by Bru Baker
Mateus jumped when he heard a doorbell ring throughout the suite. A light over the elevator flashed. He hurried over to it and pressed the call button, then stepped back in surprise when it opened and the bellman from yesterday stepped into the room.
“I wouldn’t normally bother a guest who had the Do Not Disturb engaged, but Mr. Hargrave told me it was urgent you get this message from him,” the man said.
He held out a tray with a cream-colored note on it, and Mateus had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. This was like every over-the-top telenovela he’d ever watched with his avó. Did rich people actually live this way? How much did this penthouse suite cost, anyway? Not that Crawford was footing the bill either, but still. He had the feeling that the nightly price tag for this place was higher than his monthly rent on the apartment he was currently subletting in Lisbon.
“He asked me to wait for a response,” the bellman said apologetically.
Seriously?
Mateus couldn’t hold back his snicker, but he took the creamy linen note and opened it.
Mateus,
Davis has arranged for us to have dinner with the hotel’s general manager and some local business bigwigs. I am so, so sorry. I understand if you choose to skip it, but I would be extremely grateful if you’d come.
CH
Mateus blinked at the spiky handwriting. There were no hesitant marks or swirls and loops—the letters were well-formed and neat, but undeniably the work of a man who had little time and less patience. Crawford didn’t seem to have much time or energy for niceties. He was all action. Mateus shivered, then scolded himself for getting worked up over handwriting. He was getting carried away in the telenovela fairy tale.
The bellman was still looking at him expectantly, so Mateus stuffed the note in his pocket and tried his best to look calm and assertive. He was fairly sure he failed, but it was the thought that counted.
“Tell him I’d be happy to attend,” he said, even though that couldn’t have been further from the truth. But it would be good practice for their immigration interview, and it would likely piss Davis off, which was a definite plus. He just couldn’t see Crawford married to someone who was so smarmy. “Do you have any details about where we’re going?”
He definitely didn’t have anything in his suitcase that would do for a dinner that merited a handwritten invitation delivered on a silver tray. Given the state of his clothes after traveling in them yesterday and shaking them out this morning, he probably didn’t even have anything appropriate for another trip to Tim Hortons.
“I believe Mr. Franklin arranged for a table at Cioppino’s. A car will pick you and Mr. Hargrave up at seven thirty.”
Mateus did some quick math. It was just after four now, so he had enough time for a quick shopping trip. He rubbed a hand over the stubble he hadn’t bothered with this morning. A shower and a shave wouldn’t go amiss either.
“Mr. Hargrave said you probably needed clothes for tonight,” the man continued. “I have a cab downstairs waiting for you. The concierge made an appointment for you with a personal shopper at Hudson’s Bay.”
How was he going to swing this? Hell, Mateus probably couldn’t even afford the cab fare, let alone the kind of store that offered personal shoppers. But how could he decline without making it obvious he didn’t have that kind of money?
“Actually, I’d prefer to go shopping on my own,” Mateus said, flashing the bellman a smile. “But please thank the concierge for his trouble.”
The man hid a laugh with a harsh cough. “Excuse me, sir. Of course. And the cab?”
Mateus bit his lip, weighing his options. He had absolutely no idea where he was, but the cab would significantly eat into his budget.
“If I may, could I make a suggestion?” the bellman said.
“Please.”
The man met his eye and, after a moment, seemed to relax a bit. His posture was still perfect, but not quite as ramrod straight as it had been just seconds ago. “So I’m guessing you’re not a designer kind of guy? No offense. I’m not either.” Mateus bobbed his head in agreement. “Well, then, there’s a perfectly nice mall about four blocks north of here. You can’t miss it. You just go out the front door, turn left, and head up a few blocks. It has some department stores, and I’m sure you’d be able to find something there. Cioppino’s is pretty fancy, but there isn’t a formal dress code like there is at the restaurant here. You won’t get tossed out if you show up without a blazer.”
