Seven Day Wife: A Fake Marriage Office Romance

by Mia Faye

  Chapter 25

  Cameron

  “I like her.”

  Mom nodded in thoughtful appreciation. It took a moment for me to figure out what she was referring to.

  “Of course, you do. She’s delightful.”

  “When I heard you two were married…”

  “What?” I had been watching Meredith in the far corner of the room, only partially listening to my mother. I snapped my attention back to her. She had a smug smile on her face, the kind that said she knew enough, but she was fishing for more gossip.

  “I’m assuming it’s a joke of some sort,” she went on. “Because I just know my son wouldn’t take such a big step without telling me.”

  “Maybe I wanted to keep it a surprise,” I said, playing along. “Or maybe I’ve been too busy with everything at work.”I made a sweeping gesture to indicate the wake, with people milling about in dark clothes and even darker expressions.

  “Too busy for a phone call?”

  “Okay, fine! There was no marriage, okay? You can stop looking at me like that.”

  Mother simply smiled. “Of course, there was no marriage. I knew it was a lie the second I heard it. But you know what? I almost believed it.”Her eyes were bright with an intensity I had not seen in a long time.

  “What do you mean?” I asked her.

  “I saw you two together,” Mom said simply. I waited, but she seemed to have concluded the thought.

  “Uh-huh?” I prompted, slightly impatiently.

  “Well, it’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?” she said, and now there was a note of exasperation in her voice like she couldn’t believe she had to explain it to me.

  “I’m pretty sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mother.”

  Mom sighed again. “Why do you keep scanning the room?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your eyes, your body. You’ve been looking across the room since we started speaking. Scanning. Searching. I also noticed, and I’m sure this is no coincidence that the lovely Yvette hasn’t been in since the ceremony. Plus, I saw you two together earlier. The way you were with her, the way you two looked at each other… It wasn’t so unbelievable that you two could be married.”

  I frowned; my lips dry as I tried to think of what to say.

  I had never really thought about how Yvette and I were perceived. I mean, I had considered it once, when she had wanted us to go into the building separately to stop the gossip mill from coming for us. And maybe before, in the office, once or twice, I had avoided openly flirting with her. But it had all receded to the very back of my mind after Wyatt’s death. Suddenly, it seemed like a lot of work for no good reason. Why would anyone care what Yvette and I did? Why would anyone even think about that at a time like this?

  It was subconscious, I suppose, how I acted around her after I decided to stop holding back. I barely noticed it, but she was right beside me, or she had been before the ceremony. When she stepped away, I reached an arm out and pulled her back in. I went everywhere with her; I kept her in my sights. She was an anchor in a difficult moment. I needed her with me. I couldn’t do this without her.

  “Like I said,” Mom whispered, snapping me back to the room. “I like her.”

  I smiled. “That’s not much of an endorsement, Mother, to be honest. Remember the crazy woman you threw at me during Dad’s 70th birthday party? You liked her too.”

  Mother waved a hand dismissively.“Oh, never mind her. This is different. Yvette is different.”

  “Is she now?”

  I found my eyes traveling across the room again. Not for the first time, I wondered where Yvette had disappeared to. And then I realized my mom was watching me, her smile widening, and I cleared my throat and reached for my phone. My fingers started to dial her number, more out of habit than anything else. I stuffed the phone back into my pocket and thrust my hand in along with it.

  Mother reached up and touched me lightly on the cheek. It was at once unnerving and incredibly tender. It was almost like being a child again, standing in front of her, knowing she could see right through my lies and feeble attempts at secrecy.

  “Have I ever told you the story of how your father and I met?”

  “More times than I can count, Mom. You courted him. Love at third sight.”

  “Your father watched me from across a room, not unlike this one, for the whole night. I could feel his eyes on me the entire evening. Hot, intense, unbelievably arousing.”

  “Jesus, Mom.”

  “But he never made the move. I could tell he wanted to. I wanted him to. I did all I could to encourage him. Still, we shot darts at each other with our eyes for the entire night, and finally, my friends told me it was time to go, and that was that. I agonized over it for the whole week. I stayed up at night, regretting my cowardice, wishing I had taken the initiative. So, the next time we met, I wasn’t going to repeat my mistake. I walked up to him, and I told him how I felt, and it was the bravest thing I’ve ever done, and the most satisfying, and the proudest.”

  “This is wonderful, Mom. Really. But what does it have to do with anything?”

  “You should tell her how you feel, Cam. It’s so obvious to me, and your father, and anyone with eyes, really. Why isn’t it to you?”

  “I…”

  “I don’t know about this fake marriage. I’m sure there is an innocent story behind all of it, which I hope I’ll get to hear someday… What I do know is that it has brought you and Yvette together, and that was clearly a good thing. Don’t be like your father. Don’t let her get away just because you can’t figure out how to say what you feel.”

  Yvette was nowhere to be found. I looked all around the house, going from room to room. I stopped everyone from work I saw and asked them if they had seen her, but no one seemed to have seen her since the ceremony.

