by Lauren Wood
I reached out and brushed her cheek. “What are you thinking about?”
“We have to have an engagement party,” she stated.
“What?” I perked up, resting the side of my head on my hand.
“If we’re going to put ourselves on a platform for the company and be a shining, smiling example of what Heartstring has to offer...we really have to play it up, and as publicly as possible. Which means a big engagement party with all the press and wealthy, high society people we know in attendance.”
“Is that what you want?”
She turned to face me—those big, beautiful dark eyes burning into mine. “It’s not about what I want. It’s a part of this whole deal. I’m sure we can make it fun. Drinks and dressing up. Your whole family should come, of course. I’ll get Camille to help me plan it.”
“I can help, too, you know.” I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. A few weeks ago, an engagement, much less a party to celebrate it, would have been the furthest thing from my mind. Now I was offering to help plan one...with Victoria, of all people.
My life was turning into something unrecognizable. Like I had officially lost it and slipped into one of my fantasies, but this time I would never snap back to reality.
“I’ll need everyone’s help.” She laughed, dragging her hands down her face. “Oh, god. This is all so surreal. I know how to plan events, don’t get me wrong. But an engagement party? A wedding? This isn’t really my forté.”
“Can’t be too different from what you’re used to. Those things are just publicity stunts. A chance for people to show off and have their picture taken. Just like any other PR event you’ve put together.”
She wrinkled her brows, smiling. “That’s not all they are, Lucas. They’re about love and celebrating that with family and friends.”
I felt something catch in my throat. I wished I could make her understand these events would mean that for me, too.
“But I guess we’ll be celebrating...friendship,” she offered.
I nodded. “Friendship. An arranged marriage and pregnancy.”
“Platonic love,” she sighed, rolling over to nestle up against the pillows and sheets.
I couldn’t resist curling my body against hers, wrapping my arms around her. She pulled my hand under her cheek and grew quiet, still...drifting off to sleep. The lines were all blurred, but if she wasn’t complaining...neither was I. I would take as many nights sleeping by her side as I could get.
13
Victoria
The ballroom we’d booked for the engagement party was decked out to the nines with hanging lights and chandeliers. A full wait staff stalked people with trays overflowing with champagne, caviar, and hors d'oeuvres—all leading up to a formal three-course seated dinner. But first, there were cocktails and mingling, then dancing would come after dessert.
It was like a fairy tale, and Lucas and I made sure to dress our parts for the fairy-tale romance we were trying to sell everyone. He looked better than ever in his tux, and I had the hook-up for a couture gown on loan from a friend who worked with all the top designers in the city. She managed to snag me a simplistic, chic, but very elegant and expensive dress in blush pink with intricate folds of fabric around the bust and silky, flowing fabric that overlapped and broke apart for a killer slit at my thigh. It was the perfect mix of sexy and respectable.
The star accessory to my evening attire was the ring Lucas had picked out. It was on my to-do list to grab a ring eventually, but he surprised me with one that I knew had to cost a fortune. I wasn’t sure how he pulled off the six carat diamond with its eighteen carat white gold band, but I wasn’t complaining. Maybe he had a few contacts of his own that he enlisted to help.
“Good evening, Mrs. Meadows.” He flashed me a charming grin as we found our way back to each other amidst the crowd.
“I never agreed to taking your last name,” I groaned, rolling my eyes.
“Fine, Mrs. Meadows-Sloan. How are you enjoying the party?”
I looked around the room—all the sparkling jewelry hanging from our guests and the smell of pure money in the air. “It’s...extravagant, that’s for sure. Definitely something for anyone to envy.”
“That’s the goal, right?”
I sipped my champagne and smiled with a swell of accomplishment. “It sure is.”
“Well, I don’t think anyone envies this party as much as every guy in the room is envying me,” he noted, looking me up and down. “Damn, Vic. You have got to be the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
“Glad you feel that way because it would be awfully bad press if we didn’t leave here together,” I quipped, cutting my eyes across the numerous women in the room who had been gawking at him all night. It proved a long-standing theory of mine. Most women want a hot, rich, powerful boyfriend, so Lucas was often lusted after. But you declare that man as taken, and suddenly, he’s irresistible.
“But outside of that, this whole arrangement will really do wonders for your sex life,” I teased him. “I’ve never seen so many women look quite this thirsty; they’ve been eyeing you tonight.”
He wrinkled his brow and tensed up. “I’m less concerned with them and more so with where you plan on staying the night. Back to my place after the party?” He leaned in close and ran his hand down to my butt, giving it a quick squeeze. “More baby making,” he added in my ear with a sexy rasp.
I laughed, but it all still felt a little weird. Actually...what was weird was how it didn’t feel unusual or unnatural at all, but it seemed like it should. And I had yet to find a way to shake the uneasiness of that.
“That is what the press is expecting,” I replied. “And after a big affair like this, they might very well be stalking us afterwards. So, yes. I suppose I will stay with you tonight. And maybe, if you’re lucky, I won’t be too drunk from all this champagne to work on the second part of that proposal with you.”
