by Coco Cadence
“Pretend wife,” I say.
“Right. Well, in order for that to be successful …” He leans in, and I swear to god, I think he smells me because I hear him sniff. “I need to know everything there is to know about you.”
I turn around right, facing him not even inches away. “And you think knowing how I smell is going to do the trick?” I laugh. “Because as far as I know, married people don’t go off telling people how stinky their spouses’ armpits are.”
He smirks, licking his lip. “I never said you smelled bad.”
“You didn’t, but I find it incredibly weird that you even want to know what I smell like.”
“I’d like to grow accustomed to you in every way possible.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh, now I’m interesting all of the sudden?”
“Excuse me?” He frowns.
I shake my head. “Forget it. Just … let me know what you want me to do. Also, I’d like to have it on paper that you’ll give me a raise.”
He nods, briefly closing his eyes. “I’ll do just that, Miss Webber.”
“I’d like to know how long this is going to last, what’s expected of me, and exactly what the limits are. I want to have a say in it all. And I want to know why.”
“Why what?”
“Why are you doing all of this?”
He sighs. “Fine. Whatever you want, Miss Webber.” He nods, rubbing his hands. “Right, we’ll talk about this tomorrow then.”
“What?”
He steps backwards, gazing at the door. “I have some more urgent matters to attend to right now, like a model completely flipping out over a bad Photoshop job, but I’ll make sure to discuss the perimeters of this assignment with you, okay? Tomorrow!” He holds out his thumbs.
“Okay,” I say.
“Oh, and before I forget,” he says while opening the door. “To make this all believable, I need to know everything there is to know about you. So make sure to tell me all about those filthy minutes you just spent in there, because I need to know all about what makes you and your body tick and explode.”
I gape at him.
“Bye!” And then he walks out the door.
Chapter 4
The next day…
I barge into his office first thing in the morning. “So? Let’s hear it.”
He turns around in his leather chair. “Close the door, please.”
I kick back to close the door, never taking my eyes off him. “Spill it.”
He playfully raises a brow. “Oh, so feisty … I love it!”
“Stop playing games, Leo,” I say, stepping forward. “If you want me to do this, I need to know why because I’m not putting my hands on it if it’s anything illegal.”
He laughs. “Relax; you make it sound like I’m trying to avoid immigrations or something.”
“For all I know, you could be.”
“Samantha …”
Oh, here we go again. I roll my eyes at the sound of my name.
“You know me better than that,” he says. “Besides, do I look like a foreigner to you?”
“With that tan, you could pass as one. Tell me, where do you get sprayed? I should visit that salon some time.” Okay, that’s just snark from this shark, but I needed to bite something today.
He laughs. “I like this …”
“Yeah, right,” I scoff, crossing my arms.
“I do. I mean it,” he says. Suddenly his smile his gone and his eyes zoom in on mine. “Sit down.”
The way he says ‘sit down’ has me shivering. He just used a very low, assertive voice.
I sit down in the chair in front of his desk and wait. Taking a deep breath, he grabs a few papers lying on his desk and places them in front of me.
“Your requested raise.”
I read the document, but the further I get, the less I understand. This mentions work hours outside of my regular ones, extra workload, as well as special requests. Basically, he’s describing why I am getting a raise, but none of them are real. Nothing on here states his actual request.
“But this …”
“I’m not going to put our agreement on any official document, so this will have to do. Do you want that raise or not?”
“Yes, of course, but–”
“Then this will suffice. Now, do you have questions?”
“Yes. I’d like to know why we’re doing this so I know what I have to prepare for.”
“Nothing special. Just to visit my parents and a few clients.”
“What?” I say, my jaw dropping. “You want to fool your parents into thinking we’re married?”
“They’re easily fooled, especially considering they haven’t even met you yet.”
“Why? What in the world have you done?” I ask, frowning. “As your personal assistant, I need to know what I’m getting myself into.”
“You make it sound like you have to keep tabs on me.”
“It’s not easy being your assistant.”
He licks his lips. “If it was easy, you wouldn’t be getting a raise.”
“My point exactly.”
“Which is also why you will do your very best to make sure this raise is not uncalled for.” He smirks.
“You’re the one with ludicrous requests.”
“Oh, it can get even more ludicrous if it were up to me.”
“No, thank you.” I clear my throat. “My ludicrous bucket is full.” I frown. “What is the point in deceiving your parents? Why go through all that trouble?”
He sighs, licking his lips. “I can’t get rid of your incessant questions, can I?”
“You’ll be rid of me if you pay me one million dollars.” I place my pinky near my mouth.
He laughs. “If I paid you that, you’d be out of a job.”
“Exactly.”
“Oh, excuse me, Miss Webber, would you like to be fired?” he muses.
“No, but if I’d get a million dollars, I sure as hell wouldn’t work for you.”
“Oh, ouch.” He grins. “Whatever have I done to deserve such hatred.”
I shrug. “Hmm, part assholeness, part obnoxiousness.” I smile.
