Chapter 5 Baird
CHAPTER FIVE
BAIRD
Maia gaped at me from her armchair, those phenomenal violet eyes wide behind her black-framed glasses. She looked adorably shocked and confused.
All the while my heart raced like a motherfucker as I waited for her response.
So okay, what I’d suggested sounded crazy.
But in my mind, it was the perfect plan.
“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” She shook her head, blinking rapidly. “I thought I heard you say you’ll be my fiancé for the campaign.”
“I did.” I grinned. “It’s an amazing plan.”
“I—”
“Think about it.” I lowered to my haunches in front of her so she could see my sincerity.
“I need to clean up my public image. What better way than to show I’m settling down with my Mrs.?
You need a fiancé. And not to sound like a wanker, but I think Pennington’s would be pretty fucking happy to switch out a finance guy with a professional football player for their campaign. End result—you get to keep your job.”
Maia smacked her hands down on my shoulders to shake me. “Baird, we would be getting married. Not just engaged. Like, married. In front of the entire country, I might add. Globally, if this goes viral.”
Nerves fluttered in my stomach. The good kind. “Aye. I know. We’ll just get divorced after a year or so.” Or not. By then, I hoped I’d convinced Maia I was the one. That was the third part of this exceptional plan, but I couldn’t share that with her.
I was a mess of emotions for this woman. The feel and sound of her crying in my arms was like a nightmare. Will ending things broke my heart for her, but the selfish arsehole in me was elated. Totally fucking elated.
This was my in.
But Maia needed time. Only a self-involved prick would outright pursue her after she’d broken up with her fiancé. Pretending to be her fiancé allowed me to stealth seduce her.
Somewhat manipulative?
Aye, probably.
However, I knew I could make Maia happier than anyone else could if she gave me the chance. I’d lay the world at her feet.
This was the best plan I’d ever had in my life.
“No.” Maia dropped her hands from my shoulders. “That’s insane. I’m not asking you to fake a marriage with me. I think it’s illegal.”
I laughed as I stood up because she was so goddamn cute. “It’s only illegal if you’re doing it so someone can get a visa.”
“Well … it doesn’t mean it’s right. It would be totally selfish of me.
Baird … our lives will be splashed across social media, and because of who you are, the tabloids will follow this story.
Do you realize this could mean you can’t have sexual relationships with other women unless you completely trusted they wouldn’t sell the story to the newspapers? ”
Affronted that her first thought was that my libido couldn’t take celibacy, I scowled. “Do you think I’m some sex-crazed animal or something?”
Her expression slackened with surprise. “Of course not. I just … you’re … you flirt with everything that moves, Baird. You’re only twenty-six years old. Pretty sure months without sex will have an adverse effect on you.”
“I can do it. I’m offended you think otherwise.”
“You know I don’t mean to offend you.” Maia stood to face me, squeezing my arm in reassurance. “I just don’t think you’ve thought this plan through.”
“Look, if you don’t want the added scrutiny of the media, I get it.” I did, but I was fully disappointed she didn’t see merit in the idea.
“It’s not really that … it’s just … I’ve alluded to it before, but I was always under a microscope at school.
Before I moved in with Dad. For all the wrong reasons.
” She tugged nervously at the cropped top that kept revealing flashes of smooth olive skin.
“It might be a bit of a trigger for me if that were to happen again.”
Concern had me reaching for her waist, needing to touch her. I gave it a squeeze. “Does that have anything to do with your mum?”
Maia gave me a sad smile. “I wonder how many people realize how perceptive you are for your age.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Stop banging on about our tiny age gap.”
“I’m thirty. In woman years, that’s like a ten-year age gap, not four.”
“Bullshit.” I tugged her with me to the couch, so she had no choice but to sit cuddled up next to me. “Talk to me. Because I am not giving up on this plan until you can convince me you really hate it.”
Maia pulled her knees up onto the couch and stretched her arm out along the back of it. I liked that she was already so comfortable with my proximity. It gave me hope for the future. And the success of the most amazing plan a man in unrequited love had ever dreamed up.
Yet, I did not love the expression on Maia’s face. The tightness around her mouth and eyes as she looked into mine and quickly glanced away.
Like she was ashamed.
Fuck.
“Babe, you can tell me anything. I am a judgment-free zone.”
She picked at the fabric of her sofa, her throat working as if against emotion that choked her.
Wanting to alleviate the tension, I offered, “I know a guy, and I’m not naming names, who let a lassie stick a Barbie doll up his arse, and his butthole vacuumed the doll right up there. Sucked it right in and they couldn’t get it out. He had to go to the hospital.”
Just like that, Maia’s eyes lit with shock and laughter. Her lips trembled. “You do not.”
“I fucking do. And until now, I’m the only one other than the doctors and his lassie who knows about it because”—I gestured to myself—“judgment. Free. Zone.”
Maia suddenly cackled, and I grinned as she bowed toward me with the force of her amusement.
“Do you know what’s even better?”
She shook her head, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.
“It was Interior Designer Barbie.”
Maia howled and I joined her, rubbing a hand over her knee, grateful I’d lifted her mood. “I don’t think that’s quite the interior she had in mind for designing.”
“Stop!” Maia wheezed, shoving me.
“I don’t think she wanted to be quite as involved in the demo either. Especially anal demolition. What a stinkin’ mess.”
She pushed me even harder as she laughed and squealed, “I-I’m g-going to pee myself! Stop!”
