“Is something wrong?” I asked him quietly as he unlocked the door to his condo. He set his bag down on the kitchen counter then paced around the room.
“I need to tell my brothers.”
“Excuse me?”
“I can’t keep lying to them.”
“You have to! That’s the rule. No witnesses. This has to be completely under wraps,” I demanded.
“I have to tell them. This is getting out of hand,” Blade said stubbornly.
I started to panic. I needed that house. “Blade,” I said, holding out my hands like one would to calm a wild animal. “We discussed this. We have to keep this a secret. Later, when we both have what we want, you can talk to them.”
“You don’t know what it’s like having to lie to the people you care about most,” Blade growled.
“Of course I do!”
“No, you don’t,” Blade snapped. “You hate your family, and your mother is in jail. My family is all I have. They are the most important thing to me, and now I’m poisoning my relationship with my brothers! I have more to lose here than you do.”
“Excuse me, you are a pampered billionaire,” I said, fists on my hips. “You have everything! If you don’t win this contract, so what? You just go back to having gobs of money as opposed to two gobs of money. Boo hoo. Whereas I will have nothing—no job, no place to live.Nothing.” I was so angry I thought I was going to cry.
Blade scowled. “I’m sleeping on the couch.”
“No,” I snapped. “We shook hands. We see this through to the bitter end.”
As we got ready for bed, I wished he was sleeping on the couch. The bedroom was tense.
“So that’s it? We’re not going to finish this discussion like adults?” I said.
Blade ignored me. My fake boyfriend didn’t say a word as he angrily undressed and pushed past me into the bathroom. He showered quickly and was already in bed with the lights off when I came back from washing up. I slipped under the covers, still furious that he had thrown my mother back in my face and that he wanted to ruin our perfectly fine fake relationship.
I turned over to glare at the back of Blade’s head. My grandmother used to tell me that when I was fortunate enough to find the man of my dreams, I should never go to bed angry, because I might regret it.
Well, guess what, Grandma?I thought angrily.I’m not in a real relationship, so there.
26
Blade
Iwoke up in the middle of the night freezing. Avery had somehow managed to wrap the yards of comforter around her and was bundled up like a marshmallow while I shivered in the cold. I checked the clock; it was four a.m. I wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep.
The anger from last night had dissipated, leaving only the bitterness that I had made a terrible mistake. I had wanted to blame Avery, but was it really her fault? She hadn’t put a gun to my head. I had willingly entered into the fake relationship.
“It will all pay out in the end,” I told myself as I went down the hall to my in-home gym and sat down on the rowing machine. My arms burned as I pulled back on the lever.
“This is why I don’t do relationships,” I muttered to myself. “They complicate things.” I had hoped the fact that this was a fake one would mean that I wouldn’t have to deal with any of the annoying minutiae and petty jealousies that plagued the typical relationship.
A part of me just wanted to call the whole thing off. Then I remembered that there was the dinner tonight with Harris & Schultz. I couldn’t show up without a date, not when Grant Holbrook and Carter Holbrook were going to be there with their wives and girlfriends, whom they had been with for years. Not to mention Weston clearly did not have a girlfriend, fake or otherwise. Lord knew who he would show up with. No, it all rested on me. If I didn’t pretend to be with the love of my life, we could kiss that contract goodbye.
Avery was waiting in the kitchen with a mug of bulletproof coffee when I came in with a towel draped around my neck. She looked worried.
“I’m really sorry,” she began.
I held up a hand. “You’re right. We have to stay the course. My brothers will blab. With the dinner tonight, we can’t take any chances.”
She visibly relaxed. “Exactly.”
I almost reached for her then remembered her hard and fast rule about private displays of affection and took the coffee instead.
