Chapter Fourteen #2
“We sort of fell into a…fake dating situation for the sake of business,” she continued, her voice careful. I watched her fingers tighten around her napkin, along with the slight tension in her shoulders. She was nervous about his reaction.
Miles’s eyes narrowed, fixing on me with an intensity I recognized from the game. It was the same look he’d worn right before checking an opponent into the boards hard enough to make the man crumple.
“You’re making her date you?” His voice was barely above a growl.
I thought about the hit I’d witnessed earlier and how that opposing player had needed time off the ice to recover. I was in decent shape, and my twice-weekly kickboxing classes kept me sharp, but if Miles decided I deserved the same treatment, I wasn’t confident about my chances. He was a big guy.
“No, no. Nothing like that.” Raina leaned forward, worry creasing between her brows. “We’re just letting a potential business associate believe we’re together. Temporarily. It only has to last until Simon secures the partnership.”
Miles still looked like he was considering violence. “That’s… weird. Why would you need to pretend?”
I stepped in, explaining Alexander’s emphasis on family values and how important it was to him that his business partners shared similar priorities.
“And you think pretending to date is convincing enough?” Miles asked, skepticism dripping from every word.
“Well, I wasn’t going to pretend to be his wife,” Raina said, her voice lighter. “I’d have to remember a fake last name and wear a ring all the time. No thanks.”
Her attempt at levity fell flat. Miles didn’t crack a smile.
One of his teammates mercifully changed the subject, steering conversation toward next week’s game, and Miles let the interrogation drop. But I could feel his displeasure radiating across the table, and I knew this wasn’t over.
He waited until Raina excused herself to the restroom to confirm my suspicion.
“I don’t like the way you’re using my sister.” His jaw was set, his blue eyes—so similar to Raina’s, yet so much harder right now—boring into me.
He looked strikingly like Kurt in that moment, with the same sandy brown hair and stubborn set to his features.
But Kurt had never looked at me like this—like he was weighing whether I deserved a beating.
Then again, Kurt didn’t know about the fake dating arrangement with his sister yet.
Maybe that confrontation was still coming.
“I’m not using her,” I said, my voice coming out more defensive than I intended. “It was her idea.”
Miles scoffed. “Yeah, well. Raina’s too nice for her own good sometimes.”
He scratched along his jaw, studying me with undisguised suspicion. I bit back the urge to snap at him. I wasn’t accustomed to having my character questioned—except by my recent string of assistants, and in fairness, they’d had a point.
But I forced myself to consider his perspective. How would I feel if my little sister, Shannon, was fake dating her new boss? Especially if she’d been unemployed for months and desperately needed the job?
Yeah, I knew exactly how I’d feel. Furious. Convinced her boss was exploiting his authority to pressure a vulnerable woman into something inappropriate.
As much as I wanted to defend myself, I understood why Miles was concerned. I even grudgingly respected him for it.
“Raina is exceptional at her job,” I said, glancing toward the hallway to the restrooms to check if she was returning.
Still no sign of her. “Best assistant I’ve ever had, honestly.
And I’m not coercing her into anything. I respect her too much for that.
” I met his gaze squarely. “She’s calling the shots with this arrangement. That isn’t going to change.”
Even if I eventually convinced her to forget about the fake part of dating me, it would be on her terms. I held the power at the office, but I would never let that make her feel like she had no choice outside of it.
Miles held my stare for a long moment. Something in his expression shifted—not quite approval, but the sharp edge of hostility softened. His rigid shoulders relaxed slightly.
It wasn’t exactly a victory. But I’d take it.
Raina returned just before the bill arrived, and I insisted on paying for everyone.
“You don’t have to cover dinner,” she protested.
“Sure he does,” Miles said, a smirk finally breaking through his stern facade as he slapped me on the back. “Consider it a business expense.”
I rolled my eyes, but Raina’s laugh made it worth the cost.
We parted ways with Miles, and since she’d let me drive tonight, we climbed into my car and headed toward her place.
Earlier, when I’d picked her up, she’d asked if I minded her changing the radio station.
I’d told her to go ahead. This time, she didn’t bother asking.
