by Amelia Wilde
He looks at me, a searching glint in his eyes. “Let’s talk about what you came here to propose.”
It kills me. It kills me to say it to Graham Blackpool. It kills me to go back on everything I believe in.
But my back is against the wall.
So, I swallow the acid embarrassment and look him in the eye. I channel the courtroom. I channel my future. This is the only way to get from here to there. “I’m here to accept your proposal.”
Graham takes a languid sip of his wine. “That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”
The heat in my cheeks ratchets up to an inferno. “You’re right. This was a mistake.” I reach for my purse.
Graham reaches for my hand. “Stop.”
I look back, into his eyes, and try to ignore the pleasant cool of his hand on mine. “Why the hell should I?”
“Because I’m an asshole.” His voice is even and smooth, and I want to wrap myself in it. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You shouldn’t have said a lot of things.” The panic in my gut swells into a tsunami. “You should have taken your money back.”
“Sit down.”
“I am sitting down.”
“You’re halfway out of your seat. Do you know the couple to my left?”
“No.”
“Then let’s keep them out of this. Sit down, Bellamy.” I don’t sit. He lowers his voice. “I’m sorry.”
I don’t believe him. I believe that he wants something from me, and that’s why he agreed to meet me. The only part I can’t square is why we’re in this kind of place and not his office.
I slip my hand out from underneath his and sit down. I miss the warmth of his skin as soon as I do it.
It takes is a few seconds with my eyes closed to gather myself. I used this trick all the time in law school, when the sheer volume of work seemed like a mountain about to crawl over me and crush me to death.
All of the bullshit falls away.
Graham is still sitting there when I open my eyes, still making waves in the eddies of the air around us. He is capable of anything. I know it at a glance, and I want to fall deep into that darkness.
But I can’t.
“I don’t have any other options.” I take a fortifying swig of wine. “I lost my job.”
“Shit.” He has no idea what it’s like to lose a job, I’m sure.
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to get another one, unless all this...blows over.”
He cocks his head. “Didn’t you pass the bar?”
“Jesus.” I can’t help a quiet laugh. “Do you have people tracking my every move?”
“Brian mentioned something about it.”
“Then Brian”—really, who does that guy think he is?—“doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Results won’t be in for another nine weeks.”
“People get offers all the time, before they’ve officially passed the bar. There must be plenty of firms—”
I refuse to let the heat burn me alive. “Not when my name is all over the Internet with rampant speculation that I’m—” The couple at the next table is reading over the bill. “You know.”
“Right.”
“So, we’ll need some boundaries.” I’m grasping at solid ground. Negotiation is a thing I’ve been practicing for three years. “No to living together.”
Graham raises one eyebrow. “That was never on the table. If you hadn’t left so abruptly—”
“If you hadn’t been a jackass, I wouldn’t have left.” I have to get this out. “Yes to fake dates.”
“I took that as a given.”
I can still feel the solid weight of his hand over mine when I look him in the eye. “No sex.”
Graham doesn’t smile. He doesn’t lean back; instead, he leans in. “None?”
The green of his eyes is a lightning bolt hovering between us. Justice. I think of justice, and honor, and his body between the sheets. “None.”
“But?”
I remember to breathe. It’s a near thing. “If we need to...exchange kisses—chaste kisses—”
“Of course.”
“—for the purposes of authenticity…” I hate myself.
“It’ll likely be necessary.”
“Then I would do that.”
He picks up the bottle of wine and pours another inch into his glass. “I agree to the terms.”
The thunder that always follows lightning booms, and I let out a nervous laugh. “Is it really that simple?”
“It’s that simple. We present the perfect united front until this is all a distant memory, then we move on with our lives. No strings attached.” He tilts the bottle toward my glass. “More wine?”
9
Graham
“You’re allowed to smile. This is a benefit gala, not a funeral.”
Bellamy, who is absolutely stunning in a red gown that Brian’s team approved the moment I called him with the news, contorts her face into the most hideous fake grin I’ve ever seen.
“I was wrong. The funeral frown is a better look.”
She scowls. “This is so uncomfortable.”
I take her hand and put it through the crook of my elbow. She sat as far away from me as possible on the car ride over, and she’s stiff as a board right now. “You have got to relax if you’re going to convince anyone. It’s not against the rules to have a good time.” I could show her one, if she’d let me; if she’d give herself over, just once.
“I’m still trying to convince myself that this shouldn’t be, I don’t know, some kind of crime.”
“You think we’re the first people to fake a relationship for the greater good?”
“Does it count as the greater good if it’s our own asses we’re saving?”
“Not so loud,” I murmur into her ear. “This is bigger than us.”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about that.” I steer us from the Hall of States into the Grand Foyer of the Kennedy Center. It’s breathtaking—rich red carpet, towering chandeliers—but I have the feeling that the decor isn’t what has Bellamy struggling, taking one deep breath after another. “There has to be another way.”
