“I wasn’t talking about being lazy. I was talking about socializing.”
“Hmm. Right.” I bent over and scooped up my bag and coat. “I’m off to bed.”
“You can’t avoid everything, you know,” he called after me. “It’s a life philosophy that will get you deported.”
He was right, of course.
But I was my father’s daughter.
* * *
Felicia had tried to cancel our dinner plans earlier Thursday afternoon, calling me and telling me she was too upset to be good company.
“Is it that bad? Are you really being deported?” I had asked her, staring at the images on my laptop she’d sent me. It was her, modeling the clothes I’d had sent over to her apartment on Wednesday.
The shots were for her auction site, and she’d apologized that she would have tried to use a different model given the circumstances, but that her two regulars she used were the wrong size for Becca’s clothes. Several of the dresses I honestly didn’t even remember. There was one I did, but it stood out for all the wrong reasons. Becca had actually been angry with me the night she’d worn it to a fundraiser for the hospital. We’d had a fight about her spending habits and she’d bought it to be defiant. It was red, which was not a color she ever wore, but it had been done to stand out in a sea of dresses in what would undoubtedly be ivories, blacks, and blues.
I still didn’t associate red with Becca.
But I did with Felicia.
I swiped through the images quickly in my office, not really caring about the lighting and the overall appearance, which was what Felicia wanted me to approve. They all looked fine and I was sure she knew what she was doing and could get them sold. None of that mattered.
All I could think about was how much she intrigued me, how amazing the sex had been, and how soon she was going to be leaving New York.
“It’s that bad. I’m really being deported. I have forty days unless something changes.”
I swiveled in my chair. I only had about five minutes. I had a meeting with the orthopedic department head. “I don’t like the sound of that. What would need to change?”
“Either I have the world’s greatest lawyer who convinces the INS that somehow I’m special and worthy of bending the rules because my contribution to the States is just absolutely extraordinary. I think we can see how that is going to turn out. A monster failure.”
That made me frown. Really? I finally found a woman I could see exploring a relationship with and she was being sent out of the country. “How do you feel about going back to England?”
“It’s not my first choice. I burned a bridge or two across the pond. But mostly, my adult life is here in New York. I haven’t lived in London for more than a few months since my twatty teen years.”
Normally that would have made me laugh but I was too pissed off. “There’s no other way you can stay? Maybe as a fugitive or under a false name?” I was tempted to hide her in my apartment.
She laughed. “I’m not much for subterfuge, though I do love a good spy wardrobe. But I’m a bit of an idiot if you hadn’t noticed. I couldn’t pull out the lie long term. No, the only way to stay is to get engaged to an American. I asked my roommate Javier and he gave me a shockingly resounding no. I was quite offended.”
Get engaged? Interesting.
“How could anyone say no to you?” I said.
“Quite easily. But Javier has a girlfriend, so I can’t blame him. I need someone single for it to be believable.”
“Did you have someone in mind?” My thoughts started to churn.
“I can’t think of a single soul,” she said.
Yet she sounded almost… flirty.
My surgical assistant popped her head in. “Are you ready?” she asked.
“Yes, be there in a minute, Kim, thanks.
“Felicia, I have to run to a meeting, but don’t cancel dinner. I want to see you. It will be a great distraction for you.”
“A great distraction? How could I say no to that?”
“You can’t. Remember that. You can never say no to me.”
She laughed. “Idiot. I’ll see you at seven.”
We ended the call and I stared at my phone for a second, before shaking my thoughts off. I stood up to head to my meeting.
A crazy idea was running through my head.
A very fucking crazy, sexy, dangerous, highly appealing idea.
Six
Michael was one hundred percent right. I needed a distraction from my impending exit from the States. I wondered how that worked. Did an INS officer escort me to JFK and I was put on a plane? Not that I would wait for that to happen. I wasn’t going to resist if it came to all that. I didn’t fancy being handcuffed to an air marshal.
All day I’d been working on listing the auctions for Michael’s clothes (well, Becca’s but it felt weird to think about his wife), trying not to think about it but the truth was nothing could fully distract me.
Except maybe a cocktail and sex.
We were meeting on the Upper East Side on his suggestion, so we were somewhat midway between our apartments and that was a bit disappointing. I didn’t see much shag potential there if we had to go all the way downtown after dinner. Maybe he was trying to make it seem like he wasn’t expecting sex. He was polite, after all.
It was actually something quite charming about him.
That didn’t mean I didn’t want to have sex though and I was not taking him to my place. It would be like having sex in a fitting room.
I stepped out of my Lyft and smoothed my skirt. Weather be damned. I’d worn a dress and over-the-knee boots with a wool trench. I wanted to make the man drool.
Instead of going with a small clutch appropriate for dinner, I’d gone massive tote so while it still went with my outerwear, I could slip some overnight things in. Just in case. Toothbrush, deodorant, facial cleanser. Clean panties.
Michael was waiting in the entrance to the restaurant. It was a perfect choice for a cold winter night. Sicilian cuisine with a cozy ambience. Upscale, but in a classic way, as opposed to trendy.
