by Sierra Rose
Like flipping a magical light switch, my headache suddenly went away. The world cleared back into sharp focus, and my lips curved up in a smile.
He wanted to play this game? See who could outlast who? That was fine by me. Nick had always been a rather impulsive gambler, and he seemed to have forgotten a critical component.
I wasn’t the one who had to date her.
“I certainly did.” My smile widened as I bestowed it upon each of the happy couple in turn. “And you know what...I think Ella’s right. You guys need to get out there! Get seen! And I, for one, can think of plenty of things to keep you busy...”
Ella nodded and began immediately prattling on again, but Nick lifted his chin with a secret smile. His new girlfriend might be completely unaware, but there was a game afoot.
And it was a game that neither one of us intended to lose...
Chapter 18
The first move was mine.
After calling in Jake to work with Nick and Ella on drafting a press release, I slipped out into the hall to make some calls of my own. The first was to a local moving company. The second was to the doorman at Nick’s building. The third was to a landlord up in Queens.
By the time I headed back into the office, the meeting was just breaking up.
“You get everything you needed?” I asked Jake.
He glanced reflexively at Ella, before nodding his head.
“More than enough.”
Yeah—I bet she had a bit to say.
I dismissed him with a thank you, and proceeded to walk the two of them back down to the lobby. There was still probably a fifth of liquor churning away in my stomach, but for the first time all morning, I felt like I didn’t have a care in the world.
Plotting will do that to you. It’s why I got into this line of work.
“So, it’s just dinner tonight at the Solay?” Nick asked when we got outside.
“Yep,” I flashed them each a smile, “I made a reservation for two. You guys should have just enough time to make it across town.”
Ella nodded and started scampering towards the car, but Nick held her back—looking like some of his own drinking had suddenly caught up with him.
“A reservation...for two?”
There was an unmistakable note of panic in his voice. As if he’d just now realized that in dating this woman, the two of them would occasionally have to spend time alone. He cast a quick look down at her, before pulling out his phone.
“Why don’t I see if I can’t make it for a few more people—”
“Why would you do that?” I asked innocently.
“Yeah—why would you do that?” Ella echoed, sounding distinctly more cross.
Nick glanced between us, thinking fast.
“I just thought...I could introduce Ella to some of my friends. Get her name out there, you know? There’s no need to...”
To be with her by yourself?
I cocked my head with a grin, pushing him closer and closer to the edge.
“No need to...?”
We locked eyes, before he turned to Ella with a calming smile.
“No need to keep you all to myself. We want people to get to know you. I shouldn’t have all the...the fun by myself. You’re in this to make connections too, right?”
It was both persuasive and casually said, and at first, it looked like she might have actually been swayed. But I was quick to nip that little con in the bud.
“Aw Nick—that’s sweet of you to worry, but the entire point of this is to present you and Ella to the public as a couple. Candlelight dinners. Tables for two. The whole nine yards.”
A sudden shadow dimmed his bright face, but he rose to the challenge.
“You know, before we go—I just wanted to say thank you, Abby.” He flashed me a deceptively sweet smile. “I know that it’s a lot of work—creating an entire relationship from scratch. Especially one like this. The eyes of the whole world will be upon us. The eyes of the company. The eyes of my father.”
He let that sink in for a second, before flashing me a wicked grin.
“I’m just glad that you’re the one who will be held responsible.”
My nausea was back. So was that cup of coffee I’d stolen from Allison.
Unable to speak, I simply smiled and waved them off—standing on the side of the curb until they’d disappeared round the bend. The second they did, I bent over—hands on my knees.
After forcing a swallow, I took several deep breaths. In and out. In and out.
Dick move...mentioning his father.
But after I got over the initial shock of it, the thought of Mitchell only strengthened my resolve. Nick was right. I was going to be held responsible. But that just meant that this was going to be the best damn relationship the world had ever seen.
And on that note, I glanced down at my watch with a little smile.
...the fun was about to start.
Chapter 19
“You moved her into my apartment!”
My eyes flew open and I looked around in a daze, trying to understand what was going on around me. The clock on the wall said it was four in the morning. The entire place smelled of whipped cream and lighter fluid. And Nicholas Hunter was standing in front of my bed.
The first thing I did was pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. The second thing I did was glance beneath the covers to make sure I was wearing some kind of pants.
“Nick?” I squinted in the dim light, trying to make sense of it all. It looked like he was actually wet again. But dirty too. Covered in something I didn’t recognize. “I don’t—”
“Yes,” he shouted, “it’s me! Nick! Your only client! The man who pays for this awful excuse for an apartment! The same man who you totally fucked over tonight!”
I cringed beneath my comforter, wishing it was just a dream after all.
“What are you...” The remnants of sleep began to fall away, and I started putting things together for the first time. Starting with the most important. “You came to my apartment?!”
“You moved a FUCKING LUNATIC into mine!”
Oh right...that.
