“This thing?” I ask, raising an eyebrow at her. “I thought this was the most important day of your life.”
“Sorry,” she says, putting her hand out to shake mine. “I’m not a bride. I just play one on the internet.”
When our hands touch, I feel a spark inside my chest, like my heart is being kicked into gear, jump-started and revved up.
And that’s only the feeling inside my chest. The rest of my body is doing something else entirely. I feel my cock beginning to stiffen at the simple touch of this young woman’s delicate hand, and I want to erase the distance between us and pull her into my arms, kiss her.
“You play a bride on the internet,” I repeat to her, her small hand still inside mine. “Care to elaborate on that a bit?”
“Duh, yeah,” she replies. “I’m a wedding dress model. I model for this boutique’s website. And when we have fittings with the brides I have to try on some of the dresses for the girls.”
“So this isn’t the most important day of your life, then. Is that right, miss?”
“Right,” she replies, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Just an ordinary day for me. I don’t even have a boyfriend. But you...you look like you have your hands full.”
She stands on her tiptoes and looks past my shoulder to the group of women standing behind me. I turn and wave to the ladies.
“Believe it or not, it’s just an ordinary day for me too,” I say.
The girl in front of me tips her chin down and taps her bottom lip. Jesus, she makes this little gesture look so deliciously sexy.
“You really have no idea who I am, do you?” I ask.
“You are going to have to refresh my memory,” she says.
“I’m Liam Harmon,” I say, putting my hand out to shake hers again. “So you do recognize me, and you just needed your memory to be jogged?”
“Maybe,” she says. “You do look a bit familiar. But I wouldn’t be able to put my finger on where I know you from.”
“You probably know me from memes, your social media apps. Things like that.”
She laughs as her hand slips away from mine.
“I don’t use social media,” she says. “I don’t use dating apps, I don’t do any of that.”
“But you do think you know me from somewhere?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. You just have a familiar-looking face.”
“I’ve been told I look like a cartoon prince, maybe that’s where you know me from.”
“And this is your idea of an ordinary day?”
“Not anymore.”
Her lips part and I could just take her right here. I feel my cock ache with desire for her. I know nothing about her except that this is not her wedding day. That, and she has no clue who the hell I am.
“I don’t think I caught your name, miss,” I say, and she breathes deeply and looks away from the group of girls behind me before her glance rises and her eyes meet mine.
“Oh, my name’s Anna,” she says.
“Anna,” I say, “I’ve never been happier to find out it wasn’t the most important day of someone’s life.”
Anna
Up close, he’s hotter than I thought.
Maybe several years older than me. Thick brown hair I could lace my fingers through. Lips that are perfect for kissing and…
I felt my stomach flip and my body clench the first time he shook my hand. The second time he shook my hand, I felt my head swim. Because the first time he shook my hand, he was just being polite. The second time, he didn’t have to do it. He didn’t have to be polite.
And right now, I want him to be anything but polite.
Something tells me he can be rough. Dirty. Bad.
It’s the spark of something rebellious and forbidden in his eye. It’s the way he towers over me.
Oh, and it’s the fact that I am a virgin standing in front of a man who exudes sex.
It’s kind of ironic, and kind of fitting, all at once. The dress is real, but the reason I’m wearing it is completely for show. Technically, a woman should be wearing a wedding dress on the first day she has sex, right? All that waiting for marriage stuff and all.
But that’s not why I’ve waited. It’s just never happened for me. I don’t know why. It hasn’t been on purpose. It just hasn’t gone that way for me yet.
So it’s not really like I’ve waited at all. It’s like something out in the world is waiting for me. I haven’t felt like I’ve had much control over it.
It just hasn’t felt right yet.
It’s just been happenstance. Coincidence. And the fact that I’ve never had a boyfriend.
So with Liam standing over me, all sexy and big, with his eyes piercing into mine, all I can do is try to breathe.
“I’ve never heard someone say they were happy it wasn’t someone’s wedding day,” I manage to say, swallowing thickly.
“Let me clarify,” he says, his chin tipped down as he looks at me. “Have a drink with me tonight at Raines. I’ll pick you up with my driver. I have an important question I want to ask you.”
When he speaks, I feel a spear of heat between my legs.
“Why can’t you just ask me now?” I say.
“I want to take you out first,” he says.
Liam takes a card holder out of his pocket and slips out a business card, handing it to me as he begins to back up and walk away from me.
Liam Harmon, the card reads. Harmon Media Group.
“Just so you have my information,” he says. “Text me your address. I’ll pick you up tonight at eight.”
He starts to jog away down the sidewalk, and the group of women follows him. Just as he ran up to me, he runs away.
This man was hot. And it was definitely strange that he asked me out. And what was the question he wanted to ask me?
I look down at the card and take a bite of one of the pretzels, growing cold in its wax paper. Still tastes good, though.
Harmon Media Group.
Oh...that’s how I know who he is.
He isn’t just on social media. His family is in all media.
