6. Olivia
CHAPTER 6
OLIVIA
“I ’d like to take you out to dinner tonight,” Charlie said.
Olivia looked up from the book she had been reading. “You’d like what?”
“I’d like it if we could go out to dinner together,” Charlie repeated. “Would you be open to that?”
“Why?” Olivia asked. “You’re not hoping we’ll be seen together, are you?”
“Nothing like that. In fact, I have a restaurant in mind that’s off the beaten path, and it’s unlikely anyone will see us there. It’s called Amore . ”
“So, again… why do you want to do this?”
“We’ve got the meeting with the executor tomorrow,” Charlie explained. “We should be thinking about what we’re going to say to him. After all, we have to convince him that we’re in love. That our marriage is genuine.”
“We can’t just tell him that?”
“No, I don’t think so. Rogan’s going to be suspicious. He’s going to think there’s a chance I’ve made the whole thing up in order to claim my inheritance.”
“Wow, I wonder what would make a person think that about you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Charlie said, rolling his eyes. “The point is, you need Rogan to believe this as much as I do. So you can sit there throwing darts at me about how unethical you think I am, or you can help me come up with a story about how you and I got together.”
“And this necessitates going out to dinner why, exactly?”
“Look, I’m trying to make this as nice as possible,” Charlie said. “I think it would be nice for us to have a meal together. If you don’t want to do that, fine. We can sort out our story here. But I think it would be more fun over some good food. That’s all I'm saying.”
Olivia sighed. She knew she was just being difficult. If the two of them were going to have to sit down for a serious conversation anyway — and Charlie was right, they did need to do that — it made just as much sense to do it over dinner, and it might be fun. “All right,” she agreed. “Dinner it is. Do I need to dress up?”
“No, you’re okay in that.” He gestured to her outfit. Olivia was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt. It was true that they were nice jeans — they were new, and the most expensive pair she owned. But she wouldn’t have considered this an appropriate outfit for a professional dinner.
“Are we going now?” she asked him.
“I’m hungry now. Are you?”
“I could eat.”
“Let’s do it, then.”
They went out to his car. It was Olivia’s first time inside it, a fact she didn’t fully realize until she was climbing in. The interior was luxurious — leather seats that seemed to form to her shape, so she felt completely supported. She saw on the dash panel that they were heated, too, but it was a warm evening, so she didn’t try that feature.
“What kind of restaurant is it?” she asked as they pulled out.
“Italian,” he said. “I know that’s a little simple, but it really is one of my favorites. Give me a good hearty pasta dish over fancy fusion food any day of the week.”
“I agree, actually,” Olivia admitted. “It always makes me feel a little uncultured, but all my heart really wants is noodles and cheese.”
“You’re going to love this place, then,” he assured her. “You’re going to have the best meal of your life — trust me.
It took twenty minutes to get to Amore, and when they did, Charlie handed off the car to a valet. Olivia stared. “I thought you said I would be fine in jeans!”
“You are fine,” Charlie assured her. “You look good.”
“This place is so nice!”
“You’re dressed as casually as I am,” he pointed out.
“Well, maybe you should have worn something nicer too.” But his point did help her to relax a bit. At least she wasn’t going to stand out by herself. They both would.
That was proved false when they got inside. The place was nearly empty, with the exception of the staff. “I don’t get it,” Olivia murmured. “There’s really no one here?”
“Hardly anybody knows about this place. It’s a very well-kept secret. You didn’t know about it, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” she agreed. “But that can’t be what they want, right? That’s a terrible business model.”
“Nah. At a place like this, the exclusivity is built into the prices.”
They sat down at the table the host indicated for them, and Olivia took the menu that was handed to her. “There aren’t any prices listed,” she observed.
“I’m buying.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“Of course you can. This was my idea, and I picked the restaurant. Of course I’m going to pay. It’s not up for debate.” He flagged down a server and handed over his credit card. “Everything tonight will be on this card,” he said, and the server nodded and went away.
Olivia had to laugh. “You’re really used to getting your own way about things.”
“Olivia, respectfully, this is an expensive place.”
“You don’t think I can afford it?”
“I have no idea what you can afford. I don’t know anything about your personal finances, and I’m not asking. What I know is that I can afford it. It won’t make any significant difference to my bank account. So just let me get it, all right? Consider it a part of your compensation for this whole fake marriage situation.”
“I guess if we were really married, I wouldn’t object to my husband buying dinner.”
“Exactly,” Charlie agreed. “So there you go.”
Wine was poured for the two of them. Charlie sipped his and nodded to the server, who went away again. Olivia picked up her wine and swirled the glass slowly, unable to quite shake the feeling that it would be wasteful to drink this. This wine seemed too rare and special to be used as something so common as a beverage.
Charlie drained half his glass at once. “All right,” he said. “What’s the story?”
“The story of how we got together?”
“Yeah.”
