She sighs deeply, and pink tinges her cheeks. It’s cute. She looks innocent and sweet when she blushes. I like it. “Okay, admission: they’re not for a meeting. They’re mine.”
“All three?”
“Yes, all three. Don’t judge me!” She chuckles and reaches out, pointing to each one in turn. “Morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack.”
Food done right. My kind of girl.
“I’m suitably impressed by your ability to eat that much sugar without going into a diabetic coma.” I grin. “Come on though, let me have one. Just one? I’m starving. How about we Rock, Paper, Scissors for it? You win, you keep all three. I win, and we split them.” I throw her my disarming smile that people usually find adorable. I’m not quitting until I eat at least one of these bad boys; I won’t be able to stop thinking about them all day otherwise. Yes, I am that child.
Lucie groans. “And what exactly am I getting out of it? If I win, I get to keep something that’s already mine, but if I lose, I have to give you my food. Are you high?” She takes the box from my hand and pushes it back into her bag, shaking her head, grinning good-naturedly.
“Ah, but you won’t have to sit here and listen to me whine about it for however long we’re trapped for. Surely, that’s worth it. Come on, Rock, Paper, Scissors.” I hold out both my hands, one closed fist resting on my palm, and wait.
She pushes her hair back over her shoulder and playfully rolls her eyes. “Fine, just to shut you up.”
She mirrors my hands, and we thump our fists. One, two, and on three, we throw our shapes.
“Ha!” I crow, leaning over and chopping her paper with my scissors before reaching for the box.
Lucie lets out a loud groan. “The biscotti one is mine. That’s my favourite. You can choose from the other two.”
“Deal.” I flip open the box lid and offer her the contents, watching as she takes the caramel-coloured one. “So, keep me distracted then. Tell me about you. You work here? I’ve not seen you around.” And I certainly would have remembered.
She nods. “Yeah, I’ve been here for six weeks now. I’m an intern, working for David Schuh’s department.”
“Really?” Interesting.
David Schuh runs the children’s publishing division; Patricia, my editor, reports to him. No wonder we were both headed to the same floor.
She nods and takes a large bite of her doughnut, her tongue licking across her bottom lip, collecting the biscotti crumbs that have stuck to her lipstick—and now, I’ve lost interest in my own food and my train of thought. Who knew eating doughnuts was sexy?
I swallow and force my mind back on track. “An intern? Aren’t they usually spotty eighteen-year-olds? How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-six,” she replies. “And me being an intern is a long story.”
I grin and wave my hand around at the stationary lift. “We’re not going anywhere, so we’ve definitely got time. You might as well catch me up, Luce.”
She chuckles, and after some more encouragement and cajoling words from me, she rolls her eyes before proceeding to tell me how she has always wanted to work in publishing but how she fell for the wrong guy. She explains how they split up three months ago after he cheated on her, how she basically had to start over and was lucky enough that her friend got her the intern job here, and how she plans on working her arse off to get the junior editor position at the end of her temporary contract.
I watch her talk, a little fascinated by her drive and a lot fascinated by the fact that her fiancé cheated on her. Is the guy blind or just plain dumb? I’ve spent less than thirty minutes in her presence, and I can already see the appeal she has. If I had a girl like her to come home to, I wouldn’t be looking anywhere else for sex.
“So, pretty crappy couple of months for you then,” I surmise.
“God, yeah, it’s sucked. I kinda wish this year were over with already. I woke up on New Year’s Day and honestly thought this was going to be my year. Oh, how wrong I was.” She chuckles darkly. She nods and looks down at the last doughnut in the box. “Want to split it?”
“Yeah, go on then.” I smile gratefully as she tears the raspberry-iced doughnut in two and holds out the larger half to me. “Thanks. So, you sound like you need a holiday.” As I say the words, a plan starts to form in my head.
This girl is cute and fun—and not to mention, easy on the eye. She’s definitely someone I could spend a weekend with without wanting to kill myself. I’d like to get to know her better. Before today, I all but gave up on trying to find a date to the wedding; it was too late now to find someone—or so I thought. Maybe we could help each other out.
“I wish. I can’t afford one.” She sighs dreamily, sucking jam from her thumb.
