“We were so careful to make sure he didn’t find out. I was eighteen and Nick was living with us, after all, and if our parents knew what we were doing, they wouldn’t have been happy. You were the only person I ever told the truth,” I said quickly.
“But you are adults now, so you have the freedom to do what you want when you want. And who you want,” she added with a wink.
I tried not to blush. It was strange to think that we were free to do anything we wanted. But that didn’t change the fact that I didn’t want David to be upset about it. I didn’t want to fight with my brother or cause a rift in his relationship with Nick.
Whether he knew what we were doing back in the day didn’t matter now. The fact that he and I were living together and working together did. I didn’t want him to feel strange about everything, and I hoped he’d understand since it was fake, he didn’t have to be upset about it. Of course, the sex would have to stay under wraps.
I wasn’t going to let myself fall for Nick. I already decided that. I could ignore the feelings that I once had, and I could prevent more feelings from taking their place. I did like Nick, and I always would, but that didn’t mean I was in love with him, and I wasn’t going to give my heart the chance to get that far.
I was going to go through with the arrangement and support my friend, and I hoped I’d have the support of my brother in the process. After all, Nick was his best friend, too, and he would know how tough of a place Nick was being pushed into.
Cassie didn’t seem to think it was a bad idea, so perhaps my brother would be on board for the whole thing, too. I was just going to have to figure out a way to tell him, and sooner rather than later. But I didn’t want to worry about that right now. I had promised my friend a fun day, and that’s what I intended to give her.
“Alright, enough talk about this crazy thing I’ve gotten myself into. Where do you want to go first?” I asked Cassie.
We finished our lunch and headed out to do some shopping. I showed her some of the places I’d found in my short time in the city that I liked and helped her pick out a few new outfits and a couple of things to spruce up her room on campus. It was a small single-person room, and it was completely devoid of any personality.
We had a great time finding some odds and ends that would make it her own and shared a lot of laughs in the process. I realized how much I’d missed having her close and was supremely grateful she’d chosen to come to the city for school.
If I were going to get through this fake marriage to Nick with my heart intact, I would need all the help I could get.
Chapter 10
Nick
I looked at the time on my phone and tried not to be impatient. I’d been surprised when Liz had texted me that afternoon and said she wanted to talk that night. I invited her to dinner, and I now waited eagerly for her arrival.
I’d already ordered a bottle of wine that sat in the middle of the table. I was waiting for her to show up before opening it and smiled when she walked into the room.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I got caught up in traffic getting here.”
“That’s fine,” I told her. “I’ve not been waiting long.”
“Good,” she said.
“How was Cassie?” I asked. I knew Cassie from back home, but I’d never been friends with her myself. She was around at times when I was hanging out with David and Liz, and I saw her more when I moved in with them, but she and I were more acquaintances than anything.
“She’s good. She’s working on her Masters,” she said. “Oh, wine!”
“I was waiting for you,” I popped open the bottle and poured us each a glass, then I smiled. “So, I guess we’re going to need to get this all worked out now.”
“I’ve been thinking, and the first thing we should probably figure out is our story,” Liz said. “I mean, the media is going to want to know, and if someone asks you or me separately, we’re going to need our accounts to match up.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” I told her. “I spent most of the day putting together how we met, how we almost didn’t make it, and how fate brought us back together.”
“Good,” she said, then laughed. “You should write it down so I can memorize it in case someone asks for any details.”
“You’ll get it. Really, it’s going to be some fairytale thing that we’re going to feed the media, then let them deal with the rest. I’m sure they’re going to eat it right up. They’ll think we’re fucking Cinderella and Prince Charming by the time we’re done with them,” I shrugged. “You just have to know what to say and how to say it, and you’re golden.”
“I have no doubt we can pull it off,” she assured me. “I just need to make sure we’re on the same page with what we’re going to say.”
“Don’t worry; we will be,” I told her. “It’s going to be pretty basic, with enough actual truth mixed in for the sake of keeping consistency that it’s easy to remember. Pretty simple.”
“Good. I don’t want to mess it up,” she took a sip of her wine, but then silence fell over the table. I could tell there was something on her mind, but she was hesitating to tell me what it was.
Since she was there, I didn’t think she had reservations. But I needed to do everything I could to put her mind at ease. She was my friend, first and foremost, and she was sticking her neck out in a huge way to help me out. Once it all became public, everyone, including her brother and her parents would know. It had to be weighing on her pretty heavily.
She’d had no idea I was going to spring the fact I wanted to get married on her, and here we were, talking about how to make it happen. I waited, letting her work up the courage to speak. At last, she did.
“We should tell David,” she announced.
“Of course,” I told her. “That was the plan.”
“No, I mean, we should tell him soon. I don’t want him to be blindsided by this, and he would be if he found out through the media,” she said.