  It was a large house. One of Wyatt’s quieter accomplishments, but it was gorgeous. He had planned to have a large family, but work always seemed to get in the way. I went from room to room, growing increasingly uncomfortable. It was strange, and it felt like an intrusion.

  Suddenly, I had so much to say to Yvette; stuff I had been holding on to, things I had been thinking but had been too afraid to admit, at least out loud. I had always known this moment would come. The death of Wyatt had come at a terrible time, and it was a tragedy in every sense. But it had also forced everyone, I included, to push everything else into the background. I would have liked to think that I would have reached my epiphany without my mother’s intervention, but who knew? It didn’t matter, at the end of the day. I had gotten where I needed to be.

  I was just about to give up when I heard voices coming from one of the rooms down the hall. Or rather, a voice, just loud enough to carry over to me, and, as I got closer, it started to sound familiar. And then I got to the very end of the hall, and I heard the angry, clipped tones that could only belong to one person.

  I backed away, slowly, hoping I could get away before she heard me. Just as I was turning around, though, I felt my hip connect with something hard. I whipped around, stretching my hands out in anticipation. But I grasped only thin air. I saw the vase fly, inches from my fingertips, and finally crashing to the hard marble floor. It was loud and raucous, the noise reverberating and bouncing from the walls and echoing down the hall.

  In the room at the end of the hall, the voice went silent. I froze, hoping she hadn’t heard me. But moments later, the sound of footsteps came, and with them, the curious, twisted face of Vicki Marsh poking out from the door.

  “Cam?”

  I should have left. I should have walked away and not engaged, because that was always how I got in trouble with Vicki. And I would have. But something about her face drew me in. It made me curious. I remembered the way she had sounded when we spoke on the phone, back when Emma had run away. Defeated, resigned. The Vicki I knew was many things, but resigned was not one of them. And so, I took a step forward instead of away.

  She stepped aside to let me in
to the room. As I walked past her, I noticed the redness in her eyes was still there. Her face was pale, strained. There was almost nothing of the vibrant, aggressively confident woman I knew.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked her.

  She closed the door behind her, her hand lingering on the lock as if she was trying to decide whether to turn it or not. Her phone was in her other hand, the screen still lit. Her expression was strange; pensive and open.

  Her phone buzzed as she continued to stare at me. My eyes darted to the screen, and even from a distance, I could make out the name Mike. That would explain why she had been yelling. They were in the middle of a fight.

  I wished I had followed my initial instinct and left. I had no intention of getting in the middle of whatever this was. Even though a part of me flushed with pleasure at the thought that they were not as perfect as they had initially seemed. Maybe I could sneak away while she answered the call?

  But she didn’t answer the call. She hung up, and when he called again a moment later, she let out an angry huff and flung the phone away. I heard it thud into a corner somewhere.

  “That fucking asshole,” she cursed under her breath.

  Don’t engage, Cam. Walk away.

  “What did he do?” I heard myself ask. I was genuinely curious. My initial reaction to Mike had been colored somewhat by the anger at his closeness with Emma, but even then, I thought he was a nice guy. Too nice to be with Vicki, for one. I couldn’t imagine him doing anything that would make Vicki call him an asshole.

  “It’s complicated,” Vicki said with a shrug. Dismissive. She didn’t want to talk about it. And in doing so, she was giving me an out. If I was going to leave, then this was the perfect moment.

  “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” I said. “But you seem agitated. More than usual, obviously.”

  Vicki smiled. “You always did see me so clearly, Cam. You know, I think you understand me better than anyone ever has. It’s why we were so good together.”

  “We were not good together, Vicki,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Maybe not at the end,” Vicki said. “But when we first got together? We were like an inferno. Do you remember?”She lumbered toward me. It was the first time I noticed how unsteady she looked on her feet. And that was when it hit me that she was drunk. Or at least slightly buzzed. Her speech was starting to slur, too.

  “Do you remember?” she asked again. She swayed this way and that, trying to compensate for her lack of balance by taking longer strides. The result was that she sort of fell toward me, her feet not being quick enough to carry her and causing her to fall forward. I reached out and grabbed her instinctively.

  “Remember when we fucked at that company party? In the bathroom. I had worn this little black dress, which I knew would drive you crazy, and you dragged me away in the middle of the speeches and pinned me to a bathroom wall.”

  “You should sit down, Vicki,” I said.

  Her entire body weight was on me. She made no effort to move or straighten up. I had to half drag, half carry her to the nearest chair, where I sat her down as gently as I could.

  “Or that time we did it in your car before walking into that client meeting,” Vicki went on.

  “You mean the client you didn’t tell me you were trying to poach from us?”

  “Ah, so you do remember,” Vicki said, a note of triumph in her voice.

  I tried to straighten up, but she grabbed me by the front of my shirt and held me fast.

  “Why won’t you admit it?” she asked. “We were great together.”

  Strange, I thought, how she remembered the crazy sex but not the crazy arguments after. She remembered the bathroom sex, but not the inappropriate speech she gave at the end of the night. When I thought about Vicki and me, it was impossible to look past the toxicity of our relationship.

