6. Kai
CHAPTER 6
KAI
“ U m, Mr. Nichols?”
Kai had been knee-deep in reading through a contract, picking it apart piece by piece, and it took him a second to rise from the depths of legal jargon and return to the real world. Matilda was standing in front of him with her lips pursed and her phone in hand. That was never a good combination.
“What’s happened?” he asked, bracing for the worst.
“Have you been online at all?”
Kai blinked at her, still trying to remember how to form a sentence that didn’t contain the words indemnity or confidentiality . “Uh, sorry. No, I haven’t. Should I have been?”
He was starting to worry properly now because she had that look on her face that meant she was about to tell him something that was going to take up the rest of his working day.
“Your friend Amy…” Matilda said.
Kai sighed. “I’m sorry. Has she been calling again saying her cat is sick? I told her to apologize to you for that.”
“Oh, she did,” Matilda said, brightening up for a brief second. “She was lovely, really. She even insisted she’d bring in a cake to the office as compensation. But she didn’t mention that you two were getting married?”
Kai sat up straight at that, so fast he felt his neck crick. “What?”
Matilda, her expression perfectly unreadable, handed him the phone she’d had clutched in her hand, the screen already open to the latest gossip sites that sometimes latched onto Kai’s personal life as fodder. Sure enough there was a picture of him and Amy, hugging each other tightly at the high school reunion, smug smiles plastered on their faces, underneath a headline that read Billionaire a Bachelor No Longer.
“Oh, God,” he groaned, sitting back in his chair and feeling a headache starting to thrum through the back of his skull.
“Guessing that’s just a rumor, then?” Matilda asked with a sympathetic smile.
“Yeah, but we’ve only got ourselves to blame for that one. Great.”
He handed Matilda her phone back.
“Want me to start on damage control?” she asked, prepared for battle as always, entirely unfazed, and Kai made a mental note to give her a raise simply for having to deal with all of this ridiculousness.
“Just give me a second to think it through…” he said, rubbing at the base of his neck. “Then we can come up with a strategy.”
Matilda let herself out, back to do actual work rather than field headlines about her boss’s social life, and Kai was alone once again.
He pushed the contract he’d been reading out of the way and let his forehead fall onto the desk with a thump. It wasn’t the end of the world; he was going to force himself to believe that, one way or another. And it wasn’t like he was upset about the thought of people thinking he and Amy were actually engaged. In fact, that thought lit up a pit of warmth in his stomach that he steered away from as soon as he felt it bloom. Because they were just friends , he and Amy, pretending otherwise had been a joke to play on all those terrible kids that had grown into terrible people at the reunion, and now it had gotten out of hand and out into the world. It was a mess, that’s what it was, something he’d be fielding questions about for weeks, something the tabloids would latch onto with hungry teeth, something that could very well have Amy getting stalked by photographers and God knew who else… She didn’t quite realize how much a part of his life all that stuff had become. Kai hadn’t really talked about it, preferring to ignore it. But now… well, now it could be a real problem.
His phone rang and Kai was about ready to hurl it through a window when his hand froze in midair, Jason Torres’s name flashing on the screen.
Good God, this day just kept getting worse. But If Kai ignored Jason’s phone call after blowing off that meeting, he’d never live it down. And considering he had never expected to hear from the man again, curiosity got the better of him.
“Hello?” he said, trying not to sound like he was in physical pain as he answered the call.
“Kai, why didn’t you just tell me the truth, man?!”
“Sorry?”
“I saw the announcement about your engagement. I don’t know why you made up that weak excuse that ‘something had come up’ to ditch the meeting. If you had said you were going to be out celebrating with your new fiancée, then it would have been no problem! I mean, if I had landed the girl of my dreams, you bet that I’m going to carve out time for her over work. I’m not losing that. I would have understood.”
“Uh, well…”
“All that to say, congratulations, man,” Jason continued jovially. “And I know whatever the tabloids say is usually trash, but that picture of you two is real cute. Where have you even been hiding this girl?”
“We’ve known each other since we were kids,” Kai said, too far into the depths of shock to stop himself from just blurting out facts. “Always been in touch one way or another.”
“Man, I’m happy for you,” Jason said, sounding so genuine that Kai couldn’t find the words to refute him.
“Well, thank you,” he said and hated himself immediately because there was no way of walking back from that gracefully, was there?
“Listen,” said Jason, steamrolling ahead before Kai had any chance of trying to fix this. “Like I said, if you had just told me you couldn’t do the meeting because you were proposing , then it would have been no problem to reschedule. And man, you must have been so nervous. I can’t blame you for getting the jitters and coming off a little flaky. So how about we let bygones be bygones and start fresh? Get that merger up and going again and pick up where we left off.”