“Do you always have to talk about everything like it’s a work transaction?”
“Isn’t it, though?”
He rolled his eyes and cleared his throat. “Listen, Vic. On the note of where we wind up at the end of our evenings...I’ve been meaning to talk to you. There’s another big thing the press is going to expect from all of this.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve covered all of our bases on that front, but what’s on your mind?”
“Living together.”
My heart sank. Or did it leap? I couldn’t tell. My insides definitely turned flips. He said it so casually, like it was running an errand. Going to the bank or stopping off at the grocery store. Just another item to cross off the list. Though I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, since his cavalier attitude towards all of this was what had led us here in the first place.
“That’s a big step, Lucas. Maybe we should talk about this some other time.”
“Now seems like as good of a time as any. And I wanted to bring it up before you had a chance to start working on that nursery.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I tossed back the rest of my glass and grabbed another. All this talk of moving in together was making me anxious.
“My place is bigger. I assumed you’d move in with me.”
“Your assumptions about what I want and am okay with have already gotten us into enough of a mess, Meadows. Quit while you’re ahead.”
He laughed it off and pressed on anyway. “I’m surprised I’ve thought about all of this more than you have. But okay...if not my place, then why don’t we look for somewhere else? Something big enough to accommodate both of our needs.”
The tone of his voice had me reeling. Needs? Did he mean, like...sexual needs? Surely we wouldn’t be living under the same roof and inviting random lovers over to flaunt in front of each other like it was no big deal. But if we didn’t sleep with other people...that would mean only sleeping with each other. Potentially...forever.
Thinking back on our sexual exploits so far, it wasn’t even tha
t the prospect seemed like such a bad deal. But the line between our fake arrangement and a real marriage was starting to blur more and more.
“We’ll talk about it later,” I insisted more sternly.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he offered, noticing how tense I was getting.
“I like my space, Lucas. And my privacy and freedom. It’s part of the reason I’m not diving into a real marriage. I thought we were on the same page about these things.”
“Right.” He grunted, looking slightly wounded. “A real marriage. Well...listen. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to bring it up. Why don’t we forget about it for now and dance instead?”
The whole talk hardly put me in the mood for dancing, but with that charming look on his face while he stood there in his dashing tux, his hand held out for mine...How could I say no?
I laughed a little and slipped my hand into his, adoring how he engulfed it in his big, manly grip. Everyone cleared a path for us as he led me out into the middle of the dance floor. The band spotted us and faded into a special song for our dance. I hadn’t even told them to do that; that’s how you knew you had the real pros.
It was even more like a fairy tale than I’d imagined it could be as he twirled me around the dance floor, my gown flying out around us. It was like we were floating on a cloud, and everyone watched us in envy.
With more champagne, delicious food, and dancing, I forgot all about the uncomfortable talk with Lucas about moving in together. By the end of the night, I couldn’t even remember what I was so worried about.
It was a wonderful evening, and I kept finding myself forgetting that the whole thing was a sham. Everything flowed so easily between us. We cared about each other and respected one another. The attraction was definitely there, even if it had taken an unplanned tumble into bed to really bring that to my attention.
My head was spinning with all sorts of dangerous thoughts while everyone gave us a big send-off to our limo at the end of the party. What if all of this was real? Would that really be so bad?
We were sleepy but cheerful on the ride back to his place. He stopped outside of his penthouse door and pulled me in close.
“You were unbelievably stunning tonight,” he said in his deep sexy voice as he pushed me against the door.
“Your performance was stellar as well.” I grinned, tilting up to his lips.
But he stopped. His expression turned frighteningly serious. “I wasn’t performing.”
Before I could wrap my head around what that meant, he pressed his mouth to mine. It was slow and tender at first with soft, exploring sweeps of his hands across my body to match. But even without a carnal passion, his touch still sent tingles of awareness and need through me, just as intensely as ever.
The warm buzz of drinks from the evening coupled with the heat between us sucked me in, making me forget I had a single care in the world. I melted into him and let him sneak his hands under my dress. He was taking in a big handful of my breasts with one hand and fumbling with the key to get the door open with the other.
We went crashing inside, tumbling seamlessly to the bed, where we couldn’t wait to rip each other’s clothes off. Any tiredness we’d felt before was replaced with an invigorating need to be tangled up together—to feel all the exquisite pleasure I was growing so used to him feeding into me, and me into him in return.
He stripped me down and sucked my aching folds into his mouth, making me cum twice before he even dared slide inside of me. For as stubborn and selfish as he could be everywhere else—he was beyond generous in the bedroom. I didn’t have a complaint in the world. Maybe he really was the only lover I would need for the rest of my life. For whatever that meant.
14
Lucas
I hung up my phone and tossed it back onto the bedside table. “Breakfast is on the way,” I called out to Victoria as she strolled in from the bathroom. I turned back to the newspaper in my hands, adding, “And our engagement party is the talk of the town. Front page of the lifestyle section.”