“Hi,” he said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. “Let me get your coat.”
When he took it off and I turned around, his eyebrows rose. “Wow. You look gorgeous.”
His eyes darkened with desire at my fitted sheath dress in black and the leather boots. I felt victorious. That look was worth the potential for a broken ankle. Besides, I’d only been outside for a couple of steps in each direction. Minimal risk. “Thank you. I decided just because I’m internally having a meltdown doesn’t mean I should let that be reflected externally.”
“I appreciate the effort.” Michael gave my coat to the hostess. He was wearing dress pants and a shirt and jacket without a tie.
“How was work?” I asked.
“Boring. No surgery today. Just endless meetings.” He put his hand on the small of my back and guided me to follow the hostess.
The table was tucked in the middle of the restaurant against an exposed brick wall.
“How are you holding up?” he asked, after he held my chair out for me.
I sighed, making sure to keep my shoulders relaxed. I didn’t want them up around my ears while we were having dinner. “There’s nothing for it, right?” I smiled up at the waitress as she approached. “I’ll take a glass of pinot noir, please.” No use in pretending I didn’t want it immediately if not sooner.
“Let’s order a bottle.” Michael asked for a wine list.
The waitress mentioned a few options and they discussed it back and forth while I zoned out. It felt very natural to spend time with Michael and that annoyed the hell out of me. One, because it was looking virtually impossible for me to stay in New York. Two, that I’d done it again. Chosen an older man with money who slowed down my wine order by the need to make sure it was the best option. And I didn’t even care. He could order whatever he wanted as long as it was red and liquid. But that wasn’t the point. The point was first it was wine,
then it was “I forbid you to cut your hair, and have you gained weight?”
I didn’t know he would be like that, obviously, but I’d dated enough to suggest that was a strong possibility when there was an age and financial gap.
Not that it mattered. We were going to have a few weeks to hang out, at the most.
It also meant he would be a great candidate to be my fake fiancé because I had reasons to stay emotionally distant.
“What do you think?” Michael asked me. “What’s your preference, Felicia?”
Given I hadn’t been listening to the waitress’s suggestions, I just shook my head a little. “Oh, whichever you think is best.”
Bloody hell. I mentally berated myself.
Maybe it was a good thing I had to leave the States because I couldn’t be trusted not to be an accidental sugar baby.
But the thought of leaving made my stomach clench into knots.
“We’ll take the Italian cabernet sauvignon.” Michael turned to me. “If the lady approves.”
The lady wanted him to stop being everything I shouldn’t, yet did in fact, want.
“Sounds wonderful,” I said, giving the waitress a smile. “Thank you.”
She nodded and disappeared.
I glanced at the front of the restaurant. “I love this neighborhood. I know everyone wants to be in Brooklyn now, but I’m past my going-to-the-bar years, and uptown reminds me of my childhood.”
“If you could live anywhere in the city, money no object, where would it be?”
That made me laugh. “Money is no object? Well, that’s just absurd, so I don’t know. Maybe a brownstone on the Upper West Side or something super traditional on the Upper East Side. Am I married with children in this fantasy or am I me as I am right now?” That definitely made a difference.
“Let’s say you’re married with the potential for children.”
“I’ll take the brownstone.” I’d grown up in a brownstone but I didn’t want to think about that and get melancholy. I’d loved the winding stairs and narrow rooms. So many nooks and crannies in that house. “I grew up in one.”
“I grew up in this neighborhood.”
“Oh, that’s right. We’re not going to bump into your parents, are we? That could be awkward.”
“I didn’t actually think about it, but I guess it is technically possible, though doubtful. It wouldn’t be awkward, though, I get along with my parents and I’m a grown man. I’m sure they realize I date.” He gave me a wicked smile. “It’s not like I’m going to tell them how fantastic you look naked and how much I enjoy going down on you.”
That went straight to my inner thighs. But I gave him a wry look. “How utterly disappointing.”
Our wine arrived, and after it was poured, I raised my glass. “To you going down on me.”
Michael laughed. “I’ll drink to that.”
I took a sip of the cabernet.
“And here’s to you staying in New York.”
That soured the moment. “I really don’t see how that’s possible unless you have a fiancé for me somewhere. Maybe tucked in your pocket?”
“I do,” he said. “Me.”
I choked on my wine. I coughed into my fist and set my glass down, staring at Michael. “I’m sorry, what on earth are you talking about? What do you even mean?”
He shrugged, like he hadn’t just suggested we get married. Or pretend to intend to marry. While I had seriously contemplated a fake engagement to Michael I never in a million years would have thought he’d be the one to suggest it.
“You need a fiancé. I happen to be available. I like spending time with you and we clearly have chemistry.”
I agreed with that, but what I couldn’t figure out was why he would want to be involved. I knew what I had to gain, but I didn’t know what he had to gain.
