Fake Boyfriend

by Miley Maine

  I hugged him tight and resisted the urge to baby talk. “We have to get back home, little buddy. Your mom is going to be waiting for us.”

  He knocked his head into my neck and gurgled as I patted him on the back. He needed a nap, and I had to take a shower. Apparently this dinner would be dressy, and even though I was a little nervous about eating with the Laurents and their guests, I was looking forward to having some adult interaction. Usually the Laurents went out for dinner, or if Mr. Laurent wasn’t home, Mrs. Laurent didn’t come to the dining room.

  The chef always made dinner for me and Gabriel, and sometimes he joined us to eat, and sometimes I could convince Amelia, the housekeeper to join us, too. Gabriel loved to socialize, and he ended up getting most of the attention during dinner. If we all ate together, Amelia spoke English to Gabriel, and the chef let me practice my Spanish with him.

  By the time we arrived back at the villa, Gabriel was sound asleep and I put him in his crib. As I was leaving his room, Mrs. Laurent appeared in the hallway.

  As usual, she was stunning. She was one of those people who always looked polished, whether she was in a cocktail dress or her pajamas. Not that she wore any ordinary pajamas; she wore silky nightgowns. When I’d started working for the Laurents, she’d made me pack away my University t-shirts and my old pajama pants with llamas on them, and she’d bought me pretty cotton pajamas. They weren’t slinky or revealing – in fact, if I’d been back home in Alabama, I could have worn them out and no one would have noticed they weren’t regular clothes.

  “Hello, Kate,” she said. Her accent was beautiful. I loved listening to her talk.

  “Hello, Mrs. Laurent,”

  “How was your time with Gabriel?”

  “It was really good. He loved the park as usual, and waved at the flamingos over and over.”

  “Wonderful,” she said. “I’m pleased that you are always providing stimulating experiences for him.” She glanced at my hair. “Once you’ve showered, I have some lovely dresses for you to try on for dinner tonight. You may choose the one you prefer.”

  She followed me into my room, where she’d laid out four party dresses on my bed. Wow. These were way nicer than my prom dress had been, all for a dinner at home. One was red, one was teal, one was black. The other was a shimmery champagne color.

  “I will leave you to choose a dress. When you have chosen, hang the rest in the closet. When you are dressed, choose a pair of dressy sandals from your closet. Then come to my room. I have someone to do your hair and makeup.”

  Okay. First a party dress, now I was getting my hair and makeup done for a party at the house.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Laurent,” I said, and she was gone, leaving me staring at the pile of fabric on my bed.

  She was only around thirty-four or five, and she didn’t really seem older, but she was remote, and far away. She didn’t treat any of us as if she thought she was better than us, but there was an odd separation with her, unlike with Mr. Laurent. He was pleasant, but all business.

  Maybe it was because she was so insanely rich. I’d never spent time around rich people. Sure, there were wealthy students at the University of Alabama, but most of them weren’t in my social work classes. And by wealthy, I meant they had a BMW or a Mercedes, and their parents had a big house in Mountain Brook, Alabama, or Madison, Mississippi, and they took a trip to Park City, Utah to ski every Christmas. None of them were rich like the Laurents. None of them had their own staff that lived in their house, or owned their own plane, or had homes in multiple countries.

  I pulled out my phone and snapped a photo of all the dresses. Not that I had many people to share it with. My friends were not impressed with the Laurents’ lavish lifestyle.

  Some of them balked when I texted to tell them how things were in the Laurent household.

  “You’re like her grown-up doll!” one of my friends had texted, in all caps.

  My other friends just laughed, and teased me about being a “servant”.

  “So much for being a strong, independent woman, another friend wrote. They’ve got you on a diamond leash.”

  My best friend Sarah, a fellow social worker was outraged that I’d taken the job. “There’s nothing wrong with working for a wealthy person,” I’d insisted.

  “Right. You spent four years speaking about social justice, and now you’re raising someone’s child because his parents can’t be bothered,” Sarah said over a video call one night. “He’s probably a drug dealer!”

  “He’s not a drug dealer!” I’d hissed, trying not to yell. Was I a hypocrite? There was some truth to it, I supposed. I wanted to travel. I wanted to see the world. And I wanted to be a social worker. But until I got my student loans paid off, and helped my sister with her bills, those things couldn’t happen.

  And I didn’t want this life forever. I wanted to help people. I wanted to help kids without so many luxuries, kids who grew up like I did.

