Five Fake Dates

by D. J. Jamison

  I reached out for him, but he slapped my hand away. “Just watch. I’m super turned on by the idea of fucking you. I don’t really want anything else right now.”

  “Oh.” My heart stuttered. “I mean, I guess you can fuck me, if that’s what you want.”

  “Not yet,” Adam said with a groan, and then he was coming—splashing my chest and neck with his white cum. He stroked through it, squeezing his cock and milking out all the pleasure he could. Watching was hot. We were both young, though. We could both recover and be ready to go again in fifteen minutes.

  As Adam collapsed, laying his head on my shoulder, and we shifted into cuddle mode, I kissed his temple. “Sorry, I didn’t help much.”

  “Mm, you did. You’re here.”

  Such a simple statement, but it went directly to my heart. “I’m here,” I agreed. “I always will be.”

  He craned his head up to kiss my chin. “I believe that,” he said.

  “How long have you been wanting to fuck me?”

  “Since I was fourteen.”

  I chuckled, overwhelmed again that he’d wanted me for so long, even when I was so extremely young and stupid. “I meant since we got together.”

  He shrugged. “There’s no rush, West. I wanted to test the waters.”

  “Five fake fingerings?” I joked.

  We devolved into juvenile laughter. Adam recovered first. “Nothing fake about my fingers in your ass.”

  “For real,” I agreed.

  Grinning up at me, he said, “I’m glad you liked it, but we could do anything together, and I’d be happy. We’re sharing a lot of firsts, and I really love having that with you, but more importantly, I want us to share all our lasts.”

  “I have no doubt that we will. BFFs, right?”

  “I’ll love you forever,” Adam agreed.

  “Me too,” I whispered, kissing him. “Nothing fake about that.”

  Thank you for reading!

  Thank you so much for reading my sweet, new adult romance! You can read more about Bliss Island in my Marital Bliss series, starting with Surprise Groom. I hope if you enjoyed Five Fake Dates, you’ll consider signing up for my newsletter if you haven’t already. I provide updates on new releases, sales, and giveaways. I also have an active group on Facebook, DJ and Company, with teasers, behind-the-scenes posts about my writing, and other fun stuff.

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  Caleb was kneeling before a bridesmaid — and not in a fun way — when his cell phone rang with the news that would change his life.

  He handed off a roll of duct tape to the maid of honor and extricated his arm from the underside of a royal blue taffeta gown, his fingers tangling in tulle netting briefly before coming free. At least he’d managed to avoid skimming any skin; as the wedding planner at the exclusive Bliss Island Resort, he did not want a reputation for being inappropriately handsy.

  A loose nail and an accident-prone bridesmaid had collided to create the tear that was now the focus of the entire room. The hazards of a photo shoot at the horse stables.

  “I’m getting a call,” Caleb said as he stood. “Just tape the underside and let’s see how it looks.”

  Caleb preferred to let his mother handle wardrobe malfunctions, but as the events coordinator he had to be prepared for anything. And sadly, Rebekah Taylor had her hands full with the soul-crushing work of untangling the financial knot his father — unbeknownst to either of them — had created before he died six months ago.

  Salt, meet wound.

  Bad enough they were grieving for Clint Taylor, but now they had to confront the fact that he’d made serious mistakes that would cost them dearly.

  Caleb tapped the Bluetooth headset he wore while working events. “This is Caleb Taylor with Bliss Island Resort.”

  While he spoke, he made a break for the door, ready to escape the over-perfumed bridal suite where the women were touching up their hair and makeup before Brooklyn Davenport’s big walk down the aisle. Tessa of the torn dress turned, causing her skirt to flare, the tear hardly noticeable, and Caleb offered a thumb’s up and stepped into the cool hallway, grateful for the fresher air.

  His smile of relief was short-lived.

  “Caleb, I’m glad I caught you. This is Louis Chastain.”