The panic in Kai’s chest stilled and, because he was absolutely one hundred percent out of his depth and a complete idiot, he made a split-second decision to go along with an opportunity he never thought he’d get again.
“That would be amazing, Jason. Honestly.”
Not honestly, though. He wasn’t being honest at all. But it was like he was possessed, standing outside of his body and watching it say and do things that he had absolutely no control over, the sensible part of him quietly panicking in the background, watching the carnage like a slow-motion train wreck.
“Awesome,” Jason said, his happy-go-lucky voice at complete odds with the panic swirling in Kai’s gut. “And hey, I wasn’t exactly that congenial myself on the phone the other day. I got all offended over nothing and that’s not cool, you know?”
“I don’t blame you,” said Kai, grimacing because why did Jason have to be such a nice guy on top of it all? Kai felt like he was getting rock salt rubbed into a massive wound.
“No, man, I gotta own up to it. But like I said, it’s all water under the bridge now. In fact, I have a proposition for you.”
“Oh?” Kai said, frozen in his desk chair.
“My wife Jess and I are planning to go out for a week on our yacht just to get away for a while, you know?”
“I sure do.” He didn’t, but apparently the truth didn’t matter anymore.
“Why don’t you come with us, man? Jess suggested you bring your fiancée along, too. That way we can all get to know each other better and talk about some business on the boat instead of being stuck in an office. Good food, fresh air, and the big, wide ocean? What do you say?”
“That sounds amazing,” Kai said, feeling like a robot that had gotten its wiring mixed up.
“Awesome!” Jason exclaimed, sounding genuinely thrilled. “Man, Jess will be so excited. She passes on her congratulations to you and your bride-to-be as well.”
“Well, tell her thank you. That’s very kind.”
“Will do, man, will do.”
They hung up with Jason promising to email through all the necessary details, and Kai waited for the consequences of his actions to come up behind him and knock him down flat.
Oh God. Oh God , what had he gotten himself into? It took a full ten minutes of sitting at his desk to unthaw enough to stand up, inform Matilda that he would be out of reach for the rest of the day, then head down to the garage and start his car, ready to head to Amy’s apartment. Because if Kai was about to beg and grovel for her assistance to get out of this mess, he was going to have to do it in person.
Kai had always loved Amy’s little apartment, and it had been far too long since he’d been there. The thought made him sad at how far they had drifted away from each other for a while there. But Amy welcomed him in, not all that surprised to see him turning up in the middle of a random workday, barely paying him any attention as she continued to eat half a sandwich. As he took a seat at her counter, she pattered around her kitchen in bare feet, wearing her usual jeans and a tank top, her short hair scruffy and sticking out all over the place as always.
Kai didn’t even say anything when she opened the door to find him standing there. She’d taken one look at his face and the slump of his shoulders and let him in, leading him through to the kitchen and sliding a can of beer across the counter to him. Kai nursed it in both of his hands, not even sure if he could stomach a drink right now, while Amy cracked open a can for herself after finishing her sandwich.
“So?” she asked eventually when he still couldn’t figure out how to even begin telling her what happened. “Why have you shown up at my door looking like someone slashed your car tires?”
“Uh… I have maybe, really badly, screwed up?”
Amy raised an eyebrow, taking a sip of her beer before answering.
“Are you sure you want to come to me for advice?” she asked. “Or is this something you should be talking to your fancy lawyers about?”
“Well, no, because the screwup involves some very important people thinking you’re my fiancée.”
He grimaced, both internally and externally, and waited for her reaction, but she just looked kind of puzzled as she stood there with her beer in hand.
“Wait, what?” she asked, the information finally seeming to click into her brain. “What do you mean important people think that I’m your fiancée?”
“Have you been on social media at all today?”
“Not for anything important. Only to watch cat videos.”
“Of course,” Kai sighed, not surprised in the least and pulling out his phone to show her the article he had saved, the same one Matilda had shown him. Amy took his phone and instantly puckered her lips together like she was trying not to laugh.
“It’s not funny,” Kai said, hating every second of this.
“That’s… that’s kind of funny, though, isn’t it?” she said. “But that’s also karma well and truly biting us in the butt for our little stunt at the reunion, huh?”
“You’re not upset?” he asked, not wanting to analyze why that made him inexplicably happy.
“No? It’s just funny. But back to your problem. Who thinks that we’re getting married and why is that a bad thing?”
