“Wow. How agile,” I said. “I’m impressed. I would be terrified to jump off the roof.” I wasn’t lying about that. You couldn’t pay me to jump into a pool from a rooftop. Naked would be fine. Though maybe not in front of a whole party crowd. But I would certainly swim naked with a boyfriend.
“Grant, why do you have to tell that ridiculous story? My God, it was the eighties. Everyone was jumping off roofs naked. If there wasn’t cocaine and promiscuity it wasn’t even a real party.”
I would lay down money that is not what my parents had been doing in the eighties. More like a keg party with flipped collars at the very most.
“I miss the eighties,” his father said in a joking voice.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
Chapter 11
So far, the weekend was going exactly as expected. My father was half in the bag already and my mother was pouting for no apparent reason whatsoever.
I was resigned to suffer through until we could escape to the north bedroom, which was some sort of statement on my mother’s part. It was the shittiest guest room in the house, facing the garage. My mom never put anyone in that room unless the house was totally full and she was making a statement about the person’s status. I wasn’t sure if the gesture was meant to be a slight against me or against Leah.
I’d heard the naked pool party story a thousand times so that didn’t bother me. At the anniversary party, it was bound to be retold tomorrow. My father absolutely loved the story because it made him look like a baller who landed the hot and wild chick. My mother pretended to hate the story, but I secretly thought she was just angry there was no video footage of it. She was not a woman who regretted her youth—she missed it.
When I was thirteen and they told that story, it had been different. I’d been painfully embarrassed. Thank God the phrase MILF wasn’t in popular existence yet. All of my friends would have loved to give me shit about that. I had often thought in hindsight one of the reasons I’d felt comfortable with Trevor right away was that he wasn’t sexually interested in my mom like ninety percent of my other friends.
“I’m hoping no one is jumping off the roof at your party tomorrow,” I said, and I was only half kidding. “You’re liable if someone gets hurts.”
“You’re such a buzz kill,” Mom said.
I’d take that. “I am. Completely. Ask Leah.”
“How did you two kids meet?” my father asked Leah. “Online?”
“No. I walked into a diner and there she was, wearing a uniform. This angel singing Ava Maria in a poodle skirt while people shoveled eggs and waffles into their mouths.” I’d always be fond of that poodle skirt.
“A poodle skirt? Good Lord, how can you stand a job that forces you to wear kitsch?”
“The tips are good,” Leah said. “Especially when I sing.”
“So she was your server?” Dad asked.
Note he had the language down now. I knew he’d been just being a smartass earlier.
“Yes. I sat at the bar.”
“He was very serious. I didn’t know what to make of him.” Leah leaned against me, in full-on girlfriend role.
“After eating there twice, I decided to ask her out. So that’s what happened.”
“What he actually said was ‘Why don’t you come to my place for dinner and stay forever?’”
My story was boring, I could admit that, but really? She had to make me sound like a complete tool? I looked down at her and shot her a look, but I was more amused than annoyed.
“Eddie. Jesus.” Dad sounded amused. “Going right for it. Like your old man.”
“He’s smooth like Skippy,” Leah said.
I didn’t mean to. Hell, I didn’t want to. But I burst out laughing because that was ridiculous. There was no telling what in the hell was going to come out of Leah’s mouth.
Simultaneously both of my parents shot each other a look, like they couldn’t believe I was laughing out loud. Which was fair enough. I did laugh. Just generally not in their company. Even then, I wasn’t a jovial guy. No one would claim that.
“And I really like peanut butter,” Leah said. “I couldn’t resist him.”
“So you’re living together?” Dad asked.
He looked pleased by that. Alarm bells started to go off inside me. What if Leah said we were living together? Then again, what difference did it make? They never came to my apartment. In fact, in the two years I’d been living there, they had never seen it.
It didn’t matter anyway. Leah was shaking her head.
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean that. I need to know how serious he is about our relationship. I know his track record. But I liked his confidence and his general cheesiness.”