“Okay, listen,” I sat up a little straighter, raising my hands peaceably between us, “I get that you’re mad, I really do, but...”
But mad didn’t begin to cover it. I had seen him mad. I had seen him unreasonably mad.
I had never seen anything like this.
In a single movement, he perched on the mattress beside me. An overwhelming and nonsensical array of scents followed like a dense fog, and it was all I could do to keep it together as he leaned in very close, speaking right into my face.
“Mad? You think this can be covered by mad?” A host of chills ran down the back of my spine. He sounded almost as frightening as his father. “I don’t know what’s been going on these last few days, Abigail, but you’re going to fix this—now!”
Then all at once, it clicked.
My face lightened in surprise, then dulled with a kind of abstract disappointment.
“Oh gosh...you slept with her, didn’t you?”
It was probably the only thing I could have said to make him pause. At first, he just stared at me blankly, like I was making some kind of ill-timed joke. Then he leaned back with a look of revulsion so real, it had no place darkening his handsome face.
“You think...you think I had sex with that woman?”
I didn’t say a word. Anything I said at this point would just dig me in that much deeper. I stared at the crushed strawberry still clinging to his hair.
His eyes tracked mine, before suddenly understanding. Then flashing with fresh rage.
“I didn’t fuck her, Abby!” He leapt to his feet and gestured to his filthy clothes like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “She set me on fire!”
Chapter 20
I stared at Nick. He stared back at me. A glop of jelly fell off his face
Uh...twenty seconds, Abby. Go?
My mouth opened, but the words fai
led me. The longer he stood there, glaring, looking like some kind of Greek god who got pushed into a swamp—the harder it became. In the end, it was all I could do to clarify.
“Alright,” I tried to sound as pragmatic as I could, “so when you say fire—”
“It was a real fire, Abby.”
“Like...a fire kind of fire?”
“Yes.”
“Little flames and everything?”
His eyes narrowed, glittering dangerously in the dark.
“If you make a joke right now—I will smother you with your own pillow...which SUCKS, by the way.”
No, we wouldn’t want that.
I put on my best professional frown, nodding thoughtfully as I surveyed the strange gelatin smeared all over his face. Then I made just the teensiest joke.
“...I see your fond of strawberries.”
“ABBY—”
“Alright, alright!” I threw out my arms between us like a shield, and backed slowly to the headboards—pulling the cover up around my chest as I went. I may have been lucky enough to be wearing pants, but all I had on top was a thin little baby-doll. The kind you put on specifically for company, if you know what I mean. (Coincidentally, the kind I was only wearing, because it was laundry day.) “Why don’t you just tell me what happened? Start at the beginning.”
He froze with his fingers curled into fists, clearly trying to decide whether to do as I asked or simply strangle me to death with his own hands. I held my breath. But after a second, he seemed to have accepted that he would need me to clean up this one final mess.
He could kill me later.
“Fine.” He sat down where I had been lying just seconds before, making a deliberate show of wringing out his wet sleeves all over my comforter. “We went to the Solay for dinner, just like you arranged. There were a lot of people, a lot of press, and I guess it went as well as could be expected...until we got to dessert.”
Oh good—and the trouble begins.
“Ella wanted to order strawberries foster.”
He said this like it explained everything. I, however, simply paused.
“I’m sorry,” I shook my head, “isn’t it supposed to be bananas foster?”
Nick stifled a weary sigh—he had clearly contemplated that question many, many times already that night. “I think the pastry chef was trying something new...”
An automatic grin rose to my cheeks, and I pursed my lips quickly to hide it.
“Okay, so, strawberries foster...” I prompted.
“You know how they light the bananas one on fire? It was the same concept here.” A delayed shudder rippled through his body. “You can imagine how Ella wanted to try to do that part herself...”
Yes, I certainly could. I also had no trouble imagining what would happen next.
The way she would panic and spray lighter fluid across the table. The way Nick would rise to his feet in horror, slow-motion yelling for her not to strike the match. The way that leaking silicone had long ago deteriorated her brain—so she would do it anyway, throwing it on the crumbling dessert in panic. The way restaurant security would have knocked the whole thing on the ground to smother it—my client included—sending cream and berries flying into the air.
He followed my curious gaze and dismissively guessed my thoughts.
“I obviously didn’t want to stick around and wait for the burn unit, but one of the women sitting next to me happened to be a trauma specialist. She put some gel on my face.”
“Oh!” I leaned back against the headboard once more, both enlightened and relieved. “I actually thought it was some kind of KY—”
“It is.” He forced himself to meet my gaze, before looking deliberately away. “She had it...she had it in her purse.”
It was a testament to how angry Nick was that I didn’t laugh. I may have been literally dying inside, but I held it together. At least for a moment.
“Well thank goodness for that.”
There really wasn’t anything left to say. Between the flaming strawberries and the face full of jelly, it had all pretty much been covered.
Well...not all of it.
