The Dating Plan

by Sara Desai

  “We might as well throw in the towel now.” Rochelle gave a dramatic sigh as she followed behind them. “She’s going to bore him to tears with her monosyllabic answers, stilted conversation about coding bugs, and weird facts.”

  Ignoring Rochelle’s insult, Daisy scrambled for a reason to avoid meeting with Liam. “She’s right. Maybe you should send in someone else—”

  “Don’t bail on me now,” Tyler warned. “He wants you. I need you. Get in there and kick some VC ass.”

  Daisy took in his disheveled appearance and reached for his tie. “You need to get yourself together if you’re going to pitch. Tuck in your shirt. Find your shoes.” She tied the tie for him, a skill she’d learned after years of helping Sanjay and her dad. “Josh said you’ve been sleeping at the office . . .”

  “There are so many good people here. I don’t want to let them down. I’ve reached out to everyone . . .” He tucked his shirt into his pants and straightened his shoulders. “We can do this. We’re going to give him the best pitch we’ve ever done. It’s going to blow him away.” Taking a deep breath, he threw open the door to the boardroom.

  “Mr. Murphy. So nice to see you. I’m Tyler Dawes, Organicare’s CEO.” He pumped Liam’s hand. “I’ve brought Daisy Patel, our senior software engineer, as requested. Daisy can answer any questions you might have about our system software or our direct-to-consumer platform.”

  Liam smiled and held out his hand. “Ms. Patel.”

  Gritting her teeth, Daisy shook his hand, eyes widening as electricity sparked between them. Had she picked up a charge on her shoes on the way in? “Mr. Murphy.”

  “I’ll just gather the rest of the team,” Tyler said. “Rochelle will be in with coffee and snacks in a moment.”

  Daisy waited until the door had closed behind Tyler before ripping her hand away. “What are you doing here? I told you not to rent the second floor. Poor Tyler thinks you’re here to save the company.”

  “I needed to see you.” He fumbled in the pocket of his sleek, dark suit—the kind that fit in all the right places. She’d never seen Liam in a suit before, but it added another dimension to his cool, confident persona—a dangerously sexy one.

  “If you aren’t interested in offering funding to Organicare, then your visit here was ill conceived. Tyler is apoplectic with excitement. He’s sending people out to buy you special cookies, and in about five minutes, he will have the entire pitch team assembled. I wouldn’t be surprised if he shows up with a throne for you to sit on.”

  “I do like a good throne.” Liam stroked his chin. “And I did wear a suit for the occasion . . .”

  “Liam!” She glared. “Be serious. What are you doing here?”

  He shoved one hand in his pocket. “I need a wife.”

  “And you came here . . .” She searched for an explanation for his outlandish statement. “Because you thought a company that sells feminine care products might also have a supply of women available for marriage? I can go to the stock room if you want and see what we have on the shelf. Are you looking for a blonde or a brunette? I guess it doesn’t matter whether she likes you or not.”

  “It’s not just for me,” Liam explained, pulling his hand out of his pocket. “I need a wife to preserve my family legacy.”

  “So you want to breed her? Good to know. That takes Margie and Joan out of the running. They’re both in their sixties.”

  He dropped to one knee and held out a blue velvet box. “I want you. Marry me, Daisy.”

  Of all the things she’d expected him to say, “Marry me” did not even make the top thousand. For a long moment, all she could do was stand and stare.

  “I think you have me confused with someone who would even want to be in the same room as you, much less wed you after such a romantic proposal.” She moved to leave and Liam held up his hand.

  “Daisy. Wait. I’ve handled this wrong. Let me explain.”

  “You have two minutes, and only because Tyler needs time to get his pitch deck together.”

  “My family owns a whiskey distillery in Napa.” Liam pushed to his feet, still holding out the velvet box. “It was handed down from father to son for three hundred years until my father turned his back on tradition to focus on his dream of building cars. My grandfather continued to run the distillery until . . .” Liam’s voice caught, broke. His head dropped and his hand went to his forehead. “He passed away two weeks ago.”