“The guy I had a meeting with that I… that was rescheduled. So I came to meet you at the reunion instead.”
“What about him?”
“He invited me to come on a week-long vacation on his yacht to catch up on business stuff instead of doing boring meetings behind a desk, you know.”
Amy’s eyebrows rose, impressed. “Oh wow. Well, that’s great, but I’m kind of failing to see the problem here or why our supposed engagement is an issue.”
“Because he started congratulating me on the engagement and invited you along as well. You know, as a couple’s vacation with him and his wife.”
Amy’s lips puckered again, stifling laughter and only barely succeeding.
“Oh, you just forged on ahead and didn’t correct him, huh?” she said, knowing him too well, an edge of slightly hysterical laughter still in her voice.
“Yeah.” Kai sighed. “And I said yes to everything, me going and you going and us going together as an engaged couple, so…”
At that Amy broke and started giggling, a hand over her mouth.
“Oh, Kai, dude, no. I thought you’d gotten so much better at thinking before you did things.”
“Yeah, well, I fell off the wagon, clearly.”
“So…” Amy prodded, having the decency to get her giggles in check.
“So what?”
“So what do you need me to do to get you out of this sticky situation you got yourself into? Because I’m assuming you can’t just tell this guy ‘Sorry, but we’re not actually getting married.’ That sounds like it would be bad, for business reasons or whatever. At the very least, it would make you look like a massive weirdo if you fessed up after a full conversation . Am I right?”
Kai could feel the relief flooding through his body and tried to smother it before he got ahead of himself.
“You’d seriously come along and pretend to be my fiancée for a week?”
Amy shrugged as if it were no big deal. “You came to my rescue when I was crazy enough to take on that reunion job. I owe you one. Besides, a vacation on a yacht? I can think of worse places to hang out for a week.”
“Just so we’re clear,” he said, desperately wanting to make sure Amy understood what she was about to get herself into. “You’re going to come along with me and help me save face with this guy, and we’re going to pretend to be getting married, all because I couldn’t use words properly. For a week , stuck together on a boat?”
“Yeah, sounds good to me.”
Kai slumped in his chair, letting his forehead rest against the counter as he finally let the relief wash over him, his lungs able to breathe properly for the first time since he’d hung up the call with Jason earlier that day.
“Oh, my God, you’re the actual best,” he said, still face first on the counter. He felt Amy pat his shoulder.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “Besides, it’ll be a way for me to help you out for once instead of you always wanting to help me.”
Aah, now it made more sense why Amy was so happy to jump on such a ridiculous plan to help him out. Neither of them had grown up in great situations, both of them from the poor side of town, and both of them the outcasts at school. But Amy hadn’t had the best relationship with her parents on top of it all. Anything they did for her was seen as a favor that needed to be returned, and to this day Amy had a complex about it, whether she wanted to admit it or not. Their lessons on “the world gives you nothing for free” had been taken too far sometimes. At sixteen she’d been buying her own groceries, walking to work after school because they wouldn’t give her a lift, and living at Kai’s half the time because at least his house was closer to school. To this day you couldn’t give her anything without her looking for the catch or expecting to have to pay it all back somehow. He hadn’t realized how ingrained it still was in her.
Kai changed the subject, not wanting to feel sad about things from Amy’s past that he could neither change nor fix.
“Have you recovered from the reunion yet?” he asked.
Amy’s face, surprisingly, lit up like a Christmas tree when he mentioned the reunion, and she immediately grabbed her phone.
“Oh, Kai, I’m so glad I did it.”
“That’s… literally the last thing I was expecting you to say.”
“Look!”
She shoved her phone in his face and the only information Kai could gather was that there was a whole bunch of emails marked read .
“Emails? And the good thing about that is what, exactly?”
“They’re all bookings,” Amy said with a delighted grin. “Lily Espinoza recommended me to a bunch of people because she actually felt safe enough to eat my food. There’s like a dozen emails all asking for quotes and dates.”
Kai stood and pulled Amy into a hug. “That’s great, Amy. I’m happy for you.”
“I’m happy for me too,” she said as he let her go, tucking a stray hair behind her ear, shy at the rare occurrence of her expressing pride. “So a vacation on a fancy boat sounds like the perfect celebration. Pretending to be your future wife is a small price to pay.”
Kai didn’t ask why it was all right for Lily Espinoza to recommend Amy’s company, but it was a “handout” if Kai did it. He didn’t want to bring the mood down, and it was something he was probably never going to understand anyway. Instead, he raised his beer to Amy’s, gave her a cheers, and drank to her success.