He eyed Mateus, and Mateus fought the urge to hide behind something. It was clinical, not sexual, but it still made Mateus feel like he was being stripped bare. “My sister is the manager at H&M, if that isn’t too lowbrow for you. I could call her and see if she could help.”
It wasn’t his usual style, but the price would be right. “That would be amazing. I don’t know much about clothes, and I don’t want to embarrass Crawford.”
The bellman smiled. “I don’t think you could. I heard him talking about you and your brother’s orchard when I helped room service deliver lunch to the conference room. He’s pretty besotted.” The man’s cheeks dimpled when he cringed. “I shouldn’t have shared that. It’s not professional to talk about what we hear in the conference center. But I didn’t want you to think that Mr. Hargrave isn’t proud of you.”
Mateus didn’t know how to respond to that. He felt oddly protective of Crawford, so it shouldn’t have been such a surprise that Crawford felt similarly toward Mateus, but it was.
“Thanks,” Mateus said, his anxiety melting away with the genuine smile the man gave him. He started to grab his wallet—wasn’t that what rich people did? Tip the people who helped them?—but the bellman shook his head.
“Mr. Hargrave already tipped me downstairs,” he said. He tucked the silver tray under his arm.
Mateus let his arms drop to his sides awkwardly. “Ah. Well, thanks again,” he said. “What’s your sister’s name?”
“Julie,” he said. He held out his free hand for Mateus to shake. “I’m Max. Will you be leaving right away? I’ll call to tell her to expect you, Mr. Fontes.”
“Mateus, please,” he said. “I make it a rule that anyone who talks me through a clothing crisis calls me by my first name.”
Max laughed. “Julie will make sure it’s not a crisis.”
Mateus grabbed his key card from the table near the elevator and stepped up beside Max when he pressed the call button. “I doubt that. Have you seen Crawford? It’s hard to compete with that level of perfection.”
He’d been wearing a vest under his suit coat this morning. A vest. Mateus had felt faint, and it hadn’t just been nerves over their meeting with immigration. Crawford had looked absolutely edible.
“He does cut a nice figure,” Max said agreeably. He gave Mateus another side-eyed glance. “But you do too. You’re a very handsome couple.”
Mateus flushed. God, how he wished that were true. How was he going to make it through a fancy dinner playing Crawford’s adoring husband when Crawford was dressed like someone straight out of Mateus’s fantasies? He hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off Crawford at the office this morning. Even the immigration officer had commented on how in love they seemed.
At least his crush was good for something. Anyone with eyes could see how attractive Mateus found Crawford, and he was vain enough to admit that he’d caught Crawford looking at him a fair few times as well.
“Thank you,” Mateus said. The elevator dinged and the two of them stepped into the empty car. “And thanks for asking your sister to help me.”
Max grinned. “She loves dressing pretty men. She’ll be thanking me.”
MATEUS straightened his collar and gave himself a critical look in the mirror. The black slacks Julie had picked out for him were more formfitting than he was used to, but he had to admit they looked good. She’d paired them with a crisp lavender shirt and a charcoal-gray waistcoat that he’d wanted to hate because it was so far outside his clothing comfort zone, but he’d act
ually kind of fallen in love with it.
Getting rid of his scruff had been a harder proposition. Julie had pointed him to a drugstore in the mall, so he’d been able to get a decent razor and some shaving foam along with toiletries for his unexpected vacation. It had taken him an embarrassing amount of time to get the kind of close shave he was used to having with his electric razor, but he was proud of the fact that he hadn’t cut himself in the process.
He heard the elevator open, and a moment later Crawford called out.
“Mateus? Are you in here?”
Mateus stuck his head out of the bathroom. “Just about ready. Max said this place was fancy. Does this work?”
Crawford stumbled when he saw Mateus. The naked lust on his face was gratifying, but it was all the more frustrating to see it shuttered behind the polite smile Mateus was coming to hate. He didn’t want to be another person Crawford had to put on a false front for.