  He tensed as soon as he heard the name. Louis Chastain would forever be on Caleb’s shit list for sending away his teenaged son, Julien, after discovering he was gay. Caleb had been at boarding school and unable to do a thing to help his best friend. He hadn’t even known the truth until a year later, when he started asking questions about why Julien no longer signed in to Facebook, why his text messages and emails bounced. Not that Caleb could have done much about it at fifteen years old, but he would have tried.

  “How can I help you, Mr. Chastain?”

  “This call is more about how I can help you.”

  Caleb doubted that. Louis was a lot of things, but helpful wasn’t generally one of them.

  “Your personal investment loan is coming due,” he said. “You have ninety days to pay the balance.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with this loan?” Caleb said as he walked over the floral-patterned runner along the second-floor hallway of the historic mansion his parents had converted into an elegant resort while he was a child. His mother had inherited the private — but deteriorating — island when he was six years old. By the time he was thirteen, Bliss Island Resort was open for business.

  It had been a labor of love ever since. Events planning might not be mapped into Caleb’s DNA, but it had gotten under his skin. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

  Louis Chastain’s words made him realize he might not have a choice. As he quickly jogged down the steps of the spiral staircase to the first floor, his emotions spiraled with each word out of Mr. Chastain’s mouth. The real estate investor made it clear that the Taylors were mired in debt and had only a short time to resolve it — or face the very real chance of losing the entire island. Mr. Chastain couldn’t take Bliss Island, but he could force them to sell the collateral in order to pay what they owed. With this timetable, they’d never find a buyer without taking a huge loss, and Caleb knew from what his mother had discovered so far, that they were already leveraged to the hilt with debt they knew about, much less this mystery loan underwritten twenty years ago.

  Caleb couldn’t address this now. The resort was overrun with caterers setting up in the kitchen, florists with massive centerpieces for the ballroom, and bridal party members at loose ends — mostly the men — wandering about, probably hoping for a pre-nuptial drink.

  “This is the first I’m hearing of this,” Caleb said, “and I don’t have time to discuss it now. We’ve got a wedding here today—”

  “Funny you should bring up weddings,” Chastain said. “There’s a clause in the paperwork. A little Easter egg your Dad and I had a good laugh over when we signed the deal. But it could just be your good luck it’s there.”

  “Oh?” Caleb struggled to find the humor in a debt that could ruin them. “What’s that?”

  “You can marry Sofia,” Mr. Chastain said heartily. “And the debt will be forgiven. Poof!”

  “Poof,” Caleb echoed, feeling a little light-headed.

  Had he heard that correctly? He could marry Sofia Chastain?

  “Sofia’s a lovely girl,” Mr. Chastain continued.

  Caleb couldn’t argue. Sofia was lovely. She was also like a sister to him. Whenever he looked at her, he saw the little girl with a gap in her teeth who’d tagged after him and her big brother, Julien. Sofia had grown up, of course. She was beautiful but also troubled. Last Caleb had heard, she was in rehab.

  No wonder with a father like that.

  “What do you say, Caleb?” Mr. Chastain prompted when he didn’t speak. “What have you got to lose?”

  “Well …”

  Freedom.

  Freedom to choose his own wife. Free
dom to fall in love, not that Caleb was particularly good at that. Freedom to decide his own future. Just … freedom.

  “Other than your home and business, obviously,” Mr. Chastain added, followed by a painfully false chuckle.

  “Why?” Caleb asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why would you want me to marry Sofia?” he asked. “Why would you put it in the clause in the first place?”

  “I have my reasons,” he said vaguely.

  Which only served to make Caleb more suspicious. What was Louis Chastain’s game? That marriage clause had been written into the loan when Caleb was just a child. Their families had been close, sure, but it still was kind of weird, right?

  What does he stand to gain if I marry Sofia? The entirety of a private island for his grandchildren, maybe? Fifty percent of the island, even if Sofia and I were to divorce. Not a bad profit on a loan worth a fraction of the island’s value.

  “I’ll have to review our options,” Caleb said finally. “I haven’t seen the documents or reviewed our financials in light of this information.”

