Second Chance Bride: A Fake Fiancee Romance

by Samantha West

  The gala. Yes, I am well-aware of the gala. It’s the biggest event of the week, aside from the actual pageant, and we each have an escort for it. It has already been written into the contract that Jason will be my escort.

  “Yeah, of course,” I say. Jason turns around and runs his loofah over me, rubbing my shoulders with it, pushing my hair away from my face.

  “You wanna go with me?” he asks, not looking at my eyes.

  I feel a hitch deep inside my chest. That same feeling I had moments ago when I reminded myself - scolded myself and made myself remember - to not let this get to my head.

  I can’t let this get to my head. This is just a fun week together. This is something that Jason Anderson is used to doing. This is his thing. I’ve known him forever, and that means I know what he does.

  I know what he is.

  “We have to go together,” I say, forcing a smile. “You’re contractually obligated to go with me.”

  He smirks and shakes his head, turns me around by the shoulders, laces his powerful fingers through my hair, and kisses the back of my neck.

  My face falls forward and I close my eyes as a shock of pure electricity bolts through my veins.

  “You don’t get it, Cassie,” he says. “You never did.”

  I swallow hard, pushing my eyelids open. They’re heavy with the shower water and the post-orgasmic haze that Jason has thrust me into.

  He can’t mean what I think he means.

  Jason Anderson kisses one shoulder and kneads the other with his fingertips. The pressure if flirting with slightly too much, but I like it.

  “Clue me in, then,” I say.

  I’m about to turn around, but instead of being able to indulge in the sweetness of his gaze, against all of the voices inside my head telling me not to, I hear a knock at the door of my hotel room.

  “Shit,” he whispers, a laugh in his voice. “You hear that?”

  “Yeah,” I sigh.

  “You stay here. I’ll tell whoever it is that I came up here to grab something for you. I’ll tell them you’re out. You stay in here and clean up. That’s one thing I know you people need.”

  “You people?” I ask, raising an eyebrow at him.

  “Yeah,” he shrugs, sliding the glass shower door open, letting the steam inside the shower spread over the rest of the bathroom like the fog on the lake behind our houses growing up. “Beauty queens. You have to smell good and shit.”

  “Of course,” I say, watching him as he begins to towel off.

  He leaves the bathroom with just a towel around his waist, and I step under the shower.

  I want to go to the gala as his date - as his actual, honest, real date. Of course I want that.

  My heart wants it. My body wants it. I can’t help it. I want him.

  But I don’t want to get hurt.

  I don’t want to be walled off, though. I want to let myself open up for him. The past few days have been incredible. His kiss, his touch, the way he knows every damn thing about me. The stories, the shared history, the anecdotes he told Cynthia.

  I close my eyes and allow the water hit me in big, hot pellets against my skin.

  And somewhere, in the short distance between me and the front door that Jason’s opening up for my unexpected visitor, I hear a woman’s voice.

  15

  Jason

  “Spread your legs.”

  It’s so clinical. It’s so rote. There’s no romance to it at all.

  I’m standing on a little platform in the back of a crowded, bustling suit shop with low ceilings and dark wooden paneling about twenty miles up the shore. The guy sizing me throws the measuring tape over his shoulders and brushes something off my back.

  I put my hands on my hips and spread my legs apart slightly, keeping them straight. Cynthia is standing in the corner, chewing on the end of a straw in her iced coffee and scribbling in her notebook with an intensity somewhere between maniacal and purely manic.

  “Relax, son,” the guy with the tape measure says, drawing a length of it between his fingers. He puts one end at my hip and drops the other down to my ankle, jotting something down on an ancient notebook perched on the edge of a table covered with scraps of fabric.

  “You actually look really good,” Cynthia says as a seamstress in a long black dress squeezes past her.

  I regard myself in the mirror, tipping a chin up and straightening my t-shirt at the hem.