Mateus wanted that look back. He spun around, showing off his outfit. “Will this do? I wasn’t sure if it was fancy enough, but Julie said it was.”
“Who’s Julie? And Max?” Crawford asked gruffly. Had that been a tinge of jealousy?
Satisfaction rushed through Mateus, making him bold. “Max told me we made a handsome couple, so I had to live up to my end of that,” he said. He definitely hadn’t been imagining things. Crawford’s jaw twitched. Mateus took pity on him. “Max is the bellman who brought me the message. Julie is his sister. She helped me pick this out,” he said, motioning toward his outfit.
“The personal shopper? I didn’t think you’d go for that, but Davis insisted. I guess he’s worked with her before.”
Mateus laughed. “God, no. I had Max cancel that. Julie works at the mall.”
Crawford’s eyes darkened as his gaze swept up and down Mateus’s clothes. Heat bubbled up out of Mateus’s stomach at the raw male appreciation that Crawford wasn’t doing anything to hide at the moment. “You got that at the mall?”
Mateus’s chest was full of butterflies. “Is it okay?”
Crawford’s full lips finally curved up into a smile. “It’s more than okay. You look gorgeous.” Mateus held back the temptation to pump his fist in victory, but only just barely. That was a big admission from Crawford. Maybe things were looking up. “Davis is going to be green with envy.”
Mateus’s spirits sank. He hadn’t thought Crawford was still hung up on his ex-husband, but maybe he was. Maybe this fake marriage would end up getting their real one back together. He wouldn’t stand in the way of that, not if it made Crawford happy. “Ah. Well, then, we shouldn’t keep him waiting.”
Confusion flitted across Crawford’s face. “The car’s not due for another ten or fifteen minutes. I was going to freshen up a bit.”
Mateus hoped that didn’t involve taking the vest off. He watched as Crawford deftly undid his tie and tossed it on the sofa. He had to look away when he started working on the buttons at his throat. He’d probably embarrass himself if he saw much more of that deliciously tanned skin revealed. Crawford looked like a high-powered businessman who’d come home to be debauched, and that was not a mental image Mateus needed.
“I talked to the manager today and asked him to move us to a different suite tomorrow,” he said, disappearing into the bedroom. “I told them I didn’t want to tie up their most expensive real estate for the entire trip, so they moved us down a few floors to a smaller suite. It has a bigger kitchen, so I thought we might go grocery shopping tomorrow if I can get away a little earlier. Unless you like eating room service for every meal?”
He wandered back into the main sitting area, preoccupied with buttoning the shirt he’d thrown on. He’d kept the same pants, but the vest was gone. Shame. Though the new shirt hugged his chest beautifully, so Mateus couldn’t complain much.
“No, that would be great,” he said when he realized Crawford was waiting for an answer.
“I get pretty tired of it,” Crawford said. Mateus took a good look at him and realized how exhausted he looked. He must have spent the entire day in meetings, probably with Davis by his side.
“So dinner tonight, what’s that about?”
Crawford let out a soft growl that made Mateus’s skin prickle. “Davis is showboating. He has some deal he wants to pull off, and he needs the general manager and the chamber of commerce on board with it. The dinner had been planned for a while, but since we’re also celebrating our wedding,” Crawford said, giving up on his new tie long enough to make air quotes with an adorably exasperated look on his face, “he’s inviting all their spouses too. Which is how you got dragged into it. Sorry.”
Mateus shrugged. “If you can take it, I can take it. Sounds like it won’t be totally boring.”
Crawford gaped at him. “Davis will be schmoozing and trying to talk business all night, and we’ll be stuck with a bunch of stuck-up, self-important men and their wives, who will be cooing over us all night. What about that doesn’t sound terrible?”
