Second Chance Bride: A Fake Fiancee Romance

by Samantha West

  I know the organizers of the pageant wouldn’t have approved her to be on camera unless they had pre-screened her question. I know she must have a very innocuous question prepared, something that was given the okay by Ms. Garnelle and everyone else involved. And even though I alerted Mrs. Pathmoore to the fact that a reporter found out the engagement was fake, they must not have put together that it was Cynthia.

  Or maybe she thought I was bluffing that time, too. Or maybe, at this point, they just don’t give a shit about me because they know that only my and Jason’s names appear on that contract, and their name will remain untarnished no matter what.

  “What is your question, Cynthia?” the host says, directing her attention to the audience.

  “Cassandra Blake,” she starts with a smile on her face, “I have a question I think we are all dying to know the answer to.”

  I can feel the energy in the room shift as she looks me up and down. I can almost see a glimmer of sympathy in her eye.

  She may be sick, but she isn’t evil. She may want a good story, but she wouldn’t expose me now. Not now. She could have done it in this morning’s paper if she’d wanted to let this story get out.

  Or maybe she isn’t evil at all, and she’s just trying to get a good story. After all, I am the one who lied. I am the one who faked this whole thing to stay in the competition.

  I am a fraud, after all.

  “Just get it over with,” I say, letting a small laugh come from my lips.

  This isn’t funny at all, but I can’t help myself.

  Cynthia shakes her head and smirks.

  “Why did you fake an engagement to stay in the pageant?”

  A hush washes over the theater and you could hear a pin drop. You could hear a seagull squawking somewhere over the boardwalk right now if you listen hard enough.

  And then a hushed rumble of whispers breaks out in the theater.

  The pageant host looks at me and shakes her head, casting her eyes down at our feet.

  “Cassandra?” she says, bringing the microphone to her lips, “would you like to answer?”

  I look out over the sea of faces in the crowd, and I spot my mom, dad and brother. The look of sheer mortification on their faces is actually comical, almost.

  “Yes,” I say, “I’d like to answer that.”

  But as I am about to answer, there is an outburst of commotion from the back of the theater. I watch as one of the doors at the back swings open, and Jason comes barreling inside.

  “Wait,” Jason says as security guards give chase after him, “Cassandra Blake, you haven’t faked a damn thing.”

  My heart flies into my belly when I see him coming down the aisle toward me - strong, confident, determined, and yeah, hot as all hell - and I suddenly feel as though my world is in color again. Heat blooms inside my chest and I feel the corners of my eyes prickle with hot tears, and I take in a deep, refreshing breath.

  The security guards gain on him, grabbing him by the arms and shoulders, making him stop in his tracks.

  “It’s okay,” I say, putting my hands out to try to stop them as I walk to the edge of the stage, “it’s okay.”

  “It’s alright,” the host says. The guards take their hands off of Jason as he shrugs them away, adjusting his suit jacket and standing up a little bit straighter.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, my voice trembling.

  “I’m here for the pageant,” he says, “I came here to see you. I came here because we have unfinished business. And to your question,” he says, turning to Cynthia, “we never faked a damn thing. My feelings have always been one-hundred percent real.”

  “Jason,” I say, “you didn’t have to do this. You didn’t have to come back. I can handle this on my own.”

  “I know you can,” he says, coming closer to the stage, “and if I hadn’t come here this week, I know none of this shit would have happened. But Cassie, I couldn’t stand to be without you any longer. I couldn’t stand to hide the truth from you for another damn second.”

  “So what’s the truth?” I say as he hoists himself onto the stage. He starts toward me, making my heart beat maddeningly.

  “The truth is that I love you. I always have. And I came here to the pageant to tell you this truth, and to take you home with me.”

  “So what happened last night?” I ask in a small voice.

  He comes closer to me and takes me in his arms, looking deep into my eyes.

  “She threw herself at me and asked me to spend the night with her in exchange for not printing the story. I said no, and she got really pissed off, but none of that matters anymore. I spent a lot of time away on the road, wishing I was with you. That’s all there is to it. I ran away from you because I thought I wasn’t worthy. But that time apart made me realize that you’re the one person I want. And I know you feel the same way, Cass.”

  I can’t stop the tears from coming now.

  I know, I know, there’s no crying in pageants unless you win.

  “Jason,” I choke out, “I love you too. I’m sick of pretending I don’t love you. I’m sick of pushing those feelings away.”

  He takes a big step toward me, takes my face in his hands, and plants his lips against mine.

  There’s no crying in pageants unless you win. And right now, I have the only thing I’ve ever really wanted.

  I know I’ll never compete again if I walk off this stage right now. So what do I decide to do?

  “Take me home, Jason,” I whisper into his ear.

  I don’t know what’s happening in the theater. I don’t know if Ms. Garnelle is somewhere with a walkie-talkie telling the guards at the back of the theater to catch me and Jason and bring us to the security office where they’ll lock us up forever for screwing up her pageant. I don’t know if the people in their seats are happy for me or if they pity me.

  And I don’t care.