“This isn’t like agreeing to go to a weekend in Cabo! This is a fake engagement.” I lowered my voice. “Isn’t that fraud? We could go to prison and I do not wear orange well. My skin tone is all wrong and it’s a disaster.”
The whole idea was making me panic. It was one thing to theorize about it, another in reality.
“You wouldn’t go to prison. Fraud would be like if you paid me to pretend to be your fiancé or if we had zero intention of living together or being in a relationship.”
Hold on. “Living together?” I wanted another sip of wine but my hand was trembling and I didn’t trust myself not to spill it all over the table. “Why on earth would you want to do that? You barely know me. What the hell is in it for you?”
It was pure madness.
Wasn’t it?
Michael took a second, like he was collecting his thoughts. I waited, heart racing.
The whole thing was absurd.
But it would prevent my deportation.
“I hate dating,” he said. “The games, the false starts, the lack of transparency. We’ve talked about that. I want to be in a relationship. I want to come home to someone every night and have inside jokes and the right to put my hand on my partner’s knee at a dinner party. I don’t want to spend the next however long looking for that and failing. Why the hell couldn’t it be us, Felicia?”
My throat felt tight, but not out of panic. It was hope rising. “So… cut through the red tape, is that what you’re saying? Just get right to it.”
He nodded. “Why not? Living together, having to pretend to know everything about each other for the INS interview means we’ll have a crash course in actually getting to know each other.”
“What if we find out we can’t stand each other?”
“It’s only forty days. It’s up to you how much you want to stay in New York. You can leave now or you can leave in forty days if we don’t work out. Or if we do work out, you stay.”
So much utter confidence.
It must be nice to have that kind of belief that you were doing the right thing. I suddenly felt like I wanted to call a psychic and ask her what the future held.
But this was not an entirely horrible idea. It was the only solution that would allow me to stay in New York.
“If I stay, we’re together, then? That’s it? Are we still engaged at that point or just revert back to dating?” Since the man had it all figured out.
“We stay engaged and get married before the fiancée visa expires. I’ll buy you that brownstone on the Upper West Side.”
Oh, God, there was a brownstone involved? Damn it. He was right. I couldn’t say no to him. Thinking hard, I picked up my glass and took a sip, swishing the wine around in my mouth. What was the true downside here? There was one, maybe seven, I just needed to make sure I named them all first before I made a decision.
Who was I kidding? I’d already made my decision.
“Then we can start a family.”
I almost spit the wine out. “Michael! Children? Have you lost your mind?”
“Don’t you want children?”
That stymied me. “Well. I mean, yes. But eventually, when it makes sense. When I’ve got engaged and married in the proper order.” Though to be honest, spending time with Savannah’s baby, Sully, had been tugging on my heart strings lately. I had kind of been thinking that if and when I got married, I wouldn’t mind having a baby straightaway.
But that was all theoretical.
“This is the proper order. Engaged, married, baby.” Michael swirled the wine in his glass. “If you don’t want to even entertain the possibility of having a baby, then I’m out.”
The waitress had just reached our table but I ignored her.
“You’re out?” I demanded, shocked.
“If you don’t want a baby, yes.”
The poor waitress just retreated without a word, actually backing up before turning around and heading toward the kitchen.
“Yes. I mean, we can have fun until you leave but I can’t get engaged unless you agree to the possibility of children—meaning if we work out, and if we get married.”
“That’s a lot of ifs.�
�
“It is. But I still want to cover my bases.”
I was momentarily rendered speechless by the whole situation. My mouth kept opening and shutting like a clam.
“There isn’t a lot of risk involved for you,” he said. “Just a forty-day commitment.”
I poured more wine from the bottle, then decided not to drink it. I needed a clear head for this conversation. “You don’t think this is totally insane?”
Michael reached over and placed his hand on mine. His thumb rubbed my flesh in a gentle, arousing circle.
“Don’t tell me you don’t feel it. The connection between us. It’s real and I don’t want you to leave.” His eyes were dark, his voice low, hypnotic. Sexy. “I don’t want something incredible to disappear before it even starts.”
He’d said there wasn’t a lot of risk involved for me. But that was a complete falsehood. I could waste forty days in a disaster when I could have spent that time relocating. I could get in trouble with the government. I could get my heart broken. Because what if I wanted to stay with him and he wanted me to leave at the end of our little social experiment?
That would be bollocks. Plain and simple.
All of that.
But what did I say? “I don’t want it to disappear either.”
Michael pushed his chair back and reached into his pocket. He went down on a knee next to me.
A fucking knee. He was on a knee.
I heard a strangled sound come out of my mind or maybe it was my imagination. I did momentarily see black and thought I was going to pass out but it receded as quickly as it arrived.
“Felicia, will you marry me?”
A cushion cut diamond ring in a platinum setting appeared out of a box that was Tiffany blue.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” was my actual answer.
* * *
I hadn’t thought a yes was a guarantee. Not at all. But I also hadn’t envisioned her repeatedly saying fuck. I probably should have warned her. I had wanted a genuine reaction but this was a little too genuine.
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