“The Luddite version.” He laughed. “All right. Well, to make a long story short... Basically, the entire Internet thinks you and I are engaged to be married.”
“What?” Lisa shook her head. “I just don’t— How’d you get from point A, our lunch date, to point B, we’re engaged?”
“It’s kind of my fault.” He passed a hand over his face, scrubbing with his palm at his eyes. “And by ‘kind of,’ I mean completely.”
Lisa shook her head again, uncomprehending.
Adam stood and began pacing the room. “It was just that Kiki James was grilling me, really putting me on the spot, and she already had the photos of us—you and me—from lunch, and she’d also gotten her hands on some pictures from a couple months ago, of my stepsister and her son and me.”
“I think I saw those,” Lisa said, “in some magazine my coworker had.”
“Yeah. Then you probably saw that they wrote in the magazine that Jess, my stepsister, was my wife. Which, of course, she’s absolutely not. I mean, we grew up together.” He made a face. “And I’m not married. I mean, anymore. I was. Years ago. And Kiki James had pictures of her, too.”
“Of your wife?”
He blew out a breath. “My ex-wife,” he corrected. “Ivana.”
Something inside Lisa twisted at the name Ivana. Instantly, she had a mental picture of an exotic, Eastern European beauty.
“The photos she had of us must’ve been almost ten years old,” Adam was saying. “I have no idea how she got her hands on them. Well, I mean, I do. Ivana must’ve sold them to her. Or to someone, and somehow Kiki James got her hands on them.” He shook his head. “Ivana always was money hungry.”
Lisa really didn’t want to talk about Adam’s ex-wife. “I guess I still don’t see what any of this has to do with me.”
“Well,” he said, “it’s just that... When Kiki James was grilling me, and she had all these photos, and she was claiming all three were pictures of my quote-unquote ‘mystery women,’ as if I have girlfriends all over the country, which I don’t—I mean, God,” he sputtered, “I should be so lucky—”
Lisa stood. She definitely didn’t want to hear about him yearning for multiple girlfriends. “I’m just going to—” she started, but he held up his hands.
“Wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, how it sounded. And I’m trying to get to the point, I really am. It’s just hard to admit, because I screwed up.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.” He dropped his hands. “Kiki was dredging up my past and making me out to be some kind of playboy, and that interviewer back in February made me look like a complete failure at relationships—which, I guess, I am, but that doesn’t mean my matchmaking ideas aren’t solid, and I don’t want my company to suffer because I couldn’t manage to stay married to a woman who cheated on me.” He held up a finger. “More than once, if you want to get technical about it—”
“Adam,” Lisa said, and he stopped talking, and took her hand, and smiled into her eyes.
“So I lied,” he told her, simply. “I just blurted out this lie, without even meaning to. I didn’t even know I was going to say it until it was out of my mouth.”
“What did you say?”
“I said you were beautiful and intelligent and successful.” That little dimple came out as his smile deepened. “That wasn’t the lie, of course. That part was the truth. The lie was when I said you were going to be my wife.”
Suddenly, Lisa needed to sit down again. This was all just a little much. She let herself sit back down on the edge of the bed.
“And now,” Adam said, and kneeled on one knee in front of her. He took her hands in his again and held them, and looked hopefully up into her face. “Now, I want to know if you maybe, might possibly be willing to play along. To pretend it’s not a lie, for a little while. Lisa, I’m hoping you’ll pretend to be my fiancée.”
“Adam Match asked you to fake-marry him?” Clare shrieked delightedly, and hooted at the top of her lungs.
“Hush,” Lisa hissed, glancing around. “Seriously, keep it down.” She’d called an emergency meeting with Willow and Clare at Diego’s, and now they were seated at their regular booth. It was Friday night, so the bar was crowded and noisy, as this was many people’s first stop of the evening. No one seemed to be listening in, but you never knew.
“So you’re going to be his fake fiancée,” Clare went on, warming to her jokes. “Fake-ancée. No—faux-ancée! That’s way better.”
“Clare,” Lisa pleaded, “this is serious. I don’t know what to do. I need you guys’ help.”
