Chapter Four
How could the ladies honor their contracts if they were puking their organs out, amongst other things?
They couldn’t.
So how could she possibly spin food poisoning?
She couldn’t…
Plan B.
She had one hour to find replacements, get them dressed, and have them learn the scripts she had written out for each of the bosses. It was too short notice to go the professional route. And she didn’t have a bunch of friends she could call on. At that moment, her cousin walked into the apartment. But Lindsey did have friends.
“Linds?” She grabbed her cousin by the arms. Lindsey’s attention remained fixed on her hair. “Stop looking at my hair and listen to me. Today is your lucky day. And your two other friends, Marina and Louise.” She quickly explained the situation, and three minutes later she found herself back at square one.
Lindsey immediately said no, she would pee herself; she’d be so nervous. Two more calls later, and Marina needed a two-month heads-up so she could lose five pounds at least as if she needed that, and Louise preferred to fantasize about them rather than meet them in person as their freaking pretend fiancée. Her ovaries could never, she said.
Okay. Plan C.
McKenna took a deep breath. It was on her to-do list, which meant it needed to be done. She couldn’t bring herself to mark anything on her list with a big, fat red x. She didn’t fail. She allowed something to be pending , but that was it. And this couldn't be postponed. They needed three fiancées for a couple of hours for one night only. And that night was tonight.
Failure was just not an option.
They wanted three pretend fiancées? She could be all three herself.
“I’ll have to do this myself,” McKenna said, biting her lip and glancing at her watch. It was fine. She knew the script. She had written it after all. She just needed to show up. That was all.
“Mac, hmm, but your hair?” Lindsey reminded her.
“Right. You have ten minutes; just do what you can,” McKenna said, sitting down on a chair. Rattled and under pressure, Lindsey sprayed her hair with water and frantically coated her tresses with the detangling conditioner.
While her cousin tried to do some damage control, McKenna called a designer boutique, threw around her bosses name like confetti, and soon everyone was jumping to do her bidding.
She then leaped into the shower, rinsed her hair, reconditioned it again, and scrubbed her skin to within an inch of its life. By the time she was done in the bathroom, Lindsey had already opened the door for the boutique delivery person, who dropped a wide variety of dresses for her to choose from.
McKenna didn’t stop for a moment. She speedily rifled through the rack of clothes and, in her towel, found what she thought were the three perfect dresses before she slipped into a pair of panties. None of the dresses accommodated a bra, so braless it was.
Lindsey frantically followed behind her, trying to fiddle with her hair as McKenna got dressed.
“Would you just sit for a moment?” Lindsey cried. Her cousin was in luck. She had to sit down to put on some makeup, not that it would help her plain facial existence. Actually, it wouldn’t even matter at all given her hair now. She no longer wore a tower-high frenetic beehive hairdo.
Instead, she now sported a frenzied mop kind of look. Lindsey had managed to comb out all the tangles, then quickly finger-dried McKenna’s shoulder-length hair, and now she looked like a fluff ball.
Her hair was too clean; the static was absolutely insane. She looked like Einstein’s daughter. She needed hairspray to tame her flying-away hair, but Lindsey was adamant about her never using any kind of hair spray ever again.
Concentrating really hard, and as quickly as she could, Lindsey managed to pin McKenna’s tresses into a bun, soothing the fluffy strands back with some hair wax, too afraid to use anything else on her hair.
By the time McKenna reached her car, carrying an overnight bag with two more dresses and two more pairs of shoes—because yes, she would have to change in her car if she had any chance of pulling off this three fake fiancées gig, three times in a row.
She gave herself one cursory glance in the rearview mirror of her car and groaned. Whatever sleekness Lindsey had tried to instill in her hair failed. Large tendrils of her hair, fluffy and almost buzzing with electricity, escaped the confinement of the bun and now stood all around her head.
It is what it is.
First up was Kade. His favorite color was red. So naturally, she’d chosen a red dress for him. The gown was made of the finest material money could buy, the fabric so flimsy and whimsical it flowed like water over her curves. The thick straps left most of her shoulder bare and dipped down her back to reveal more skin than she had ever revealed before.
He was playful but dangerous. Two words that described him best. He only ate the red M&M's, so McKenna made it her duty to separate the colors, keeping the rest for herself and all the red ones in a crystal jar in his office.
She was meeting him at an art gallery. For what reason she had no idea.
Her only mantra was not to trip and fall over nothing but air. She’d already made up an excuse to leave after she’d shown her face enough.
She was in fact Dr. Azura, soon to be Dr. Azura Howard if the ring on her finger was anything to go by. Yes, the ring was as fake as her pretending to be Kade’s fiancée. She won it while playing ring toss at an amusement park. She'd won two other rings, too. One for Ledger and one for Hayden.
She just had to make sure no one would be close enough to scrutinize the big ol’ plastic diamond on her finger.