  Daisy’s throat tightened when his blue eyes glistened. She’d never seen Liam so emotional. Or so open. “I’m so sorry, Liam. I know you didn’t have much family.”

  “He left the distillery to me in a trust on the condition that I marry before my next birthday,” he continued, clearing his throat. “Family meant everything to him and he told me before he died that he was worried that I’d wind up alone. His lawyers are administering the trust. If I don’t marry by that time, the distillery goes to my brother, who intends to knock it down and sell the land to save his business.”

  “I’m sure you can find someone to marry you,” Daisy said, trying not to be too harsh in light of his circumstances. “You’re not hard to look at. Actually, Rochelle is single. I think you two would make a great match.”

  “There’s a catch.”

  Daisy groaned. “There always is.”

  “I have to stay married for a year to show the marriage is legitimate,” Liam said. “I don’t want to involve friends or exes or lead anyone on because I have no interest in a real marriage, and our arrangement will be over when the year is up. I also don’t want to marry someone I don’t know and can’t trust. There’s a lot of money at stake, and at the end of the day, I can’t risk a stranger turning around and demanding fifty percent because we’re in a no-fault divorce state. That’s why I need you.”

  “You should write that on a greeting card,” she said dryly. “I can barely contain myself.”

  “But that’s why it’s perfect,” he said. “You don’t like me, and I have no interest in a relationship, so there would be no expectations either way. Except for a few events to establish the legitimacy of the marriage, we could continue to lead separate lives. No one will know.”

  “I’ll know,” Daisy said. “Every time I look at you, I’ll wonder if you’re just going to disappear again. You were part of the family, and then you were gone, like you didn’t care about us at all.”

  “I did care.” He paced in front of her, irritating her even more because now she caught a glimpse of his tight ass and the strong thighs that carried him across the room and back.

  “It wasn’t easy to leave. I thought I was doing the right thing for me and for your family.”

  Ah yes, her family. They now thought she and Liam were together. And here he was with a fake marriage proposal that would save her from matchmaking aunties and boring blind dates. Superstitious Lakshmi Auntie would call that karma. Or she might assume that Daisy had seen a fox when she’d woken up in the morning, which signified a productive and fruitful day.

  “There has to be something you want,” Liam pleaded “Something I can offer you.”

  “Your head on a spike?” She’d always envied Liam’s relaxed attitude, his impulsiveness and disregard for rules. He was chaos. She was order. Even if she agreed to his crazy plan, it would never work. They’d destroy each other before they could say “I do.”

  • 10 •

  SWEAT beaded on Liam’s brow. He’d spent the weekend thinking through the options. Aside from the fact that Brendan would see through the ruse, there were significant emotional and financial risks involved in marrying a stranger. Daisy was his only hope. Maybe he shouldn’t have winged the proposal, but planning just wasn’t his style.

  “I could pay you.” He regretted the words as soon as they dropped from his lips.

  Daisy’s face shuttered, and for a moment he thought she’d throw something at him. Lucky
for him, the coffee hadn’t arrived.

  “I’m not a hooker, Liam.”

  “Jesus Christ. I don’t think you’re a hooker.”

  “And just for your information,” she continued. “I don’t need to sell myself to get sex. Lots of guys want to have sex with me. For free. I don’t even let them pay for my dinner. That’s how free it is.”

  “Daisy . . .” His voice cracked. Was it possible to screw this up any more? What the fuck had he been thinking? If he’d seriously wanted to convince her to be his wife, he’d just blown it all to hell.

  “I have free sex all the time,” she mumbled, half to herself. “I don’t pay them. They don’t pay me. You missed out at the prom. Big time.”