  I look tired. I look worn down - and I brought this on myself. Six months on the road without adequate sleep can wear down on a person, and it catches up with you fast. One day, you’re signing up to do something you’re super pumped for, and what seems like the very next day, you’re lamenting what’s become of your early twenties.

  I know it’s a cliche to say I’m too old for this shit - but I’m too old for this shit.

  I catch Cynthia’s eye in the mirror. She smiles and buries her pen in her notebook again, her eyes scanning quickly across the page.

  What the hell is she writing?

  I mean, I know she’s doing research, and that means tagging along with me for a few errands I have to run today. She’s been following the pageant, and now that the lede story seems to be me and Cassie, that means she has to put together profiles on both of us.

  “Thanks,” I say to Cynthia, raising an eyebrow slightly and trying my hardest to hide my annoyance.

  I really can’t blame her for busting in on me and Cassie - this woman is just doing her job, even though she’s cockblocked me at least once in the past few days.

  But it’s more than just that.

  It’s more than just what I’m here to do. It’s more than my job. It’s more than being a professional, it’s more than just helping Cassie.

  Falling into this crazy thing with Cassie feels like nothing at all and everything in the world - natural and easy, but overdue and like pure damn destiny. She kept me going when I was away, and even though it was nothing to her - we only exchanged texts like old friends, checking in on the mundane happenings of our days - I always felt drawn back to her.

  This fake engagement just feels like the most genuine thing that’s happened to me in a long damn time.

  “So we have the details about the engagement down. The whole thing about how you put the ring in the mailbox,” Cynthia says, not looking up at me. “That’s very cute. Very small-town, very Dawson’s Creek almost.”

  Cynthia glances up at me as the tailor pulls the length of the soft measuring tape across my shoulders.

  “Thanks,” I say cautiously.

  “But I want to know more about you,” she says, sauntering over to me.

  “I’m an open book,” I offer.

  I scold myself. I’m about to generalize about reporters, and that’s not fair.

  But on the other hand, this woman did put out a completely unnecessary hit piece on my girl.

  I call it unnecessary because it was stupid. But from Cynthia’s point of view, it was certainly necessary. Fucking required, even. Because she’s got to get a story, and she’ll do it any damn way she sees fit. That doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it, though. I don’t have to throw this woman a parade for doing her job when it’s her job to be generally shitty to people.

  “Okay, Jason,” she says, “tell me about your time on the road. I pulled some clips about you. Word is that you once single-handedly bounced some big stalker guy from a concert when he tried to get into the talent’s dressing room.”

  I laugh to myself. This woman is thorough, I’ll say that much. I didn’t even know anyone was really at that concert. When I’d looked out into the pit from the corner of the stage, the only people standing in the crowd were people the lead singer chick and the rest of the band and I had gone to high school with.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” I say, pausing for a moment, “yeah. That happened. Seems that you’ve done your research. I didn’t know anyone had covered that show.”

  “Wait,” Cynthia says, smiling over
her notebook, “you really don’t know who I am?”

  I don’t feel my heart drop when she looks at me. It’s something else.

  “No,” I say, “I don’t know who you are.”

  I did think she seemed familiar. But I haven’t had to make assumptions about this woman to discern who the hell she is. I already know her because she’s made herself known to me and Cassie - but the fact that she thinks we know each other is both a cosmic annoyance to me and a brute fact that hits me square in the chest.

  The last thing I need is this woman hanging on me. The last thing I need is anything to distract from me and Cassie, and from helping Cassie win this contest.

  Which means I’m in a really fucking hard spot. Piss this woman off, and she’s likely to write some bullshit to jeopardize Cass. Be too nice to her, and she’s likely to get some damn illusions in her mind about me and her.

  She looks up at me over her notebook, biting her straw.

  Fuck.

  “Should I know you?” I ask, feeling my muscles tense up. The tailor taking my measurements grunts a little as he throws the measuring tape around his neck and hobbles away, motioning me to get down from the platform.

