12. SOFIA
12
SOFIA
“ W hat the actual fuck , Ben?” I exploded when I was sure that Richie was gone and he wouldn’t see it. “Married? What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was just thinking that he wants a family. He’s serious about that, and we can give him that.”
“What do you mean, ‘we can give him that’?” I hissed. “We can’t give him anything! We’re not married and there’s no way in hell that we’re doing this.”
“I can’t tell him it was a lie,” I said quickly. “If we tell him now, then he’ll drop the project for sure. But if we keep pretending…”
“You want me to pretend to be married ?” Sofia asked, her eyes narrowed.
I nodded. “Yeah. It won’t be for long, just until we get this project and we don’t have to see Richard face-to-face all the time. Then we get to go back home to our normal lives and you don’t have to see me ever again. It won’t be that hard to pretend that we’re together.”
“Really?” I asked hotly. “Because right now I can’t do anything else but hate you.” I was seething. I couldn’t believe what he’d done! Married!?
Ben looked irritated and grabbed another cracker, sticking a large piece of cheese on it and biting into it. He chewed, bouncing his leg on the ball of his foot.
“It’s bad enough that I opened up about my past to Richie—”
“I didn’t ask you to do that—”
“I was bailing you out! You were going under with him asking you to talk about something other than business when we all know that’s all there is to you.” I glared at him. Ben’s expressionless mask slipped into place again.
I knew that face by now. It wasn’t hard to tell that Ben was used to hiding whatever he was thinking. His poker face was good for hiding emotions but parts of Ben were a lot more transparent than he realized.
“I can’t suddenly pretend that I’m married to you,” I said.
Ben shook his head. “It’s the only way we’ll get this project, Sofia.”
I tried to manage my emotions. There were too many of them, and when this happened, I would get flustered and my anxiety would spike.
We had to get this project. I didn’t want to go home and know that we’d failed. I wasn’t going to get a whole lot out of this deal. A raise, sure, but other than that… it was more something that would look good on Ben’s résumé, but that didn’t mean that I would just give up.
But he’d blatantly lied . And he’d drawn me into it and I hadn’t had a say.
I took a deep breath through my nose for five counts, held it for eight, and let it out slowly again.
I repeated the process three times to calm myself, and Ben ate his crackers, allowing me the time to get it together.
He didn’t push me to say or do something until I could get my anxiety spike under control. If I wasn’t this angry at him, I would have appreciated it, but I could only dish out so many emotions for him at a time, and I was full up on rage right now.
“I can’t believe you did this,” I said, my voice calmer now.
“I know.” Ben shook his head. “But what’s done is done, and if we get this project, a lot of people will get a lot of things they need.”
He was right, and damn him for using that against me, too. I wanted to help the people. I wanted this project to go through.
Damn it.
“I’m going to take a moment and go to my room,” I said evenly. “I’ll meet you for lunch and we can discuss this, but I need some time.”
“That’s fine,” Ben said. He was frustratingly calm after what he’d done.
But maybe lying and deceit came easy to him.
That just pissed me off more, and I left the living room before my anxiety spiked again and my anger returned with renewed force.
When I got to my room, I closed my door harder than I should have and stomped my foot. I cried out and gritted my teeth before I forced myself to take deep breaths again.
I grabbed my phone and dialed Elena.
“You have no idea what just happened,” I seethed into the phone the moment she answered.
“What?”
“He told the client that we’re married.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
I explained to Elena what had happened, how Ben had decided to hijack the conversation and change the entire game.
“Oh, my God,” Elena breathed once I finished my story.
“I know!”
“What are you going to do?”
“What can I do? If Richard finds out that Ben lied, we’ll lose the project. If we carry on and pretend it’s true, I guess there’s a chance we could get it. I don’t know.” I let out a heavy breath.
“Maybe it won’t be that bad,” Elena said.
I froze in horror and for a moment, I said nothing.
“Are you still there?” Elena asked.
“Yeah. How can you say that? How can it not be that bad ?”
“You can’t go back on it now, right?”
I shook my head. “No, but I’m the last person on Earth for this kind of ruse. I mean, I don’t believe in love and relationships, and the whole thing about happily ever after… it’s just not for me. And now I have to play happy families with Ben?” I squeezed my eyes shut and sank onto the couch in my living room. I rubbed my forehead with my fingertips.
“It’s just a short while,” Elena said.
“It’s a lie.”
“Yeah, I know. And it’s completely unethical and immoral and all the other bad words we can attach to it, but it’s happened, and now you have to deal with it.”
She was right. Elena was always so objective, looking at the logic. Sometimes, that was exactly what I needed, but sometimes I wanted her to rant with me and tell me what a complete asshole Ben was for doing that.
“Just have fun with it,” Elena suggested. “At the end of it, you’ll get something out of it, so it’s not for nothing. Besides, maybe you can push it a little further and have some real fun.” I heard the smile in her voice.
“I’m not sleeping with him,” I said flatly.
“Why not? You said he was incredible in bed.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“If he knows it’s not serious, and you know it’s not serious, why not?”
I couldn’t answer that. It all just seemed so wrong. But sleeping with Ben again… a shiver ran down my spine just thinking about the way he’d touched me that first night, the way he’d looked at me, the way he’d pushed me to the very edge and brought me back begging for more.
“Fine,” I said to Elena. “Maybe you’re right.”
Elena chuckled. “I’m always right.”
I laughed despite myself. “Don’t let it go to your head just because it’s true.”
We laughed together and it helped to release some of the tension.
“I can’t wait to hear what you guys get up to,” Elena said.
I groaned, but I was still smiling. “I’ll talk to you later.”
We ended the call and I put my phone on the coffee table in front of me.
Shit.
This was going to be interesting. A mess, but an interesting one.
I still couldn’t believe Ben had lied to Richard, and now I was trapped in this lie, unable to get out. It was completely against my grain to be so unethical, and Ben had used my need to help people against me.
The more I thought about it, the more upset I got.
I’d seen so many good things about him the last couple of days, spending time with him, seeing a part of him glimpse through that was completely different from the business shark he was to the world.
But this trumped everything good I’d seen. This was who Ben really was. This was the definition of Benjamin Blackwood, and thanks to his scheming and conniving, he’d turned me into an immoral person, too.
I was furious all over again and just waiting for our little lunch meeting so that I could lay into him all over again.
He deserved to know how upset I was.
Even if a part of me secretly liked the idea of being that close to Ben, pretending to be married, and all that entailed…
No, no, no , I scolded myself.
That wasn’t what this was about.
I had to keep my mind on business, not on sex.
But what if business was sex in this case?