“Well,” Willow said, her tone measured. “Tell me again what, exactly, he asked you to do.”
Lisa sighed. “He wants me to pretend to be his fiancée for the next month. He said the website is hosting these Dream Date weekend things—that’s why he’s in town this weekend, because they’re doing one here—and he wants me to come along as the in-house massage therapist. I guess it’s these couples who win dates from Mister-Match.com, and they get to do whatever they want—all kinds of pampering and VIP treatment.”
“The couple this weekend gets to see Willie Nelson in concert,” Clare said. “Private concert.”
“How did you know that?” Lisa demanded. “Adam just told me that, earlier. But it still just says ‘To Be Announced’ on the website.”
“I have my ways,” Clare said, with an enigmatic wink.
“Willie Nelson?” Willow breathed. “I love him!”
“I know,” Lisa said. “They’re so lucky. Anyway, I guess couples’ massages will fit right into the whole pampering theme. And Adam thinks it’ll be a good cover, a good way for us to spend time together for the next few weeks, to support our fake engagement.”
“How much is he going to pay you?” Clare asked. “For the weekend gigs?”
“He told me to name my salary,” Lisa said. “So I did. I told him an amount I thought was ridiculously high.” She paused. “And he doubled it.”
“He doubled it!” Clare hooted again and slapped the tabletop.
Willow’s response was more measured. “How would these Dream Date weekends work, for you? You’re on call at Indulgence every other Saturday, you know.”
“I can shift her hours around,” Clare protested. “It’s just for a month, right?”
“He said he’ll fly me to each city—”
“First-class, right?” Clare asked.
“Well,” Lisa said, “actually, yes.” The very idea of it embarrassed her—even as it excited her.
“You are so lucky,” Clare sang to the ceiling. She pulled out her phone and started tapping at its screen.
“Yeah, right,” Lisa said flatly. After the past three years, punctuated by a crappy, emotionally damaging relationship with the Rod, a failed business, and an IRS audit that had led to financial devastation and the repossessing of everything she’d owned of value, she was about the last person in the world she would call lucky.
On the other hand, after all that spectacularly bad luck, maybe she was due for some of the good variety.
“I just don’t understand why he lied to the interviewer,” Willow was saying, “and why he wants you to play along with it.”
“I guess a different interviewer called him out a couple months ago for being a single guy who founded a dating site, and the company took a real hit. So he’s been trying ever since to build it back up again and just keep quiet about his personal life. But then these photographs of him with his sister and his nephew showed up in the tabloids—”
Clare looked up from her phone. “Wait, the woman in those pictures in Rag was his sister? That’s hilarious! They always say incest is best.”
“Gross!” Willow said, looking truly offended.
Lisa scowled. “Incest? What? No.”
“I’m kidding,” Clare said, rolling her eyes. “Obviously.”
“She’s actually his stepsister, not his sister. But he said they grew up together.” Lisa shook he
r head. “Anyway, the point is, the media keeps getting the wrong idea about him, and publishing all these photos of him with different women, and speculating about whether he’s either some kind of loser at relationships, which of course calls the legitimacy of Mister-Match.com into question, or he’s some kind of player, with women waiting for him all over the country.”
“And now you’re supposedly one of the poor dupes,” Clare said, still looking at her phone. “Since the paparazzi published shots of you with Adam, too.”
“Right,” Lisa confirmed. “So I guess he just did the first thing that came to mind during his interview yesterday, and told the woman that he’s engaged.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, that we’re engaged.”
“So, how does it all end?” Willow asked.
Lisa blinked.
“Sheesh,” Clare said. “Buzzkill.”
“I’m serious,” Willow said. “So you and Adam pretend to be engaged for a month, and you work a few Dream Date weekends with him. Travel a bit, make some money, have some fun. Then what? How does it all end?”
Lisa shifted uncomfortably. “He said we would stage a breakup in a few weeks. Call off the engagement.”
“Sweetie, are you sure you’re going to be able to handle that?” Willow asked gently. “What if you end up getting attached?”
