Chapter 5
Five
Terms
Kelly
Now I had agreed to fake-date a billionaire for four days and I would have liked the universe to apologize.
I dropped my bag on the chair by the door, kicked off my sandals, and stood in the middle of my apartment staring at the wall and wondered how to ignore the world.
But I knew I couldn’t. I called Britney first because she was the most likely to physically track me down if I didn’t.
She answered on the first ring. “Tell me you said no.”
I went to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge. “That depends on how committed you are to hearing the truth.”
Silence.
Then, very flatly, “Kelly.”
I took a long drink and leaned back against the counter. “I said yes.”
The silence got worse.
Not louder. heavier.
She exhaled hard. “Why?”
I shut my eyes for one second and let my head tip back against the cabinet.
“Because he’s right.”
That came out uglier than I’d meant it to.
“No,” she said. “No. He is not right. He is strategic.”
“Brit.”
“Kelly.”
“If he walks it back now, I become the woman he publicly claimed and then very publicly did not have after all. There is no version where I come out of that looking untouched.”
“Who gives a shit how it looks?”
“I do.”
That was the truth. I did care.
I was tired of telling the joke instead of letting anyone see I was the only single one left and I was tired of never once being first choice in any man’s life and I never wanted another bad date.
Britney was quiet for a beat. “I know you care,” she said finally. “That doesn’t mean he gets to use that.”
“He gets how this can blow up in my face. That’s not the same thing as using me.”
“Kelly.”
I pushed off the counter and paced into the living room. “He offered terms.”
She made a rough sound that might have become a laugh in another life. “Of course he did.”
Britney let that sit there for a second.
Then, more quietly, “Do you want to kiss him?”
I stopped pacing. “What?”
“Do you want to kiss him?”
Heat. A hard little pulse low in my gut. Those muscles of his were chiseled to make a t-shirt hot.
“I want to set him on fire,” I said.
“That was not what I asked.”
“No, and I hate that you know that.”
“Kelly.”
I pressed my fingers to my lips, then dropped my hand. “I want him to stop looking at me like he already knows what we could do to each other.”
Britney was quiet.
“Okay,” she said after a beat.
“That’s all you’ve got?”
“It’s enough.”
I almost laughed.
Instead I sat down on the edge of the couch because my legs had remembered they’d had a day.
“No, Kelly. Listen to me.” Her voice changed. Less dry. More direct. “Men like him don’t need much to turn control into chemistry. You need to decide what, when, where, how and you need to know your why.”
That hit because it was right.
“I know,” I said.
“If he tries to make it sound romantic, leave.”
I stared at the ceiling. “That, at least, I can promise.”
My friends were all happy and in love. Hope might secretly believe in miracles. Avril might be gentler about it. Isabel might phrase it more elegantly. And Britney managed us all and British nobility like we were a family.
That should have made this easy because they were all I had in this world.
I showered, changed into sleep clothes, and sat cross-legged on the couch with my laptop open and a legal pad in front of me like I was about to draft a hostage treaty.
On the legal pad, in all caps, I wrote:
RULES FOR NOT RUINING MY LIFE WITH A HOT PSYCHO
Then I stared at it.
Then I crossed out hot because I refused to give myself that much away in ink.
Then I put it back because honesty was the only thing standing between me and complete delusion.
By midnight, my list looked like this:
1No sex.
2No expensive gifts.
3No solving my problems with money.
4No surprise touch in public unless necessary.
5No actual declarations of love or forever or soulmates or whatever insane thing his mother would eat alive.
6No jealousy scenes.
7No showing up at my apartment without permission.
8Hard stop after graduation weekend.
9If Britney asks me directly, I reserve the right not to lie to her face.
I looked at the list and felt slightly calmer.
When I closed my eyes I kept seeing myself break them all. If a woman came up to Xerses this weekend, I’d probably murder them both with my bare hands.
I slept badly again.
The next afternoon, I texted him the address and met him at a wine bar in Virgin Cove that tried very hard to look casual while still charging Manhattan prices. It had a back patio, low lighting, polished wood, and enough local respectability and most important neutral.
I got there ten minutes early on principle.
He was already there.
He looked up the second I stepped onto the patio.
His gaze landed and stayed on me. And the air changed from his attention and my chest and lower all went warm.
Damn. I wanted him. I walked straight to the table and set my bag down without smiling. “You’re early.”
“You’re later.”
“Of course you did.”
He rose enough to pull out the chair across from him.
