“I’m not. I’m just picky.”
And shy.
And socially awkward.
“Or too caught up in trying to draw your perfect man.” Eloise picks up my sketchbook and wags her finger disapprovingly. “Today you are Eloise, not Charlotte, remember.”
I open my mouth to protest, but she slips the sketchbook into her bag. “Think of today as practice.”
“Practice for what?”
“Dating.”
“You want me to practice with your geriatric fiancé?” I gag.
Eloise laughs. “We don’t know how old he is.”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s thirty or three hundred, he is a jerk who thinks he can buy whatever he wants.” I haven’t even met the guy and I dislike him more than anyone I’ve ever met. “And he is not buying my hymen.”
Eloise giggles. “Relax. Sex and kissing aren’t a condition of the contract. It is a purely platonic business deal."
Eloise reaches for her buzzing phone. She unlocks it and reads the message, her face turning gray.
“What is it?”
“A flight itinerary.”
“For the honeymoon?”
“No, the job interview. It’s in Puerto Rico. They want me to spend time putting together some social media stuff to see what I can do. I can’t go.”
A wave of anxiety washes over me. I’ll have to be the stand-in bride for the honeymoon too. How’s that going to work? A little bit of lipstick doesn’t suddenly give us the same personality.
I close my eyes and count to ten. I hope this isn’t a mistake. “You’re going.”
She looks up at me, color returning to her cheeks, her eyes hopeful. “Really?”
I nod, trying to quell my panic. “You’re sacrificing a whole year of your life for our father; the least I can do is give up a week of mine.”
It’s fine.
Everything is fine. I just need to figure out how to pretend to be an outgoing extrovert. My fingers itch for a pencil and paper to quell my anxiety, but I can’t—Eloise doesn’t know how to draw.
And she took my sketchbook.
This is important. Eloise deserves to live whatever life she wants, not be bound by the demands of a jerk who thinks he has the right to buy a year of someone’s life.
And if I don’t pull this off, he will back out of the deal, and our father will lose his business. He was a mess when our mother died; focusing on the business was his coping mechanism. If he loses it, it will devastate him.
Eloise hugs me. “Thank you. Thank you.”
She’s kissing my cheek and out the door before I feel a panic attack starting.
I pace back and forth in the suddenly-too-small room and suck in slow, steady breaths like Eloise told me to, but this stupid dress is too tight.
After yanking the door open, I rush down the hall to the exit and stumble outside into the church garden.
People rush by, going about their daily lives, blissfully unaware of the mess I’ve gotten myself into.