“This is what we agreed on.” We pass by another couple—the man, tall and viciously handsome in an expensive tuxedo, and the woman regal, in a light-blue gossamer cloud of a ball gown. I met them at the inauguration, and I’d know them anywhere. “You didn’t want to be introduced to the former President and First Lady?”
Bellamy whips her head around. “That was him? Jesus Christ. My lips are going numb.”
I laugh out loud.
“What is funny?” she hisses.
“This is a performance.” I pat at her hand, lean in close.
Bellamy stiffens. “The play doesn’t start for another forty minutes. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do until then.”
I put two fingers underneath her chin and tilt her face upward, so she has no choice but to look at me. I keep the smile on my face, letting it soften into something indulgent and admiring. A strange compassion squeezes at my chest in spite of myself. “We are a performance, Bellamy. All we need to do is put on a show.”
She breathes out through pursed lips, and her shoulders relax. “It’s a lie.”
“Not when you look like an animal trapped in a cage. You’re broadcasting the truth to everyone here. And look. Seriously. Look.” Bellamy turns her head, eyes scanning the crowd that moves and seethes and swirls around us. “These are the people we need to convince.”
She narrows her eyes. “I don’t see any journalists.”
“They know where their place is at events like this. There will be photos later. But more importantly, there will be rumors first.”
“We’re trying to avoid rumors.”
“We’re trying to start new rumors to cover the threatening ones.” Bellamy trembles. I didn’t see it before, when we stepped out of the car, but now I do. “You’re doing the right thing.”
“Arguable.”
“It�
��s not up for debate. Now, would you rather make this convincing or waste the opportunity?”
She drags her eyes back to mine. “Convincing.”
I take my hand away from her chin and offer her my elbow. This time, she takes it, and her hand feels warm and alive. “Happiness. Try to project an aura of happiness.”
“What does that even look like?” We move into the crowd, and I go on autopilot. The campaign trail was a meditation on smiling and nodding and giving the impression that you care about every person who passes by you at a thousand identical events.
“Start with a smile.”
Bellamy bites her lip. “I’d argue that—”
“You don’t always have to argue, you know.”
“I do, though.” She takes a glass of champagne from a tray held up by a uniformed waiter and drains half of it in one long sip. “You don’t get anything without a fight.”
“This isn’t a fight. This is a business arrangement.”
Bellamy gives someone to our right a genuine smile, her shoulders relaxing. “I’d call it a political arrangement.”
“Semantics.”
“Accuracy.”
I’m not supposed to care about Bellamy Leighton. I’m not supposed to care about anything other than our objective, which is to save my brother from some nameless doom. But the woman won’t stop talking about accuracy. And she was very specific about the boundaries she named. She was relentlessly specific, and yet, a pretty little blush spread from her cheeks to her cleavage when she named them.
I want to know more. “Why do you have such an accuracy fetish?”
This makes her laugh, and the sound is startlingly delicious. “I’m not sexually fixated on accuracy.”
“What are you sexually fixated on?”
“None of your business.”
“I disagree.”
“No sex. That’s one of the rules.”
I take us up to one of the cash bars and get us both a glass of wine. White—because Bellamy insists that’s the best kind. “So, we can’t even discuss it?” That same blush appears beneath her makeup and moves downward to the plunging neckline of her dress.
“I don’t know why we would.”
“We don’t know how long this will last.” We step away from the stream of people and Bellamy lifts her wine to her lips. “Shouldn’t we get to know each other?”
She licks her bottom lip, and the sight of her pink tongue sends a charge from the center of my chest to my cock. “The wine is going to my head.”
“Pull yourself together, Ms. Leighton. We have a performance to put on.” To underscore the point, I lean down and press a kiss to her cheek. It’s chaste. It breaks no rules.
When I straighten up again, Bellamy is the same color as her dress. “I’m—” She shakes her head a little. “What were we talking about?”
“Why you’re obsessive about accuracy. What made you that way?”
“Nothing we need to discuss for the purposes of—”
I drain the rest of the wine and curve an arm around her waist. There’s only so long we can stay here, enclosed in this little circle of two. We need to be seen. “I know what it’s like to get fucked over by a bad deal.”
“I doubt it.”
That makes me laugh. “Because I have money? Is that it? You think that makes me invincible?”
“I think it makes you...” Her voice trails off. “I think you must have everything.”
Innocent Bellamy Leighton’s face is wide open, hopeful and afraid, and the sight of her is like waking up after a long dream. “You should know by now, sweetness. Money can’t buy everything.
“No,” she whispers. “You’re right about that.”
10
Bellamy
“This one’s a definite no.”
Brian Kelting’s red hair glints merrily in the late February sun while he places a printed photo on the desk in front of me with a gentle whhp. This could be a political thriller, if Brian weren’t so relentlessly calm. I guess that’s what makes him a good Public Relations officer—not much can rattle him.
The picture is of Graham and me at the benefit gala, where we watched a special performance of Hamilton, put on to raise money for the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation.
It’s...not good.
We were photographed in front of the NPCF’s banner during intermission, and I look...stricken. My eyes are too wide, and somehow, I simultaneously look like I’m leaning into Graham for support and pulling away from him at the same time. This is not the look of a woman in love.
