Fake Bride: A Fake Marriage Billionaire Romance (Forbidden First Times Book 2)

by Summers, Sofia T

  “I would love to take you to Florence,” he’d say. “Show you Michelangelo’s work up close.” As if he was still thinking about knowing me in the future and taking me on trips. I felt like I should remind him that we weren’t really dating, weren’t really together, but if I did… what if that meant he withdrew? And I couldn’t bring myself to let go of his companionship. It was selfish of me, but this was the sort of person I had always dreamed of dating. The sort of person I had always longed for. I couldn’t bring myself to give him up.

  Other than art, Laird’s big passion was for food. He took me out to Thai places, Chinese places, Italian places—you name it, we had tried it. He was forever finding some new place that was just opening, or had just gotten a rave review, and he wanted us to give it a try. No matter how wacky it might seem. Laird was just so eager to try it all, so adventurous.

  Sometimes, Jack would join us. Jack was a lot more sophisticated, in some ways, than Laird. He was the kind of guy who got all the girls. Personally, I liked Laird better, and I was glad that I wasn’t having to pretend to date Jack. He was too much like an older brother sort of person to me.

  “You better take care of this one, Laird,” Jack would say after I made him laugh. I made him and Laird laugh a lot, which always made me proud. I never thought of myself as a particularly funny person, not until I started spending time with them. “If you don’t appreciate her I’ll have to slap you.”

  Laird would always laugh in return, as if the idea of not appreciating me was ridiculous. This was entirely new to me. Sometimes, some of Pete’s friends would make jokes about me, but they’d been derogatory. Saying something like how if Pete ever got tired of me, they’d be happy to take a turn. That sort of thing. And Pete himself never would’ve appreciated Jack’s big brother sort of affection. He would’ve gotten angry and defensive, possessive of me.

  Jack was always checking in on me, too. He asked if we could exchange numbers, and he would stop by the coffee place to chat with me. At first I thought that it was just so that he could keep an eye on me for his friend, to make sure that I wasn’t secretly some crazy person who was going to kill Laird or rob him blind.

  I told Jack as much, at one point, feeling depressed that day, low energy, and wondering why anyone would put up with me. “You really don’t have to keep checking up on me for Laird,” I promised him. “I’m not going to turn on him.”

  Jack had blinked at me in surprise. “That’s not why I come here, Trudie. I like you. I think you’re a great person who needs friends. That’s all.”

  To my horror, I had started to cry a bit, and Jack had hugged me, laughing a little—not like he was making fun of me, but like he was fond of me.

  After that, I started to relax around him, and to actually view him as my friend. Edith had noticed that I was happier lately, telling me that I looked like I finally was actually cheerful when I got home from work or headed out for the day, rather than merely existing. “There’s a difference between surviving and living,” she told me. “You need to live, not just survive.”

  It was true. I had been just ‘surviving’ for a long time. First to keep Pete from hurting me, then to escape him, and now to keep my head above water financially. With Jack, and at work, and with Laird especially, I no longer felt like I was just surviving. I felt like I was starting to really be a part of something. Like people would miss me if I was gone.

  “You seem happier lately,” one of the other baristas mentioned. I was starting to open up around them, too. Most of them were my age or younger, and a few of them were even still in high school.

  I had felt pretty isolated from them at first, because most of them were in college. They were always talking about their studies, their exams, the crazy parties. I had no life like that. I’d never gotten to finish college, and my short time there felt like eons ago. Like another life. How could I possibly relate to them?

  But then as I started to come out of my shell a bit with Red, the baristas would reach out to me, and I found that just being included with them was nice. They sympathized with my financial struggles and complained about the rude customers with me.

  “You should come to the movies with us,” they would say. “You should come out to the bar with us.”

  Laird encouraged it. “You need friends,” he kept telling me. “And you deserve friends.”

  That was… new, to me. And it gave me another reason to trust him. Pete had always wanted me all to himself. He would cut me off from my friends and keep me from seeing other people. I never got to hang out with anyone. But Laird was happy to hear that people wanted to spend time with me. He kept telling me to branch out.

  I was starting to really feel like these people were home to me. It was a dangerous and exhilarating feeling. I hadn’t felt so embraced by people in… not since I was a kid. Not since I’d lost my family.

  Of course, there were still obstacles. Liam, Laird’s brother, was coming home and there was going to be a family dinner. This would be the first test, where Laird and I proved that we could fool his cousins. If we could manage to fool his own brother, then we could certainly fool everyone else.

  The idea of Laird lying to his brother didn’t sit well with me, since they seemed to be so close, but Laird had explained that Liam was horrible at keeping a secret and that Laird wanted to show him up a bit. “He got married a short bit ago and he’s been ribbing me for not having someone of my own. I want to show him that I could have someone if I wanted to. I just don’t want to.”

  It wasn’t ultimately my choice, of course, it was Laird’s, and if he wanted to do this then I was all in. And it would be a good idea to have a kind of test run. See how I handled things. I was pretty good at lying or so I liked to think. I’d had to hide a lot from people. First when I was dating Pete and people asked how I was, and I pretended I was fine and everything was great. Then when I was preparing to run from Pete, I had to lie to him a lot—pretend that I wasn’t storing away money, making plans, getting ready to disappear into the night.