Which means I just came face to face with one of the most elite, sought-after men in Manhattan.
And the sexiest man I’ve ever seen.
I didn’t tell Maggie about my date. I didn’t know how. I wouldn’t know what I’d even say.
When I got back inside the dress shop, the bride’s tears were dry. Her stomach was rumbling. We ate our pretzels with enthusiasm. Maggie didn’t want to share mine with me - she’s too concerned with remaining thin for that - though she did have a few things to say about the prospect of me getting bright yellow mustard on the dresses, even if they are samples.
Maggie pushed the original dress, and the bride happily purchased it. In two sizes bigger than she thought it should be.
I went home in a daze, and I think Maggie knew I was distracted for the rest of the day. I don’t know how she didn’t see the cacophony outside the shop, between the Vespa and Liam and the girls, but I guess she was just too busy doing a good job calming down her client.
As she should have been.
As soon as I got out of work and walked the four blocks to the subway, I texted Liam my address. I got a response back from him quickly.
West Village, it reads. You’re an artist on the side in addition to being a model?
No, I reply. Not a starving artist. Just poor.
I do make a decent salary, but between the insanely high rent in the city and my student loans, it’s hard not to feel poor. It might not be for everyone, but for me, it’s worth it to live in the best city in the world and have a job that’s mostly very fun.
And now I have a date. It’s just a date. It’s not a big deal.
Except that he has a question to ask me.
I get ready quickly when I get home from work, choosing a slinky, curve-skimming black dress that I save for special occasions like this. I don’t wear it often, but I think this qualifies.
It’s
just a date, though. It’s not that big a deal.
Sure.
It’s almost time for Liam’s driver to pick me up - I never thought I’d have a driver picking me up, unless it was an Uber driver, and even those little indulgences are few and far between - so I check my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
I live in a small, unrenovated, old apartment. It’s not bad, exactly, but the plaster around the sink is cracking and the tile floor in here is always ice cold in the winter, even with the window closed and the heat on.
It’s like a miracle of nature, how cold the tile floor gets in here.
In the mirror, my reflection looks puzzled as she peers back at me. I push my hair away from my face and tie it up in a ponytail, picking a few strands around my face out so they frame my cheeks, making my look slightly more elevated than just a simple ponytail. I just don’t really know how to do much else, and the hairstyle Maggie gave me this morning became so messy and unkempt by the end of the word day from all the poking and prodding and peeling dresses off and shimmying back into them, I couldn’t just leave it the way it was.
My hair looks alright, but I still have that puzzled expression on my face, one that I just can’t make go away. Because I am puzzled. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and it’s written all over my face.
I hear my phone ding in my room, so I rush out of the bathroom to grab it. It’s probably Liam, or his driver. It’s just about time for this to happen.
To say I’m nervous would be an understatement. Even though I keep telling myself it’s just a date. And that question he wanted to ask me? He probably wanted to know if I prefer boxers or briefs. He’s clearly someone who can have any girl he wants, so he probably just used that question line on me as a ruse. He probably just wanted to pique my interest and get me curious about him.
But Liam Harmon, I am already plenty interested in you.
And I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say no to you.
I wouldn’t want to.
I don’t want to get my heart broken, but he’s just too damn sexy to say no to.
It’s just a date.
I keep telling myself it’s just a date.
Liam
I’m not nervous at all. I’ve never looked forward to something before, not like I’m looking forward to seeing her.
I have a corner table at Raine’s, where I’ve made a last-minute reservation for me and Anna.
She is the only thing that’s pushed all the negativity that’s surrounding me out of my head. In fact, she’s so beautiful and fucking perfect that I don’t know if all that negative shit that overtook my morning will ever be able to come back.
Not as long as she is in my life.
Fuck, I am getting ahead of myself.
She hasn’t even said yes to my proposition yet.
Before this morning’s little run, I had a very interesting conversation with my father.
And that’s what I have to ask Anna about.
From the back corner table where I’m sitting, I see the door to the bar open and I see Anna walk in.
She is even more stunning than I remembered, even though I just saw her a few hours ago. She is wearing a stunner of a little black dress, and her curves are like sin. I need to know how she moves in the dark. I need to put my hands over her curves, feel every single inch of her, let my tongue run over hers and take her breath away when I kiss her.
“Anna,” I say, standing up and moving around the table to pull her chair out.
“Liam,” she says, smiling at me as she sits down. I push her chair in and she places her elbows elegantly on the table. “It’s nice to see you again. Very nice.”
“Now,” I say, “if you just visited my blog, you’d be able to see you any time you wanted.”
“Oh, but I don’t know if I want to see you all the time yet,” she throws back at me with a sexy little smile.
She better watch how she uses that dirty little mouth. I can show her how to cause all kinds of trouble with those lips.