“Oh my God,” Clare interrupted. “You’re famous!” She held out her phone for Lisa and Willow to see.
“What?” Lisa frowned and leaned in.
“Wow!” Willow gave Lisa’s shoulder a light squeeze. “That’s you! You look really pretty, too. This is so amazing!”
It was one of the shots from yesterday, of Lisa and Adam at the sushi restaurant. In the photograph, Adam was holding the door for Lisa, and she was looking up at him with goofy, syrupy adoration all over her face.
Lisa could see why the tabloids had assumed there was something going on between her and Adam Match, and why Willow was worried she might get overly attached. It was clear from the photograph that she was completely smitten with the man.
“Let me see that.” She took the phone from Clare.
“You can swipe side-to-side to see the others,” Clare said. “There are four or five more. I can’t believe this! You’re actually famous. So where’s the ring?” She pointed at Lisa’s bare hand. “If this guy is serious, I expect to see a big, fat rock on that finger before the weekend’s out.”
“Oh, stop,” Lisa protested. She was feeling more dispirited by the second. This was a ridiculous scheme Adam had set in motion, and she was caught right in the middle of it.
“Seriously, if he wants to pull this off, he needs to give you a ring. A giant one.”
Lisa sighed, and reached into her purse to unzip the inner pocket. “Yeah... He actually did.”
She pulled out the ring Adam had given her earlier, and held it out for her friends to see. “He said I could keep it. I mean, either way—whatever I decide. He said I can keep it or sell it, or whatever I want.” She frowned at the thing, glinting in her palm. “It’ll definitely help pay off some of my debts,” she admitted.
Willow and Clare weren’t listening. They were too busy squealing over the ring and fighting over who got to try it on first.
“Look at this thing!” Clare exclaimed, jamming it onto her ring finger and holding up her hand to admire it.
“It looks like an antique.” Willow’s eyes were wide. “Lisa, it’s gorgeous.”
“I know,” Lisa agreed uncomfortably.
The problem was, Willow was right—it was gorgeous. And it was an antique, which meant it was one of a kind. It was a scalloped design, with two large diamonds set in platinum, surrounded by smaller diamonds. It looked like fine lace, or a cluster of delicate flowers.
Somehow, Adam had gone to a jeweler and found the exact kind of ring Lisa would have wanted from a real boyfriend with a real proposal of marriage.
How had he known? How had he chosen just the type of ring that would make her pulse speed up and make her wish, in her heart of hearts, for the impossible—that this thing between them could actually be real?
“Try it on,” Willow was insisting. “I want to see it on you. Does it fit?”
“It’s perfect,” Lisa said, shaking her head. “Seriously, I have no idea how he knew my size or my taste, but somehow, he did.” She slipped the ring onto her finger, and the table went quiet as all three friends simply gazed, dazzled, at the ring.
“I’m giving it back to him, of course.” Lisa started to pull it off again.
“What!” Clare exclaimed. “No!”
“But he said it’s yours to keep,” Willow protested.
“I can’t keep it,” Lisa began, and then broke off abruptly, because her stomach suddenly felt like a bucket full of concrete. Ice-cold concrete.
Willow was watching her. “Lisa, sweetie, what’s wrong?”
Lisa couldn’t answer. She couldn’t even breathe. She might want to throw up, except none of her bodily functions seemed to be working—except her heart, of course. That was pounding triple-time. She could feel it in her chest, in her ears, and of course behind her right eye in the usual stress-headache spot, where its hammering actually felt very much like a hammer.
“What’s going on?” she heard Clare ask in a hushed voice. Apparently she’d figured out that Lisa wasn’t just taking an especially long breath.
And still, she couldn’t do anything except stare as Rodney—AKA the Rod, her ex, the despicable piece of pond scum who’d cheated on her and then left her to deal with the IRS on her own while he moved on to his next victim—approached their table.
Chapter 11
____________________________________
Rodney wore an oily smile, and his glossy head of curls was as big and luxuriant as ever—a crown for the king, Lisa thought distantly. He also wore some fucking blonde on his arm who looked about eighteen years old. She appeared yoga-toned and irritated, like Bambi with a gym membership and an attitude.