“This is New York,” Nick continued in his most dangerous voice, “you learn to expect a certain degree of spontaneity. To factor in for these sorts of things.”
His eyes flashed as they met mine.
“But what I did not expect, something that no one in their right mind could possibly be expected to deal with, was coming home after all of that only to discover that while they were being incinerated at dinner...their demonic publicist had moved Ella Campbell into their house.”
Yeah...that part might have been me. In my defense, I could have had no way of knowing about the strawberries foster. Or the lighter fluid. Or the rest of it.
“Yes,” I said slowly, trying to stall for time, “I could imagine how that might not have been exactly...ideal timing.”
Nick nodded curtly, and waited.
Waited for me to fix it somehow. For me to apologize. For me to give up on this bizarre game that we’d been playing, admit defeat, and let him off the hook.
Instead...
His face screwed up in horror. Then twisted in absolute rage.
“Is that...are you smiling right now?!”
I shook my head quickly, dropping my eyes to the bed and letting my long hair spill in between like a shield. He was in no mood to be toyed with right now, I knew that. Even the famous Nick Hunter had reached his limit for the night.
I smirked. You should have seen him. And on top of it all, he smelled like some kind of misfit s’more...
“No, I’m...” I cleared my throat sharply, trying to get it together, still completely unable to meet his eyes, “I’m just trying to figure out the next step—”
A hand broke through my brunette curtain and lifted up my chin. The next thing I knew, I was staring right into a pair of luminescent blue eyes.
He was much closer than I’d thought he was. Perched on the mattress just a few inches away. Dripping caramel sauce and lighter fluid slowly onto my bedspread.
“You are smiling. I can’t believe it.”
I thought he was going to yell, or curse, or scream. I thought he was going to storm from the apartment and possibly fire me. I thought there might even be a chance that he’d pick up my pillow and press it slowly, vengefully over my face.
Instead...he smiled back.
“Abby Wilder...you are really something, you know that?”
I stared back into those twinkling eyes, at a complete loss as to what to do. A part of me was still baffled that, after over two years of spending every second together, Nick Hunter was sitting my apartment for the first time. Another part was terrified that if he caught a stray spark on the way home, there was a good chance he could go up in flames.
And now he was smiling?
Then, before I could even ask the question, he pushed to his feet and headed for the door.
“Wait a second!” I threw off the covers and hurried after him, wrapping my arms protectively around my thin top as I scampered down the hall. He paused in front of the front door, waiting. “I’m not...after tonight, I mean...I’m not fired?”
His eyes lingered a moment on my quivering curls and tiny pajamas, before coming to rest on my face. We stared a moment. Then his lips curved up into a twinkling smile.
“Why would I fire you?” He stepped into the hall and glanced over his shoulder, tossing me a mischievous wink. “You’re the one who has to make this relationship work.”
Chapter 21
For the next month and a half—that’s exactly what I did.
From parties, to gallery openings, to lunch dates, to photo-ops in the snow—the three of us did it all. I was a puppet-master, and they, my willing (and not-so-willing) subjects.
In a lot of ways, it was my finest work. From a PR standpoint it was the dream, and I certainly pulled out all the stops to make it happen.
Strategic leaks to the press, staged strolls through
Central Park, carefully coordinated-just-so-they-would-look-not-coordinated outfits. Right down to calling up the paparazzi at the precise moment that Nick showed up at Ella’s apartment with a bouquet of flowers. (Flowers that I had purchased myself at a gas station not two minutes earlier.)
Yes, professionally speaking, it was my finest hour.
And yes, Ella was currently living in her own apartment.
It had been Nick’s one ultimatum. He had been willing to go along with just about everything else. The parties, the forced sobriety, matching her dress to his tie. He gritted his teeth with a smile and powered through it all. But on this, he would not compromise.
The fake relationship stopped at his door. She was not allowed inside. Nor had she ever been invited. It was his sanctuary. A sanctuary that—after spending every day with the little harpy—he most certainly deserved.
Over the last few weeks, Ella had not gotten easier to stomach. She had, however, gotten easier to predict.
For example, I’d learned by the end of the second day working with her to always check her outfits before she was allowed outside. It was extraordinarily inconvenient for myself, of course. Having to get up a full hour earlier every day (making it somewhere around four), just so I could get dressed, check all the major papers for press, and then head over to her apartment to make sure that she wasn’t taking this ‘playboy barbie’ routine of hers too literally.
I couldn’t even begin to describe half the things she pulled out of her closet. Sequins of every size and color. Enough spandex to paper the Upper East Side. Something I literally thought was a child’s sweater before she tried to stuff it over her breasts and walk outside.
And wardrobe was not the only struggle with Miss Ella Campbell. Bless her heart, at some point between the farms of Oklahoma and the slick streets of New York, the little Southern bell had decided that she was going to have opinions.
It didn’t really matter what they were about, or whether or not she even understood what was being said to her. She was going to have an opinion about it. And she was going to say that opinion loud. Really fucking loud.