Chapter 18 Andrea #2
I shoved the bucket into a small nook at the bottom of the cupboard under a twisted plastic Christmas tree and a broken clothes horse, giving an extra shove to the leaking lava lamp and novelty popcorn maker that looked dangerously close to escaping.
Mum’s “gifts” were stuffed onto the highest shelf where they wobbled like a badly stacked Jenga tower, one door slam away from total humiliation.
Nine fifty. Ten minutes. Shit. I mentally checked off my list of bare minimums. I needed a shower, and my teeth were still furry.
Then deodorant … maybe mascara? No—too try-hard.
Or was it? And was there even time to redo my nails?
Absolutely not. What if he showed up early?
What if he actually wanted coffee? My heart was thudding so hard I half expected Eliza to tell me to keep it down.
Seven minutes later, my sister and I were both sitting on the sofa, flicking oh, so casually through carefully selected magazines, our collection of Heat, Closer, and Take a Break stashed under the sofa along with a stray box of tampons.
This was the time for my three copies of Art Monthly to shine, along with an ancient copy of Tatler Eliza had managed to dig out.
Not that we were bothered about impressing Mr. Billionaire.
We just didn’t feel entirely comfortable with anyone knowing about our addiction to Torso of the Week or how thoroughly thumbed the I Married my Cousin’s Ghost article was.
That was all.
A quick spritz of Eliza’s Red Vanilla perfume had almost erased the scent of three-day-old pepperoni, and my apartment felt quite tranquil. I could get used to this. Shame we actually had to live in it. Otherwise, it might have stayed that way.
The entry buzzer rattled through the hall, and I jumped.
“Right, you know the plan,” I said. Eliza nodded with all the solemnity of a jewel thief about to rappel down a skyscraper. She’d say hi to Liam, then vanish to her room. Close enough to eavesdrop and assist with the postmortem if my brain melted.
I gave myself a quick once-over in the hall mirror: denim cutoffs, surprisingly flattering, and my favorite white band tee. Aerosmith. I liked the logo. And the music. The fact that the fabric sat well across my chest was purely incidental.
My cheeks were still flushed from the frantic cleaning frenzy—showering hadn’t cooled me down at all. Hopefully, he wouldn’t notice. I took a deep breath and visualized calm.
It was really no big deal.
Guys came over all the time.
Well. Not for a while, to be honest. But sometimes.
And Liam was just another guy.
Except richer and taller and someone I couldn’t stand.
I buzzed him in.
*
Liam balanced his paper coffee cup on his knee. He looked huge in my living room. Huge and totally unreal. I could hardly believe he was sitting there, cool as a cucumber, nestled into my faded sofa with the old saggy IKEA cushions that we’d done our best to plump up, but failed.
“I got you an oat milk flat white,” he said. “You didn’t answer my text.”
I’d been way too busy wiping toothpaste blobs off the bathroom mirror with the sleeve of my T-shirt to check my messages.
“Yes, that’s what I … um, thanks.”
I kept my upper arms pressed against my sides in case sweat marks were showing under my pits. Fuck.
“The wedding’s in just under three weeks,” he continued, annoyingly calm. “Between now and then, we’ll need to make sure we’re ready.”
“Ready,” I echoed. “You mean, to convince people we’re not strangers?”
“That would be a good idea, yes.”
I took a long sip of my coffee. It was exactly how I liked it. How could he have known?
He set his own cup down carefully. “We’ll need a schedule for the next couple of weeks. Dinner, maybe an event or two. Enough to build a trail, at least. In case someone asks why there are no photos of us together.”
“A dating roster?” I raised an eyebrow. “And they say romance is dead. You do realize normal couples don’t make Gantt charts to prove they’re in love?”
“I prefer spreadsheets.”
Was he … joking? His mouth remained a firm line. Hard to tell.
“All right,” I said, slumping back into the sofa cushions. “What do you want to discuss?”
He paused. “We can get to that. The first issue is … Novexia. There may be crossover between my friends and associates at Nick’s wedding and people at the office. Especially senior people.”
I hadn’t thought of that. I’d assumed the wedding act would somehow exist in isolation, and we could keep it separate from the rest of our lives. Especially from the office. But of course, it couldn’t.
Everyone had seen me chase Liam down at the big meeting. They knew something was up.
How would that work if … if Liam had been my boyfriend for the previous nine months? That made no sense at all.
Surely, he must have thought about this already?
