16. Falling for My Fake Date
16
Falling for My Fake Date
ANDREW
From: Victor Lynch
To: All Finance Employees
Sent: December 7, 4:16 pm
Subject: Decorum
As we enter the holiday season, I’d like to remind all employees that a certain level of professional behavior is required not only at work but outside work. This includes behavior on social media and other online spaces.
Examples of unprofessional behavior include but are not limited to dressing up as a honeybee to explain the properties of hexagons.
Sincerely,
Victor Lynch, Chief Financial Officer
I dropped my phone into the pocket of my track pants, my heart pounding. I was already going against Vic’s decorum directive. He’d lose his shit when I showed up dateless to the holiday party.
“What’s wrong?” Oliver lowered the laser measure and started across the grass toward me.
“Nothing. It’s all good.” At least, I hoped it would be after I talked Carly off whatever ledge she was on. I waved him back into position. “Let’s finish this shot.”
“Better wipe that frown off your face then. You’ll scare the kids.”
“Okay, okay.” I needed something positive to distract me from fears of my career implosion and the disappointment on Mother’s and Charles’s faces when I had to tell them I didn’t get the promotion. My mind drifted toward the memory of Carly standing in my hotel room doorway. I felt my lips curling up.
“Better?” I asked.
“Hundred percent. Roll camera.”
I raised the Ping-Pong paddle we were using as the target for Oliver’s laser measure and spoke to his phone on the tripod.
“Today, we’re talking about the Pythagorean theorem. The Pythagorean theorem describes the relationship between the sides of a right triangle.” I paused so we could insert a voiceover with diagrams in editing. “My trusty assistant, Oliver, and I are going to set up a few right triangles on this soccer field and make some measurements so you can see how it works.”
I was breathless from running down the sides of triangles when I saw Carly striding toward us, heels in hand.
I hadn’t thought about her comfort when she’d said she wanted to meet me. Christ, I was a jerk. I held up a hand. “Just a minute,” I called. “I’ll come to you.”
I jogged back to Oliver at the net. “We done? You got it?”
He hunched over his phone, shielding it from the glare with one hand, then he held up a thumb. “Got it. We’re good. Want to meet me at my place for editing?”
“Yeah. Be there in a bit.”
He glanced between Carly and me. “Good luck, man,” he said, low. “I don’t know what you did, but that is not a happy woman.”
I grimaced. “I don’t know what I did either.”
“That’s always the worst kind.” He gripped my shoulders and stared into my eyes. “My life is better for having known you.”
“Shut it, asshole.” I shoved him, not gently.
He laughed. “See you later.”
Squaring my shoulders, I trudged toward Carly, who waited at the sideline, her expression stony. I stopped just across the chalk line from her and wiped a bead of sweat from my temple. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Her gaze dropped to my workout shirt.
Conscious of the way it stuck to my sweaty chest, I plucked it away. “Would you be more comfortable in the parking lot? Or the car? Are you warm enough?”
She gave me a curt nod. “I’m fine. What are you doing here? Don’t you need a ball to play soccer? And opponents?”
I chuckled. “We’re not playing. My friend Oliver and I are…” Should I tell her about the videos? Would she think they were ridiculous like Vic did? Fuck it. She might as well know about my geeky hobby. Someone was bound to ask her about it at the holiday party, assuming I could turn this train wreck around.
“My friend and I make educational videos for kids. About math. Today we’re doing one about the Pythagorean theorem. We used the lines and angles on the field to measure out different triangles and then confirmed that the hypotenuse is the square root of the sum of the squares of each side.”
She squinted one eye. “That takes me back to high school geometry. Do you sell these videos to high schools?”
Fuck, I’d never thought to sell them. “No. We upload them to YouTube for free.” No wonder I’d never become an entrepreneur like my brother or Carly. “According to the analytics, our viewers are a mix of kids and adults. Probably some parents watching with their precocious kids. Most of the emails we get are from tween-age kids.”
“You get fan mail?”
“Yeah.” I scuffed my cleat through the grass. “Kids seem to like the videos.”
“God damn it,” she muttered.
“What? What’s wrong?” Shit, she thought the same as Vic. There went my chances at that promotion.
“I just…I came here to tell you the arrangement isn’t going to work for me. And then you go and tell me that.”
“Tell you what?” I might be a math genius, but I couldn’t keep up with Carly.
“That you make videos to teach kids math. For free. On a Saturday. Most guys your age would be…I don’t know. What do guys your age do on Saturday afternoons?”
I chuckled self-consciously. “Dunno. My friend and I make dorky math videos.”
