Almost a Bride

by Jo Watson

  “Nope, like I said, not good at ball sports. Or just sports in general for that matter. Don’t really like them. I preferred going walkabout and playing the didgeridoo.”

  My blood froze. What the hell was Chris doing? Trevv was sooo going to see through this. I nudged him in the ribs, hard, and he winced next to me.

  Trevv looked at us curiously and cocked his head to the left. (God, that was familiar.) “That’s strange, I thought all you Aussies loved sports.”

  “Nope. Exception to the rule.” Chris’s tone had a bite to it, and I wondered if he was having the same allergic reaction to Trevv that I was.

  Trevv nodded his head sincerely. “Couldn’t have been easy growing up, not being good at sports. I was first team rugby and cricket.” He then did something that made my skin crawl. He mimed catching a rugby ball and then finished it off with a little pow.

  Chris’s eyes widened in what must have been shock as Trevv playfully punched his arm. “That’s a shame, buddy, I was going to suggest we have a round together.” He clicked his fingers at Chris. “On me. Obviously!” And then he flashed a smile that was so white it could blind people.

  I blinked; this was officially the weirdest conversation I’d ever been privy to.

  And then after exhausting Chris, he turned his attention to me. “So how’s work, Anne? Didn’t I hear you were working at a tailor’s?” The conceit in his voice was undeniable. “At the Oriental Plaza? I didn’t even know that place was still going.”

  He was going for the jugular now.

  “Mmm. Yes. I’ve been doing some of that…you know?”

  “That must be quite a change from the glamorous life of a fashion magazine.” He was clearly going for the carotid artery, too.

  I managed another “Mmmm” through my very clenched teeth.

  “Well, we’ve had a great year so far. Tess and I.” And then he turned to Chris again. “We just won that Harrison case, you may have heard of it. It was on the news?”

  Next to me Chris folded his arms and I could tell that he was genuinely wound up. Who could blame him, really?

  “No, I don’t watch the news,” he snapped back.

  “Oh yes.” Trevv nodded. “I suppose you don’t, being a creative type and all.”

  Trevv said the words creative type with such poisonous venom that it actually made the hairs on my arms stand to attention.

  “We got so much publicity from that trial that we decided to go out and start our own firm. Didn’t we, baby?”

  Tess nodded. “And it’s been going great. So totally great. In fact, so great that we’re moving to London at the end of the month, big, BIG international client.”

  “London. So great. Big clients,” he echoed, just in case we hadn’t gotten the fact that work was going so GREAT for them. Oh, sorry, did I mention that it was going great for them?

  “And great in our personal life, too. In fact, we’re also getting married. Right here. Beach wedding. Yay.” Tess’s eyes sparkled as she held out her hand to show me her ring.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” she cooed through her pouty lips.

  These two had to be mental! Either that, or they were the most self-obsessed narcissists that had ever lived and breathed. Perhaps ever, in the history of the human species. They were acting as if nothing had happened between us. How could they not remember having me arrested, and blinding me with their kinky, nipple-clamping ways? Had they forgotten that they were both cheating whore-people? Clearly they had.

  “Four carats,” Trevv said as he puffed out his chest. “Cost a pretty penny, but what can I say. When it feels right, it feels right.”

  “Aaaah.” Tess’s voice was dreamy now. “The wedding is going to be so beautiful. It’s going to be at sunset. We’re going to have candles on the beach, and flowers. I planned the whole thing from SA, what a mission, but so worth it when I see my Trevvy at the top of the aisle…well, at the top of the beach.” She giggled, and I just wanted to slap her. An image popped into my head…Trevv and Tess swimming innocently in the sea. A shark appears and bites her beautiful legs off and the blood starts spraying everywhere. And then flesh-eating plankton feed on her fingers.

  Chris suddenly jumped up and clapped his hands. “Congrats! Crickey, that’s a real whopper.”

  “A whopper?” Trevv repeated in disbelief.