“I’ve thought about this already,” he said coolly. “It’s plausible you wanted to catch up with me before I gave the speech. I’d just got off my flight, of course, and you were grabbing me because—” He stopped. My ears started to burn. The last thing I wanted to do was relive this.
“You grabbed me”—his eyes seemed to soften. Did I imagine that?—“because I was your boyfriend. And you wanted to talk to me. Not because you thought I was someone else.”
“So our story is, I figured your inaugural speech at Novexia was so unimportant that the entire company could wait for me to have a little boyfriend-girlfriend chat with you?” I could hardly think of anything more entitled. “What kind of spoiled little princess would do that?”
“I’ve seen worse,” he said casually. “Besides. Of course you’d missed me.” He pursed his lips like he was trying not to smile. Was he?
“I missed you? Since I’d seen you the day before?”
“I’m very missable.” His face was deadpan. “Anyway, nobody knows that. I got into the country the day before, so it’s entirely feasible we hadn’t yet caught up. Regardless. We don’t have a lot of choice. Do you have a better idea?”
I wasn’t comfortable about the idea of slotting me into the role of needy girlfriend in this narrative. “No, but … this is … just, no.”
“Is it any worse than what actually happened? You did throw yourself at me in front of the whole company. Wouldn’t it be better if they thought we had some history?”
Shit. I’d thought the whole accosting the boss thing was the pinnacle of my mortification. But maybe it would be better if the story were adapted to suit this new angle? Certifiable lunatic with no respect for boundaries, or Crown Princess of Neediness?
Tough call.
“I guess … we could say that. But wouldn’t it be preferable if we let people at Novexia assume we’d only just started dating? Since you got here, I mean. And then … if someone asks, or finds out about … you know—”
“How we fell in love at Comic Con?” His smile was dry.
“Yes. If they hear it’s been nine months, not a couple of weeks—” Crap. Monish and Kelly would never buy this. They’d been across the entire von Roth dick-swinging drama from the start. They knew exactly why I’d jumped on Liam.
“Can’t we just keep the whole wedding-dating thing a secret from the office?” I asked. “Why does anyone at Novexia even have to know?”
Liam was appraising me calmly, like I wasn’t really a person, just a problem he had to process.
I preferred the version of him I’d met in the lift—the Liam who’d cracked stupid jokes about douches and donkeys.
What the hell had happened to that guy? He was …
funny. Was it really possible he’d been a figment of my imagination? How was it he was so … detached, now?
“Too risky, I’m afraid. Nick and Juliette are extremely well connected. The wedding will be … Well. It won’t be a small affair, put it that way. We can’t have one story at the wedding and another at the office.”
“Okay. But my friends at work … they already know I haven’t been dating you for months and months. Gerald introduced us at the bar that night. On the rooftop—remember?” I couldn’t believe Liam—or at least Bonnie—hadn’t considered this.
“Yes. I do recall.” He placed a finger on his lips like he was thinking through the best approach.
“So … what do we … I mean …” Shit. This was getting more complicated by the minute.
Liam looked down at his knees. It was very silent in my living room, just the sound of Mr. Darcy scratching at something under the sofa, the fridge humming in the kitchen.
“Okay,” he said after a minute. “We proceed with the nine-month Comic Con story with Hugo and co., as well as anyone else at the wedding. As for your work friends, it’s up to you whether you tell them we’ve been dating since then and that you’ve been keeping it a secret, or that we started dating more recently. What seems more workable?”
I was surprised he didn’t whip out a whiteboard and start ideating.
“I … I don’t know.” But I did know. There was no way I could tell Monish and Kelly that I’d known Liam all along.
I’d just have to say Liam and I connected after that first hookup, and things had just …
flowed. And even that seemed like a long shot after what we’d said about him. A walking red flag.
Fuck. They’d never buy it.
“What do we do if it gets out at the wedding that I really didn’t know you when you showed up at Novexia, though?” I asked. “Won’t that cause a problem for your … thing? With Hugo?”
“It will, yes. So if that happens, I’ll need you to tell your friends we’d been dating in secret all that time.
No matter how awkward.” He leaned back and folded his arms. “I need to know you’ll see this through.
You’re either in, or you’re out. And if you’re out, I’ll tear up the NDA. There’s no halfway option with this.”
I hadn’t foreseen something like this. It all seemed a lot more real than I was imagining, and a lot less fun.
Liam wasn’t squirming anymore—the tension had shifted in his favor.
I didn’t want to lose the safety net he’d offered against redundancy, and I certainly didn’t want to relinquish the ￡10,000 either.