I knew she was right, and though I wasn’t sure how we were going to tell him, I knew we had to do it soon.
I wanted it to all take place soon, which meant we were going to have to move quickly with all of it. The sooner I could lock in my investors, the sooner I’d be able to move on with my own plans for my company without the old farts breathing down my neck.
They might have given me thirty days, but I wasn’t going to take that long. I wanted this official – or rather, as official as it was going to be – as soon as possible.
“We’ll tell him tonight,” I told her with a reassuring smile. “I’m sure he’s going to be fine with it. We’ll just have to make sure he knows it’s just business. Trust me, Liz, If I thought it was going to be an issue, I wouldn’t have brought this up to you.”
“I don’t know who else you would have to ask,” she said with a laugh. She knew me too well already, which is part of the reason I thought she was perfect for the whole thing.
“ I honestly wasn’t sure what the fuck I was going to do when they told me what they wanted. I briefly thought about just finding someone on a dating site or calling up an old hookup, but none of that made any sense to me. Apparently, I was a genius in asking you to come out here and work for me for more than one reason,” I teased.
“Yes, I would say this worked out pretty well for you if you ask me,” Liz said.
“Don’t act like you aren’t benefiting from it,” I teased her. “I know you’ve wanted to marry me since the day you first laid eyes on me.”
“I haven’t!” she replied, a little too quickly. “I mean, I thought you were hot, sure, but I didn’t think that you and I were going to be together or anything like that!”
“Uh-huh, did your teenage self know that, or are you trying to convince her of it now?” I continued teasing.
She gave me a look and sipped on the wine, and I laughed once more. But then, silence once more fell over the table, and this time I was the one who didn’t know what to say. It had been on my min
d for most of the afternoon and now seemed as good a time as any to just blurt it out.
“Are we going to tell David everything?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” she replied, eyeing me warily.
“I think you know,” I said simply. The look on her face told me plainly she did know exactly what I was talking about, but she denied it.
“We’re going to tell him the truth about the investors, and the fact that you need to get married, that’s all he really needs to know,” she said.
“But are you going to tell him about what happened before?” I asked.
“Why should I?” she asked. “He can know what the rest of the world knows, and that’s it. He doesn’t need to know anything else about my personal life.”
For a moment, I felt a rush of anger run through me. I was feeling frustrated with her, but I wasn’t sure why. I knew she didn’t ever tell her brother the truth about what was going on with us, and there was a large part of me that supported that in her.
At the same time, I felt frustrated she was in such denial of how I knew she felt at the time. There had been a time when I thought she and I might really have a chance at being together. I wouldn’t have been opposed, but at the same time, I didn’t want there to be that awkwardness in the family.
I had left Phoenix mostly because of my parents, but partly for my own feelings, too, and now I wasn’t sure what to do. I felt frustrated over how I felt when I was around her, and I hated that fact, too.
With a sigh, I turned my attention to the menu. It was clear to me we were going to have to work things out, and we were going to have to learn how to communicate with each other if we were going to make this work. There was a part of me that almost felt as though this was the real deal, too.
The woman sitting across from me – the girl I had known for so long and questioned whether I was even in love with – was going to be my bride. We just had to get David to accept it, and we’d be free to make it happen.
It was a strange feeling, and I hated to think that I might be more invested in the situation than I even realized. I didn’t want to get hurt again, by anyone. I had been through so much already; I didn’t want to even risk it.
But, even more than that, I didn’t want to hurt Liz.
We walked through the door and found David at home, but he was clearly getting ready to leave again.
“Hey,” Liz said.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“You heading out again?” she pressed.
“I’m going to see Candice ,” he said with a smile. “And don’t bother giving me your opinion on it, either.”
“I’ll give you plenty of my opinions, don’t you worry,” she said with another teasing grin. “But first, we need to talk to you.”
“About what?” he asked, looking from his sister to me in surprise.
“Well, Nick is in a bit of a tight spot, and I was going to help him out of it,” she said.
“Go for it,” he shrugged.
“You haven’t even heard what it is yet,” she laughed. He gave her another look, and she just blurted out the words. “We’re going to get married.”
He looked at us as though he hadn’t heard her right. “You’re joking,” he said.
“No, we’re not,” I interjected. I explained to him the issue I was having with my investors and the demands they were putting on me. I explained how I would never consider it if it didn’t mean I could lose my company. The entire time I spoke, I watched his face carefully. I wanted to know if there was any sign of him not approving, or if he was going to get pissed off with the fact we had chosen to go through with this before consulting him first.
“They think you getting married is going to fix your image?” David asked with an inquisitive look.
“They think that a bride is going to keep me in line, and I really didn’t want to ask someone I barely knew,” I said with a shrug. “I figured we’d already lived together before and knew that we could, so why not?”
