AllFreeNovel
Share Us
One-thirty arrives and I’m hiding next to a stinky pile of garbage. There’s a sentence I’d never thought would be associated with my life. My eyes scan the area on high alert, looking for insistent paparazzi, my heart thumping with anxiety.
BEEP!
I jump and then sprint to the black SUV with tinted windows that has just arrived, hurtling myself into the open back seat door, feeling foolish when I land and the car doesn’t peel off in a hurry. Maybe the whole covert nature of this meeting has got to me, but I really felt like a spy in a movie about to make a great escape.
“Natalie, are you OK?”
I look to where Matthew is seated, also in the back seat, as the driver of the car moves us slowly away from the hospital.
“Never better.” I flash him a painfully fake smile and pat my hair back into place.
I’m back in my ugly blue scrubs again, not having had the time to get changed before our meeting and this, combined with the dive into the car, has left me feeling dishevelled. And at a complete disadvantage when faced with Matthew’s casual perfection. He’s dressed in his ‘sports gear’ today, grey tracksuit pants and a sweatshirt that should look sloppy but don’t. His hair is damp, like he’d just gotten out of the shower and his fresh scent fills the small confines of the car. Altogether, he's a walking Calvin Klein commercial—the sports edition.
“I’m sorry for everything that’s happening.” Matthew’s voice is deep with sincerity, and I nod. It’s not his fault that the media is obsessed with him. And his active love life.
“It’s OK. It’s not your fault.”
His mouth twists, and he stares out of the window. “Regardless, I shouldn’t have put you in this situation. I know how they are; I could have predicted this would happen.”
He looks so perturbed that I take his hand to squeeze it, only to have it swallowed in his own, held in place. This hand-holding is getting too familiar, too comfortable, too much like something I don’t want to stop doing.
“So, how do we fix it?”
He turns to look at me, a small smile growing on his face as his eyes roam over mine. I watch as his large hand—the one that’s not holding mine—reaches out and tucks a stray strand of hair behind my ear, sending a sprinkle of shivers down my spine.
“I need to ask you a big favour.”
The serious expression now on his face has my heart racing and I incline my head to get him to continue.
“Apparently, this kind of press is not good for my brand.” He stops, taking a deep breath before continuing. “The public loves to gossip about sports stars and who they date, but according to my PR company, there’s a fine line between what is acceptable and what’s considered too much. And I’ve just crossed that line.”
Comprehension dawns. “With me? But we’re not even dating!”
“I know that. You know that. They don’t know that.” He waves his hand towards the passing cars. “And that’s a problem. My sponsors are speaking up about my image and I’m being forced to do damage control.”
My heart hurts for how disheartened he sounds. What must it be like to live your life having to answer to big corporations and the faceless public?
“And that’s where you come in.” He stops and doesn’t continue.
The silence stretches until I can’t take it anymore. “What do you need?”
He turns his big body to face me, an imploring look on his face. “I need you to be my girlfriend.”
My entire body buzzes and I feel faint. Surely, I heard him wrong. There’s no way he just asked me to be his girlfriend!
“What I mean,” he continues in the face of my shocked silence, “is that I need you to pretend to be my girlfriend. Until this all blows over.”
“What? How? What?” I’m not making any sense and I’m fine with it. His proposition is the stuff of rom-com movies, not the lives of cat-loving student nurses like me.
“I need you to pretend that we’re dating, that we’re in love for a while, until this has all blown over and the media is on to the next big story of the week, and then we can quietly break up.”
Nothing. I have nothing. No thoughts and no words to contribute.
“Pretend break up,” he clarifies with a worried glance at me. “My manager seems to think that you’d be perfect for my image. The complete opposite of the people I usually date.”
I wince and shrink back into my seat, the reminder of how different I am to the models he usually dates stinging my pride.
“Different good!” he continues, and I ignore him. There’s no good different when comparing me with the glamazons he usually dates. “What I’m trying to articulate—poorly—is that the public is going nuts for us because you’re the girl they want me to end up with.”
