We’re pulling up to the curb beneath a huge Orlov hotel before he can say any more on the matter, and I shoot him a glance as I inhale, straightening my spine. “Willa says we have to look in love if we want to sell it, think you can manage?”
His throat shifts again with another swallow before he nods.
“Alright. Now, don’t look too alarmed,” I say.
“Why would I be alarmed?”
I set my shoulders and then attempt asweetsmile which feels more like pulling my mouth away from my teeth to show him how great a job the braces did in high school. He recoils slightly, exactly the shock I imagined at my attempt. It makes me laugh, a surprised snort and now hereallylooks surprised.
“Not natural?” I ask.
“Not particularly,” he says, and for the first time since we got into the car, he’s smiling too. “Just be you.”
“I don’t think that my resting bitch face is what your public image needs.”
“You’re perfect,” he says definitively before sliding out of the car first and offering me a hand as I follow suit.
Maxim’s PR manager worked with Willa to make sure the right paparazzi were tipped off about the public day date of Maxim Orlov and his mysterious, soon-to-be, gold digging, child bride. There isn’t a legion of photographers like I imagined, but as we walk down the street and he offers me his elbow for me to slip my left hand into the crook of, I hear the sounds of shutters going off down the street, a cluster of a few men with cameras trained on us. I seek Maxim’s eyes instead of looking at them, and he’s already looking down at me, searching my face as if to decode how I feel about it all.
I’ll give him credit, he looks wholly focused on me, which isn’t the “enamored by his bride to be” that Willa thinks we need, but it might be better somehow.
This time when I smile, it’s quieter, and when he smiles back, I think this whole sham marriage might not be so impossible.
5
MAXIM
I sitacross from my fiancée for another meal. It’s the third weekend in a row we’ve been seen out together, though this time no photographers. She’s still dressed up like a young congresswoman, today a soft pink sweater and a complicated hairstyle that leaves little curls around her face.
She looks so different, polished and glowing, exactly the sweet kind of girl my mother would choose for me. There’s nothing of the girl I’ve watched in my club: no devilish light behind her brown eyes, no dark lipstick, no frizzy hair. I’m besotted by both versions of her.
I didn’t realize before how much she looks like her sister, the older one, though I see the resemblance to Vanessa as well. They all share features, same slope in the nose as Vanessa, the high cheek bones of Willa. Of all the sisters, she might look most like their mother, Claire, though that woman’s face is soft and gentle. Claire could be getting a speeding ticket and the officer might somehow still feel fundamentallyseen.
Since the local news outlets had their fun reporting on my much younger fiancée, it’s only a matter of keeping up appearances until the wedding next month. Thus, brunch, then a dinner, and now a mid-week lunch in the nicest Orlov hotelin the state. The Meridian is a great restaurant, but everyone here knows I own it, so the entire staff is attuned to the table, worrying over their boss’s experience.
Someone tops off Mary’s glass with more water and we haven’t even ordered yet.
Today’s outfit is doing horrible things to me. I’ve seen her in far more revealing things at the club, but the prim little sweater over a collared shirt is something in between cute and the sexiest thing my mind could have conjured. I had to put concerted effort to not stare at her muscular legs in black tights—have mercy—and her eyelids shimmer with a warm color that makes her brown eyes bright. She bites her lip as she studies the menu and I once again wonder how the fuck I am going to do this.
How am I going to keep sitting across from this woman once per week until we’re married, and then every day for as long as I live? My cards will be revealed eventually, I won’t be able to hide my infatuation forever.
She puts the menu down. “Can we get a bunch of appetizers?”
Her eyes narrow, I think this might be a test, though she asked over the last two meals we shared and my answer was the same.
She could get the whole fucking menu if she wanted, she has no clue.
“As many as you want.”
She raises an eyebrow as if to test this theory, and I’m pleased that when the waiter arrives—the manager this time, who is exceedingly polite and welcoming, and probably sweating through his dress shirt—she orders three different seafood appetizers and a french onion soup. I get the Margherita pizza, and she adds a slice of cheesecake and a coffee.
“Black tea for him,” she says as she closes the menu and hands it to the man.
The exchange thrills me.
Her eyes wander around the restaurant, squinting as she takes it in, but they return to me when I speak. “You love seafood?” I ask. She ordered lobster on our dinner date last week, though the restaurant was loud and we didn’t converse much. I did a lot of watching her, and she did a lot of watching everywhere else.
“Do you?” she asks instead of answering.
