And maybe, just maybe, I can get her to agree to be my girlfriend for the weekend if I can convince her to go out to dinner with me. It’s not like I can pull her aside at work and tell her I’m in need of a fake girlfriend.
I mean, I could, but it feels wrong. I should at least treat her to food first…
“Mr. Harper, Keaton Welch is on line one.” My secretary, Jeanie, pokes her head through my door, pulling me from thoughts of winning over Lucy Spence.
I smile at the middle-aged, kind mother of three then glance at the clock. “Thanks, Jeanie. Will you tell him I’m in a meeting and that I’ll call him back later?” I pause. “Why don’t you go take your lunch break? Oh, and will you send Lucy in here?”
She grins. “Of course. Thank you, sir.”
Jeanie’s floating head disappears, the door clicking shut behind her.
I stand, stretching out my back after pouring over financial reports all morning long. The community center I opened here in Juniper Grove about a year ago is thriving as I hoped it would. While attending college in the area, I noticed the local kids didn’t have a place to hang out, study, or engage in sports, especially the kids from lower-class families. I found an empty building, which used to be a factory, and had it turned into a community centerusing my earnings from stock trading and the money I had saved fromnotpurchasing a ring five years ago.
I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished here. No, this endeavor doesn’t make me a lot of money, but that’s what working the stock market is for. Plus, I’ll open more money-making businesses in the future. This was a heart project. When I was a child back in Dasher Valley, I wished I had somewhere to go to stay out of trouble and still have a good time. I plan to open a center down there next, especially if Stella wins a representative seat, but Juniper Grove was first because I used my internship class during my senior year of college to kickstart things in this town.
Three light knocks on the door inform me she’s here.
“Come in, Lucy May,” I say with a broad smile already taking over my face. She claims she doesn’t like me using her middle name, but when I do, her cheeks redden, and sometimes, I catch her suppressing a smile as she rolls those hazel eyes into the back of her pretty little head.
When I learned she was a romance author mere months after I hired her, I ran to get my hands on her books. She has two completed series of romantic comedies published, but from her marketing, it looks like she has some urban fantasy romances coming out in the near future. I can still use those for my purposes. A direct line to her heart and mind to assist in my attempts to win her over? Yes, please. I adore that she uses her first and middle name as her pen name. It’s so Lucy… It shows her constant battle between desiring attention while simultaneously attempting to hide herself away. The duality of her character isfascinating.
She steps into my office, her stubbornness already cemented in place. Her shoulders are pushed back, chin tilted up, and her hands are planted firmly on her all too delectable hips, which are on full display in that tight, pink plaid skirt she’s wearing.
We match. Isn’t that cute?
“What do you need me for, Mr. Harper?”
“If you won’t go to dinner with me, then let me take you out to lunch.” She narrows her eyes and purses her lips. “For official business,” I add.
I have to leave to go to Dasher Valley for my buddy’s wedding by tomorrow morning at the latest, and I need Lucy by my side if I want to keep up the “she’s my girlfriend” charade with my family. If she doesn’t agree, then I’m going to have to come up with something to appease my family, which will put Stella further on my case. Everyone who knows me knows that I would rather croak than to show up to a wedding without a date. (My sister’s was the only exception because I thought I’d take a go at her New York friend, Hayden, which was shut down quickly. Turns out she was meant for the new president of the country, so that’s kind of cool.)
Lucy rolls her eyes and cocks her hip out to the side. I take a steadying breath to keep my face from heating. I might be the ringleader of this game, but that doesn’t make me immune to the hypnotic sexiness of this woman.
“This is becoming a weekly occurrence, Mr. Harper. It’s impacting my work performance.”
I lean against my desk and cross my arms. “So should we bump it up to twice a week so that you’ll bedoublyimpacted? I didn’t realize me pestering you for lunch and dinner was such a positive thing.”
Lucy tugs at the bow tied in the front of her shirt at her neckline. The unbidden mental image of me reaching across the sea of distance between us and tugging the bow loose might be enough to undo me.
“I never said it had apositiveimpact.”
“But you didn’t say it was negative.” I wink, and a rose petal flush paints her nose, cheeks, and forehead. I adore that when Lucy blushes, she does so with her entire freckled face. “Come on, one lunch. Just one lunch and I promise I’ll stop asking you, okay?”
She thinks for a moment, pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes. “Fine,” she bites. I celebrate the moment in my head, but I know my thoughts leak through my smile. I’ve finally won her over, even if she isn’t considering this an actual date.She finally said yes…
Lucy speaks again in that sharp tone. “But I’m picking the restaurant. And you can bet it will be an expensive lunch. Seafood. Lots of it.”
I chortle, admiring this confident, bold, fierce side of her. “I would expect nothing less from you, Lucy May.”Now to get you to go to Dasher Valley with me tomorrow morning for the entirety of the weekend…
Thirty minutes (and a fifteen minute bickering session in my truck) later, I’m seated across from Lucy at Perry’s Seafood, a local restaurant known to bring the Cajun heat. This place is one of my sister’s favorites to eat at when she visits me.
I thought I’d have three months to build a decent breakup story to tell Stella. To tell her that I was coming home alone for her birthday because things were over between me and Lucy. I’d start with slowly mentioning fights we had, then I would start creating stories that painted Lucy in a negative light, such as she flirted with other men in front of me or something. The killing blow would be that she cheated on me, so I could no longer continue seeing her.
Just like that, I could go home alone for Stella’s birthday, and my “girlfriend” would be no more. My family wouldn’t ask me about it because they never bothered to ask me about Lacey when that ended. I kept quiet, and they let me. Lucy would be the only other woman they think I’ve seriously committed to, and while they harass me about my flings, they’ve never gotten on my case when it came to Lacey. It would be the same with Lucy.
I’m a mastermind, right? Well,was…
The planned course of action will not take place since I’m going home in the morning, and that’s clearly not enough time to build up a breakup. I also feel a smidge guilty over the thought of painting Lucy in such a bad light. I don’t actually think she would cheat on a man. She might date a lot, but she’s got a heart of gold.