I narrow my eyes at her, trying to wrap my head around the creature sitting before me. She’s a model, technically, but she is so much more than what you think of when you hear the word model. She is curvy, with sinfully perfect and pouty lips, and she isn’t tall the way you’d think most models would be. Anna has a perfect, cute little nose and eyes that I want to make flutter and roll back in her head when I smack her round, perky ass.
No model can compare to her.
And the way she gives me lip, she’s all sass and smarts.
And she makes me stone-hard.
“You think you can say no me to, baby?” I say across the table to her. She leans forward on her elbows, the neckline of her dress tantalizingly low across her perky breasts.
“I didn’t say no,” she breathes, “I said I don’t know yet.”
“Let me try to persuade you,” I say as our cocktail waitress brings over the two blueberry ginger vodka tonics I ordered. “Let me try to get you to say yes.”
“I’m listening.”
“If you looked at my card, which I know you did because you needed my number, you know that my family owns half of the newspapers up and down the eastern seaboard. My father is at the helm of the ship, but he is getting older now, and he wants to retire. My brother and I are the VPs of the company, and my father wants to leave majority control of the firm to my brother. This is a problem.”
“A problem?” she asks, taking a sip of her drink. Her lips wrap up around the thin black straw and I feel myself stiffen at the thought of what I’m going to have her do later. “What’s the problem? Let me guess. You want control because it means more money. More control, more power?”
Oh, my girl has me so wrong. And I’m going to set her straight.
“Let me clue you in, baby. I don’t give a shit about having more money or power. I already have all the money and power I could ever want. The moment I got you to come to this bar with me, that’s when I knew I wouldn’t need power ever again. Because if I can get you to come share a drink with me, have a date with me, then I don’t need anything. Because you are beautiful, and I still can’t believe it’s not your wedding day.”
She sits up straight, taken aback. Her eyes open wide and I can see her breathing come faster, and she reaches forward to take her glass in her elegant fingers, taking a sip of her drink.
That’s right, baby. Cool down.
“What is it, then?” she asks. “Why do you care about getting control of your father’s company?”
“My brother is a dickhead, and that’s putting it nicely. He wants to take one of our media divisions, the one that runs the print newspapers in New York, and chop it up. Sell off the parts to the highest bidder. Outsource the office jobs, take away the printing functions from the people who’ve run everything for years. And I know lots of people are going to lose their jobs if - excuse me, when - that happens.”
Anna takes another sip of her drink and puts the glass down on the table.
“Why’s this even a problem, though?” she asks. “Why don’t you just ask your father to put you in charge and cut your brother out?”
“My father is old-fashioned. He hates that I run a blog and interact with a community of other bloggers. Hates it. He thinks it’s too egalitarian. He thinks the media should be controlled by a few. He doesn’t agree with my approach to things. He doesn’t like that pretty much anyone can share and disseminate information so easily.”
“Disseminate information?” she says skeptically. “I think you’re overestimating the power of the internet. It’s all just cat videos.”
“You’re right, there’s a lot of that fluffy stuff out there. But that’s the point. We have to keep these platforms open and available to everyone. Even if we think some content choices are somewhat questionable.”
“What about you, Liam? What are your content choices?”
“I thought you didn’t want to see me online,” I rib her.
“Consider my inte
rest piqued.”
I grab my phone and scroll through my blog, landing on a picture of me at the beach. Shirtless. Sweaty. Smiling. Like it’s all for the girl who’s looking at the picture.
“How’s this for content?” I say, pushing my phone across the table to her.
Her lips part slightly as she looks down at the picture, and then back up to me.
“Want to see me with my shirt off IRL?”
“Is that the question you wanted to ask me? Is that why I’m here right now? So you could show me your abs...what did you say? IRL?”
“No,” I say, taking my phone back from her. “I wanted to ask you to pretend to be my girlfriend. And I thought you’d like it if I bought you a drink first.”
Anna’s eyes widen and her eyebrows knit together slightly in the middle. I want to reach under the table to touch her thigh. I think she’s getting wet for me.
I know she’s getting wet for me. I know that look. And strangely, I feel like I know her.
My insta-girlfriend.
“Girlfriend?” she breathes. “I’ve never…”
“I know, you’ve never had some random guy off the street be so forward with you. I get it.”
“No,” she says. “It’s not that.”
And she arches an eyebrow at me and bites down on the corner of her lip, and I know it will be no fucking time at all before I have her in my bed.
Anna
“Listen, Anna,” his voice comes out as a ragged growl.
I was right. I’m not going to be able to say no to him.
“I’m listening.”
“My father wants me to be more traditional. He wants me to have a girl on my arm. A ring on her finger. A baby. A kid. Strollers. A dog and a cat. He doesn’t like that I haven’t settled down yet. I’m thirty-two years old, and I’m not some kid anymore. So partly, yeah, I agree with him. It’s just been hard to meet someone who doesn’t have any pretenses about me. To be honest, you’re the first girl I’ve met in a long time who didn’t immediately know who I am.”
Insta-Hubby (A Billionaire Fake Relationship Romance) Page 3