She just reached for the dial and started scanning through options like she owned the car.
For some reason, that made me grin. She cycled through three stations before landing on one playing an old Bon Jovi song. I listened as she sang along quietly, her voice wandering charmingly off-key in a way that probably should have been annoying but somehow wasn’t.
When the song ended and a commercial break began, I spoke before she could resume her station surfing.
“Your brother seems protective of you.”
Raina groaned, reaching to turn down the volume. “I knew he said something while I was in the bathroom. He had that look when I came back. What did he say? Did he give you a hard time about the fake dating thing?”
“Don’t worry about it. He’s just concerned.” I paused, an unexpected doubt surfacing. “I assured him I’m not forcing you into anything. You don’t feel forced, do you?”
Raina let out an inelegant snort that made me smile. “Please. If anyone was forced into this situation, it was you.”
“That’s fair. I’ll have to tell Miles that you’re the mastermind here, and I’m just the poor, innocent man dragged along by your harebrained scheme.”
She shoved my shoulder, laughing. “Hey! It’s not harebrained. It’s brilliant.”
I couldn’t argue with that, not when the memory of our first kiss still burned so vividly in my mind.
“And don’t worry about Miles,” she continued, her tone softening. “You’re right, he is protective. He just… he feels guilty about me dropping out of college.”
“Why?” I glanced at her and frowned. “How was it his fault?”
“It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Not really.” She turned to look out the window, her reflection ghosting across the dark glass before she glanced back at me.
“My mom got sick with cancer, and someone needed to take care of her. Miles was living across the country, playing for the first team that signed him out of college. Kurt was busy building a business with you. That meant I was the only one left.”
I remembered that time. Kurt hadn’t talked about it much, but right after we’d started our company, his mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
She’d managed to avoid a mastectomy, but she’d had surgery to remove the tumor, followed by months of radiation.
Kurt had mentioned that his sister was helping with her care, but things had been so chaotic with the business that I hadn’t given it much thought.
I made the turn into the cul-de-sac and pulled up to the complex where I’d picked Raina up earlier. I parked at the curb and turned off the engine. A streetlight a few houses down cast just enough illumination to see her face when I shifted to look at her properly.
“So you dropped out of college to care for her?”
Raina nodded slowly, seemingly in no rush to part ways. “She needed me. Nothing was more important than that.” Her voice was quiet, stripped of its usual brightness. “She was so exhausted and sick, and I was providing round-the-clock care for months.”
She paused, her fingers twisting together in her lap.
“When she started to get better, I still wanted to be there until she was fully recovered. I found an entry-level position at the advertising firm and worked my way up in the company while still taking care of her when I wasn’t at the office.
” A small, sad smile touched her lips. “By the time she was officially cancer-free, I’d decided to stick with the job instead of finishing my last year of school.
I don’t have any regrets, really. Even if my options are more limited without a degree. ”
The words were matter-of-fact, but I heard what lay beneath them—the weight of responsibility she’d shouldered at such a young age, the dreams she’d quietly set aside for the sake of family.
“But Miles feels guilty about it?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah, he’s the oldest. I think he feels like he’s supposed to be responsible for the whole family, especially since our dad died.”
The words landed heavily in the quiet car. “How old were you when you lost him?”
I knew it had been a long time ago. Kurt had mentioned it in passing over the years, but I couldn’t imagine losing my father at any age, let alone as a child.
“I was ten.” Her voice had gone small and fragile in a way that made my chest ache. “He owned a roofing company. One day there was an accident at a job site. His harness wasn’t properly secured, or something like that. I don’t know the exact details—I was so young when it happened.”
She swallowed, her gaze fixed on some distant point beyond the windshield.
“I remember being shocked that he died in a fall. I looked it up once. Falling is actually a leading cause of accidental death. But usually it’s elderly people. My dad was only forty-one.”
I didn’t know what to say. What words could possibly be adequate? So I reached across the console and took her hand. Raina’s head turned toward me, surprise flickering in her eyes, but she didn’t pull away. Her fingers were cool against my palm, and I wrapped mine around them, holding gently.