  Jason takes me by the hand as we rush toward the edge of the stage, and he hops down, turning to take me by the hips to guide me down with him.

  As I slip my hand into his, I know I’ve won. Because we finally said the words I’ve wanted us to say for years. He came back for me even though I pushed him away in a moment of doubt and weakness.

  He came back and watched my chances of becoming queen tonight totally go up in flames.

  And you know what? Screw it.

  We crash out of the theater through the double doors and run through the hotel lobby together, where he grabs me by the hips and crushes his lips to mine. My body warms to him and I kiss him for what feels like the first time and the thousandth time.

  “Where is home, Cass?” he asks, pulling away from me, his eyes looking at mine hungrily, in that familiar way he’s always looked at me.

  “It’s right here with you,” I say, resting my head against his shoulder. “It always has been.”

  Epilogue - Jason

  One Day Later

  Cassie and I are making our way through one of the casinos, where the metallic jangling of virtual change and the bright lights on the tops of the machines are bursting with color.

  We had a long talk with her parents and brother. They told me she’d already given them a heads-up, days ago, to not believe anything they read in the papers. This meant we had to actually convince them that what happened on stage last night actually was real, and not orchestrated.

  The thing that convinced them was the fact that Cassie really had dropped out of the pageant and would really be going home empty-handed.

  “I think you made a lot of girls happy by quitting,” I say, taking her hand in mine. “You really thinned out the competition.”

  “I suppose so,” she says, digging around in her purse. “All I know is that I am done with pageants. It’s not my life’s calling, anyway.”

  “And what is your life’s calling?” I ask, pulling her closer to me.

  “I don’t know yet,” she replies with a smirk, “but I have a few ideas.”

  Cassie slides her arm
around me and keeps digging around in her purse with her other hand.

  “What are you looking for in there?” I ask, peering down at her.

  “I wanted to put a twenty in one of the machines,” she says, looking at me and smiling. “You always hear about people who never gamble, and then on the way out of the casino they throw a twenty in a machine and end up winning.”

  “That’s a fantastic idea,” I say, rubbing my hands together. “Are any of the machines calling to you?”

  “Not really,” she says, scrunching up her face, “let’s just pick one randomly.”

  She leads me by the hand to the nearest vacant machine, where she perches on the edge of the chair and slides her money into the slot.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” she says to me as she looks down at the buttons. “It is highly unlikely that we will actually win.”

  “Come on Cass,” I say, “you have just as much a shot as anyone else.”

  I put my hands on her shoulders from behind her and dig my fingers gently into her skin. She is more relaxed than I think I’ve ever seen her.

  “Here I go,” she says, pushing a button to place the maximum bet with her twenty dollars.

  We watch the machine intently, and I have to admit, I get a little bit excited. Cherries scroll across the screen at lightning speed, and for a minute I think we actually might win something.

  A little bell goes off and I raise my eyebrows as she whips her head up to look at me.

  “Twenty bucks!” she says excitedly, clapping her hands.

  “Wait,” I say, “twenty dollars? But that’s what we started with.”

  “I know, but that means we didn’t lose anything!”

  Cassie pushes the button to redeem her twenty bucks and pulls the crisp white voucher from the machine, holding it between her fingers like she’s won a million dollars.

  “Not bad,” I laugh, putting my arm around her, “now let’s get you home before you make a bad habit out of this.”

  “Would you mind holding this for me until we find a machine to redeem it?” she asks, handing me the voucher.

  “Sure,” I reply, sliding it into my back pocket.

  I feel so damn good with Cassie Blake on my arm. And I know this is just the beginning for us, which feels even better.

  I exhale, feeling so damn free and so damn certain about what’s going to come next.

  “Hey,” I say as we keep walking, “we still have about a half hour before our bus leaves.”

  “What do you want to do?” she asks, “get a snack? Smoothie? Frozen yogurt? Soft pretzel?

  I look down at her, pull her close to me, and press my body against hers. She already knows what I’m thinking.

  “We don’t even have to be careful anymore,” she breathes, putting her arms around my neck slowly.

  “We were never all that careful to begin with,” I reply, putting my hands on her hips, allowing them to roam over her curves. I spot a small area off the main casino, labeled “High Rollers,” and grab her hand to bring her over to it. There’s no one here, and the entrance isn’t being guarded. I take that to mean we can just go in.

  “What are we doing?” she asks mischievously, checking behind us as I pull her away from the crowds.

  “What the hell do you think?” I ask, spotting a mens’ room.

  I flash a look and raise an eyebrow toward her, and her face instantly flushes and becomes pink. She bites her bottom lip and looks up at me sheepishly.

  “You wouldn’t,” she says softly, looking behind us again.

  “Why are you checking to see if anyone is watching, if you don’t think I’d do it?”

  “I don’t know,” she shrugs sweetly.

  “Only if it’s nice,” I say, pulling her toward it.

  We tumble into the bathroom and I shut the door behind us, locking it quickly. But it isn’t a bathroom - the room we find ourselves in is a small lounge, and I think there are probably bathrooms behind one of the doors on the wall off to the right, but where we are there’s a wall of mirrors, dim, golden lighting, and a black leather couch.