Screw it. Just ask, Theo. What’s the worst that can happen? “How do you fancy an all-inclusive weekend break in the picturesque surroundings of Scotland?”
One of her eyebrows rises in question, so I continue, really trying to sell it, “My brother is getting married this weekend up at Loch Lomond, and I have a plus-one. There’s a five-star luxury hotel, a spa, woods to walk in, a national park, water sports, glorious weather predicted, free food, and more importantly, free drink …” I smile hopefully. “Thursday to Sunday. Come with me? I’ll even pay for your flight. Everything’s included. In return, you have to attend the wedding with me as my plus-one.”
“This weekend?”
I nod.
Her nose scrunches. “Thursday to Sunday? Who drags out a wedding for four days?”
“My brother and his perfect fiancée.”
“Uh-oh, is she not perfect? Why the animosity?”
I wish. “No, she is perfect—that’s the issue. I want her. But she’s his.”
Her mouth pops open, and her eyes widen as her back straightens. “Oh, so you want me to make her jealous, break up the wedding? That’s so arseholish, Theo!” She scowls at me, her anger obvious.
I scoff indignantly at her assumption. “No! I don’t want to break up the wedding. I’d never want to ruin what they have. I’ve accepted my fate and moved on. They’re great together. I just want a drinking and dancing buddy, someone to talk to and use as a buffer when people come up to me and say, It could be you next, Theo, if you just managed to get your shit together.” I do a terrible impression of my mum and aunt and pretty much everyone else who judges me and asks when I’m going to settle down and find a nice girl who loves my quirks. Not much chance of that though. There can’t be two girls as awesome as Amy in the world.
Lucie chews on her lip, curiously eyeing me, probably checking I’m not trying some form of a scam or plot to ruin my brother’s big day with her as the secret weapon. “So, you want a fake girlfriend for the wedding?”
I shrug. “More like a fake date, not a fake girlfriend.”
She’s silent for a few seconds. I can see in her eyes that she’s considering it, but then she shakes her head.
“Ah, sorry, I can’t. That’s insane. I don’t even know you; people don’t just go on a mini break with someone they met in a lift. For all I know, you’re the next Ted Bundy, or you think pineapple belongs on pizza.”
I don’t let her rejection get to me though; instead, I reach over and snag her Magic 8-Ball from the floor. Grinning, I give it a shake. “Should Lucie come to Scotland for a free weekend of day drinking and sunbathing?”
I turn it over, and both of our eyes drop down to the window.
Without a doubt.
I smirk at her. “Well, that’s definitive. The 8-Ball has spoken.”
Lucie laughs and snatches it from my hand, tossing it back into her bag. “Traitor,” she tells it.
“Oh, come on. A free long weekend? I’ll pay for your flights, you’ll get your own room, and you’ll get plenty of downtime. All I ask is that you come to the pre-wedding party on Friday night and that you attend the wedding with me on Saturday afternoon. The rest of the time is your own. You don’t even have to hang out with me if you don’t want t
o. Though I’m not sure why you’d choose not to hang out with me. I’m pretty awesome.” I shoot her a cheeky smile.
Her lips purse as she thinks about it. I stay quiet and mentally cross my fingers. I already accepted my fate as Nanna’s bitch, so this really is my last shot. A totally unexpected shot at that.
She huffs out a breath after a solid minute of deep thought. “All right, I might be moving mad here, but … how about I make you a deal? If we ever get out of here”—she nods at the lift doors—“I’ll do you a solid and come to your wedding weekend and be your fake date. If, the following Saturday, you come with me to a posh party at my parents’ house and let me pretend I’m over my arsehole ex-fiancé. I want to make him choke. I want to look so smoking hot that he dies from jealousy while I hang all over another man. How about it?” She purses her lips and cocks her head to the side, waiting for my answer.
“Oh, I can absolutely do that.”
She’s already got the smoking-hot part down; I’m surprised a guy would ever cheat on her in the first place. I have no plans the following weekend, so I can let her hang all over me to make this idiot jealous.
“Deal!” I hold out my hand. She grins before placing her hand in mine, and we shake on it. “Can you get time off work on short notice?”
