“I was agonizingly sober the whole time. I know it’s impossible to believe me because I wouldn’t say that shit even if I was tripping on acid. But I did. Singlehandedly destroyed my life with one fucking word.”
Not breathing, she stared at me with blinking doll eyes for so long I started to worry. “Zoey, you still in there? Did I break you?” I asked.
She finally took a breath. “I’ll go make some coffee.”
“You do that. I’ll go back under the quilt.”
“No, boss. Stay with me. We’re gonna fix this.” She interrupted her trip to the kitchen to glance at the condition my face was in. “Maybe use the bathroom?”
“Like washing my face would do me any good. I need a hose. Or a gun.”
“Start with a shower, and we’ll take it from there.”
I let hot water and soap clean whatever they could, shrugged into a bathrobe and followed the coffee smell like an addict. Even dead me couldn’t resist it.
Waking up my brain cells with the magic liquid, I filled in my secretary about everything. “Now, everyone will know I’m a pathetic liar. A fraud. Rina will sign with Fletcher, I’ll lose the rest of my authors, my credibility, Brighton, my home, everything.”
“Not if we got you a fiancé,” she said as if she was telling me to go buy some groceries.
“Those don’t grow on trees or get stacked on supermarket shelves. Besides, I can’t just have any fake fiancé. It has to be Fabio.”
“Then we’ll get Fabio. He played your fake date once. He’ll play your fake fiancé, too.”
“No. No more lies. It’s what got me here in the first place. I’m in this whole mess because you convinced me to fake date thatstronzoto save Brighton. Look how that turned out to be. I’m on the verge of losing Brighton for good. How is fake marrying a stripper going to solve anything? I’m going to tell everybody the truth.”
“Because of how forgiving this business is? You know as well as I do one mistake is all it takes to tank a career in publishing. Haven’t you learned anything from Jack? If it weren’t for you, Gabi, Brighton would have been lost a long time ago. The authors that stayed with Brighton after the accident stayed for you, not because they were loyal to your husband or the brand. They connected with your tragedy and wanted to support you.”
“Aren’t you the one who said those same people started to see my grief as an act?”
“Yes. That’s why you needed to give them another story to connect to. A happier one. Judging by how they reacted at the ceremony, it worked. Now, imagine what happens when they know it was all a lie.”
“Fletcher’s party is a death trap. Even if I manage to have Fabio as my fake fiancé after what happened between us, don’t you think Fletcher will have dug up Fabio’s dirt by then? Fletcher will find out what Fabio does for a living and expose me at the party. He wins either way. I’d rather tell everybody the truth myself. I’ll lose everything, but, at least, I won’t lose myself.”
“Fletcher doesn’t have to win if the story becomes real.”
My jaw hung low. “Now you’re tripping.”
“You and Fabio like each other. It’s going to happen eventually, so why not use it to your advantage? You’ll have a gender-flipped Pretty Woman story for everybody to swoon over. Authors would bend over backward to sign with America’s new favorite indie press and Fletcher can eat shit.”
I let everything register in my brain for a minute. Discarding theFabio and I like each otherpart, Zoey could be right about the gender-flipped Pretty Woman story. Even if it was temporary and fake. No one needed to know that tiny little detail. “And you think Fabio is going to just play along?”
“Probably not without a blood sacrifice to the gods.”
“Or a huge loan. If he says no to me, he won’t say no to money.” I rose to my feet. “But no. I can’t handle any more lies, and I’m not going to be under the mercy of that stronzo.”
“Jesus Christ. The only one you’re lying to is yourself when you’re pretending what you feel for Fabio isn’t real. And Swallow your pride a little, boss. It’s better to be under Fabio’s mercy than Fletcher’s, don’t you think?”
I paced the lounge, huffing, glaring, thinking, praying there could be a better solution but came up empty. My fingers pressed the inner corners of my eyes as a headache invaded my skull. “Yes. You’re right,” I said in surrender. She was right about my feelings for Fabio, and my pride, and being under anyone’s mercy other than Fletcher’s. “There’s another problem, though. I don’t know where Fabio is.”
“He’s gonna be at a bachelorette party at Hotel Mariposa tonight at nine.”
I darted back to the couch. “What? How did you get hold of him?”
A shit-eating grin took up half of her face. “I didn’t. You got a message from someone named Logan, giving you the whereabouts of your boyfriend.”
CHAPTER26
Fabio