  That last part was bullshit. He knew they didn’t have the equity to pull it off, not when you lined it up against the years of debt and shoddy book-keeping his father had done. At this rate, they’d be lucky not to be audited by the IRS.

  “You don’t think she’s good enough for you?” Louis asked, a hint of anger creeping into his tone.

  “I didn’t say that,” Caleb replied evasively. “I don’t know that Bliss Island would be the best place for her, though. She’s just coming out of rehab, right? We have parties here every weekend.”

  “Not the kind of parties she attends,” Mr. Chastain said darkly, and Caleb had to admit he had a point. Alcohol flowed freely, but they set limits on what was allowed at their receptions — and the kind of prescription drugs and party pills Sofia got hooked on weren’t typically available.

  As far as he knew.

  “She’s always liked you, Caleb, and hell, saving your island isn’t a bad wedding gift. Think it over. But remember: the clock is ticking.”

  Caleb could do little more than think it over as he spent the night overseeing a wedding reception. Disturbing as the news was, he had a job to do. But the following day, Caleb and his mother ransacked the filing cabinet until they finally found a copy of the investment loan Louis Chastain had extended to Clint Taylor. Then, Caleb had scoured the terms — a sliding-scale interest rate that increased every five years, exorbitant late fees, and the cherry on top: a balloon payment due at the twenty-year mark to pay the full remaining balance. They had ninety days until the deadline.

  “Can we finance this somehow?” he asked his mother.

  She shook her head, her eyes red-rimmed. From crying or overworking herself in the office, he didn’t know. He’d have to ask Anna, household manager and a second mother to Caleb, to keep an eye on her to make sure she wasn’t overdoing it.

  “We had that blizzard that collapsed the stables roof a few years back, remember? We had to finance those repairs, along with dozens of other things over the years. An island is expensive to maintain, especially up to resort standards. Even if we could find the equity, our name is mud with creditors right now.”

  Caleb smoothed out the papers. “Maybe we could find another investor. Someone to bail us out, or—”

  “No one’s going to want to invest. We’re profitable, but we don’t have the margins to take on a partner,” she said. “I hate to say it, Caleb, but this marriage clause might be our only hope. Otherwise, we’ll have to sell the island, and once we pay off all the debt …”

  He knew what she was going to say, and he dreaded it all the same.

  “We really will be broke,” she whispered.

  They sat in silence then, lost in thought. Caleb’s mind whirled through options, trying in vain to find an answer that wasn’t an arranged marriage with Sofia Chastain. He knew he couldn’t love her. Not like that. But he suspected she would love him, would put her hope in him, would ultimately be disappointed in him. Like so many other women he’d dated, who realized they were only runners-up to his true love: Bliss Island.

  “We’ll figure something out,” he murmured.

  Rebekah Taylor nodded, though her eyes were dim of the passion he’d seen burning there for most of his life. “I hope you’re right.”

  He picked up the contract, scanning until he found the clause, hoping some new loophole would jump out at him.

  Should a child of Clint Taylor and Rebekah Taylor legally marry in good faith a child of Louis Chastain and Helena Chastain, this debt will be released upon the legally filed marriage date.

  It was already signed, ready to go into effect. All he had to do was bite the bullet and marry a woman he didn’t love and barely knew, a woman who was a party girl, socialite, and recovering addict. Of all the versions of Sofia he’d come to know, though, it was the one-time little girl with the gap in her teeth that he was most afraid to hurt.

  How happy would she be in a loveless marriage?

  Caleb wished he knew what to do.

  “You poor, poor rich boy,” Rory said with an eye roll. “You have to marry a rich woman, who’s probably also beautiful, in order to own an entire island and the business that goes with it. You’re right; this is soul-shattering stuff, my friend.”

  Rory sat across from him at a high-top table, sipping a Cosmo as he single-handedly destroyed Caleb’s pity party. Caleb had called up his former boarding school roommate in the hopes of commiserating with someone. A week had gone by since Louis Chastain’s phone call, and Caleb still hadn’t found a solution that didn’t start with marr and end in iage.

