“How could you side with him? Of course she’s attentive—that’s her job! But trust me. The second I fired Madison, she’d quit giving a damn. Besides, even if she had feelings for me—which she doesn’t—I’d still say no. I don’t shit where I eat. Interoffice dating is doomed to fail.”
“Fine. Forget Madison. You must still know somebody who can help you,” Grant says.
“If you don’t have even one hottie who owes you…” Noah’s expression positively brims with pity. “You’ve lived your life wrong.”
* * *
By the time the brunch ends, the sky is practically black.
“Damn it. Is it going to rain?” Griffin gets grumpier when the weather’s crappy. Not because he’s afraid of driving in the rain, but because he hates SoCal drivers even more when it’s raining.
“Looks like it. Drive carefully,” I say, climbing into my car. I’m not worried about my brothers doing something stupid. I’m worried about other drivers screwing up.
As soon as I’m on the highway, the water hits, and the road turns into a parking lot.
Fabulous. Just fantastic.
If a zombie apocalypse started during a rain, everyone in SoCal would be trapped in their cars and get their brains eaten.
After about five minutes of my staring at the barely moving taillights in front of me, my mind begins to wander.Fake engagement…
Nicholas’s idea sounds like a romance novel. Of course, he reads a lot of them because his wife Molly loves them so much. He somehow manages to get her tickets to all sorts of popular signings and gives her his black AmEx to buy whatever books she wants. He even sent a private jet to pick her up because she often buys more books than she can possibly ship.
But even she doesn’t spend twenty-five thousand a month. Seb’s wife might, but Lucie is a jewelry company CEO. She works her ass off, and she’s entitled to spend the money she’s earned.
This secret spendthrift Webber girl probably has no job. Why work when you receive free money? I haven’t heard anything about Vivienne getting such a generous allowance, so the mystery girl must’ve found some way to squeeze it out of Nelson, which couldn’t have been easy. He’s generous and indulgent with himself, but not with others. And he isn’t a complete moron, so he’d be difficult to trap.
She’s starting to seem like a manipulative, conniving woman. Maybe worse than Grandmother. I’d have to be on guard at alltimes to make sure I didn’t get fucked over if I was dealing with her.
I narrow my eyes, loathing the situation. The mystery Webber girl is almost certainly worse than Vivienne. At least I know what’s wrong with that one. Annoying. Stupid. Vapid. Spoiled. Fickle. Gather all the foibles of our mothers and take away all their positive aspects, and you have Vivienne Webber.
My mind whispers that I should choose the lesser of the two evils. At least pick the devil I know. But the idea is abhorrent. On the other hand, if I don’t do anything, my family will eventually find a way to force me. A twenty-five percent stake is enough to meddle in the management of my ad agency, and Grandmother will do everything in her power to ruin my dream so that I’ll have to live hers.
She’s already sent me hundreds of texts, railing at me for not showing up for the dates she set up.
If I had a fake fiancée, I could take myself off the market long enough to fight this contract. My family is damn good, but so is John Highsmith. And he’ll take the case just for a chance to show my grandmother.
But who owes me a favor big enough to play my fake fiancée?
The rain is now pouring down so hard I can barely see anything in front of me. It hasn’t rained like this in a long time. In fact, the last time…
Wait a minute. That girl who said she’d like to pay me back. She only had a dollar or two and left me a number instead. I never called to collect, but I kept that dollar bill.
She may not be suitable, but it wouldn’t hurt to check her out. Her gratitude when I dropped her off was sincere. If she can help, she will.
Well, well, well.
Maybe I didn’t live my life so wrong after all.
Chapter Eleven
Grace
Why, oh why, does Andreas hate me?
I try not to show how I really feel as I push my seafood pasta around on the plate. It’s probably poisoned. Not because Karie’s cook is a terrible human being, but because Karie is.
She loves to serve food like she’s the one who labored in the kitchen, putting on a red and white apron with a big embroidered apple and holding a wooden spoon with some sauce smeared on it. But if you look closer, the dress on her gym-toned body is a brand-new Dior, her nails long and flawless, her makeup perfect. And no one has to look closely to see the bleached hair pulled up in a French twist and secured with a couple of pearl pins, or the fact that too many diamonds glitter on her ears and around her throat. Or listen that carefully to hear her sky-high stilettos clack on the marble floor. She’s the picture of a woman who doesn’t look like she spent more than a minute instructing her staff.
