Pretend Married (A Billionaire Love Story)

by Nikki Wild

  “It appears that his lordship made untoward passes at Ms. Fairchild on their… ‘date’ last night,” Tina said, a frown affixed to her face. “When his lordship didn’t relent, Ms. Fairchild struck him across the cheek with her open hand, picked up her belongings, and left.”

  “I see,” I said, once again attempting to keep my frustrations in check. “Make sure that Ms. Fairchild is sent flowers as an apology from us, and a letter apologizing specifically for facilitating her unfortunate encounter. I’ve had enough of cleaning up that old bastard’s messes for the past year.”

  “Yes, marm,” Tina said, nodding as she tapped on her tablet.

  “Thank you,” I sighed, brushing a strand of hair away from my face. Tina was undoubtedly the only person on the planet I could trust to keep her composure in the face of men like Lord Adderby, and the only person I trusted to handle the minute details of what amounted to my entire life’s work. She was a godsend, and more often than not it was me who had to force her to go on vacations every few months.

  “You have one more thing lined up this morning,” she said, swiping her finger across the screen in her hand. “Though I’m not sure if you’d like to put it off until later this afternoon.”

  “It can’t be as bad as what we just endured with his lordship. What is it?” I asked, motioning for Tina to follow after me as I headed into my office proper.

  “You mother would like you to call her,” Tina said, and I noted the pained grimace on her face.

  “I was wrong,” I laughed as I sat down at my desk. “That is so much worse.”

  “Shall I tell her that you’re engaged until later this afternoon?”

  “No,” I sighed, resting my head in my hands. “I’ll call her now. No point in putting off the inevitable, is there?”

  “No, marm,” Tina affirmed.

  “Would you do me a kindness, though, Tina?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “I would kill for a cup of coffee.”

  Tina nodded wordlessly, moving out of the room, her clacking heels echoing out into the hallway beyond, leaving me alone with only myself and the looming prospect of having to talk to my mother to keep me company.

  Lady Wolfe, otherwise known as my mother, was not always my favorite woman in the world. That was not to say she was a bad person… though perhaps she could have been described as a bit power hungry. My mother was one of those people who craved authority and recognition, though not always at the expense of others. She was motivated, determined, and at times, a little pushy. I didn’t blame her for the way she was—my mother was an impressive woman and one that I’m sure that many others girls could look up and aspire to be like. Just not me.

  I reached toward the phone with a sigh, putting the receiver to my ear as I dialed her number. While both my mother and I were of a similar cut, sans the moderate lack of empathy on my part, I had a hard time holding a conversation with her that didn’t infuriate me. Everything from my sense of style to my choice in clothes was exactly the opposite of what she’d ever have chosen for me, something she never failed to comment on whenever we had the chance to speak, much to my chagrin.

  The phone began to ring. Once, twice, three times before I heard the clatter of someone on the other line.

  “Good morning, Gwendolyn,” my mother said in her usually cool tone. “How are you, dear?”

  “Just fine, Mother,” I answered, leaning back into the comfort of my high-backed office chair. “And yourself? Tina had mentioned you wanted to speak.”

  “I always wish to speak to my daughter, dear, when the time permits.”

  I closed my eyes and fought to keep my tone even. While my mother might wish to speak to me, that was never the same thing as actually doing so. The time, as she said, never seemed to permit. I’d grown up dealing with this sort of behavior for years, and had always come to expect never actually being the kind of priority I’d always wanted to be in my parents’ lives. I wasn’t my father’s blood relation, and therefore was not in line to inherit any of his estate or a title—not that I was sorely missing it, to be honest.

  “And what is it you’d like to discuss with me today?” I asked after a brief silence.

  “Well, Gwendolyn, I have some news that I may need you to be sitting in order to hear.” Already I didn’t like the way that this was going, much less the way my mother seemed almost giddy as she spoke. My mother was not the kind of person to ever express anything so base as to be giddy over anything.

  “I’m sitting down… go on,” I said, unable to shake the sense of dread that was pooling in my stomach.

  She drew it out anyway, as though she’d rehearsed this moment for prime effect, pause and all. “I’m pregnant.”

  2

  After Afghanistan, I thought I’d seen it all—the myriad of horrors the universe held, all the pain and suffering that could possibly be inflicted in this world. I’d experienced more than my fair share of shock and awe, seen the misery painted on the faces of my brothers-in-arms. I’d never been allowed on the front lines, of course—I was heir to a rather substantial duchy, after all—but one didn’t have to be eye-to-eye with terror to get caught in its illimitable hold.

  But when my father told me his new wife was pregnant—and with a son, no less—that made all the darkness I’d seen in war seem like a children’s TV show, by comparison.

  It wasn’t even the thought of my dad actually fucking someone that sucked the blood from my face, or the idea that his crusty sperm still had some vitality left in them. Those were repulsive enough ideas, but not the ones that made my stomach threaten to splatter at my feet.

  It was knowing how this would change the course of the rest of my life that made me want to gag—a knowledge that no one but me, and my father, had.