God, Lisa wondered, was this the woman Rodney had cheated on her with? She’d never known who it was, or anything about her, really, beyond her name—Becca. Lisa’s lip curled just thinking it. It was such an ordinary name to inspire such revulsion.
Was this Becca, in the flesh?
Suddenly, all her functions kicked back into gear at once: Her throat started working, air started rushing in and out of her lungs, and she definitely wanted to puke. Preferably projectile, and preferably on the blonde.
“Well, if it isn’t the Rod,” Clare said flatly. “To what do we owe this—wait, what’s the opposite of a pleasure?”
“Clare,” he returned. “Sweet as you always were, I see.”
She eyed him with a bored, bland stare. “And I see you’re still as full of shit as the sack of shit you are.”
Lisa smiled grimly. If she wasn’t able to come up with insults or the guts to hurl them at the man, she was glad at least her best friends had her back.
The blonde—Bambi, as Lisa was calling her in her head—was frowning and pulling visibly on Rodney’s arm. “Let’s just go,” she said, but Rodney wasn’t paying attention. He was smiling down at Lisa.
She felt like someone in a horror movie—paralyzed, strapped down to a table as a leering madman descended on her, a whirring saw blade in his hand aimed straight for her jugular.
“Lisa,” he said, still grinning that huge, greasy, Joker smile of his, “it’s been too long.”
She tried to say something sharp and cutting, but all that came out was a strangled noise that sounded like the grunting, popping nose made by grackles—downtown Austin’s signature trash bird.
She was dimly aware of Willow frantically kicking her under the table. To snap her out of her daze? Lisa wasn’t sure. All she knew was her shin hurt.
Clare’s torso suddenly loomed in Lisa’s peripheral view as she half-rose and stuck out a hand toward Bambi. “I’m Clare. I don’t think we’ve met.”
Bambi looked as if she’d caught a w
hiff of Clare’s aforementioned sack of shit, and didn’t shake her hand. “I’m Barbie.”
If she hadn’t felt so ill, Lisa would have burst out laughing. Not Becca, and not Bambi—Barbie. It was too perfect. And she’d thought she was just stereotyping the poor girl.
Judging by her she-wolf grin, Clare also thought the name fit like a glove. “Wow, Barb, great name. Great rock!” Unfazed by having her offered hand rejected, she zeroed right in on the ring on Barbie’s left hand, grabbing her wrist to draw it out for everyone to see.
Lisa felt Willow grab her own hand under the table and squeeze, hard. Only by the contrasting warmth of her friend’s fingers did she realize how cold her own had suddenly gone.
“Hoo-wee!” Clare hooted. “Look at the size of that thing! Did the Rod buy that for you?”
Barbie pulled her hand back, frowning up at Rodney before looking at Clare like she was thicker than a brick. “Obviously. We’re engaged.”
“Obviously,” Clare repeated. She leaned in a little closer for the kill. “So, let me ask you, Barb. Did he use his own money for that, or did he get you to pay for it? Because the Rod, here, he’s got some cash-flow issues, not to mention a little problem with theft. And lying. Oh, and cheating.” She shrugged. “But you’re the one who’s engaged to this prize, so I’m sure you know all about all that.” She shook her head admiringly. “It’s so big of you to be able to look past it and love him anyway. You must have the hugest heart.”
Barbie took a step back, yanking at Rodney’s arm. “Let’s go. Rodney. Now.” Her voice had gone shrill, but Rodney didn’t look at her or respond.
“Seriously, sweetheart, watch your valuables around this one,” Clare was saying. “He’s got a history of taking whatever the hell he wants, and making everyone else pay for it.”
Rodney didn’t seem to be paying any more attention to Clare than he was to Barbie-doll. Somehow, he was still standing next to the table, staring down at Lisa. “I’ve been wanting to run into you for a long time,” he said to her. “I’m so sorry, Lisa.”
Why hadn’t he left yet? And why couldn’t she look away?
Mister Match (The Match Series Book 1) Page 10