  I knew very little about Australia, other than it had kanga-bloody-roos and Kylie Minogue. But clearly Trevv knew a little more than I did, because he was not buying this. I could see it and it was making me feel sick with panic.

  “We’re very happy together,” Trevv added as he pulled Tess into a hug.

  “Well, when you find the right sheila, you gotta hang on to her.” Chris reciprocated by pulling me into a big bear hug. My ribs! My ribs were about to crack. “Isn’t that right, baby angel.” He squeezed even harder. I couldn’t breathe.

  You could have cut the competitive tension in the air with a blunt, plastic knife. Trevv glared at Chris with such self-satisfaction as he pulled Tess toward him and kissed her passionately. Trevv smiled again. “So nice to see you, Anne. So glad you’re doing so well. Tess and I were worried about you at one point.”

  “No need to worry about this one,” Chris said loudly while smacking me playfully on the bum. “She’s a fighter.”

  “Oooh!” I jumped in fright and Chris turned to me. “Isn’t that right, baby doll?”

  “Mmm.” I nodded. Baby doll?

  “Well, nice meeting you, Boyd. And we must do dinner sometime. Cheerio!” Trevv said before walking off.

  I turned and looked at Chris. He looked like he had just bitten into a sour lemon.

  “Cheerio? Who says ‘cheerio’? Seriously! And can that guy be any more of a prick?” Chris put his hands on his hips and I saw the competitive streak flash in his eyes.

  “Who the hell says ‘crickey’ and ‘whopper’ and ‘sheila’ and ‘mate’?”

  “An Australian,” Chris answered.

  I grabbed my head in absolute disbelief. “I can’t believe that just happened. I can’t believe you pretended to be my Australian boyfriend, for heaven’s sake.” Not that I hadn’t been massively relieved when he’d come to my rescue. But now what?

  “I had to! Did you see how self-righteous they were getting about their perfect little beach wedding, not to mention her perfect four-carat diamond and their great, great life? Did I mention they have a great life?”

  “They’re going to see right through this. Your Australian accent is terrible.”

  “What do you mean, mate?”

  “Stop saying ‘mate’!” I squealed. “You’re being so obvious. You might as well sing ‘Waltzing bloody Matilda.’”

  Chris started to open his mouth and I shot a finger out at him. “Don’t you dare. This isn’t funny, Chris. This is serious. This isn’t some plot in one of your movies.”

  “But don’t you see, Annie. This is your revenge story line. This is the moment you have been waiting for, to get Trevv back for all he’s done.”

  I stopped for a second. He was right. This was my Medea moment, without the murder.

  “Come on, let’s go get your bags.” Chris started pulling me out the lobby.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re moving in with me. Remember?”

  “What?”

  “We’re a couple now, we have to act like one.”

  I heaved a massive sigh. “This is crazy. How the hell are we going to pull this off?”

  He grabbed my hands and held them to his chest. “Baby doll,” he said with sickly sweetness, “don’t you remember telling me how much you loved me?”

  I pulled my hands away angrily. “Chris! This is not one of your romantic comedy movies. It’s my life. And I don’t think it’s funny.” My tone of voice shot up, and by the last word, I felt on the verge of tears.

  “Shit. Okay. I’m sorry. You’re right.” He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “It’s just. Dammit, Annie. That guy got to
me. I mean, what a complete asshole. You can’t let him win.”

  Suddenly Chris took my hands again and looked at me earnestly. “We can do this. We can show them. I took some acting lessons a hundred years ago, maybe I can give you some pointers. And I’ll brush up on my accent tonight. We’ll listen to ‘The Locomotion.’” He flashed me another playful, brilliant Chris smile. Damn, there was something so persuasive about that grin.

  But there was more to this than just putting on a smile and pretending. There were real practicalities attached to this, to making it work.

  “I really don’t think you understand what this means. We would have to walk around for the next seven days pretending to be together. God, there might actually have to be some hand-holding. Breakfast, lunch, supper together every day. You are going to get totally sick of me at some point—”

  “Never,” Chris said. “Let’s just think of it as two friends hanging out and having fun…with the occasional hand hold and possible hectic making out and groping.”