  “I shouldn’t have offered to pay you,” he said contritely. He shouldn’t have done a lot of things, starting with pulling her braids when she was ten and encouraging her obvious crush with smiles and winks behind Sanjay’s back. By the time he had realized she had real feelings for him, it was too late. He’d fallen for her, too. But she was his best friend’s little sister, and worthy of a man far better than him.

  She gave an indignant sniff. “Definitely not, but it just goes to show what a degenerate you are.”

  Undeterred, he kept talking. “I thought the idea of a business arrangement would appeal to your logical nature, and since most business transactions involve money . . .”

  Daisy held up a hand. “If you have that much money, why don’t you just buy the distillery yourself? Or finance it? Or get your company to invest? You are in the food business, after all.”

  Of course she’d think of all the logical options. “Brendan would never sell it to me, nor would he allow my company to get involved. We have issues going way back. He’s the kind of guy who would take a hit just to spite me.”

  “Fancy that.”

  “But you and I have a history together,” he continued. “It would be entirely plausible that we reconnected, fell in love, and I proposed when my grandfather was ill because it made me realize that life is short.”

  “Let me stop you right there.” She held up a warning hand. “You are clearly not understanding how things work in my world. Marriage isn’t just about two people; it’s about family. There’s no possible way we could get married without them being involved. I would be disowned if I showed up at the next family dinner and announced I was married. And then, if I got divorced? No good desi boy would ever want me.”

  “I thought that was the goal,” Liam said. “You said you wanted them to leave you alone.”

  She hesitated for a heartbeat. “That’s true. If I were almost thirty and divorced, my aunties wouldn’t even try to find a husband for me. I would be a lost cause.”

  Hope bloomed in his chest. “Just say the word and I will happily ruin you.”

  “It’s not just up to me,” Daisy said. “My family would have to approve of the engagement. Imagine sitting in front of twenty or thirty of my relatives and being grilled about every aspect of your life, your every word and every move analyzed to death. One wrong word, one misstep, and you would be deemed unworthy, and that would be the end of it for you.” She drew her finger across her neck.

  His eyes widened. “They’d kill me?”

  “Worse.”

  Liam shuddered. “Torture?”

  “That’s another word for Taara Auntie’s cooking.”

  He had a vague memory of Sanjay warning him never to eat food from a plastic container he’d been given by one of his aunties. “So, what would happen if I didn’t get their approval?”

  “You would walk away without a bride. There are no second chances.”

  “Sounds harsh.”

  She shrugged. “Patels have a very low divorce rate.”

  “Are you ready for us, Mr. Murphy?” Tyler knocked on the door.

  “One more minute,” Liam called out.

  Daisy’s smile faded. “Tyler thinks you’re here to save the company. He’s going to be devastated to find out you only came here to find a wife.”

  “I’m not sure why. I asked for you.”

  “We’re in financial trouble, Liam.” She twisted her hands in front of her. “The former CEO cashed out after an ill-conceived decision to expand the product line. That’s why we were pitching at the con. It’s such a shame. Organicare is a great company with amazing people, good products, and wonderful outreach programs for young women in developing countries. It’s the first start-up I’ve worked at where I’ve really wanted to stay, but Tyler just told us we should start looking for new jobs. He thinks you’re a miracle, come to save us.”

  Damn. He hadn’t even considered how his presence could be misconstrued. “Most start-ups fail. It’s the nature of the business.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t have happened to this one,” she said vehemently.

  “Clearly I miscalculated,” Liam said. “I’ll do him the courtesy of listening to his pitch.”

  “But you won’t give him the funding, will you?”

  He made the mistake then of looking at her. Between them lay memories of a time when he would have done anything she asked. “I don’t think—”

  “What if I agreed to marry you?” She blurted out. “Would you save Organicare?”

  Even now, he couldn’t deny her. “I can put together a proposal, but the partners have the final say. I’ll be honest, though, personal care isn’t really our thing, and from what you’ve told me, it sounds like the company has been mismanaged.” Not only that, a proposal to finance a dud company might make the partners question his judgment and destroy his chances of joining the partnership.

