Chapter 14
JACQUELINE
Jesse hadn’t been kidding. He really did have a jet. We were lucky we hadn’t actually flown to France during our drunken bender.
I shook my head the moment I saw the sleek, gleaming, absurdly expensive-looking machine that apparently belonged to him. It was idling on the tarmac at a private airstrip just outside the city. As the driver he’d sent for me pulled up to it, I felt like I’d somehow fallen straight into a dream.
This definitely couldn’t be my real life, but I supposed it wasn’t. It was, however, his real life.
The stairs were already lowered, just waiting for me to board. I shook my head slightly, unable to believe that I was here. Willingly. With a Westwood of all people, and I wasn’t even the least bit pissed off about it. Instead, there was just a tiny bit of excitement in my stomach.
The driver opened my door for me and I climbed out of the car, pausing for a moment and pretending to adjust my sunglasses just to have the opportunity to take it all in. It wasn’t every day a girl like me got to hitch a ride like this.
I had done well for myself, sure. I had been smart with money, worked damn hard, and clawed my way into rooms that hadn’t been built for women.
I also could’ve been here eight years ago, sitting comfortably as a partner in the firm if I hadn’t followed a man across continents while he chased bones, history, and whatever else archaeologists did when they disappeared for months at a time.
But even then, a private jet had never been in the cards for me. Ever.
Neither had the man currently leaning against the open door with his sleeves rolled up and his sunglasses on, smiling down at me like this was all perfectly reasonable for a Thursday morning.
“Darling,” he called, his grin wide. “Come join me.”
“Sweetheart,” I said back in the same playful tone, lowering my sunglasses down the bridge of my nose and staring up at him. “Are we rich?”
“Very,” he said without hesitation. Laughing, he pushed off the door and reached for my hand when I got to the stairs.
I let him take it and tried to pretend like this wasn’t the most ridiculous thing I’d done in a long time.
When I stepped foot inside the plane, however, it only got even more ridiculous.
The chairs weren’t just seats. They were buttery-soft, leather recliners, the finishing all polished wood.
The cabin was spacious, too. Tall enough to stand upright in, to move, and to breathe without feeling crammed into a metal tube with strangers and questionable air circulation. This wasn’t that at all. It was the epitome of luxury and class, and it belonged to Jesse—of all people.
“This is obscene,” I muttered under my breath.
“Thank you,” Jesse said, as proud as if he’d personally designed it.
My eyes rolled. “I wasn’t complimenting you.”
“Whatever you say, baby.” He smirked, already moving past me. “Have a seat. Make yourself comfortable.”
As I did, settling into one of the seats by the window, he spoke briefly with someone I assumed was the pilot before joining me again. He still hadn’t told me where we were going, so I cocked my head and kept a straight face.
“I ran a check,” I said as Jesse sat down across from me. “You’re not wanted for any crimes that you’re running away from.”
“That’s great,” he replied without skipping a beat. “It’s always nice to start a trip without legal complications.”
“Speak for yourself,” I said. He laughed and something about it, about how easy and natural it was, made me smile. “You’re really not going to tell me where we’re going?”
“Nope. Just sit back and enjoy the flight,” he said. “I’m afraid I need to get some work done, so I won’t be the greatest company, but let me know if you need anything?”
I nodded. “Fantastic. I guess it’s a good thing I brought my laptop along as well, then. The flight will be long enough to actually get something done?”
“Yeah.” He raked a hand through his hair and offered me a smile. “It’ll be worth it, though.”
“I don’t doubt that in the slightest.”
Somehow, that really was true. I didn’t know this man very well but I had a feeling that if he did something, he did it properly. Wherever we were going, it would definitely be worth spending a few hours in the lap of absolute luxury.
We hunkered down then, both of us pulling out our laptops and settling in with coffee we were served once we reached cruising altitude. I was answering emails, preparing case files, and reading the precedent the paralegals had sent me.