I looked at her. “That was a backhanded compliment.”
Leah smiled up at me sweetly and scratched my beard. She just reached up and ran her fingers through it like we were alone. “Shh. It was not.”
Speaking of confidence. Hers had no bounds.
It’s not that I had expected Leah to be shy or demure. But I had thought she would just be cheerful, pleasant, compliant. I hadn’t anticipated she would have this whole narrative laid out to present to my parents. In which she both managed to do the job I had hired her for and teased me mercilessly at the same time.
As I stared into her brown eyes, on the sofa at my parents’ house in the Hamptons, and let her stroke my beard with total familiarity, I knew I was in trouble.
I was falling for Leah. For real.
And I didn’t hate it.
I took her hand and kissed her fingers. One by one. While her eyes darkened.
Falling? That was a fucking lie. Fallen.
I had fallen for Leah.
“You certainly don’t want to rush anything,” my mother said, completely ruining the moment of intimacy.
Her voice was a harsh, grating, and negative reality in a moment that felt huge. The moment I was staring into Leah’s eyes and thinking this could really be something.
And there was my mother, the nails on the chalkboard destroying the vibe.
“You really don’t know anything about this woman,” she continued.
As if Leah wasn’t sitting right there.
As if I were an idiot who couldn’t make my own decisions about who to spend my time with.
I thought about Leah’s response to me telling her about Rose. How sweet and understanding she had been and how easy it had been to talk to her.
Thirty years of irritation with my mother collided with the unexpected intensity of my feelings for Leah and I knew I couldn’t spend the entire weekend listening to her pick at Leah for zero reason whatsoever. I needed to shut that shit down now.
“I know everything I need to know about Leah,” I said in complete honesty. Then I turned to my mother and figuratively dropped the mic. “That’s why I asked Leah to marry me.”
Leah made a strangled sound, but I just squeezed her hand tighter in warning. My father choked on his gin. My mother frowned, giving me the evil eye.
“Excuse me?” she said. “You’re engaged to this woman? Have you lost your mind?”
I stared her down. “Yes. I’m engaged to this woman. Whose name is Leah. She’s a singer and a server and she’s going to be my wife.”
The word wife should have had me choking on my own spit. It didn’t. It rang out loud and clear and determined. I felt the force of it down to the tips of my Italian leather shoes. For the first time ever, I could envision myself taking vows to love someone forever. To love Leah. It didn’t feel awful or foreign or fucking terrifying. It felt like a goal.
Make it real. Make Leah mine.
My mother was holding her chest like she was having a heart attack and I knew I had about ten seconds before all hell broke loose.
I stood up, pulling Leah with me, who looked equally as stunned as my mother. “Let’s go get our luggage, sweetheart.”
I had just pulled one of my mother’s moves. Walk into a room with a hand grenade. Pull the pin. Wa
lk out, leaving destruction in your wake.
It felt good, I wasn’t going to lie.
Until we got outside and Leah hissed, “Are you insane? We’ve been here ten minutes and you flipped the script!”
My high from both besting my mother and realizing the true depth of my feelings for Leah deflated just a little. Leah was clearly angry. I popped open the trunk. “It’s called improv. I’m sure you’ve done it before. I had to shut my mother down or she was going to be intolerable all weekend to you. I thought she would at least attempt to behave but she was being pretentious and nasty so I threw her off. She won’t say anything the rest of the visit.”
“Give me a warning before you change anything. That’s all I asked. The one thing!” She put her hands on her cheeks. “Oh my God, my face is on fire. I’m so embarrassed.”
I smiled at her. “Embarrassed to be engaged to me?”
“We’re not engaged! We’re nothing. This isn’t funny. I’m really mad at you!”
Her words were a kick in the dick. Nothing. We were nothing. She was right and I hated it. “No, you’re not mad at me. How can you be? What difference does it make? It’s a business deal and I just renegotiated the terms. I’ll increase your rate if you want.”