  “Jason, I can’t believe you don’t know who I am. I was practically attached to your band’s hip two years ago when you were doing that New York tour.”

  “I’m sorry, I really don’t remember you.” I push my hair away from my face and search her for a clue. Anything to jog my memory, but it’s just not happening. But I have to stay on her good side. I smile. “And that’s okay because you’ve got my attention now.”

  She taps her pen on her notebook and glances up at me. I don’t know what her angle is. Maybe she’s just trying to get a good story, and again, I make no illusions about what her function is and how she fits into this whole puzzle.

  “I’ve got my eye on you,” she says as she peers at me with a smirk that I can’t quite read. Part of me thinks she wants to jump my bones, even though she knows I’m attached. Part of me think she wants to tear me and Cassie apart, all in the name of a good story. Still another part, my rational brain, brushes her off as a mere annoyance as we squeeze through the tables filled with big rolls of fabric, women flitting around between taking measurements and shouting out commands to people I assume are interns, young men and women dressed all in black and taking orders without seeming at all perturbed by being barked at.

  Cynthia stands next to me, tapping away at her phone while I pay for my suit. The price nearly knocks the wind out of me, but the cost is being reimbursed by the pageant so I’m cool with it.

  We make our way out of the store and the fresh, salty air envelopes me. I look over at Cynthia and wish it were Cassie here with me, breathing in the fresh air away from the chaos surrounding us back at the hotel.

  “Listen, Cynthia,” I start. But I don’t know what the hell to say to her. I want to tell her that she needs to stay away from me and Cassie, but I can’t.

  And I’m lucky, because Cynthia’s phone buzzes and she brings it to her ear, putting a finger up in the air between us. She nods a few times at whatever the person on the other end is saying, then says goodbye and hangs up.

  “Sorry babe,” she says, going into her purse and taking out her keys, “wish I could stay and chat, but I’m working right now.”

  This woman is bizarre. She walks away from me toward the small parking lot in front of the store, and I make my way over to where my driver for the week is parked, waiting for me.

  I’ve got a full couple of days ahead of me. I have to ask Cassie to be my date - my fucking real date to the gala tomorrow night, and not in some passing moment.

  This is what really matters.

  16

  Cassie

  “Yes, I promise it’s going great,” I say into the phone. I’m sitting at the hotel bar waiting for Jason and speaking to Mrs. Pathmoore, tracing my finger along the edge of my glass. I’ve ordered a beer for Jason, and I keep checking over my shoulder anxiously, what feels like every few seconds, to see if he’s arrived.

  He said he wants to talk to me. He said he has something to discuss.

  “No need to get defensive,” Mrs. Pathmoore replies. I roll my eyes in response. I hadn’t thought I was being defensive. “You’re doing fabulously. Everything is going smoothly. And after the pageant is over, you can say goodbye to that man.”

  I sigh deeply and bring my cocktail to my lips, taking a big sip to steady myself. She’s right.

  After this is all over, Jason and I can go back to just being friends. We can go back to...whatever the hell we were before.

  I feel a soft smile play against my lips when I think back to that first night with him. He did everything I’d ever wanted. Everything I had ever imagined. Then forces outside our control intervened, and I never got to find out his true feelings. He’d said he wanted to continue hanging out with me, but that’s not an indication of his feelings.

  That’s an indication he wanted to continue having sex with me. And wanting to sleep with someone is not the same as wanting them. The two can overlap - god, do I know that - but it’s not the same thing. In the Venn diagram of the heart and the body, there’s only a very small slice of reality where wanting someone and wanting someone completely coincide, and it’s so small and so fragile.

  I know my feelings for Jason occupy that space. They have since before I can even remember. But that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything for Jason.

  Still, despite his feelings for me - whatever they may be - it really freaking irks me that Mrs. Pathmoore referred to him as “that man.”

  “I don’t plan on...on doing that,” I say cautiously, because of course I don’t know if Cynthia is lurking around some corner.