“If you ever become old-fashioned on purpose, I will end you.”
One corner of his mouth moved. “I am hoping we move past bodily threats.”
I sat.
He sat.
The server appeared instantly.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked me.
“Water.”
Xerses looked at me. “No wine?”
“Not if I’m negotiating with the devil.”
“Don’t make her come back.”
“Fine send a bottle of white sparkling too.”
The girl blinked once, then smiled like she thought we were flirting.
When she left, Xerses said, “You came with notes.”
I looked down. My legal pad sat half-visible in my bag. I took out the pad and set it on the table between us. His gaze dropped to the title. “I’m not a psycho but it’s good you think I’m hot.”
“I figured if I was your date I better think that for a weekend.”
I slid the legal pad toward myself before he could reach for it, because something about the thought of him touching my rules before I’d said them felt too intimate.
“This is simple,” I said.
“It rarely is when people say that.”
“Well, then, lucky for us I am not in the mood to be charming.”
His eyes held mine. “I noticed.”
I looked down at the page.
“Rule one,” I said. “No sex.”
No pause. No surprise. No look of male challenge rising like steam off his body.
He winked and said, “I won’t start it but if you ask, we will.”
I looked up.
The server returned with glasses. I waited until she left again before I continued.
“Rule two. No gifts.”
He shrugged and poured for us. “Fine.”
“My parent died because they thought they were left a house as a gift. They were caught in a storm, no house and on the way home the road flooded. So I mean it.”
“That’s awful Kelly. I’m sorry.”
“It was long ago. Rule three. No solving my life with money.”
His gaze sharpened almost invisibly. “You’re spliting hairs.”
“I’m drawing a border.”
“Okay.” He pushed my glass toward me.
Then he took a sip of his and set the glass down. “No gifts. No interventions. No problems solved unless you ask.”
That landed better than I wanted it to.
He was too agreeable. My stomach knotted like I was disappointed.
“Rule four. No jealousy scenes.”
His brows lifted very slightly. “You think that will be a problem?”
I gave him a flat look. “You tell me.”
His mouth moved once. “Fine.”
“No public chest-beating. No random male territorialism. No making every man I talk to sound like a threat to national security.”
“That’s specific.”
“Interesting theory.”
“Rule five.” I ignored him. “No declarations.”
He leaned back. “Meaning?”
“Meaning you are not allowed to improvise anything dramatic about love, forever, fate, soulmates, feelings too strong to contain, or some other rich-person emotional catastrophe in front of your family.”
Something genuinely amused flashed through his expression. “Rich-person emotional catastrophe?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“I really don’t.” He folded his hands loosely in front of him. “And if someone asks how we met?”
“We answer like sane adults and I’m part of the story.”
“Which is what exactly.”
“We like each other. We’ve been seeing where it goes and we’ve been friends for a long time. And we kept it quiet because we didn’t want the whole family in our business.”
His eyes stayed on my face. “That part, at least, is true.”
My pulse did one ugly little kick. I ignored it on purpose.
“Rule six,” I said. “You do not come to my apartment uninvited.”
“Agreed. I like being invited in.”
I rolled my eyes. Why did he make everything sound so easy. “Rule seven. Hard stop after graduation weekend.”
Something in his face changed. I saw it and I sharpened in response because I was learning him just enough to know when stillness meant resistance.
His gaze met mine. “If we do this, I’m not going to insult you by pretending four days is enough time to guarantee no complications.”
My stomach tightened.
I sat back in my chair and folded my arms. “You don’t get to say ominous things and call them realism.”
“It’s not ominous.”
“It is when you say it.”
One side of his mouth twitched. “Fine. Hard stop after the weekend unless we agree to more time.”
I flipped the page on the legal pad and wrote:
COVER STORY
Then I looked up. “We need facts.”
“Agreed. We knew each other a long time already and I finally asked you out a few weeks ago.”
I made a face. “Too vague.”
“It was what I said to my father.”
She wrote it down. “How many weeks?”
“Three.”
I thought about it. “Not believable.”
His brows lifted. “No?”
“No. Three weeks means people will ask where we’ve been, why none of the girls knew, why Roxanne didn’t notice, why literally no one saw us together.”
“You’re saying I’m not subtle?”
“I’m saying your family isn’t.”
He conceded that with silence. “It’s what we said at dinner.”
“I still think six,” I said. “Long enough to sound real. Short enough that we could justify not saying anything.”
He shrugged. “Fine.”
“Who made the first move?”