“This one’s a maybe.”
The second one’s from ten days later, at another benefit event—this time, a pancake breakfast for the Boys & Girls Club. I’m chewing a bite of pancake and scowling at Graham. At least, that’s what it looks like in the photo. In reality, I was trying to get a piece of sausage out of my back teeth.
“Stop it, Brian. I look like I hate him.”
He considers the photo again. “It could look like he was comforting you, which would bode well for the relationship.”
“There is no way anyone could mistake that expression for happiness.” My cheeks are hot. “Do you have any others you want us to review?”
“The lady has a point.” Graham is leaned back in his seat, looking so casual I want to slap him. Brian’s laying out all the evidence of our failure, and he’s acting like this is a minor setback.
I try to ignore the heat under my irritation. I don’t see Graham every day—only when we go on outings the press will be—and sitting this close to him, his scent in the air, is going to my head.
“Here’s the last one.” Brian’s mouth turns down and my heart sinks. I’ve been hoping he was leading up to something positive, but why would he do that? The two of us aren’t sitting in the West Wing because we’re doing a fabulous job.
Graham and I both lean in to see the photo.
It was taken three days ago, outside the National Portrait Gallery. It has the potential to be a gorgeous shot, with the soaring pillars of the building sweeping up in the frame behind us, strong and proud and unapologetic. But I’m squinting into the evening dusk, a tight frown on my face as Graham stabs a finger at something out of the frame.
My frustration, at a slow simmer in the pit of my gut for the entire meeting, boils over. “This is a totally inaccurate representation.” We’d tried our best at the unveiling of the former president’s new portrait, hanging there next to a stunning depiction of the man we’d seen at the Kennedy Center. The artist had managed to capture the liquid blue of his eyes.
Not that I’d noticed them at the Kennedy Center. I only realized what an opportunity I’d missed when I got home that night and settled onto my couch, exhausted and in search of anything to quell the burning curiosity I had about...well, the former president. Definitely not Graham Blackpool.
“I understand why you’d feel that way.” Brian bends his head and looks at each of the photos in turn. “And I did see other shots that captured your relationship in a more flattering light.”
“If you called us here to congratulate us, you’re doing a pretty poor job.” Graham’s voice is even, the hint of a laugh curling up at the edges.
Brian frowns. “I wish that were the case.”
“Then let’s cut the bullshit, Brian. I have meetings this afternoon.”
“And the both of you have an event tonight,” Brian agrees, straightening up in his chair. “However, I think, in light of these photos, we should cancel.”
I’m a ball of anxiety, its cold fingers sweeping up and down my arms at all hours of the day, reminding me that everything is not going according to plan. My plan was to graduate law school, pass the bar, and start working for a firm that could help women like my mother. Instead, the map I’d laid out for myself is in tatters on the floor, and I’m sitting here, receiving cryptic commentary from a man who doesn’t know me from any other woman on the planet.
“Let’s be clear.” I keep my voice ste
ady, but it is work. “These are the most unflattering photos, and there are better ones...so you called us here to...share this information?”
“I called you here to offer a suggestion.”
“Whose suggestion is it, really?” Graham smiles at Brian, like he’s a predator and Brian is a field mouse. “Yours, or my brother’s?”
Brian glances at his desk. “President Blackpool has, of course, been looped into recent developments.”
“You’re killing both of us with this vague bullshit.” Graham sits up at last, leaning forward, elbows resting just above his knees, and the way his jacket tugs against the hard muscles of his arm makes me short of breath. “If you have orders from on high, there’s no need to bring visual aids.”
Brian folds his hands on the desk, looking from me to Graham and back again. Are we in couples’ therapy? Is that what’s happening? If Brian asks me to share my feelings about the way all this has been going—
“The press isn’t convinced.” His tone is blunt, and I sense a hint of disappointment. “These photographs are the ones being circulated most frequently on the Internet and in print. That’s why I brought them.” He clears his throat. “I’m sorry if the result was to make you feel uncomfortable, Ms. Leighton, but—”
“Favoritism,” says Graham with a laugh. “Blatant favoritism.”
Brian ignores him. “But I thought it was prudent to lay out all the facts before we plan our next move.” We. Our. Brian is real team player.
Graham motions in the air for him to speed things up.
“Fine. We need a proposal.”
We’re back at square one, and I sigh. “What do you mean, a proposal? Are you asking for me to create some kind of...brief?” My head swims at the thought of it. I still haven’t recovered from taking the bar.
Brian grins, his eyes lighting up. “A marriage proposal.”
My throat goes tight. “No.”
“Don’t make a hasty decision, Ms. Leighton. The optics—”
“No. I won’t.” The panic rises, choking, wrapped in guilt. “This is already enough of a lie.” My hands shake. I fucking hate it. “A proposal would only add fuel to the fire.” The fire is my future. The fire is every job interview I’m never going to get because every news outlet in the country is busy calling me a prostitute.