She shrugs one shoulder and winces. “Hopefully. I’ll ask when I get back upstairs. Surely, I’m entitled to some form of recompense for the trauma of being stuck in the lift. They owe me,” she jokes. “Let’s swap numbers.”
She reaches into her handbag and comes out with a thick organiser, pulling a business card from the plastic wallet stuck on the inside of the front cover. She hands it to me, and I look down at it, seeing her name and all the social media handles, email, plus her mobile phone number.
“Luciella Gordio,” I read. “What kind of name is that?”
“It’s Italian. My family moved to London when I was ten.”
“Ah, so that’s what the faint twang of an accent is, though it’s almost imperceptible.” Fiery Italian girl. Me likey.
She smiles and nods. “Yeah, I’ve been here so long now that I’ve practically lost it. Though when I’m angry or around my family a lot, my accent comes back a bit,” she answers, pulling her mobile phone from her bag and looking at me expectantly.
I reel off my number, watching as she taps it in her phone. “If you text me your date of birth later, I’ll get the flights booked tonight,” I say.
She nods and flicks through the pages of her organiser. I notice it’s full of notes, quotes, appointment reminders, to-do lists that have all been checked off, and a buttload of other organisational crap. Stopping at a blank page, she reaches into her shirt and magically pulls a pen from her bra. I raise a suitably impressed eyebrow and am strangely jealous of the pen for having been tucked into her bra this whole time.
She clears her throat and clicks her pen a couple of times. “I think we need to have some sort of contract. Put it in writing that this is simply a friendly agreement, that it’s not a real date, more like a date stand-in kind of situation. Just so we can be clear that neither of us is expecting more.”
Her friend-zoning is subtle, and I have to admire how she slipped that in there. I nod in agreement, kind of liking how ordered she is—her and her colour-coded organiser and pen bra. It’s cute.
“Sure. If that makes you feel more comfortable.”
“It would. Thank you.”
She gets to work, writing down a couple of lines that basically explain the exchange in services: that we’ll be polite and courteous to each other’s families, that this is a fake date, that I’ll be paying for her trip, and that she will pay expenses for my returning the favour the week after. She loops her signature underneath and then passes me the pen, and I slash mine next to hers.
She nods approvingly down at the contract and closes her organiser, chewing on her lip. “Is this insane?”
“Definitely, but all the best adventures are.” I nod, grinning.
She chuckles and starts packing up her bag again as I pull out my phone and scoot closer to her. Opening the Camera app, I tell her to smile. She looks up just as I position the phone and snap a selfie of us, but she doesn’t smile. Instead, she sticks out her tongue and throws a peace sign. It’s perfect.
Grinning like a moron, I head to Twitter and post the picture, tagging her account, adding the caption: Scored a date whilst stuck in a lift. Thank you, karma gods!
After posting it, I head to her profile and look it over. Her profile picture is a cute one of her baking; there’s flour on her cheek, and her smile lights up the damn room. Her bio makes me chuckle: Professional meme stealer. I communicate best via GIF. Unsolicited dick pics will be sold to stock image sites. All views my own.
Out of nowhere, the lights flicker, and the elevator whirs to life. My heart leaps, and Lucie gasps.
“Thank the Lord, we’re saved!” I joke, eliciting a snicker from her.
Truth be told though, I’m a little disappointed our encounter is over. But I do have the weekend to look forward to.
I push myself to my feet and hold a hand down to her. A blush covers her cheeks as her hand slips into mine, and I pull her to her feet. As the lift speeds us both up to our desired floor, I slip on Jared’s jacket, and she leans down, picking up her bag and now-empty coffee cups. I don’t look at her arse as she bends over—that would be creepy. Okay, that’s a lie; I totally look, and I definitely like what I see.
When she has everything, she steps to my side and glances down at her watch. “Well, that was fun. And I got fifty minutes off work, so … winning!”
“Yeah, weirdly, this was kinda nice.”
As we get to floor eight, the doors ping open. There’s a cluster of people there, comprised of a security guard, a mechanic-looking guy, and a few random, curious staff.
Stepping to the side, I politely motion for Lucie to exit first.
She turns back to me and offers me a small smile. “I guess I’ll talk to you later then, Theo. Try not to get into any more trouble today.”