  Though I supposed now his wife knew, too. Why wouldn’t she? Dear old Dad would be only too thrilled to share this particular news—that his screw-up of a son wasn’t actually entitled to anything now that a legitimate heir was on the way. Yes, I was my father’s bastard, and in more ways than one.

  Ever since I was young I’d been made painfully aware of my father’s thoughts when it came to my illegitimate standing, though as his only heir I would be the one to claim everything on the moment of his death. That was, of course, something that he had always begrudged, especially since he had—until now—been unable to repeat the miracle of my own conception. Everyone had thought him sterile, and that my birth had been a fluke of nature, or as my father liked to refer to it: a curse.

  My mother had been young—barely into her twenties—when they two of them first met—he, however was most certainly not. Already approaching thirty-five himself, my father took advantage of the doe-eyed young lass while summering in the southern part of the country and one thing apparently lead to another. When all was said and done, my mother was dead and my father swore up and down that the girl had been nothing but a slut and that the child was not his.

  One short paternity test later, and I was quickly named the bane of my father’s good name, a title I took to very readily and with much cheer. I learned to hate the old man, and took a certain satisfaction in the fact that I was the last person who he ever wanted to become the sole beneficiary of his estate. That was at least until I got the news that I’d have a little half-brother on the way within the next few months.

  He’d decided to drive home this particularly devastating news over lunch, as he most often liked to do anything. I’d only just come back from my last tour when I received the sudden and prompt invitation to meet him the following day at one of his favorite restaurants, Coldwell’s. I was rather shocked to see him when I first arrived, thin as a rail and looking almost deathly. If it weren’t for the fact that he was stuffing his face with the dish in front of him before I even sat down I would have thought that he was starving himself. For the briefest of moments I felt something akin to sympathy for my father, even wondering whether my father had contracted some kind of horrible disease. S
ympathy however soon turned to hopefulness, wishing that such a thing might actually come to pass.

  “Ah, you’ve arrived—late as usual,” he muttered between bites. Every time I saw him eat I pictured a vulture gorging itself on a carcass. That was what I’d always seen my father as, a scavenger that made his name on the backs of people who came before him. “Sit.”

  I held in a vicious snarl. How a sod like that had gotten my mother pregnant, I’ll never know—nor did I want to. I was thankful to have missed out on the majority of his repugnant features, genetically speaking, leaning more heavily toward my mother’s looks than anything else. At least I’d gotten that much of her. At times he still chided me, claiming he still wasn’t even sure that I was his at all and that “the trollop” had made it all up. It was those times where I’d been on the verge of violence. I hoped my father would keel over in his seat.

  “Your letter was already enough exposition than I really needed,” I said as I sat down, waving the waiter off as he swooped in to take my order. I had no intention of sharing my meal with that bastard sitting across from me, especially since I felt that a death from some manner of poison would be all too imminent. “Why do I need to hear it again?”

  “Because I damn well want to see the look on your face while I say it,” the old crow snarled. He loved seeing others crushed beneath him, it was a sick delight for him that I always thought was on a list just before chocolate and just after sex. “The boy inside of Evelyn will inherit everything. After all this time, I can be free of you and the horrifying prospect of leaving my legacy to a damned degenerate.”

  “And if I put a fight up on the matter?” I asked, my fists clenched in an attempt to maintain a civil tone. I hated this charade that my father and I had to put between one another in public, hiding the venom we felt toward one another was almost a torture in and of itself. “What then?”

  My father laughed, cawing like a buzzard. I hated everything about that laugh. It was cruel and harsh, the laugh he’d used to give whenever he’d watch me fail. Ever since I was a child I’d heard that high laughter whenever something would happen to cause me harm while I was out playing or involved in some sport or another. It had felt much worse back when I was so desperate for his approval, before I learned that nothing I did would ever be good enough.

  “The only way that a bastard like you can hope to inherit while there is a legitimate heir living is by being the first to marry a respectable woman before I pass—something that you with all your ‘prowess’ couldn’t even manage.” He chuckled as he looked at me over his food. “I’ve won, Tristan. And for the rest of your days you’ll know that a fetus was more worthy of my love than you ever were.”

  He was right.

  He’d found a way to take everything that I had hoped to gain in my life and put it into the arms of a shriveled little fetus. It was as though something that I had waited for all of these years was ripped from my fingers just as I was about to see it be mine. I wanted to scream, to flip over the table and send his food flying, and stab him in the eyes with the fork in his hand. I felt myself getting red in the face, heat rising at the back of my neck as his chuckle turned into another round of raucous laughter.

  “That look,” he laughed, throwing his head back as food fell from between his lips. “That has made me a happier man than anything ever has in my life.” The old man shook his head, a smile cut across his face from ear to ear. “I’ve wanted to see that look on your face—to tell you that you get nothing from me after I’ve died—for as long as you’ve been alive. Now you can go off to where I hoped that whore of a mother would have; out of sight and out of mind.”