I added that because her words had seriously bothered me. It was a knee-jerk childish reaction but the words were already out before I could stop them.
Her mouth dropped. Then her eyes narrowed. “Oh, really? If you can change the rules, then so can I. Watch out, Grant Caldwell the third. Your mother is right—you don’t know a thing about this woman.”
I felt the first ounce of concern. “What does that mean?”
Leah went up on tiptoes and ran her lips along my earlobe before whispering, “Never tell an angry woman she isn’t angry.” Then she bit my ear. Hard.
Leah took the smallest bag out of the trunk and spun on her heel and strolled back into the house.
Oh, yeah. I was so in love with her.
What the frickety-frack was Grant thinking? I carried the suitcase into the house, cheeks on fire, mind racing. Engaged. To be his wife. Oh my God. The man had lost his mind.
Of course, the reason I was so upset was because it was hard enough to play the role of his girlfriend and know it was fake. But fake fiancée? It was like pretending to be a princess when in reality you’re Cinderella. Cleaning up after other people while having a nonexistent love life. That was me. Nonexistent love life and a world where eight grand bought you a used car, not a pair of pants.
Had a part of me for one nanosecond wished that it were true? Oh, yeah. Totally. Which is why it sucked so hard. My stupid heart had lifted like a helium balloon for a beat, then had fallen down into my gut. It wasn’t real and I had never wanted to get married anyway, so why did any of it matter?
Grant was right about that. Why did it matter?
Except that it did and I was both angry with him for catching me off guard and angry with myself for feeling things I had no business feeling.
I strode into the living room. “Sorry to be a bother.” Not really. “Which room would you like us to stay in?” I needed a minute alone to stop being overly invested in the situation. To pull back.
“The north bedroom,” Tiffany said.
That helped me exactly not at all. I was tempted to roll my eyes. You’d think she would at least pride herself on being a decent hostess but she was actually in a full recline on the sofa now and showed no sign of standing up anytime soon. Grant’s father was mixing himself another drink.
“Where is my son?” Tiffany asked. “I need a word with him.”
“I’m right here,” Grant said. “I’m going to take Leah up to our room.”
“Take her up then come back. Alone.” She dramatically put her hand across her forehead. “I need you to promise me that thing you said was a joke.”
“It’s not,” he said flatly.
He hadn’t lied. His mother really was horrible. She spoke like I wasn’t in the room.
“I want to go swimming,” I said, before Tiffany could speak. “Grant, take me to the pool so we can practice our dance for our wedding reception. There’s a certain lift you promised me.” I gave him a brilliant smile.
I figured that statement would punish him and his mother both.
I didn’t have a swimsuit but his mother was irritating enough that I just might be tempted to go skinny-dipping.
It didn’t take Grant long to react. There was a brief pause where he seemed to be assessing if I were serious or not, then he nodded. “Of course, sweetheart. We want our wedding to be perfect.”
Tiffany hauled herself to a sitting position. “No one in this family is doing one of those tacky coordinated dances. I forbid it.”
“Tiff, you did cocaine with Mötley Crüe at our wedding. I think a coordinated dance is perfectly acceptable compared to that.”
Tiffany glared at Grant’s father. “This whole weekend is ruined. My child hates me and my husband is an ass.” She pointed a nail at Grant. “I’m disowning you.” She turned to her husband. “And I want a divorce.”
“No can do,” Grant the second said cheerfully. “I dropped three hundred grand on this party, Tiff. We can’t cancel it now.”
“We’ll call it a divorce party instead. We can announce we’re disowning Grant.”
“You can’t disown me,” Grant said. “My trust is from Gigi and Grandpa.”
“What about me?” An older man exited a room that when I glanced in appeared to be a library of sorts.
“Mom wants to cut me off,” Grant said. “Because I’m getting married.”
“To a gold digger!” his mother said. “She admitted it right to my face!”
I just stood there, convinced we were on a reality TV show. Who acted like this?
Apparently, billionaires.