Her blush is endearing, and I can’t resist sending her a playful wink before I wave back at the lift doors and tell the waiting crowd, “Lift, zero stars, do not recommend.”
Behind me, as I walk away, Lucie laughs, and I feel it all the way to my toes.
five
Lucie
Theo walks off with all the confidence and swagger of Conor McGregor. The damn guy knows he’s hot. Meanwhile, I’m a hot mess.
I gulp in a few breaths and watch as he heads off up the corridor towards the conference rooms, raking a hand through his tousled brown hair. Around me, I don’t miss the fact that all of the girls—and even some of the guys—are also watching him walk away in his grey tailored suit and retro ThunderCats T-shirt. Not that I can blame them. The guy is gorgeous in every sense. He fills that suit to perfection with his tall, athletic frame, strong and broad shoulders, a tapered-in waist, and long legs. And that smile? Dazzling. The best part though: his eyes. They’re a light amber brown; it’s like staring into a glass of whiskey. They are mesmerising and twinkle with a zest for life that I’ve probably never had. He’s magnificent, and with his bone structure, he looks like he should be on the cover of GQ.
His photo would undoubtedly inspire me to purchase it.
Suddenly, I realise I don’t even know why he’s here. I didn’t ask him what his meeting with Patricia was for. He must be an agent or an author or perhaps a bookseller. My guess would be bookseller; he’s too well put-together for the shy, uncoordinated author types we get come in, and an agent looking to schmooze an editor would likely not wear a T-shirt and trainers. I don’t know anything about him other than his first name and the fact that he’s got an exceedingly sweet tooth and feelings for his brother’s fiancée.
I smooth down my skirt and lift my chin as people’s curious eyes swing back to me once he’s out of sight. Turning on my heel, I drop the empty coffee cups and the full cold ones we didn’
t drink into the bin and head in the opposite direction, stalking towards my pokey office cubicle. I drop my bag onto my desk and flop down into my chair, taking a couple of deep breaths.
What just happened? What in the fresh hell just happened?
I’ve agreed to spend the weekend with someone I literally just met. It seems that, in the moment, I forgot every lecture about stranger danger my parents had ever instilled in me. Now that I’m free of the eight-foot-by-eight-foot steel cube we were confined in, I can see more clearly, and it hits me full force how utterly stupid his idea was. It’s like I was trapped in some sort of weird Lift Stockholm Syndrome situation where it made sense. Now? Not so much.
“Oh God.” I chuckle to myself and shake my head at the absurdity of it all.
As much as it sounded so easy and fun when he was saying it—and goodness knows I could totally use the downtime and a little sunshine—I can’t go on holiday with a guy I just met.
What on earth possessed me to agree to that?
I shake my head and lean forward, my stomach clenching. I can’t do it.
I’m no longer the fun-loving, free-spirited, impulsive girl I used to be when I was eighteen. Yes, pre-Lucas Lucie might have jumped on the Theo fun bus and ridden it all the way to Scotland, but post-Lucas, adult Lucie is more sensible, more mindful of other people’s opinions and perceptions. I can’t jet on out of here with a super-cute guy for a weekend of drinking and dancing … can I?
No.
No, I can’t.
I swallow a ball of regret. Part of me wants to go, throw caution to the wind and have an adventure, like he said. And the idea of him paying me back by coming to my dad’s retirement party is extremely tempting. The thought of making Lucas jealous appeals to my very soul. He deserves some hurt after what he put me through.
When I think about Lucas again, an ache builds in my chest. I miss him. Or maybe more accurately, I miss the routine, comfort, and security of him. I miss the sex on tap, the cosiness of falling asleep next to someone at night, the sound of the words I love you being whispered in my ear. I miss that easy life of being in a committed, stable relationship. I’m not a pushover by any means, but if Lucas came back, crawling on his knees, and said he’d made the biggest mistake of his life … I would consider it and likely cave. I love him. I’d thought we were it. Just because he was balls deep inside someone else doesn’t mean I can turn those feelings off overnight—as much as I’d like to be able to. Hopefully, one day.
Stand-In Saturday: (A standalone romcom. Book 2 in the Love For Days series) Page 4