“Aww, you hurt me, Miss Webber.” He places his hand on his heart.
“Aww … want a cookie now?” I say, raising an eyebrow.
“You really love me so much, huh. I can tell,” he says. He leans forward over his desk. “Tell you what, I promise I’ll work on the asshole part if you promise me you’ll do your best as a pretend wife.”
I squint. “And you think there’s actually something you can do about that?”
“A man can always try, that has to count for something.”
“What about the obnoxious part?”
He leans back in his chair. “Nope, sorry, but that’s just part of my awesome personality.”
I roll my eyes and shake my head. “Fine. Let’s get to the point already. What happened that you have to lie to your parents about this.”
He grabs a pencil and starts fiddling with it. “Right. Well, you know I went to Vegas this last weekend.”
“Please don’t remind me. I still have to clear out your phone of all those pictures that can’t see the light of day. As well as mine.”
“Oh, I sent them to you?” He laughs. “Goddamn, I shouldn’t have drank that much.”
“Nope, and I warned you, but you wouldn’t listen to me, as always.”
“I don’t listen to anyone, you know that, Samantha.”
“You should, though.”
“Should I listen to you then? Or should you listen to me?” He leans forward again with a big smirk on his face. “Because as far as I know, this nameplate here means that I’m the one in charge.” He taps on the metal nameplate that’s on the front of his desk. “See that? What does it say?”
He’s just doing this to taunt me. He just loves to see me snarl. Goddammit, I won’t be provoked that easily.
“I know what it says,” I say through a slit between my teeth.
�
�Say it.” His command is so direct that I immediately respond just because of the fierceness of it.
“Leo King, CEO of W Magazine.”
“Exactly. I don’t listen to you, you listen to me.”
“No wonder this Vegas trip worked out so wonderfully. You know so well what to do when you’re drunk. Even then, you base your decisions on your amazing intellect. I’m but a humble assistant there to serve you.”
The smile builds on his face. “Just what I like to hear.”
“I’d like to hear what happened that causes you to want me to be your pretend wife, though. After all, you know so well what to do in these situations, and I’d like your advice.” I blink a couple of times.
“Well, if you’d listened to me from the start and actually let me talk, you would’ve known by now.”
“Oh, my god. Just get to the point already!”
His eyes widen. “Such brashness.” He grins. “Just the way I like it.”
When he sees the annoyed look on my face, he sighs.
“Right …” He clears his throat. “I was there with a good friend of mine, and on the day after our little drinking party, I … sent a text to my parents stating that we had gotten married.”
“What?” I say, with a scrunched up face. “You did what?” Now I’m the one leaning forward in my chair.
Oh, Jesus Christ, how are we ever going to fix this? As his assistant, I’m not in full panic mode.
“So, my parents think I’m married now. To that friend.”
“Leo ….” I sigh. “What have you gotten yourself into?”
“Now, I know what this sounds like, but it’ll only be for a while that you have to pretend to be my wife. Until things simmer down and I can explain it all.”
“Tell them you’re not. Let’s start telling the truth now before this gets out of hand.”
“Oh, no. Definitely not. My father has been pushing me for years to get married.”
“So? Who cares? Do they still wipe your ass after you took a shit?”
“No?” He laughs.
“Then why do you care what they think you have to do?”
“Because this is my father’s business, and he gave it to me explicitly stating I had to get married soon. As in, this year. Otherwise, they would basically kick me out of the family.”
“Oh …”
He clears his throat. “Yeah …”
I didn’t know it was that personal. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I can handle it.”
“But what about that friend? Can’t she explain it to them?”
“She doesn’t want anything to do with me,” he says. “Trust me on this.”
I have no clue why, but it must have something to do with the fact that he basically put her in the middle of this.
“Okay … so you want me to pretend I’m that friend.”
“They don’t know what she looks like, so it works perfectly.”
“Right …” I nod a few times, slamming my lips together. “You know how stupid this all sounds?”
“Totally, insanely stupid.”
“The biggest nonsense of all times.”
“That’s me.”
I want to wipe the smirk off his face.
“And you think I’m going to succeed at this how?”
“I’ll give you a list of things that’ll tell you all about me. What I like.” I can’t ignore the certain sparkle in his eyes. “You have to give me a list as well.”
“That’s absurd; you think I can get to know you through a list? And that you’d actually know me that easily?”
He cocks his head. “I think it’ll be easier than you think.”
I chuckle. “Well, that’ll take you a while then because my list is a long one.”
“You mean the things-you-hate-most list?” He lifts a brow.
“Oh, ha-ha. If I had such a list, you’d be at the top.”
“Good. I’m always at the top. And on top.” He licks his lip, biting his bottom one shortly. Somehow, that makes me squeeze my legs.
“Besides, I think I know more about you than you think … more than you probably know about me.” He winks.
“I doubt that,” I say.
“I know about your bathroom incident.”
“That wasn’t an incident, and it sure as hell wasn’t any of your business.”