  “Hey.” I held my hand up. “I draw the line at kissing and certainly at groping.”

  “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  I sighed in resignation, still in disbelief. What the hell had I just agreed to?

  CHAPTER NINE

  When I was twelve, I was cast as a tree in my school play. Not because I was particularly willowy in stature, or because I was treelike in any way, shape, or form. I was cast as a tree because I couldn’t act. A little bug-eyed boy called Charles, who was about as delinquent as they come, and moi stood at the back of the stage, covered in green cardboard cutouts of leaves, and waved our arms from side to side as the only two trees in a play set in Antarctica. On my report card my teacher had commented on my participation in the school play, Annie tried really hard in the play.

  And now I was cast in the role of fake girlfriend and had no idea how I was going to pull it off. Especially in front of Trevv, who seemed to have this uncanny ability to sniff out bullshitters, liars, and cheats. (Takes one to know one I guess.) The prospect of playing “couple in love” for the next seven days was terrifying. And I could only imagine what my friends were going to say when they arrived, especially Dr. Jane.

  “Okay, so maybe I took it a bit far with all my Australian-ness. I’ll try and tone that down,” Chris said as he helped me throw my clothes and cosmetics into my suitcases. It was as if the activity of moving my stuff was making it a bit clearer to him how severe our situation really was. Men. They just always do things and worry about the consequences later.

  “But those two were just driving me mad with their perfect, great—sooo great—little life. I couldn’t help myself!”

  “A bit too far?”

  “No!” He held his hand up. “No time for negativity and second-guessing ourselves. We are going to do this! Boyd can handle the challenge.” Chris zipped up the last of my bags and pulled them out the door. “What do you think about me giving the character of Boyd a limp, or maybe making him colorblind?”

  “What?” I spun around and glared at Chris.

  “Just kidding, babe. Come on…” He pulled me into a brief squeeze. “It’s not like we’ll be bumping into them every five seconds. It’s a big resort.”

  Famous last words—Because as we closed the door behind us and started walking down the path…

  “Anne. Boyd.” That smug little nasal voice again. Was his voice always like that, or had I just gotten used to it? Perhaps that had been one of the irritating things that I’d also chosen to ignore, too.

  “What are you guys doing with bags?” I could hear the conniving suspicion in his voice. He was dying to catch us out. I could tell from the second that Chris had introduced himself as my significant other, he hadn’t believed us.

  “Um…” I looked at Chris, hoping he had some clever story; he was the writer after all.

  “We’re upgrading rooms. The presidential suite.” Chris really enunciated those last two words and Trevv shuddered in response. “The presidential suite was only available from tonight, so we’re just doing the old room switcheroo.” Chris shot him a dazzling smile.

  “Reel it in,” I hissed under my breath.

  “Presidential suite, hey? I didn’t know they had them here.”

  “Honestly, it’s not as good as some of the others we’ve stayed in, but it’ll do.”

  It was hard not to burst out laughing. Chris was milking the moment for all it was worth and despite the insane situation I now found myself in, I was thrilled to finally be getting the opportunity to kick Trevv where it would hurt most—in his ego. I might be able to go along with this after all. I just needed to keep reminding myself of the reward—getting back at Trevv for what he had done to me.

  I looked over at Trevv. He looked pissed off, but was trying to conceal it under his usual grin.

  “Well, enjoy,” Trevv said through a slightly clenched jaw. It was said with such blatant insincerity that I could almost hear what he really wanted to say: “I hope the roof caves in on you two and a giant tsunami rushes in and washes you both out to the deep sea where you are swallowed by a ferocious killer whale.”

  But he smiled and waved and trotted off down the path, dragging Tess and her long legs behind him.

  We arrived at the room, and Chris opened the door and put my bags down. Even though I had already seen this room, it still boggled me. And I wondered just how much something like this might cost a night. I could probably fit my whole cottage in this place at least twice.