“All right, all right. I’ll stop. But do you get my point?”
She nodded, removing her glasses to wipe at her eyes. Her long lashes spiked with the wet and made her irises look even more violet. Once she caught her breath, she smiled at me. Such a sweet, sexy smile. “Is that a true story?”
“Absolutely. I’ve got way worse than that, but I don’t want to traumatize you. My friends know I don’t judge and that they can tell me anything, so I get all the juicy stories.”
Maia considered me, a soft expression on her face. “Okay. Well … this isn’t quite ‘Barbie up the butt’ level of story.”
I waited patiently.
She exhaled but then began. “I grew up not knowing who my dad was. Mum finally gave me a name after years of me begging to know. By that point, she was addicted to smack. We lived in this terrible block of flats where people are just forgotten because it was the only place we could afford. I was scared every day. Not only because of where we lived but because I’d taken on the role of parent and I was terrified of my mum overdosing.
Also Mum always had some guy around who liked getting strung out with her.
As I got older, that got more dangerous for me. ”
The thought of anyone trying to hurt her like that … “My, I’m sorry.”
“People at school knew my mum was a heroin addict. And kids are not kind. I was bullied constantly. Other parents didn’t want their kids around me.
I felt ashamed every single day of my life.
I had to turn up at school in too-small clothes and I would steal soap just so I could get washed because Mum had spent her benefits on drugs. ”
My stomach knotted and I slid my hand over her knee again, soothing, comforting her.
“When I was fifteen, one of her boyfriends tried … he tried to …” She looked down, picking at her nail nervously. “Well, you know.”
“Fuck,” I hissed out angrily, trying to contain the emotion.
“I got away. But when I told Mum, she slapped me. Told me I was lying. It broke something in me because I always made excuses for her because I loved her. I always had compassion for her, even though her addiction was ruining us. But when she hit me and didn’t take my back, something died between us.
I told her she had a choice. It was me or heroin.
” Maia’s lips trembled, and I saw all the agony in her eyes as she met mine. “She didn’t choose me.”
If I didn’t already know I was in love with Maia MacLeod, I would have known right then. Because my chest goddamn ached for her.
“She didn’t deserve you,” I whispered.
“I know.” She nodded, reaching for my hand on her knee.
“I know. But even knowing something doesn’t mean you can rationalize it quite that easily.
Anyway, I took off. I went in search of my dad, and I found him here in Edinburgh.
It was hard for him finding out he had a kid and had missed all this time with me, but he didn’t turn me away.
He fought for me. He and my stepmum Grace tried to make up for the first fifteen years of my life.
“The most important thing for me was having people around who loved me and wanted the best for me. But I also noticed something that was a byproduct of that. I was now wearing decent clothes and had a good family at my back. People didn’t know about Mum.
And they treated me so differently from before.
I watched how they treated the kids at school who clearly didn’t have much.
Not just like they had less than, but like they were less than.
They treated them like I had been treated in my previous life. Like I was nothing. Uneducated. Trash.”
“Then they were cunts.”
Maia blinked at my crudeness but then smirked.
“Aye, they were. But as much as people don’t want to believe it, the way you present yourself to the world matters.
I began to hyperfocus on my presentation in the hopes no one would ever guess where I came from and who gave birth to me.
I’m ashamed of her, and I’m ashamed of myself for being ashamed of her.
I’m ashamed of myself for leaving her behind because I did love her. ”
“Of course you loved her. But you’re allowed to be ashamed of a woman who put you at risk and didn’t fight for you. And you are not your mother.”
“Rationally, I know that. But I carry a lot of guilt.” I shrugged sadly. “Anyway, there’s something else you should probably know before agreeing to this.”
“All right …?”
“We don’t talk about it a lot because of how sensitive a subject it is, but my dad has a record. He went to prison before I came into his life.”
Shock thrummed through me. Logan MacLeod was a bit of an intimidating dude, but he also was an upstanding guy who managed a couple of Braden Carmichael’s businesses for him. I tried to keep my expression neutral. “Why did he go to prison?”
“My aunt Shannon had a boyfriend who was abusing her. One day she tried to leave, and he beat her to a bloody pulp and almost raped her.”
Fucking hell. I pictured My’s tiny wee aunt and felt a murderous urge to kill some guy I didn’t know. And I understood why Logan MacLeod went to prison. “Your dad hurt him,” I guessed.
“He put him in a coma.” Maia shrugged. “Maybe I should feel otherwise, but I don’t blame my dad for doing what he did, even if the law does.”
“I don’t blame him either, My.”
“I didn’t think you would.” She smiled gratefully. “But my parents have pasts that other people would judge if they ever made it into the public sphere.”
“They won’t. We’ll make sure of it.”
“My point is, I’ve worked hard to get to where I am. The idea of splashing myself across social media and tabloids to be put under scrutiny … I don’t know if I’m built to deal with it.”
Damn it. How could I argue with that?
“But then …” She nibbled at her lips. “I don’t want to lose my job. And the campaign would only be for three months.”
Hope began to bloom. “It might be fun, My.”
She considered me. “Would it really help you out too?”
“Absolutely. It might even get me out of phony volunteer shite. Plus”—I wiggled my eyebrows in exaggeration—“can you imagine the look on Becky the Rat’s face when you tell her you’re now engaged to a professional footballer?”
Maia let out a gleeful snort of amusement, and my heart turned over.
“Is that a yes, My? Are we doing this thing?”