“True,” David said with another shrug. He seemed to be thinking it over; then he waived it off. “As long as the two of you know, this is fake, and you don’t actually make it to the alter, I’m not going to say anything about it.”
“Well,” I said with a laugh. “I can promise you I’m not going to fall head over heels, but I can’t promise you what this one is going to do.”
I pointed to Liz as I spoke, and she laughed, slapping me on the arm. “I was going to say the same thing; you just beat me to it.”
“Whatever, this whole thing sounds so strange to me, but if that’s what you have to do to keep the company, then you may as well go for it. But I mean it when I say it better not turn into a thing, that would just be too weird,” David said. “Now if you will excuse me, I’ve got a date to get to.”
He walked out the door, leaving Liz and me alone. I grinned. “That went better than I thought.”
“Me too,” she said with a smile. “I almost think he’s happy for us.”
“Good one,” I laughed at her joke. But I couldn’t deny the feeling that rose up in my chest once again.
There was a part of me that almost wished he was.
Chapter 11
Liz
“Great, that’s what I like to see,” I told Jean as she showed me the final image we’d chosen for the logo. Things were going great with the entire rebranding project, and I was happy to have something else to keep my mind on.
I worked with a great team of people, and while I was the one who put together the sketches for the logo, they were the ones bringing it to life. It sent chills down my spine to think that we were going to pull this off, and I couldn’t wait to talk to Nick about it once that we had the finished product in hand.
“I think we can put in a bit more shading on this side, and pull a bit off here, then it’s all going to come together nicely,” Jean said with a smile. “I’m going to have Will take a look at it on the computer and see what he can do with it, too.”
“Excellent, tell him I want to go with the shade of blue we discussed the other day,” I told her. She nodded and went to find her colleague. Will had been hired to replace Philip after he had been let go, and so far, the entire team was coming together nicely.
I was about to turn my attention back to my own desk when Nick suddenly poked his head into the room, asking me to join him.
“The investors are here, and I want you to be in on the meeting,” he told me. “If they can meet you, then I think they’re going to actually believe me when I say that this is going down for real.”
“Did you tell them that you found someone already?” I asked.
“Yes, and I don’t think they really trust that that’s true,” he said with a shrug.
“It must be hard working for people who clearly don’t give you credit,” I told him.
“It is. But I don’t need them to like me. I need them to give me their money,” Nick said with a laugh. “But don’t tell them I said that.”
“What do you want me to tell them?” I asked. I was feeling a little nervous about the idea of meeting the investors, but Nick shrugged.
“I’m sure they’re going to have plenty of questions for you, and I just want you to tell them what we’ve already talked about,” he said.
“I can do that,” I said, and he nodded. We’d talked about it the night before. We were going to go with the idea that we were childhood friends, and he had to leave to New York to start the company. We never thought we were going to see each other again, but as fate would have it, we were back in each other’s lives. So pretty much, the exact truth. It would be easy to keep it all straight.
“I think it’s going to work well,” he said.
We were at the door, and I took a deep breath before we walked in. Several men were surrounding the table, and all had the same unimpressed look on their faces. They didn’t seem to really love Nick, and I could see what he meant about not needing them to like him.
One of th
e men looked directly at Nick as we walked in, and he addressed the room. “Gentlemen, this is Liz. My future wife.”
“Miss, are you sure you want to go through with this?” the man asked.
“That is Mr. Maxwell, he’s sort of the spokesman for the group,” Nick explained to me.
“It’s nice to meet all of you,” I said, struck by the fact the man didn’t waste any time in trying to undermine Nick. It was becoming increasingly clear to me how abrupt these men were, and I could better understand why Nick had been pushed into the position he now found himself in.
“Well, gentlemen, I’m Liz Robertson, and to answer your question, I’m fully willing to marry Nick,” I continued. “We have a long history together, and I’m more than happy to help him out. In fact. I’m looking forward to it.”
“You understand that he can’t screw up at all, right? We are through with the disgrace that he has been in the media, and we’re not going to stand for it anymore. If he so much as screws up one time, we’re going to pull our funding from the company, no second chances, no questions asked,” Mr. Maxwell replied.
I was going to answer, but he continued, not giving me the chance to say anything. “That includes anything he might be doing in bars, anything he might be tied to, and anything that could be considered a scandal. You better be sure of him, because I’m serious when I say you are going to be watched just as closely. You bring any mess of your own, and the same consequences will follow.”
“I understand that,” I replied. “He explained to me that you are very serious about what you want from him, and you aren’t going to put up with any of his antics any longer. I have known him since I was a kid, so I think I’m going to be the best person you could ask for this job.”
The men around the room exchanged glances, and I got the impression they were happy that I knew Nick so well. I still didn’t fully understand why they were so upset by what the tabloids said, but I wasn’t going to push it any further. I really didn’t need to know the particulars; I just had to be willing to play ball. And I was.
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