“Tiff wants to divorce me too,” Grant the second said.
“Oh, Christ, that’s the most idle threat I’ve ever heard in my life. She’s been saying that since the day after you got married. I wish she’d just do it already so we can stop talking about it.” The man came over to me and stuck out his hand. “I’m Grant the first. You must be Eddie’s new girlfriend.”
I nodded. “I’m Leah. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
He waved his hand behind him. “They’re fucking crazy. Just so you know. My business acumen and work ethic skipped a generation. You’ve got a good man in Eddie.”
I tried to imagine my grandfather dropping an f-bomb and couldn’t fathom it.
“I totally agree. Eddie is a dream.”
“You’re getting married, huh? Congratulations. Welcome to the shit show.”
That seemed legit. “Thank you.”
“When’s the big day?”
“Never,” Tiffany said.
“We haven’t really settled on a date,” I said. “But it’s going to be huge. Invite everyone we know. Spare no expense.”
“I would love a spring wedding,” Grant said.
I almost laughed. I wonder if he ever imagined words like that would ever come out of his mouth. He almost sounded believable. Almost. I was still mad at him, but this was kind of funny, I couldn’t lie.
“Get her locked and loaded, eh, kid?” His grandfather tapped him on the shoulder. “Solid plan.”
“It’s a bullshit plan!” Tiffany yelled from the sofa.
Grant’s grandfather raised an eyebrow and shook his head. “Fucking nuts. Can we get some food around here? I know Tiffany doesn’t eat and Junior just drinks booze, but the rest of us would like a damn meal.”
“The caterer has some trays in the refrigerator for today. Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to plan a party like this?” Tiffany said, sounding like she’d run a half marathon in ninety-degree heat.
“Especially when you haven’t eaten in three years,” Grant the first said. He shook his head at me. “Menopause hit that one hard. She’s living on air to stay at that weight.”
A slight woman in he
r seventies wandered in smoking a cigarette. “Who’s in menopause?” she asked.
“Tiffany.”
“Oh.” She waved her hand in dismissal and took a drag. She was dressed like she was taking a stroll outside in January. Many layers of expensive wool and an elaborate headdress. “Who are you?” she asked me. “Are you one of Bert’s kids? I seem to remember he married some Italian slut at some point. You look like her.”
And wow. Just wow. “I’m not one of Bert’s kids,” I said. “I’m Grant’s fiancée.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you an Italian slut?”
“She’s a waitress,” Tiffany said.
“I don’t think we should refer to other women as sluts,” I said, unable to stop myself. If there is one thing I absolutely couldn’t stand, it was women dragging down other women.
Gigi nodded. “Slut.”
“Gigi!” Grant’s voice roared loud and angry. “Don’t you dare speak to her like that. This is my fiancée.”
He sounded furious.
“Relax,” Gigi said. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Really? And how was that exactly?
“We’re going swimming,” I said. “We’ll see you all later at dinner.” Or maybe we would skip dinner. I took Grant’s hand and tugged him, moving backward.
When we got to the stairs, I just ran up them, no clue as to my destination. Grant grabbed a suitcase and followed suit. At the top of the stairs he turned left and opened the first door. He shoved it open so hard it bounced off the wall and hit him on the arm. He shoved it again and rolled the suitcase into the room.
“Fucking unbelievable,” he said. “Can I disown all of them? They’re insane.”
I followed him into the room. “They’re not great,” I agreed. “I’m sorry.” It was hard to stay mad at him when I pictured him as a small child being raised in a pack of jackals. It was a miracle he was even remotely normal.
He slammed the door shut and locked in. “No. I’m sorry for putting you in their line of fire.” He reached out and brushed my hair off of my face. “I didn’t think they would be amazing, but I didn’t think they would be so insulting. This isn’t fair to you. We can leave in the morning before the party. Hell, we can leave now if you want.”
Weekend Wife: A Fake Fiancée Romantic Comedy Standalone Page 15