  I pull her close to me, taking her ass in my hands and pushing her against the wall.

  “So is this nice enough?” I growl, kissing her neck, “or do you want me to stop?”

  My fingers find the edge of her panties and I slide them past, feeling her sticky sweet juices already making her so fucking wet.

  “It’s nice,” she moans as I glide my fingers against her clit, “really nice.”

  We only have time for something fast, so I put her down and spin her around, pushing her hands against the black, textured wall.

  “Stay right there like that,” I say, kneeling down behind her, pushing her dress up around her waist and yanking her black lace thong down.

  She has soaked through her panties, and I find her tight hole with my tongue, pressing my way inside her as I massage her clit in small circles.

  Her breathing picks up quickly, and I reach down to take my cock out as I stand.

  “You like it fast and dirty like this, don’t you?” I growl, pressing my lips to the back of her ear. I line up up my cock with her soaking wet, tight hole and slice through her, making her head fall back against my chest.

  “Yes,” she moans, “I like it.”

  “You’re gonna stay with me, right Cass?” I groan, pushing in and out of her as hard as I can, “you’re gonna move into my apartment with me where I’m gonna screw your brains out every damn night.”

  “Jason,” she moans lightly, “are you asking me to move in with you?”

  I smile to myself. I guess I am. But that’s not all I want her to do.

  “Yeah baby,” I groan, feeling her pussy tense up around me. I keep my fingers on her clit, hitting it from every angle I can, trying to push her to an orgasm as fast as possible. “Now cum with me right now.”

  “Oh fuck,” she moans, her hands slipping down the wall. She steadies herself on her elbows and I explode inside her, shooting myself deep inside as I take her hips in both of my hands and press her ass up against me.

  I let out a deep breath as my cock sputters and jerks inside her.

  She rests her head against my chest as I wrap my arms around her waist. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this damn satisfied before.

  No, scratch that - I have never felt as damn happy as I feel right now, in every way.

  And I’m going to keep her just like this, begging me for more every day and night, and giving her everything she wants until she’s absolutely spoiled.

  Because whatever she is - beauty queen, prom queen, or the girl next door - she’s mine now, and she always will be.

  Epilogue - Cassie

  Three Months Later

  “I thought we agreed the initial order was for a thousand units,” I say, flipping through some paperwork sprawled out on the kitchen table in my parents’ house. I find the contract I’m looking for and find the page with the order schedule on it. “Yeah,” I say, my finger trailing down the page until I find the line I need, “the initial run was for a thousand units.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” my contact at the local organic supermarket says, “I found it. But we need more inventory. I’ll email that second contract over to you as soon as possible.”

  “I promise we are working our asses off over here, Chuck,” I say, nestling the phone between my chin and shoulder.

  After we got home from the pageant, things weren’t exactly pretty for a little while. I mean, it could have been worse.

  Cynthia got what was coming to her. Apparently it’s against journalistic ethics to be a source in a piece you yourself are writing. So while she thought she was breaking a big story by standing up and humiliating me in the middle of the pageant, she was actually sabotaging her own career.

  Yeah, it seems that even tabloids have standards, and when her editor found out that she was the one who overheard the whole infamous love is stupid comment and decided to run with it in the paper, wel
l...the last I heard, she had lost her job and no one will touch her. I think she has a blog now.

  Reaction to my ordeal has been mixed. Most people have been supportive. I decided not to throw the pageant under the bus, decided not to tell the world that it was all their idea to begin with, because really, what good would that have done?

  I’ve been told that sometimes taking the low road feels good. But it turns out that taking the high road feels good, too.

  And really, all I did was tell a white lie. Because the truth is that, all along, Jason and I were moving on a path toward each other. I just didn’t know it yet.

  Plus, when news that we were still dating after the pageant was over hit the papers, that did a lot to mollify the blow to my reputation.

  Mrs. Pathmoore even said she’d still take me on as my manager if I ever decided to go back to competing, and Ms. Garnelle even said she’d write a letter on my behalf to the organizer of any pageant I decided to apply for in the future.

  But something tells me that part of my life is now in my past.

  “Where do you want these boxes?” Mark asks as he barrels through the screen door, letting it snap behind him.

  Shortly after getting home, I received a few calls from investors about my skincare line. I ended up going with someone local to Ocean City, and since his investment, I’ve been able to get into a bunch of local stores.

  “Just anywhere you can put them,” I say, clearing off a space on the kitchen table.

  Jason comes in after my brother, wearing combat boots, his old Metallica t-shirt, dark, faded jeans, and the smile that still melts me.

  “Right here good?” he asks, putting the box on the corner of the kitchen table, sliding it forward with his hips.

  “Perfect,” I say, grabbing a pair of scissors from the junk drawer to start opening up the boxes.

  It’s the first batch of my custom tea-tree-oil blend cleaner. They’ve just picked it up from the small facility I’ve rented out to have everything packaged, and it’s time to do quality control before I send the batch off to my vendors.