“That’s how you know we did a good job. Anyone can get posted all over the internet, but when they put you in print? You nailed it.”
“All thanks to the best PR pro in the city.” I winked.
“And the love guru Heartstring head honcho himself...Mr. Lucas Meadows.” She crawled into the bed and leaned over the paper to plant a kiss on my lips.
We stayed in bed—reading, working from our phones, and enjoying a nice delivered breakfast. I watched Victoria, her hair rolled up in a cotton towel from her shower. She was wrapped in a big robe and had just slid on her glasses to respond to a work email. The comfort and familiarity of the scene was thrilling and unsettling all at once.
This had become our regular routine. We spent most nights together, ravaging each other like animals, all under the guise of giving Victoria her baby. But during the daytime, neither of us shied away from being close like this. We kissed and cuddled. Shared meals. Worked together. It was like a dream come true. I was getting to live out the fantasy I always wanted, but Vic still had no idea just how long I had been dreaming about this.
“Have you given any more thought to us moving in together?” I asked finally.
“Nope,” she shot back without a second thought. She didn’t even look up from her phone.
“Well...don’t you think you should? Or that we should talk about it some more?”
Realizing I wasn’t going to let it go, she let her phone fall to her lap. She turned to me with a groan. “We probably should. But that doesn’t mean I want to.”
“Why?” I laughed, wrinkling my brow.
“Because it stresses me out, Lucas. Keeping our own places seems like the only real boundary we can set in this whole thing. It’s what keeps this an arrangement...and gives us our freedom to still live our separate lives.”
Just say it, Lucas. Just admit that you don’t want to live separate lives. That you want to spend every morning with her...just like this.
“I could help out more with the baby if we were under one roof,” I offered instead. Appealing to her pragmatic side was a much easier solution.
“Or I could just keep an extra bed in the nursery at my place.” She shrugged. “And you could stay in my room on nights when you wanted to help out.”
“And you’d sleep...where? In the nursery?”
“That’s the idea.”
I felt my heart sink down into the pit of my stomach—a sensation Victoria was especially skilled at manifesting in me. It had been happening more and more lately. Every time I thought we were on the same page and I could confess how I felt, she did or said something to knock us back ten steps.
I folded up my paper and moved it aside. “So, once you are pregnant...and the baby is born...all of this…” I waved my hand between us in bed.
She scrunched up her nose. “All of what?”
“Us sleeping together. Breakfast in bed. What happens then? We just...stop?”
I saw a hard lump slide down her throat. “Well. Yes. That is the arrangement, right? Unless, of course, we’re in public. Then we have to show a little PDA. At least for as long as the media still cares enough to pay attention. But if I get Heartstring to the level I want, the media will be all ablaze about you and your company for years to come.”
That reassurance did little to comfort me. It all meant nothing if it was just a publicity stunt to her. But then again...what did I expect? She was only playing by the rules I’d proposed with this whole game. This was a bed of my own making...with her in it, just waiting for the time to come when she would leave.
“This all seems to come so easily to you,” I told her. She certainly didn’t appear to have the same sinking feeling I did.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you enjoy spending mornings like this together? And the nights…”
“Your ego is just spinning out because you can’t believe that a woman might have other things to do with herself besides succumbing to
your sexual temptations every night.” She laughed.
“It’s not that,” I insisted, sliding out of bed. I could feel her eyes burning into me as I stepped into my closet to pull out my jogging clothes.
“Did I miss something here, Lucas?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Umm...well...you’re acting weird. Like you’re...upset with me or something?”
“No. Not at all.” I rolled my shoulders and stepped into my sweatpants. “You’re right. Separate lives. I’m just feeling a little antsy. I’m going out for a run.”
“Okay.” She stared at me while I finished getting dressed, but eventually got sucked back into her work emails. “I’ve got a meeting with a client later, so I won’t be here when you get back.”
“I’ll see you tonight?”
Her arms stretched high above her head with a yawn. “No, not tonight. I need some alone time. Might grab dinner with some friends. All these late nights with you are starting to take a toll on me.”
“We don’t have to fuck every time we see each other, you know. We’re also friends. We can just hang out.”
She cut her eyes up at me. “I know that. And we have been. A lot.”
I needed to get out of there. I was starting to sound like some needy chick. Even if we were a real couple, of course we’d spend some nights apart, doing our own things. But something about this being an arrangement and her insistence on drawing a hard line to keep it that way, had me feeling all kinds of insecure and desperate. It was pathetic.
Resisting the urge to go over and kiss her goodbye, I headed for the door. “Alright then. Cool. I’ll see you when I see you.”
“Have a good...” she yelled through the apartment, but I was already taking off and slammed the front door before she could finish.
The moment my sneakers hit the pavement outside, I broke into a steady sprint. I needed to shake this gross feeling. It seemed like I had everything I ever wanted, but it wasn’t mine. Not really. It was a facade that could slip through my fingers any day now.