  But this was different. This wasn’t lying for survival, exactly, and it wasn’t lying to someone that I hated and feared. This was going to be lying to a good person, and a person that I didn’t know. Could I really pull it off? Could I convince someone who had known Laird from the moment he was born that I was Laird’s wife?

  “You’re going to do great,” Jack assured me. “Liam’s a pushover. You should be glad that it’s not Laird you’re having to try and fool.”

  Laird seemed confident in me as well—or at least I thought so? He never said anything otherwise.

  The day we were supposed to do the dinner, I walked into work in a cold sweat. Which was a hell of an accomplishment given that I had powerwalked all the way here.

  “Where’s the fire?” Red asked, looking amused.

  I pointed an accusing finger at him. “Don’t start.”

  “I think I liked you better when you were all shy and didn’t say anything and never talked back,” Red replied, grinning at me.

  “You’re the worst, and you like me better now, you like my sass.” I grabbed my apron and put my purse away.

  “Seriously though, what’s the panicked expression for?”

  “Laird and I are having dinner with his brother tonight, and he’s going to pick me up straight from work.”

  “None of that sounds like a reason to panic.”

  I glared at him. “Red. Do I look like I’ve got the proper clothes to go to a swanky restaurant?”

  “Oooh, you guys are going out?” Red waggled his eyebrows at me.

  “You’re more excited for this whole thing than I am, I swear to God.”

  “I’m excited for you. You might not believe it but this is all good for you, I promise.” Red was still grinning, unperturbed by my snappiness. “So. You don’t have anything to wear?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing that’s nice enough. I only have… I have nothing, really.”

  There was no room at the c
o-op for clothes, and I couldn’t really afford to buy a lot anyway. When I’d fled from Pete, I had taken only what I had to, and that had meant leaving most of my clothes behind. Now I only had… I mentally ran through my wardrobe. A spare pair of pants, some shirts, and an extra pair of pajamas. Nothing that was fit for a nice dinner so that you could meet the brother of your husband for the first time.

  Red hummed contemplatively. “Sounds serious.”

  “I have no idea what to do,” I confessed. “I want to impress Liam. I want to make a good impression. And if I was really Laird’s wife I would be able to afford nice things—not that, you know, a man shouldn’t pay for… you shouldn’t just expect your spouse to pay for everything. But…”

  “But Laird’s a generous guy and he would make sure that if you wanted to have nice clothes you could,” Red finished. “Of course. What was the last thing he said to you?”

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and showed him the text. Before I could stop him, Red plucked the phone from my hand. “Stop! What are you doing!?”

  “You didn’t tell him you didn’t have anything to wear, you should’ve told him. Laird wouldn’t want you to be embarrassed.” Red started texting on my phone and I could feel panic seeping in.

  “Red…”

  “Aha, there, I told him what the situation was.”

  I tried to leap for the phone, but Red held it up over his head, out of reach from my grasping fingers. “Nuh-uh, you deserve nice things, and you need to learn how to ask for them.”

  “That—but that would be rude—”

  “You want to put your best foot forward and so does Laird,” Red reasoned. “If you go in just your jeans and a shirt, then you’re going to embarrass him, and you don’t want to do that. So this is the solution: tell him, and he’ll come up with a plan. If that means he buys you a cute dress to wear for the evening then that’s how it works.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Of course, logically, it made sense. But I hadn’t been able to shake… this feeling inside of me that felt like it was wrong to ask for things. I had never been able to ask for anything with Pete. It just wasn’t how things worked with him. He could get whatever he wanted, no questions asked, but if you wanted something? God forbid I ever want to treat myself, or get something nice for myself, or expect a present from him. He made me feel so guilty about wanting anything, like I was supposed to somehow be this automaton that didn’t need food or sleep or personal care. He was the worst. And I knew that all of that was wrong, but the instinctive guilt that clutched at me when I even thought about asking anyone for anything was hard to reject after I’d had to live with it for so long.

  Even when you knew an abuser was being awful to you and lying, they managed to get under your skin.

  My phone dinged with a response, and Red grinned. “He said that he’s coming to pick you up right now, and you’re going to get something nice.”

  Oh God. I didn’t want Laird to have to pick something out that was fancy. “I’m going to throw up,” I said, panic rising in me.

  “You’re not going to throw up,” Red replied, handing me back my phone. “You’re going to be fine.”

  Laird arrived downstairs from the elevator, smiling at me and jangling his car keys. “Shall we? Red, you don’t mind if I steal her away a little early, do you?”

  Red grinned. Clearly he had made it known in the text to Laird that he had sent the text from my phone, and that it hadn’t been me who was actually doing it. “Not at all, Laird, go right ahead.”

  “I’ll get you for this.”

  “Y’know you keep saying that and yet… here I still stand, unharmed.” Red waved goodbye as Laird gently herded me out the door.