  Caleb had never considered himself a commitment-phobe. He was a wedding planner for goodness’ sake! But the more he thought about marrying Sofia, the uneasier he felt about the whole thing. Each night he went to bed, his brain circling the drain yet again as he searched for solutions that didn’t exist, the heavier the weight that sat on his chest. One night he was going to suffocate unless he got it under control.

  Control. That’s what he needed. Some control over a life that had gone off the rails. One morning he woke up the events coordinator for a successful wedding resort, the soon-to-be owner of that resort, and a bachelor with the freedom to date who he wanted. And now? His entire future was dangling by a thread.

  All he had to do was admit defeat and agree to marry Sofia Chastain.

  And yet … He. Could. Not. Do. It.

  So tonight, he just wanted to drink his Jack and Diet Coke and get a little goddamn sympathy for his situation. Apparently, he’d chosen the wrong friend for that job.

  “You make it sound like I haven’t worked my whole life to earn this.”

  “You were born into this privileged life,” Rory pointed out.

  Caleb remembered suddenly that Rory had been on a scholarship to the boarding school, not one of the wealthier set. What would Rory say of his privilege if Caleb told him that while he might live in a mansion on a private island, he was in debt up to his eyeballs … oh, forget it. He was still privileged, and he knew it. But for how much longer?

  “What about love?” Caleb asked.

  “A lot of people would give up love for the kind of security you have.”

  Caleb groaned, and Rory took pity, laughing. “Flip the script on them, then. You mentioned this marriage clause was written into a legal document. I worked in a law office, and trust me, there’s always some kind of loophole. You just have to find it.”

  Trouble was, marrying Sofia was the loophole. Some might even say it was a generous gesture by Louis Chastain, but Caleb knew better. The terms of the deal had not been favorable to the Taylors, and the loan was written not long after they relocated to New England. Clint had been a Midwesterner with zero business experience, and Louis had taken advantage.

  To make matters worse, the Chastains had befriended his parents and taken them under their wing socially. Their children — Caleb, Julien, and Sofia �
�� had played together. It was a total betrayal in Caleb’s eyes, and a perfect illustration of just how flimsy their friendship had been.

  “No loopholes to be found,” he told Rory. “I have to marry into the Chastain family if we want to save the resort. There’s no other way. My fucking father signed me away like … like … some medieval prince!”

  It was possible he’d had too much to drink by this point. He was on his third Jack and Diet Coke. Or maybe fourth.

  “And before you tell me how lucky I am to be a prince, lemme tell you something.”

  Rory smirked. “Okay, lay it on me.”

  “Louis Chastain is a DICK!”

  Caleb said it so emphatically he almost fell out of his chair. Rory caught his arm, pushing him back into place while laughing. “Okay, shh. Maybe not so loud.”

  “No, he’s a dick. I mean it. He sent away his son, Julien. And you wanna know why? Huh?”

  “Pretty sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “Because Julien’s gay,” he said. “His son is gay, and Louis Chastain is a fucking homophobe.”

  “Oh, well you should have said so. Fuck that guy.”

  “Exactly.” Caleb held up his glass in a toast. “Fuck that guy!”

  They clinked glasses and drank. After a minute, Rory snickered to himself.

  “Wha?” Caleb slurred.

  “I was just thinking, too bad you’re straight. Otherwise, you could marry his son. Really stick it to him.”

  Caleb gaped for a second at the sheer audacity of that idea before collapsing into hysterics.

  Oh, God. He could just imagine Louis Chastain’s face if Julien showed up after all these years and foiled his plans. It would be the ultimate justice. Poetic revenge. No, those weren’t the expressions. Poetic justice and the ultimate revenge. That sounded better. That sounded fucking perfect, actually.

  If only.

  He sighed and took another drink. Then straightened in his seat, grasping at Rory excitedly and nearly knocking his Cosmo over in the process. “Rory, you’re a genius,” he crowed.