8. CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHT
M ICAH
Wine sprays across the table, hitting me right in the face. The people at the tables surrounding us fall silent.
Luckily, I close my eyes in time, but some of it still gets me in the mouth. Not that I mind too much. It’s Carly. She could probably spit straight in my mouth and I wouldn’t care.
Now there’s an idea we can try later….
Holding that thought, I finally open my eyes to find Carly gaping at me pale-faced. Shock and horror fight for dominance in her expression. I wait for one of them to take hold while I take a napkin and wipe my face clean, trying not to crack up.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers with an almost comical horror in her tone. “I didn’t mean to… I can’t believe I did that.”
“Nah, entirely my fault,” I say, somehow managing to keep my face straight. I shouldn’t have broken the news to her like that, but the idea just hit me out of nowhere. And I can’t lie, I also wanted to surprise her a little, to see what she was like when she got caught off guard.
And, well, I guess I got my wish.
“I really am sorry,” she says again in a quieter voice as I dab the liquid from my suit. It won’t come out. I already know it’s a hopeless case, but I at least want to be able to walk out of here without looking like a two-year-old who hasn’t learned how to properly drink from a sippy cup.
“I can get it cleaned for you after.”
“That would be pointless. This is cashmere.” I wave my hand. “Seriously, don’t worry about it. Although, if you’re that sorry, then maybe consider saying yes to my little proposition.”
“What proposition?”
“To marry me, of course.”
Her eyes widen again, and I know if she had more wine in her mouth, it would be spraying through the air again. “Wait, you were serious about that?”
“You think I would risk such a spit take if I wasn’t serious?”
Her face flushes and she finally glances around as though realizing we’re in public. The restaurant is quiet enough that her antics likely got some attention, and even though almost no one is outwardly staring anymore, quite a few tables are still stealing glances and chuckling. “God, that was embarrassing.”
“Nah. It was glorious,” I tell her, finally allowing myself to grin. “Ten out of ten accuracy and maximum comic relief with minimum damage. You just made quite a few people’s nights. It was the icebreaker they needed to crack the tension. You may have saved a few first dates too, and maybe a few marriages by giving them something else to talk about other than who’s sleeping with whose yoga instructor.”
“Oh God.” She covers her face with one hand. “Of course. The first time I come to a high-class restaurant and I have to make a complete country bumpkin of myself.”
I take her other hand from the table, turning it over to trace the lines in the center. She has such soft hands. And while I’m enjoying her embarrassment, I also feel the urge to soothe her worries, and make her comfortable again. “If it makes you feel better, one time I got wasted at a business convention and ended up toppling over a year-long project that was an elaborate twelve-foot model of the Eiffel Tower.”
She peeks at me through her fingers. “Really?”
“Yup.” The specifics are that it happened a week after my brother’s funeral. My father invited me to the business convention because all the important business people were supposed to be there. He wanted me to impress them so that the stakeholders would be okay with me taking my brother’s place. It was the first in his long line of acts to force me into the role, while my brother was barely decayed in the ground. I know Dad was grieving him in his own way, but the man could compartmentalize like a pro—grieve but still do his duty, and insist on me doing mine.
But I hated it, hated the role he was forcing me to play. I felt like a misshapen peg that everyone was trying to bang into a clean round whole.
And so, as an act of rebellion, I got drunk before I showed up to the convention so that the shareholders would see how unsuitable I was for the role. Of course, I didn’t expect to be that out of control either. I got way too loose, too fast, and blacked out for most of it. I only know what I did thanks to CCTV footage and my dad’s later rants.
I didn’t drink for weeks after that, and even now, I barely drink at all because of it.
But looking back, it was kind of a funny story.
Carly doesn’t need all the backstory, so I just tell her the highlights, about me stumbling around, nearly throwing up on a prime minister’s wife, accidentally insulting a liaison to France, and then calling our primary stakeholder a big poopy head.
Carly smiles and eventually laughs as the story unfolds, easing her tension. She has such a pretty laugh. Her nose crinkles a little, her eyes turn into this warm chocolatey color, and her lips downturn, like she’s trying her hardest not to give in.
And the sound itself? Throaty, like happiness punching out of her.
“So anyway,” I conclude. “The long and short of the story is, Hennesy is the devil’s juice and I’m no longer allowed within fifty feet of a Ritz-Carlton. Might also be banned from a few embassies too. You probably need to know that if we’re going to be married.”
“Why?”
“Why am I banned? Well, I just told you the story of–”
“No.” She laughs and holds up her hand to stop my tirade. “I mean why do you want me to marry you?”
“Oh, that. I was wondering when you would get around to asking.” Her embarrassment has likely died enough that she’s finally ready to confront the question. “It’s another pretty long story involving a man called Marcus Landing.”
“Your dad?”
“Yes,” I say. “How did you know?”
“Because you mentioned in that other story that the ambassador said, ‘Marcus, what is the meaning of this,’ and I put two and two together.”
“Ah.” I nod my approval. “Attentive. Good. I like that in a wife.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling so I continue, “My dad wants me to take over his company. Even with the tower-toppling incident, he seems to think that I’m CEO material, despite my hard and honest attempt to show him I’m not.”
“So you don’t want to take over?”
“Not even a little bit. He’s the head of a holding company that manages a bunch of different businesses that are a monopoly in various industries. I think monopolies aren’t great for the economic climate to start with, but I don’t want to do it mostly because I think his job is incredibly boring. Most of the time, you sit in a room with about thirty old men and deliberate on how to add another trillion dollars to the bazillion you already have. And then you go to a meeting with another old man and try to convince him how you can make him another trillion. And then you go to a meeting with a woman and tell her you can make her a trillion too. And so on and so forth until one of you dies. I can’t imagine a more drab existence.”