“I didn’t say it wouldn’t be terrible. I said it wouldn’t be boring.” Especially since he planned to make it his personal mission to goad Davis into showing everyone just how oily he really was. Though that would probably be bad for Crawford in the long run. Dammit.
“Will they ask a bunch of questions about us, do you think?”
Crawford groaned. “Tons. I swear I fielded more questions about you than I did about what I was actually brought here to do,” he said. He offered Mateus a tired smile when Mateus made a distressed sound. “Not your fault. And it’s worlds better than getting questions about how I’m handling working with my ex, which is what I came here expecting.”
Mateus cleared his throat. “And how’s that going? If I can ask.”
“Of course you can ask. You’re one of the few people I actually don’t mind talking about it with because I know you’re not just looking for office gossip,” Crawford said, his eyes crinkling when he smiled. He still looked tired, but not quite as defeated. “It’s going as well as I could hope for. Having you here really is helping. Davis is still off-kilter, so he doesn’t quite know what to do with me. It hasn’t been perfect, but it’s been miles better than I’d expected.”
Because Davis was leaving him alone or because Davis was jealous? Mateus wished he could read between the lines and figure out if Crawford was still interested in his ex-husband. He really hoped he wasn’t. Not that Mateus had any sort of claim over Crawford.
Except he kind of did, in the one way that legally mattered. He might not have Crawford’s heart—and Crawford definitely didn’t have his—but he had Crawford’s marital status. And right now that was more important than his silly crush on Crawford and his ridiculous jealousy over a man Crawford openly loathed most of the time. What business was it of his if Crawford and Davis ended up having some sort of torrid hate-sex affair?
The thought made Mateus swallow hard. He had to bite back a question about Crawford’s feelings, because he honestly didn’t know if he was asking about his feelings for Davis or his feelings for Mateus. Mateus knew he wasn’t the only one who felt the attraction between them, but so far he seemed like the only one even remotely inclined to act on it.
He’d have to play the doting husband tonight, so it was probably better not to get into it. He’d have a hard time smiling and flirting if Crawford told him he was using the interactions as a way to get into Davis’s bed.
This could get complicated fast. They’d come up with a bare-bones story for the meeting this morning, but they’d have to spend some time coming up with a better story if they were going to get grilled by everyone. “Have you told them anything I should know? So I don’t say something different?”
“Nah. I was vague.” Crawford rolled his shoulders, and Mateus’s fingers ached to slide over them and work out some of the tension he could see coiled there. Maybe he’d be able to talk Crawford into a massage later. Or at the very least, taking advantage of the hot tub out on the terrace. They hadn’t made it out there last
night, and if they were moving to a different room tomorrow, this would be their last chance.
“Will that work tonight? If these wives really are as nosy as you think they will be?”
Crawford’s hands hovered over the suit coat he’d draped over the stool at the bar, but he passed it over after another glance at Mateus’s outfit. He looked gorgeous, between the immaculately tailored pants and the simple Oxford shirt and the thin navy blue sweater he’d pulled over it that looked as soft as a cloud. It was a much more casual look than the three-piece suit, but he looked just as put together, like he’d stepped out of a fancy magazine.
“Eh, I figure we’ll just be a little mysterious. It should be fine. Especially if we sit far away from Davis.”
Mateus had figured that was a given. “Will he make that difficult?”
“Probably. Difficult is his specialty.” Crawford dug through his suit coat and came up with his key card. “Do you want to go downstairs? We can grab a drink in the bar while we wait for Davis.”
Mateus wasn’t sure alcohol and Crawford were a good mix for him. He didn’t need any loosened inhibitions, especially in front of people Crawford worked with. But surely one drink wouldn’t hurt. He could do with a little loosening. He’d been tightly wound ever since Max came by to give him the summons to dinner.
“Are we riding over with Davis, then?” Mateus called the elevator and jammed his hands into his pockets just to have something to do that wasn’t giving in to his temptation to reach out and see just how soft Crawford’s sweater was—and how hard his chest was underneath it.