Jesse was focused too, which I hadn’t entirely expected, if I was honest. There was something almost jarring about the shift from loud, animated, chaos incarnate to sharp, efficient, and decisive.
I liked it. At some point though, several long hours later, he closed his laptop and leaned back, reaching for something on the side table.
When I realized what it was, I blinked hard, staring at the actual, physical copy of a newspaper when he flipped it open. “Are you really eighty years old?”
He didn’t even look up. “I’ve been called worse.”
I leaned forward slightly, catching sight of the front page, and it was then that I understood. There he was, front and center, a picture of him leaving the skyscraper after the investor dinner the other night, his expression something between amused and unapologetic.
“Do you always carry around stories about yourself?” I asked.
“That depends,” he said, finally glancing up at me with one eyebrow arching slightly.
“On what?”
“On whether I’ve been up to anything exciting enough to write about.”
I gestured toward the paper. “Well, what are they saying about you today?”
That eyebrow lifted a fraction higher. “I was pictured with a rather beautiful mystery woman leaving that dinner two days ago. Any guesses who that could’ve been?”
“I wonder,” I said slowly, leaning back in my seat and crossing one leg over the other. “If she’s smart, that mystery woman probably regrets not charging you a fee for the publicity.”
He laughed, folding the newspaper, but not putting it down. “You wound me. I would have paid. I offered, remember?”
“Yes, you do seem like the type who throws money at problems until they go away.”
“Not problems,” he corrected lightly. “Experiences.”
“Right, and what would you classify me as?”
For a moment, he just looked at me like he was trying to decide something. Finally, a slow grin spread across his lips. “The woman of my dreams.”
I rolled my eyes, but I felt it anyway, that small, irritating flicker of amusement I was starting to associate with him. “God, I think you suffer from a chronic case of flirtation sickness.”
“You still came with me.”
“That’s because I wanted a holiday. It had nothing to do with you.”
“Good. This is why you’re perfect.” He looked at me. “No complicated entanglements.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and he grinned like he’d just won something. After that, however, we chatted for a while, falling into a rhythm that felt too familiar for the short length of time we’d actually known each other, but it was nice.
Until I asked the question that had been burning at the tip of my tongue ever since he’d shown up at my office that day. “What’s your game plan here, Jesse? You needed arm candy for that dinner and you, what, wanted company for your trip? Why exactly are we pretending to be together?”
A light went out in his eyes, his expression suddenly completely serious. I had a feeling he didn’t get this way very often, so it made me frown when he pursed his lips and inhaled a deep breath, perhaps even looking a little uncertain about himself right now.
“I didn’t just want company for the trip,” he began, swiping his tongue across his lips before he brought his gaze back to mine, those blue eyes now utterly devoid of humor or even mischief. “If we want people to buy that you’re my girlfriend, we need people to see us together.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “What exactly does that entail?”
“We pretend to be serious for a little bit, and then, when the time is right, I’m going to leak a proposal.”
I blinked at him, rapidly and far too many times for it to be anything resembling natural. “You’re going to do what?”
“Right around the time of Alex and Jane’s big gala, which is where the formal announcement is going to happen, I’m going to let the press know anonymously that you and I are engaged. I told you about this.”
“I know, but now that it’s actually happening, it’s a lot. An engagement is a lot more than accompanying you to a dinner and on a trip.”
He watched me carefully, like he was wondering if I was going to make a run for a parachute and jump right out of the plane, but eventually, he nodded his agreement. “Yeah, I know. Will you do it, though?”
“What happens after?” I asked, suddenly curious as to whether he’d thought this through at all. “It’s one thing to be photographed together for a few weeks and then to slide a fake ring onto my finger, but what then?”
He shrugged. “We’ll figure it out, but it won’t be a fake ring.
It’ll be a real one. A big one, just like I promised.
And you can keep it after if you want, but to answer your actual question, we’ll stage a breakup and that’ll be it.