Her gaze dropped to my mouth, then up to my hair. “Do you always wear your hair like that in your videos?”
“Like what?” I ran a hand through it. My scalp was sweaty from all the triangles I’d run. I kept forgetting to get it cut, and it was unruly.
She rummaged in her purse and pulled out a small tub of something. “Mind if I…?”
“No.” I bent my head so she could reach my hair.
She rubbed the product on her hands, then ran it through my hair. I closed my eyes, savoring the sensation of her fingertips against my scalp. When I’d gone down on her, she’d had her fingers in my hair, tugging at the roots, urging me on?—
“I don’t know about this arrangement,” she said. “People are going to think I’m a…a cradle robber.”
I blinked open my eyes. “I’m hardly a child. I’m a grown man, and I can make my own decisions. I’ve decided I want to date you. What’s wrong with that?”
She tipped up my chin and assessed her work. “You’ve decided you want to fake- date me.”
Since that kiss after dinner with Brad, I’d been wishing it were real. Even before that, in Monterey. Hell, since I’d seen her on her yacht in that bikini almost twenty years ago. But given the flash in her eyes, it didn’t seem like the right time to mention my crush.
“Sure. But to everyone else, it looks like I’m dating you for real. Why wouldn’t I? You’re smart, ambitious, gorgeous. I’d be a fool not to want you.”
I was no fool. I wanted to step across the sideline and kiss those downturned lips, stroke her back through her silky blouse, then slide my hands lower to where her narrow skirt followed the curve of her ass.
She’d made it clear she didn’t want me.
She held my gaze for a moment, considering. Then she held up a mirror. “What do you think?”
I blinked at the mirror. What had she done to my hair? I didn’t look like a math nerd who’d been running sprints. I looked like a movie star.
“How did you do that?”
“Just a little hair cream.” She held up the tub. “Keep it. Use a light touch. This one has enough hold that it should carry you through one of your videos, even if you’re running.”
“That’s magic. There’s no way you won’t get a dozen new clients at Brad’s wedding.”
“What if he says something cruel?” Dropping the mirror into her bag, she bit her pillowy-soft lip, and I wished I could take her into my arms and comfort her.
I shook it off. We were talking, not kissing. Our last kiss had been for show, at least for her. “If he says anything, I’ll get in his face. No one messes with my date.”
She pursed her lips. “What, and then you’ll hit him with your caveman club? No, thanks. I meant what if he says something about you, about how young you are.”
I grinned. Was that what it was about? It wasn’t about me at all. It was about Carly’s insecurities. “Why would he? He’s older than you, and he’s marrying someone younger than me. He’s the ridiculous one.”
“It’s not the same for men. You know that.”
“Where is this coming from? You seemed fine with it before.”
“Fine is an overstatement. Remember our old rules?”
“Of course I do.” There was gravel in my voice. I remembered everything about that night.
“I ran into Hayley today.”
Oh. I could only imagine how fragile Carly’s feelings were now that her ex, someone she’d given twenty years of her life to, was marrying someone else. Someone young and pretty.
I wished Carly could see herself the way I did. Strong and smart and beautiful and kind. Hayley was a pale shadow, like printouts at work when the toner ran out. Carly would see it after Brad’s wedding was behind her. For now, the best way to get her there was to appeal to her business side.
“Our arrangement is working for both of us,” I said. “Let me take you to this wedding. It’ll be good for your business. And maybe a little fun too.”
She made a face.
“Okay, fun might be overstating things. But we’ll be in Spain, and if the wedding is awful, we’ll head to the beach or drive to the mountains. Whatever you want.”
She looked up at me from under her thick, mascara-black eyelashes, her irises clear as a glass of single-malt and just as delicate. I leaned toward her like she was a magnet and I was made of iron filings. But then I remembered how I’d felt after the last time I’d kissed her. Hurt. Ashamed of my feelings when she didn’t reciprocate them.
I straightened and stuck out my hand. “Deal?”
She shook my hand. “Okay.”
“Two weeks,” I said. “In two weeks, we’ll be in Spain. I promise, you’ll have a fantastic time. Plus, everyone will beg you to style them.”
She smiled. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I am.”
As she drove away a few minutes later, I frowned. I should’ve mentioned my mother and Charles were going to the wedding. I couldn’t blindside her like Vic had done to us when Brad joined us for dinner.
At the wedding, I’d protect her from my mother and Brad and anyone else who came for her. I clenched my fist.
I should’ve seen that protective impulse for the warning sign it was.
Falling for my fake date was against the rules.