  “Why don’t you take the room downstairs and I’ll take the one upstairs,” Chris said.

  “No, it’s fine. I’ll take upstairs.”

  “Downstairs is nicer, though.” Chris switched the air-conditioning on and a glorious blast of cool air rushed in.

  “It’s okay. Besides, I like the view from upstairs.” The truth was that I felt weird sleeping in his bed. It felt way too intimate. He was practically a stranger.

  “So,” Chris said with a weird inflection in his voice, “have you noticed anything new?”

  “About what?” I automatically started scanning the room.

  “About me.” Chris said.

  I looked at him and couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed earlier. The Trevv and Tess debacle had obviously blinded me to the glaring change.

  “You’ve trimmed the beard.”

  “Bingo.” He looked pleased within himself and ran his hand over his now-smoother face.

  “It looks good.” In fact, he looked amazing. He looked absolutely…wow, the familiar feeling was back. My body temperature rose as if the air-conditioning had just been switched off.

  I could finally see the face that had been hiding beneath the hair. The beard wasn’t completely gone, but in its place was a dark five-o’clock shadow. The most striking thing about the change was that I could finally see his full smile. I’d only had a taste of it last night. But like this, it was big, wide, friendly, and totally contagious—it lit up his entire face.

  It had a certain mischievous quality to it and caused the lines at the side of his eyes to crinkle, which I really liked. Trevv’s smile had always felt rehearsed, not to mention that his face never crinkled; he used more facial product than I did. His perfect smile seemed identical in every photo, as if he’d practiced it in front of the mirror, which he probably had.

  In looks, Chris was the antithesis of Trevv. And then there was his personality, chalk and cheese. Chris was natural and laid-back, whereas everything with Trevv had always seemed like a carefully constructed performance. A performance that I’d only been too happy to go along with. But who the hell had we been performing to?

  “You look good,” I said again, a little softer and more breathily than I would have liked. The smile, coupled with those light watery blue eyes, coupled with that sexy laid-back quality…

  I wouldn’t mind practicing a few more things on him actually.

  “Okay, I’m going upstairs now to unpack.” I grabbed my bag and started ma
king a move for the stairs to avoid shamelessly throwing myself at him.

  “Cool. What do you want to do later?” Chris asked.

  His question momentarily caught me off guard. Of course we were going to be doing things later. We were a couple now. Couples did things. They hung out. They held hands. They held other things, too—which, in our case, would not be happening. “I can’t afford to spend any more time in the sun.”

  “What about a massage at the spa?” he suggested.

  “That sounds ah-mazing. Since bumping into Tress I think I’ve developed a pain in my neck.”

  “Ha-ha, Annie. Cheesy, but good.”

  “Thanks. Besides, we’re also less likely to bump into them there. Knowing them they’re probably on the beach flaunting their model physiques.”

  But unfortunately when we finally did walk into the spa, there they were (surprise, surprise), sitting in the waiting area. Tess looked like she might be modeling in a photo shoot for Guess swimwear. She’d changed into a bikini and had barely covered her bottom half with a see-through sarong. I glanced down at my clothes, and felt a sudden pang of embarrassment.

  I was wearing a less-than-fashionable shirt and, Oh God, please will the deity of fashion forgive me, a cheesecloth skirt straight out of an episode of Friends. I’d found it in the back of my closet and been forced to bring it; the loose fit hid the little stomach I was developing from all those chocolate binges. Why had I put this on today? Why did I eat so much chocolate, why hadn’t I gone to the gym instead?

  I made a mental note to go and buy something that made me look like I was part of this decade.

  “Well, well, we meet again.” Trevv was the first to speak. Naturally. “We just keep bumping into each other, don’t we?” He stood up and gave Chris a manly pat on the back. “Are you guys following us?” He finished this sentence with another fake laugh.

  “Busted!” Chris was full Australian again and reciprocated by slapping Trevv back; it was perhaps a little hard. “You guys are just so interesting that we can’t help following you around,” Chris added in insincere mock jest, topping it off with his best fake laugh.