  Maybe I’d text my sister, after I was all fixed up. At least she wouldn’t give me a hard time.

  After I’d showered and scrubbed every inch of my body and conditioned my hair with the expensive products Mrs. Laurent provided, I chose the red dress. With my dark hair, I could pull off a bold color, or at least, that was what my sister told me a long time ago. The bodice was fitted, and so was the waist of the dress, and then it flared out, like a cocktail dress. I twisted my arm around backward, and I was almost able to get the zipper up all the way. I chose a pair of black sandals with a three-inch heel. That was the tallest I could manage. Before I’d taken this job, I’d only worn heels three times: at my prom, my graduation, and once when I was a bridesmaid in my aunt’s wedding.

  Once I got the heels in place, I walked to the mirror, only wobbling a little. I smoothed the dress down with my hands. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but the dress was sexy. It clung to my body without being too tight, and the length of the hem showed off my tan legs.

  I picked up my phone and took a selfie. This time I sent it immediately to my sister.

  As soon as it went through, the phone rang. Before I could say hello, my sister was squealing into the phone. “You look hot as hell! Push those shoulders back! Show off your legs!”

  “Ashley! Calm down.”

  “No,” she said. “I will not calm down. Quit acting like you don’t have any right to wear that dress.”

  My cheeks flushed as red as the dress. I’d always liked looking clean and put-together, but I’d never been comfortable with looking sexy. It just wasn’t me.

  My sister wasn’t done. “I’m glad you’re not wearing one of the potato sacks you wore all last summer.”

  “I was working at a children’s behavior clinic! I had to be comfortable.”

  “Look, you’re in South America, in a glamourous city, living with some filthy rich people. Live. It. Up!” Her voice softened. “I know you’re always practical, and always sensible, because you had to be.”

  That was true enough. We had a classic rough childhood story. Our dad left, then went to prison for armed robbery, our mom fell apart, started doing drugs, then started dealing drugs, and I was left to raise my sister. All of that led me to want to be a social worker and help other kids like us, so I tried to find the positives in it, when I could.

  “But all that’s over now,” my sister said. “So live a little. For me. Okay?”

  Now I felt bad. My sister was the more adventurous of the two of us, but she was stuck at home, going to community college and waiting tables on the weekends at a diner. Her grades hadn’t been as good as mine, so she wasn’t able to get a scholarship. “I will, I promise.”

  “Yay. Now, document everything with pictures, and keep me updated! I want every single detail.”

  We said goodbye, and with one last look in the mirror, I went to find Mrs. Laurent.

  For an hour, I sat in Mrs. Laurent’s opulent bathroom while her stylist blow-dried my hair and curled it into loose waves. Next, she applied makeup. I wasn’t even
sure what most of the makeup was called. My sister tried to get me to watch an online tutorial once, but I didn’t have the patience.

  Sitting in Mrs. Laurent’s personal bathroom was a little awkward, especially because she hovered nearby the entire time, commenting as the stylist worked. Maybe I was like a doll to her. I wondered what the previous nanny had been like. Gabriel was ten months old, and I’d only been here for a month. I could tell from watching her with him that she probably had a nanny ready to go the minute he was born.

  She was a sweet enough mom, and she played with him and snuggled him for several hours a day. She just didn’t do any of the gross stuff, like changing diapers or wiping up the spit, or even feeding him the homemade baby food that the chef made. She also liked dressing him up in cute little outfits. Her favorite was a white top with buttons and a collar and navy shorts. It didn’t look fun for a baby to wear, but he did look adorable in it.

  The stylist stepped back and Mrs. Laurent stepped forward. She leaned in close and touched my face. “Kate, you are stunning. See for yourself.” She and the stylists moved away. When I saw myself, I blinked. My hair was shiny. My skin was glowing. I looked more like Mrs. Laurent than myself.

  “You have great cheekbones,” the stylist said in Spanish. My eyes looked bigger, and my lashes longer, and my lips fuller.

  “Do you like it?” Mrs. Laurent asked.

  “Yes,” I said. And I did. I was going to try to follow my little sister’s advice and live a little. I lifted my chin and smiled at my reflection. I pulled my spine up straighter, just like I did at my internship when I was facing a group of rowdy kids. “Actually, I love it.”

  The stylist beamed, and Mrs. Laurent did that reserved half-smile that came out every now and then.

  Hope you loved the excerpt of Love Undercover. Pre-order your copy right here! Your book will be automatically delivered to you on 24th August on its release day.

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