  “You can do precisely as you wish,” she replies, “after the pageant is over. For now, you know how to continue on. You will display an image of the perfect couple in love, without any public indiscretions.”

  Again, I roll my eyes.

  “But Mrs. Pathmoore,” I say with a hint of sarcasm, “how do people in love act? Are we supposed to act like strangers in public? A pat on the shoulder and a hearty handshake? People who are in love usually show they’re in love, don’t they? Now, I’m not talking about grinding up on each other…”

  “Cassie!” she hisses as I take another sip of my drink, “you will do no such thing!”

  “I’m just playing around with you,” I sigh, “or is that not allowed either?”

  I guess I’m so invested in messing around with my manager that I barely hear Jason come over to me. I only realize he’s arrived when he slides into the stool next to me and I breathe in his sexiness. He sits back and takes a swig of his beer, and I feel a spear of hit shoot me low in the belly.

  “As I said, you can do whatever you want after the pageant is over,” Mrs. Pathmoore says.

  We say goodbye as Jason takes another sip of his beer and looks over at me with an uncertain expression on his face.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “Nothing really,” he says, “but I wanted to ask you something. Could we go outside so we can talk without all these people around?”

  I study the uncertainty in his eyes as I feel myself deflate.

  Okay, so maybe this is the part where he breaks my heart. I avert my gaze from his and take a final sip of my cocktail, draining the whole damn thing into my gut to steady myself. The best tactic for ensuring a woman doesn’t make a scene when you break up with her or do something that will otherwise upset her is to do it in a public place. It seems that, for my sake, he has the decency to do it in semi-private so we don’t jeopardize this charade we have going on.

  I nod a little bit too eagerly and follow him through the bar.

  “Everything alright?” I say as we make our way through the lobby and out onto the boardwalk.

  I cast a glance up at him as he puts his hand on my lower back. I want to ask him what the hell is going on, why he’s being so damn re
ticent. But then, I guess he was always like this.

  “Yeah, everything’s good,” he says, guiding me over to a bench on the edge of the boardwalk.

  He takes my hand and we sit down, looking out over the water.

  “Cassie, listen,” he says, turning his knees toward mine, making them touch my thighs. I’m wearing a dress he once complimented me on. It’s simple, and even though I’m supposed to only wear new, trendy stuff this week according to the guidelines of the contest, I thought I could get away with this. It’s just a simple black sundress, and he said he liked it because you could really see me. “I wanted to ask you to go to the gala with me. But not as my fake date. As my real date.”

  His eyes are colored with want, and as they roam over my face, I watch his expression change. The hardened, slightly-distant yet intimate expression is difficult to read; I can tell he wants me, though. I can feel it as the air whips around us. I can feel it as he puts his hand on my lower back and pulls me into him, a slight rumble pushing through his body and emanating into mine.

  “And if I don’t want to?” I ask, his gaze burning against mine, “what if I want to just keep going on the way we have been?”

  “Then I’d tell you you’re crazy, because the way we’ve been acting isn’t because of the fucking contract.”

  Jason puts his hand behind my head and pushes his lips into mine, forcing his way into me. I get lost in his kiss and my hands move up his chest, until I’m wrapping them around the back of his neck.

  I feel myself getting wetter when we kisses me. Before, I was wet just from the way he looked at me.

  He pulls away and exhales deeply, his breath shaky. But he has a certainty in his eyes, even though he is so damn hard to read and so infuriatingly sexy.

  “God, Jason,” I say, putting my hands on his shoulders, “I just wish I knew what you were thinking. I always have.”

  “All you have to do is ask,” he whispers into my ear, pulling me close.

  And then I feel the full weight of me and Jason crash down on me like a piano falling out of the sky in an old cartoon. The ones where the hero is walking along, minding his own business, and some great, cosmic tragedy befalls him. But this time, it’s not a tragedy. It’s just the weight of the last several years falling on us and it’s the sweet ache of finally feeling Jason with his arms around me.