  “Okay. We were great together, Vicki. Until we weren’t. If you want to go down memory lane, go all the way down the street.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “We were toxic.” The words came out in a sigh, both tired and defeated. Her whole body slumped, and for the first time in all my years of knowing Vicki, she looked like she was about to cry.

  “What’s going on?” I asked her. “Talk to me.”

  Vicki dropped her eyes to the floor. She swiped at her face with an unsteady hand, and I thought I saw her shoulders shake. I remained on my haunches beside her, at a loss on what to do.

  She regained her composure fairly quickly. When she looked up, her eyes were moist, but she smiled weakly at me to let me know she was okay.

  “Mike was going to propose to me,” she finally said.

  My eyebrows shot up, but I remained silent so she could continue.

  “I found the ring in his sock drawer while putting away his clothes, and I just freaked out. I tried to forget about it; I told myself it probably meant nothing, and I was going to act as nothing had happened. But Mike has always been able to see right through my bullshit, so after he prodded, I confronted him about it. We had this huge fight. I don’t even know why I was angry at him, but I was. I told him I wasn’t sure marriage was something I was ready for, and then he got angry and said I was not being honest about why, and that the natural progression of any relationship should lead up to marriage…”

  She trailed off. I could almost imagine how the rest of the fight had panned out. Vicki and I had had a very similar one years ago.

  “He ended up giving me this ultimatum, telling me he wasn’t going to stay in a relationship if we didn’t want the same things, and then I snapped at him and made some snide comments about his ex and called his obsession with marriage Ross-like.”

  I let out a snort.

  “You were lashing out,” I commented.

  “I was! But now everything is messed up, and he’s moving out, and I don’t know what to do…”

  “I think you do,” I said. I tried and failed to keep the smile off my face. I still couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with Victoria Marsh.

  “I get it now. This. You. Why you got nostalgic just now. I understand the compulsion to return to something that felt safe, even briefly. But Mike isn’t me, Vicki. What you two had was healthy, beautiful. And you know I mean it because I hated admitting that to myself. Hell, I never even allowed the thought to cross my mind. But it’s true. You’re freaking out because you know it too. You’re scared.”

  Vicki smiled too. “It sounded for a second there like you were admitting to being jealous.”

  I shrugged. “Only if you were being vulnerable for a second there.”

  She smiled again.

  “Well, now that we’re confessing things, I was a bit jealous too.”

  “Of Yvette?”

  “Yeah. I might have said some unpleasant things to her outside.”

  “There’s the Vicki I know and love.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been a bit unfair to you as well. Of course, you can see Emma more. I just never believed that you would follow through this time. And if I’m being honest, I hated that you could just waltz in and out of her life like that and she still loved you so fiercely.”

  “I never wanted to be that dad,” I said. “I know I never wanted to be a dad at first, and I’ve been a dick about it, and I know there’s no universe where I deserve a daughter as incredible as Emma. But I want to be there for her. I’m done missing out on her life.”

  Vicki shook her head. “How did two people this fucked up create something so wonderful?”

  “Beats me, to be fucking honest.”

  “Okay,” she said, punching me playfully on the arm. “I guess we’ll work out the custody details later?”

  I nodded. It was like meeting her for the first time all over again.

  “Call him,” I said as I straightened up.

  Vicki stood up as well. She opened her arms wide, and I stepped into the hug with a feeling of immense relief. It was a warm, friendly hug, and I realized the relief was from letting go o
f years’ worth of anger and resentment.

  A creaking sound from behind us caused us to separate. I pulled away from Vicki and swiveled around, my arm still around her waist.

  I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and I froze.

  There was a familiar female outline standing in the doorway.

  Dread settled into the pit of my stomach. I knew who it was even before she came into focus.

  Yvette looked from Vicki to me, and I watched her face go through the full range of emotions. Confusion. Disbelief. Disappointment. And, finally, anger. Her mouth fell open, forming a perfect O. I realized we were still holding each other and let go quickly.

  But Yvette was already on the move. Without a word, she turned and walked away.

  I cursed and took off after her. She had already disappeared when I got to the end of the hall. I looked left and right, catching a glimpse of a foot going around a corner into the main dining room where everyone was gathered.

  I broke into a brisk run, turning the corner so fast I almost walked into someone.

  “Cam?”

  Meredith blinked up at me, holding out her hands to steady me. “Thank God, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I need your help with something. It’s urgent.”

  She slipped her hand around me and started to lead me away. I thought I saw Yvette step out the front door, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to go after her.

  Chapter 26

  Yvette

  As soon as I walked out of the house, I looked back. I wasn’t sure why, but I hated myself for it. Because I wanted to see if he would come after me. I hoped he would. It’s what they did in the movies, the big, romantic gesture, ideally through an airport or across a busy highway. The man would brave speeding cars and angry pedestrians just to get to her, and she would be forced to stop because she realized he wouldn’t stop chasing her.