  Laird was always so gentle in how he touched me. He was never tugging me, or grabbing me, the way that Pete had. Pete had touched me all the time like it was his right, and he’d been rough about it, moving me places like I was a rag doll with no will of my own. But Laird was always careful with his touches.

  “I don’t like the idea of you buying me fancy clothes,” I said as I got into Laird’s car for the first time. It was a very nice silver BMW, and I felt almost like I had to sit in it carefully, gingerly, like I didn’t really belong in it so I couldn’t make myself comfortable.

  “Mmm, why does that not surprise me?” Laird teased. “If you were my wife, you would have nice clothing. I’d want you to be able to buy whatever you wanted, and you’d need nice things so that you could accompany me to important dinners and parties. Besides, we should get you a dress for the wedding anyway. I should’ve thought of this whole thing sooner.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Now, I could take you to a boutique and say the sky’s the limit, have you try on fancy outfits, but you wouldn’t like that, would you?” Laird asked me.

  “You know me,” I admitted. I wouldn’t like that at all.

  “Then how about this.” Laird pulled the car into a parking lot and I realized that we were at a mall. “There are plenty of stores in here, some higher end than others. I’ll give you my credit card and a budget, and you’re going to pick out some nice outfits that you like, that you’re comfortable with, and you have to stay under budget. Would that help you to feel more comfortable?”

  I mulled that over. I was going to get a new wardrobe whether I wanted it or not, that much was clear to me. Or maybe not an entirely new wardrobe, but some new pieces that I could wear on the trip and with Liam so that I looked like I was a woman who was married to a man who had money to spare. But Laird was right, if he took me to some fancy boutique and spent thousands and thousands of dollars on me, I would be upset. I’d feel… halfway between like I was taking advantage of him and being used like a doll.

  This way, though, with a budget and allowed to go to what stores I wanted… that gave me some more autonomy and independence. “How big would my budget be?”

  “Five thousand?” Laird ventured.

  I glared at him. No way. How could I possibly spend five thousand dollars on clothes? Where would I even begin?

  Laird chuckled. “Four thousand? Three thousand?”

  I kept my glare up, since that seemed to work so well.

  “Two thousand five hundred,” Laird said. “That’s my final offer.” His voice got firm, and I could imagine this was how he sounded in the boardroom, but it wasn’t harsh. It didn’t make me feel threatened. In fact that tone of voice made me shiver with heat. The tone of soft but firm command, the fact that I knew he wasn’t budging, the total self-confidence he was exuding… it was wildly attractive.

  “Fine,” I said, after I swallowed to try and get my voice back. There was no reason for Laird to know that I was attracted to him using that tone with me. Just like there was no reason for him to know that I found him unbearably handsome and had since I’d first seen him. That would be unprofessional for our relationship.

  I got out of the car as Laird did the same on his side. Two thousand, five hundred dollars, all for me to spend. How was I going to possibly use it all on clothes? I supposed I would have to find out.

  12

  Laird

  Watching Trudie shop was a lot more fun than I could have anticipated.

  I enjoyed shopping for a good outfit myself, but I’d found that shopping with others could be tedious. People were often impressed by price and would go for the more expensive item, even if it didn’t look as good, because they wanted to brag about how much their new suit had cost them. Or they would buy two items of clothing that didn’t go well together or buy something that didn’t flatter them just because it was designer. They’d get upset by sizing (men always thought their cup size was bigger than it was, and the women would get upset thinking they were fat when they weren’t). They’d shop after what was in vogue, trying to keep up with trends, and they’d take forever to choose things.

  Trudie was entirely different.

  She was timid, at first, stepping into the stores like a deer moving out into a clearin
g in the woods and unsure if there was a hunter around or not. She approached the clothing racks like they might bite her. But as time went on, she began to grow more confident, perusing the racks with a keen eye.

  “I’m shocked you didn’t head right for the sales racks,” I noted.

  Trudie rolled her eyes. “Like you’d let me ever hear the end of it if I did.”

  “Oh, I’d let you hear the end of it. After a few months had passed and I found something new to rib you about.”

  “I don’t know why I put up with you. Why did I agree to this, again? So that I could get annoyed all the time?”

  “Aww, I’m not annoying, I’m adorable. I’ve been told so many times.”

  “Obviously you were told that by delusional people who were dropped on their heads as kids.”

  “You’re just such a sweet person,” I said, grinning wildly as I followed her out of this shop and into another one. Trudie didn’t seem to know exactly what she was looking for, and was giving everything a look over to see what she liked best and then come back to that. “I don’t know why you’re not the most popular person in town with all these lovely things you say.”

  “I’ll have you know that I’m a ray of absolute sunshine,” Trudie replied, poking her head into another store and then deciding it wasn’t for her. “To people who deserve it.”

  “Ouch, you wound me. Tell me.” I hooked my arm around hers. “What can I do to deserve sweet looks from you and fewer acidic comments?”

  Trudie glared at me, but there was no real heat behind it, no actual anger. “Stop starting arguments.”

  “I don’t start anything!” I faked a dramatic gasp. “I merely made an observation, love, you’re the one who decided it was an opening volley.”