  “Marriage isn’t my thing,” Daisy said. “But this would not only get my matchmaking aunties off my back and make me totally unmarriageable when we get divorced, it would mean Organicare could be saved, my colleagues can keep their jobs, and they can move back down to the lower floor so I can be left alone to work in peace.”

  It was what he’d come here for, what he wanted. Not only that, spending time with Daisy would give him time to make amends. He’d made many mistakes in his life, and leaving her had been one of them. “I can’t make any promises,” he said. “But I can have my team analyze the business and help Organicare put itself in the best possible position to get funding, if not from us, then from another VC. But you would have to agree to stay here and see it through.”

  She was silent for so long, he thought she’d changed her mind.

  “Fine.” She sighed. “I’ll marry you.”

  It wasn’t the acceptance a man dreamed about, but it was a “yes” just the same. He pulled out his phone.

  “I’ll tell my assistant to get us on the first flight to Vegas tonight.”

  “Vegas?” Daisy’s brow furrowed in confusion.

  “We can get married tonight,” Liam said. “I know a good chapel. Some of them are tacky, but this one has class. We can fly out after work. The Elvis wears a three-piece suit and a tie . . .”

  His spider senses tingled, warning him that something was wrong. Or maybe it was the scowl on his fake fiancée’s face. “If you don’t like Elvis . . .”

  “Are you kidding?” Daisy walked over to the whiteboard and picked up a marker. “We’re not going to Vegas. We need a plan for this whole thing.”

  “I don’t do plans.”

  “Well you’re going to do one now because otherwise you won’t have your marriage of convenience.” She turned to the board, giving him a perfect view of her lush behind. His thoughts immediately went somewhere the thoughts of a fake fiancé shouldn’t go, a small indication that this was going to be harder than it looked.

  “We can’t just jump into a marriage,” she said as she wrote on the board. “It won’t be believable, especially if the trustee is a lawyer. We’ll have to plan out some dates to legitimize our relationship before the wedding. We have to be seen togethe
r, Liam.” She turned around and pointed to the board. “This is what we need.”

  Liam read the heading and laughed. “A dating plan? I don’t plan dates, sweetheart. I go where the wind takes me.”

  “When Orson and I used to go out with friends, we’d talk about restaurants we’d been to, or an interesting documentary we’d watched on Netflix, or an art exhibition we’d seen, maybe an energetic walk along the coast. Those are the stories that make a relationship sound real.”

  Liam faked a yawn. “Orson sounds like a boring guy.”

  “He was easy to be with. We didn’t have to talk much.”

  “My kind of relationship.” He gave a sly smile.

  Daisy raised an eyebrow. “If you are suggesting that all we did was have sex, you would be very wrong. It was an intellectual relationship. We saw thought-provoking films. We discussed philosophy, religion, politics, programming issues . . .”

  Liam dropped his head and then jerked it up again. “Sorry. I fell asleep after you said you and Orson never had sex.”

  “I didn’t say . . .” She trailed off, her eyes narrowing. “It’s none of your business.”

  “I’m your fiancé. I think your sex life is very much my business. I need to know what kind of woman I’m marrying.”

  “The kind that doesn’t kiss and tell,” she snapped.

  Thoroughly enjoying her discomfort, he leaned back in his chair, hands crossed behind his head. “Who is a better kisser? Me or Orson?”

  Daisy’s eyes widened and she froze, her hand hovering in midair. Liam remembered that look from the afternoons he’d spent at her house, when she’d been caught doing something wrong.

  “I have my answer.” He puffed out his chest. “The old Murphy charm wins again.”

  “That was the only kiss you’ll ever get from me,” she said firmly. “My feelings for you haven’t changed. This is a marriage in name only. That means no physical contact except for holding hands or a peck on the cheek for appearances.” She turned back to the whiteboard. “I’ll write that down so you don’t forget.”