging from their cocoons to fly in circles in her stomach, her lips and fingertips tingling in anticipation.

  “Okay,” she murmured. “It’ll be okay.”

  She strode to the door and pulled it open.

  Then blinked and felt her jaw drop open.

  “Oh my God, your hair,” she moaned, reaching up before stopping herself. Because the man bun was gone.

  Why was the man bun gone?

  He smiled, and she saw he’d shaved off the stubble, too, revealing a strong, clean line that she wanted to run her lips across. “You don’t like it?” he asked, rubbing a hand over the shorn locks on the side of his head.

  Oh, she liked it.

  She liked it a hell of a lot.

  But the man bun was gone, and she hadn’t even really gotten to run her fingers through it or learned how he made his messy bun look so much better than hers.

  “I figured I’d better clean up for your parents,” he said. “They seem a bit traditional, and I was more than tired of it, just had been too lazy to get a haircut.” A blip of uncertainty flittered across his face. “Did I mess up?”

  Her heart squeezed, and she closed the distance between them, running her fingers lightly through the brown locks, not messing them up, but rather giving in to her urge to touch the silky softness.

  “No,” she murmured. “You look too handsome by half.”

  His lips turned up. “You trying to charm me?”

  A shrug, her tone bordering on grandiose. “I speak but the truth.”

  Jaime tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Are you going Shakespeare on me?”

  “Well,” she said. “You are looking at the famous Lady Macbeth from Sierra High School’s production of Macbeth in 2004. I’ll have you know that I got not one but two standing ovations for my performance.”

  “I’m thoroughly impressed.”

  She giggled and started to shrug into her coat, breath catching when he grabbed it from her and helped her slide it on. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you,” she murmured, heart pounding when he gathered her hair at her nape and freed it from the collar of her coat. “For lunch. That was very sweet of you.”

  A brush of his lips across the back of her neck before he released her hair. “You have time to eat it?”

  “Food from Molly’s?” she said. “I made time.” Spinning around, she decided that she would spend the night not second-guessing and hoping that things between them were different, but instead she’d just enjoy being with this man who was nice and sweet and seemed to like her.

  Rising on tiptoe, she pressed a kiss to his lips.

  And just like last night, pleasure exploded through her, shutting off her brain so she wasn’t thinking or worrying or riddled with guilt. Rather, for the first time in a long time, Kate was able to just be in the present.

  His lips moving on hers, his hand cupping her cheek. The spicy male scent of him surrounding her and going to her head more than a glass of wine.

  They kissed until her lungs threatened to explode, and then she dropped back down onto her feet, pulling her mouth from his, her heart beating out of control. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and her lipstick was all over his mouth.

  “Shit,” she muttered. “I Firecrotched you.”

  He’d started to smile, to say something, but then it seemed that her words processed because his mouth dropped open. “What?”

  Which was the moment she realized that this man wasn’t privy to the color of her lipstick. Because his gaze dropped down, scorching a path to . . . well, her fire—

  Yeah, no.

  “It’s the name of my lipstick,” she rushed to say, lifting a hand and rubbing it over his mouth. “I’m sorry. I got it all over you.”

  A wicked gleam in his eyes, a warm palm on her back, trailing up and down, up and down. “You’re apologizing because you Firecrotched me.” Laughter bubbling in his chest, his fingers wrapping around her hip.

  “Fine,” she said, stepping back and mock-frowning. “I won’t apologize.” She reached for her purse, snagging it from the small table she kept near the door, where she’d set it when she started putting on her coat, and caught a glimpse of t
he time. “Crap.” They’d been making out in her hall for almost ten minutes. “We need to get moving.” She made a pitstop to touch up her lipstick, opening the closet door and using the mirror to slick on a fresh coat, then turned and glared. “No more kissing with that non-scruffy mouth of yours. It’s too distracting.”

  He grinned. “So, you like the haircut and the shave?”

  She just kept her narrowed gaze on him. “It’s unfair that you’re so pretty.” A sniff. “And that you had better hair than me when it was long.”

  “I dream about your hair spread over my pillow at night.”

  Silence.

  As in she went silent.

  “What?”

  “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he murmured, coming up behind her, running his fingers through her hair, which she’d left loose to trail over her shoulders. “Your hair is the color of rubies. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it shining in the restaurant. I always thought it was a filter, that it couldn’t be real. But I was wrong.” He bent his head and inhaled. “Roses. Roses and rubies and silk.”

  Goose bumps prickled on her skin, and she melted back against him, the line of her spine colliding with the hard planes of his chest, his abs. “Have you ever felt this way with another person?” she asked.

  “No.” A stroke of those fingers over her collarbones. “Only with you. From the moment I first saw your picture, I knew you were different.”