  I wasn’t sure how I managed to keep myself under control, to stop myself from leaning across that table and drowning him in his soup, but somehow I managed. I could hardly feel my face, let alone tell what kind of expression I was making as I watched my father laugh as though he’d just heard the best joke on the face of the planet. I was sure that all was lost.

  But then I realized that I had a chance—a slim one, but a chance none-the-less.

  I could get married—find a woman to settle down with and before my father could kick his proverbial bucket—I would be the one to inherit everything. All I’d have to do was find a woman willing, but therein lay the problem in its fullness. Who would be daft enough to even consider marrying me? Especially with the kind of reputation that I had. I couldn’t deny that I was a lover of women, and having that kind of reputation tends to make one undesirable for the purposes of matrimony. But then again there were always those women convinced that they could change men like me, fix us and teach us to be tied down and contained. The thought of it made me squirm but if I could use that to torture my father one last time before he died then it would all be worth it. After all, divorce was always a viable option.

  I couldn’t help but smile as the old man continued to cackle madly, all the while totally unaware that he’d given me all I needed to make him eat every last one of those words. The old bat didn’t think I’d ever be able to keep a woman long enough, that my appetite for the tender company of women would drive any decent find far away; but I knew exactly the person to help me—my father’s own stepdaughter, Gwendolyn.

  “You’re right, Father. I must concede defeat,” I said, a wily smile crossing my face. I watched as my father’s expression fell, unable to see me sulk over the news of this injustice. I’d snatched his victory and I’d snatch it again before he even knew what was happening. “Congratulations. You’ve beaten me in our little game. No use being a poor sport about it. I must be off, however. I have an important appointment and I mustn’t delay with something so trivial as our wife’s prenatal status.”

  I wanted so much to giggle at the fury growing on his face as I trivialized what he considered to be the greatest victory of his life. It was the mark of a petty man that the suffering of others be their own comfort, and my father was most certainly king of all that was petty.

  I stood, flashed him a venomous smile and turned on my heel in military fashion before heading out the doors and out into the street to call a cab. For my plan to work I would need to be on my best behavior, keeping myself out of the spotlight as much as possible to keep the public and most importantly my father out of the loop as I prepared to ruin his entire plan for his future. Before that child was born, I would make sure that I’d make my father regret the day he was born—I know that I certainly did.

  3

  The more I stewed over the fact that my mother—a woman of almost fifty years—was pregnant by my stepfather, the more I considered bleaching away the thought with a few bottles of much-too-expensive wine. I honestly couldn’t believe that they’d even managed to pull it off, what with my mother having sworn from hell to horizon that she’d never again go through the burden of childbirth after I’d been born.

  That was the beginning of our very strained relationship. I loved my mother, I supposed, as all children did. But I also recognized that she was a class-A narcissist, and I’d spent my childhood imagining her as both a misunderstood saint, and the monster hiding under my bed.

  For all the “trouble” she’d went through to bring me into this world—something she never, ever let me forget—she expected me to be her crutch in return. I was never doted upon, except in public, where my mother might advance her station in life. I vaguely remembered the few years we’d lived in a New York apartment with a bunny-eared TV set and cans of creamed corn to eat every night. I was very young then, no more than two or three, but trauma has a way of giving even your oldest memories teeth.

  Mother had been so unhappy then. And she’d blamed it, mostly, on me. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, she’d still be that senator’s mistress. I was to blame. I’d created this mess. So in her mind, it was only “fair” that I got her out of it.

  I suppose it was all those soap operas she watched that first gave her the idea as to how she could better herself once again. I was to be part of this charade, perhaps
even the most important part—I’d be playing the role of the sophisticated, well-educated daughter who deserved more than the American education system could provide. My mother, by comparison, was the widow of an English attaché who’d perished in the September 11th attacks. Mother was nothing, if not opportunistic. I think her family crest might say something like, “Never let a good tragedy go to waste.”

  This ruse meant I’d had to learn a posh British accent, study endlessly to meet the academic benchmarks of a “gifted European child,” as my mother put it, and endure countless etiquette classes meant to train the upper crust in exhibiting their classist natures with style. This started when I was barely old enough to read, but my mother spared me no leniency, nor did she spare me the back of her hand. Among other things.

  I shook my head, trying not to think about it. She’d changed after she met her new husband, let go of that chain she’d wound around my neck, if only a little. I was still expected to never embarrass the family or sully her name, even indirectly. How a woman so frigid could conceive a child at all was beyond me.

  But apparently one thing had led to another, and now not only was I going to be a big sister, but I was also expected to act the part. I was a busy woman, a woman who had better things to do than help my mother especially on any kind of emotional level—if my mother could even comprehend any emotional help I could offer.

  I looked deep into the crystal wineglass in my hand, pondering the ripples that this one little event would have on the rest of my life—hopefully not much, seeing as I was not even set to inherit my stepfather’s assets or title. But there was still a sensation in my gut that filled me with an unexplainable sense of impending dread, as though this small little thing would change more than just the number of heirs my parents had at their disposal.