Her smile widens. “Well, when you put it like that, it does sound awful.”
“It is,” I assure her. “Especially for someone like me. I like to travel, see the world, do things, make things. I don’t care whether or not my shareholders have the assets to buy another private jet. I want to do something that matters.” I’m shocked as the words leave my mouth. I didn’t intend to reveal that much, but maybe I’ve had too much wine tonight and need to pull back. “Anyway, the point is that my father, seeing as he has no other heirs, doesn’t give a damn what I want and is trying to manipulate things so I have no choice but to play it his way. And the Pink Hotel is part of it. It’s supposed to be my training wheels. I don’t want to run the place, but he’s making it difficult for me to do anything else. And I’m trying my hardest to show him I won’t give into his nefarious schemes.”
“By marrying me?”
“No, hold on we haven’t gotten to that part yet.” I hold my hand up. “Okay, where was I? Oh, so first, I tried to sell my shares of the hotel to an old friend, so that I could use that money to start my own thing. Since Dad controls most of my other accounts, I need one that he can’t touch and I need to buy contacts that he can’t bribe. But then he blocked the sale of my hotel shares too because he’s…well…a poopy head. A very powerful poopy head. No one else will buy the shares from me because no one is going to want to tangle with Marcus Landing on a warpath. No one else except, of course, Marcus’ father.”
“Your grandfather?”
“Yup. He can help me get out of this and convince my dad to lay off me. Grandfather actually doesn’t care who takes over my dad’s company. He doesn’t see it as his legacy since Dad started it without him, and refused to take over Grandfather’s oil business.”
“Sounds like you’re following in your father’s footsteps then,” she murmurs, but I don’t like the comparison so I continue as though I didn’t hear her.
“The thing is, my grandfather is, for whatever reason, deeply concerned about my love life. Don’t ask me why, the man had an arranged marriage at eighteen and he and my grandmother hated each other for the entirety of their relationship. They lived in separate houses most of the time, but they never bothered to get a divorce. Nevertheless, he seems to think that marriage is a fantastic idea for me, and that I’m way past the age where I should be married. And he’s not going to help me until I agree to make a concerted effort to that end.”
“So you want me to play the part of your fake fiancée?” Understanding dawns on her features.
“Ding-ding,” I tell her. “I told him I was already seeing someone and that I would bring her over for dinner soon, so I desperately need someone good enough to play the role. I asked a few other people but they… erm, fell through.”
I first started the search with my former lovers but they ended up being either completely inappropriate for the role or they still held a torch for me that would make the situation more complicated than it needed to be. And the other people I tried out, the high-society girls that Grandpa liked so much, left me feeling cold and eager to get out of their presence. I don’t think I could pretend with them even if I tried my hardest.
When I was flying back to Laketown, I had my assistant looking for actresses to play the part but the problem with that is that my grandfather might hire a PI to look them up and then he would figure out the entire ruse.
It was starting to look hopeless but then just earlier this evening, when I saw Carly in that black dress, the idea hit me.
Carly could do it.
She looks sweet and has that old Hollywood charm about her. When she dresses up, she easily passes for a high-society queen.
Plus, I actually like being around her so it won’t be too hard to fake a relationship with her.
“So you just want me to go to dinner with you and your grandfather?” Carly asks, her eyebrow furrowing.
“No, not just that,” I tell her. “I’ll explain everything more in detail later, but it’s going to be a lot of dinners and probably more social events than you think.”
“Oh.” Apprehension enters her gaze and she bites her lip in brief thought. “Well, it’s not like I don’t want to help you out, Micah, but it’s just that I’m really busy. You know, with work and school, I don’t know that I’ll have time to even pretend to date you.”
Ah, and that’s why she’s perfect for the role. “Well, I thought it would probably be a big ask, which is why I’m offering a financial incentive.”
She pauses and stares at me.
“How does three hundred thousand dollars sound?”
She blinks. And then blinks again. “Are you serious?”
“As a spit take.”
She sputters a bunch of choked sounds before she manages to make a full sentence. “You would really offer me that kind of money for pretending to date you?’
“Yeah. Even with my father’s antics I still have at least that lying around. I should be able to move it without him noticing.”
“I bet that’s chicken change to you,” she says a little snarky, and I smile.
“Yup.”
She shakes her head.
“But seriously,” she says. “You’re not kidding me, right? This isn’t like some prank show, is it? Are cameras going to come out?”
“No,” I assure her. “I’m serious. We can even sign a contract to that effect. What do you think?”
She spouts some more words of disbelief for the next few minutes, but by the time the waiter comes back to take our food orders, she says, “Well, I would be stupid to turn that down. Where do I sign?”
I laugh at her eagerness and let her know I’ll send her the contract tomorrow. I even tell her that I’ll pay if she wants to hire a lawyer to help her look it over, and she beams, radiating excitement the entire night.
It makes the rest of the dinner pleasant. The food is good, the smile doesn’t leave her face, and the conversation doesn’t end.
And with each second that passes, I want her more and more. I want her glittering eyes staring at me in pure lust. I want her sensual lips under mine. I want her skin between my teeth.
Eventually, I drag my seat closer and reach under the table, touching her thigh.
She looks at me in alarm, which quickly gives way to a moan of desire as I lean over and kiss her neck. “Well, now that we’ve got that out of the way? How about we have a little fun?”