The media will paint me as a playboy again, probably speculate as to how exactly I broke your heart, and you walk away clean. I’ll make sure of that.”
I tilted my head, considering him for a long moment.
It sounded like he was perfectly fine with the press painting him however they wanted, which seemed odd.
He was walking into this thing willingly, asking me to go along with it, and in the end, he was planning to take a devastating blow to a reputation that had only just begun to recover.
“What is all this for, exactly?” I asked. “Why would you want to stage a relationship, knowing from the start that it’s only going to end with you looking like the bad guy?”
Something unsettled flickered across his eyes, but he shrugged like it didn’t even matter. “That’s easy. I don’t want to.”
“Then why would you do it?”
“I was asked,” he explained, still completely serious. “I don’t have the best track record with my brothers, especially Alex, so when he asked, I agreed.”
“Do you always do whatever your brother asks of you?” One of my eyebrows arched.
This was the kind of behavior that made my distrust of Westwoods flare.
Had Alex given any thought to the blowback of this on Jesse’s reputation?
Did he care, or was Jesse collateral that the family could easily write off? All is fair in love and business.
“I’m not saying no, Jesse. I’m just trying to understand.”
“To answer your question, no, I don’t. I usually don’t do anything they ask me to, actually, but that’s kind of why I’m doing this now.”
“Is that supposed to make sense?”
“Do you remember Will, my twin brother?” he asked suddenly, a soft, faraway sort of smile spreading on his lips. “And Little J?”
I nodded. “Of course. We met them at the estate.”
“Yeah.” Jesse turned his head toward the window, staring out of it with an expression I couldn’t quite read as he went on. “Will did something great for me recently and I owe a few favors now, I guess.”
My head tilted as I studied him, the seemingly carefree, roguish Westwood not so carefree right now at all. “This is a pretty large favor though, don’t you think?”
“It is, but I’ll do what I can as long as no one gets hurt. Including you.” He finally brought his gaze back to mine. “If you’re ever uncomfortable or you want out, no problem. We’re done. No questions asked.”
Unexpectedly, I found that I actually I believed him, but I still shook my head. Getting hurt was the least of my worries. “This plan is absurd, you know that, right?”
“Yep, but it’ll work,” he said confidently, that glint of mischief I’d come to expect from him finally making a reappearance in his eyes. “So, are you in?”
Am I?
Honestly, I wasn’t sure. Yet I was currently on a private jet with a man I barely knew, discussing a fake relationship that would inevitably become very public, very quickly, and all I knew was that he was doing it for his brothers.
It didn’t make a lick of sense to me, but I supposed it was his family’s business, not mine.
A voice cut through the cabin. “We’ll be descending shortly. We have approximately twenty minutes until arrival in Honolulu.”
My lips parted, my eyebrows shooting up. “Honolulu? Are you kidding me?”
Jesse winced slightly. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”
I turned fully in my seat, staring at him openly now. “You brought me to Hawaii.”
“I was going to tell you,” he said defensively.
“When? After we landed?”
“That was the general idea, yes.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. This man really didn’t do anything halfway if his version of a conversation about a fake engagement involved a private jet and an island in the middle of the Pacific.
“You’re insane,” I said, still laughing as disbelief sped through me. “Absolutely, utterly insane.”
“Correct,” he replied easily, another one of his smirks ghosting across his lips as he held my gaze.
“We might as well have fun with it, right? And what better place to reveal my girlfriend to the world than stunning beaches, crystal clear water, and tiny swimsuits as we toast to rekindling our relationship?”
I shook my head, but I couldn’t help smiling as I glanced out the window like I might be able to see blue ocean instead of stars.
Jesse’s plan was ludicrous. It made very little sense to me that he would agree to something like this and even less that he’d choose me as his partner in pretend matrimony, yet, if this was the treatment I’d be receiving for the duration, then I had a feeling I wasn’t going to say no—even if I already knew that I probably really should.