“We already told your family that we met in Boston at some kind of work thing, so I guess we have to stick to that story.”
“But we need details,” he persisted. “What was the work thing? What kind of work event would you and I both have been at?”
“Do you even have a job?”
“I’m on the board of my family’s company, but I can’t think how you and I would have crossed paths.”
“Okay, so let’s try a different tact. Let’s say I was at a realty conference and you just happened to be at the hotel bar,” Olivia suggested. “You saw me and offered to buy me a drink.”
“People will believe that,” Charlie agreed. “It sounds like the sort of thing I would do.”
“You do that a lot, do you?”
“Buy drinks for pretty girls? Sure. Why else does a man go to a bar?”
“So when I called you a rich playboy, I wasn’t exactly missing the mark by miles.”
“Not exactly,” Charlie agreed, grinning in a way that let Olivia know the label didn’t bother him. Maybe he even wore it with a bit of pride.
I need to be careful around him .
There was no doubt that Charlie was attractive. What was more, he was charming. Olivia couldn't help feeling drawn in by him whenever they spent time together — to know him was exciting, and to be a part of his world — a part of his life — made her feel special.
But she wasn’t special. She needed to remember that. This thing between the two of them — it wasn’t real. It didn’t mean anything. It was just an arrangement to help him sell his house, and when it was over, they’d go their separate ways. He would bring other women to this strange, exclusive Italian place, and he wouldn’t even be thinking about the fact that he had once been here with Olivia. This night was special and out of the ordinary for her, but for him it was standard. He had handed over his credit card without a second thought. He probably came here all the time.
This was what she wanted. She had only gotten into this because she had known it was temporary.
But she needed to make sure she remembered that. She had to guard her emotions.
“Okay,” she said. “So that’s the story. We met at a bar while I was at a conference.”
“And what then?”
“What do you mean?”
“We didn’t just meet at a bar and waltz down the aisle. What happened next?”
“Oh, God, I don’t know,” Olivia said. “I guess we probably spent the rest of the time I was in Boston together. We got close in a hurry, and we exchanged contact information when I left. We started traveling to see each other whenever we could, me going up to Boston or you coming here. We agreed not to tell our friends or family until we were sure of how serious we were, but secretly, we both felt like it was turning into something. And then we got the news about your aunt’s will, we talked about it, and even though it felt sort of crazy, we decided to take the plunge.”
Charlie stared at her. “That’s quite a tale.”
“You don’t like it? We can come up with something else.”
“I like it fine,” he said. “I guess I’m just surprised you were able to come up with something so quickly, that’s all. That’s pretty impressive.”
“I don’t know. It’s just a story,” she said. “It’s not like it’s based on anything.”
“You must have had that in your mind for a while, though.”
“Not really. I just figure, if I met someone I liked at a bar, that’s probably the way things would go,” Olivia said.
“You think so? You mean, you’d want things to get serious quickly like that?”
“I wouldn’t have married someone I’d just met a few weeks ago, no.”
“But the rest of it. The rest of the story. You would have done all that?”
Olivia was confused. “The rest of it is just normal dating stuff,” she said. “Meeting someone, exchanging phone numbers, and seeing each other again. That’s what anyone would do if they met someone they were interested in.”
“Maybe.” Charlie said dubiously.
“You wouldn’t?”
“I don’t know that I’d give out my phone number, no.”
Olivia shrugged. “I guess I don’t see that as such a big deal,” she said. “If I like someone enough that I’d want to see them again, I have to give them a way to get in touch with me. That only makes sense.”
Charlie took a sip of his wine and said nothing.
He really is a player. The thought of giving someone his number, of connecting with someone multiple times, was foreign to him. Olivia felt even more determined to keep her distance from this man to whom she was married. He didn’t seem like someone who ought to be trusted with anybody’s heart.
“Do you think the story is good?” she pressed him.
“It’s good enough,” he said. “I think it will convince Rogan — or, at least, it has as good a chance as anything else does. He won’t be able to disprove any of it, and it sounds like the kind of thing that might have really happened. It just didn’t really happen to us — but I think we stand a good chance at convincing him it did.”
Olivia nodded.
The rest of dinner proceeded in relative silence. Olivia was too lost in her own thoughts to find very much to say to Charlie.
He just seemed to take all these things in such stride. Surely that couldn’t be normal. Was it possible he had been married before?
No, of course he hadn’t been. That would have come up at the wedding. His brothers and sister hadn’t hesitated to say disparaging things about him. If this had been a second or third marriage, there would have been wisecracks.
No, it was just that he was so… so unserious when it came to the idea of relationships and commitment. That was what made him seem as if he didn’t notice what was going on around him, as if none of it mattered to him very much. He didn’t care about this marriage because soon enough it would be in the past. He didn’t care about Olivia because she was nothing more than a means to an end.
She had to ensure that she continued to think of him in the same way.