“Ouch, Miss Webber. Retract those claws, they damage my reputation.” He smiles. “I’ll be gentle with your dirty secrets. You can trust me on this.”
“I doubt I can trust you with anything, let alone tell you my secrets.”
“Oh, I assure you, I’ll treat them with care, as with anything else that becomes mine.”
The way he says mine creates goosebumps all over my skin. Why is it that every time this man talks I get the feeling he’s trying to either dry-hump me with his words or make a fool out of me?
“Don’t think I’ll tell you anything that can damage my reputation,” I say. “If this is for a job, I’ll stick to professional details only. Things that matter.”
He grabs his pen again. “Anything matters if it involves you.” Placing his hand under his jaw, he leans on the desk, twirling his pen in the other hand. “I need to know everything there is to know about you.”
“As if they’d ask about personal stuff.”
“You have no clue how personal it can get when you’re near me. Or my family, for that matter.” He seems so very amused by all of this.
I pick up the list he placed on the table, desperate for some distraction. “How long do I have to study all of this?”
“Two days.”
My jaw drops. “What?”
“Do I speak Chinese?”
“What do you mean ‘two days’?”
He lets go of his chin and starts playing with his pen with both hands. “We’re going to visit them in two days’ time.”
“Oh, my god, you have to be kidding me.”
“I wish I was, but unfortunately, we’re not that lucky. My parents want to see you. Now.”
“You mean ‘your wife.’” I make quotation marks with my fingers. “Let’s not forget that part.”
“Oh, I’ll never forget that part, Miss Webber. You need not worry.”
“For all I know, you’d make this permanent.”
“If I was, you’d know.”
There’s a slight hint of amusement in his eyes that makes me want to slap him across the face. How dare he even suggest I would marry him? That I would actually be with him for longer than is needed in order to keep my job? And how dare he make me think about all those things that involve ‘marriage’ and how he’d ‘let me know’ that I was his? Goddammit. Put your bitch-mode on, Samantha. He keeps making me blush, and I can’t have that. This fucker deserves some arse-kicking.
The phone suddenly rings. He keeps his eyes focused on me, not moving a muscle.
After a while, I ask. “Aren’t you going to pick up?”
“This conversation is far more important.”
“You don’t even know who it is.”
“Does it matter?”
“Maybe.” I swallow. Then I quickly reach for the phone before he can stop me and pick it up. If he’s not going to do it, then I will. I’m his assistant, here to catch him when he’s throwing himself off a building again. That also includes when he makes stupid decisions like this.
“Hi, this is Leo King’s office, Samantha Webber speaking.”
Suddenly a beeping noise ensues.
I look up and find Leo pressing his finger on a button that immediately cancels the call.
I sigh out loud. “That could’ve been important.”
“This is important, too.” He points his finger between the two of us. “You might not see it, Miss Webber, but this is very, very important to me.”
“Oh, I see it all right,” I say, putting down the phone. “Clearly.”
“I don’t think I’ve been clear enough. When I say I don’t want to pick up the ph
one, I didn’t mean you could do it for me.”
“Sorry that I put your best interests first, Sir.”
His eyes narrow when he hears that word; his lips twitch, not quite forming a smile.
“Hmmm …” It sounds like he’s humming or … moaning.
I swallow away the lump in my throat. Dammit, I can’t think about stuff like that. Jesus, why’d I have to say that word? I’ve only given him more fodder to feed me with, and I don’t mean the good kind. He’ll tease me with this, I’m sure of it.
“I will see you tomorrow, Miss Webber.”
“I thought you wanted to talk some more?”
“No … never mind. I just remembered I have things to do.” He clears his throat. “Regardless, you will do this for me.”
“Is that a question or an order?”
He smiles. “Do you have to ask?”
“I suppose not,” I say, getting up from the chair.
“Stop.”
I cease in the middle of my movement.
His eyes skim my face, then down my body, passing my cleavage as well as my skirt. Shit, now I’m flushing again. Why is he looking at me like I’m some kind of juicy beefsteak? Hmmm, although thinking about that makes me hungry now. Damn.
“What?”
“Shhh,” he interrupts.
I raise an eyebrow, slamming my lips shut as he keeps engorging my body with just his eyes. Briefly, I glance down at my own outfit, suddenly overcome with the urge to prove to myself that I did actually put on some clothes today and that I’m not naked. Nope, no skin showing. Phew.
When he’s done, he looks up at my eyes again with a big smile on his face. “You can go now.”
I frown. “What … uh … was that?”
“Nothing. I just have to think about something.” He blinks. “I’ll call you if I need you. Bye, Miss Webber.”
I scoot the chair back, still confused about what the hell is going on, but I’ll take this as a sign to leave quickly before he comes up with more excuses to keep me here.
Whatever is going on, it’s totally weird, even for him, and that’s saying something. He’s always weird but never this weird. It’s like he’s suddenly discovered I’m a woman or something. That, or he was blatantly checking me out.
Nah. I’m going crazy.
Time for some sweet … dark … delicious … Snickers.