Otherwise Engaged: A Fake Engagement Romance

A half-empty bottle of Malbec sat next to us on the end table while Thayer snuggled up beneath a fuzzy blanket next to me on the couch, ice-cold bare feet nestled next to mine. For the life of me, I’d never understand how she was always freezing. In contrast, I was always warm, if not verging on uncomfortably hot. I guess we evened out, which was true in a lot of ways.

She arched her neck and leaned against me with a sigh while I stroked her silky hair absentmindedly. We were half-watching a recently released drama on Netflix, but we’d both already seen it before, so it was more like background noise to our idle chatter. I didn’t know when I turned into the ‘stay in and watch a movie on a Friday in our lounge clothes’ type of guy, but as it turned out, I liked it. A lot more than I had expected.

The movie credits began, and Thayer spoke up.

“How’s your mom doing?” She shifted and looked up at me, tone hushed. There was a pang in my gut, both from the topic and from the care shining in her eyes as she asked.

“She seems to be responding to treatment so far,” I said. “Long road ahead still, though.”

“I bet.” She traced the rim of her wineglass with a slender finger. “And she’s still planning that party for us. I feel like I should help, especially now that my mother got involved and it’s ballooned into this big event.”

Unsurprisingly, once our mothers connected, what had started as a casual Sunday morning brunch had morphed into a semi-formal Saturday evening cocktail party. My mother didn’t seem to mind, though, and she was enjoying planning. Maybe it was a good distraction.

“Don’t feel bad,” I told her. “My mom loves planning events.” I wished she’d go back to volunteering on the hospital charity board. She claimed she was still too embarrassed after my father’s scandal, even though most of the other board members from that time had since moved on. Personally, I said fuck anyone who judged something like that, but unfortunately, my mother didn’t have nearly as thick of a skin as I did.

Thayer sat up and refilled both of our glasses, looking thoughtful. “Well…” she trailed off, “hopefully my mother doesn’t drive her too crazy. She can be a lot to take sometimes.”

“I think it’s a good distraction. It gives her something else to focus on besides chemo.”

Of course, neither of us wanted to address the fact that this party was to celebrate our farce of an engagement. Our relationship had begun with an expiration date, but that wasn’t all this was anymore, was it? Otherwise, what were we doing here at my place? There was no one here, nothing to prove. There was something real between us, even if we were both too afraid to broach it.

Thayer inclined her head, eyes raking over my face. “Are you worried about tomorrow?”

Why would I be worried? Closing the deal was only make or break. The difference between success and insolvency. Maybe I was being a tad dramatic. It’s not like Flux would go bankrupt tomorrow if this fell through. We’d simply bleed out slowly while limping our way to an agonizing and publicly humiliating death. No big deal.

But I didn’t particularly want to admit the full extent of my worries to Thayer.

“Callaghan is ninety percent of the way there,” I said. “Or eighty percent, at least. All he needs is a little reassurance that he’s in good hands.”

Something popped into my mind from out of nowhere. Something that had been nagging at the back of my mind for ages. Maybe it wasn’t my business. Hell, it definitely wasn’t my business. But that had never stopped me before.

“Forget about work.” I shifted, turning to face her on the couch. “Let’s do a question for a question.” We hadn’t done this since high school, around the time that things between us had started to change and free-for-all questions began to carry too much risk.

Thayer scrunched up her mouth and her pale blue eyes darted around the room before landing back on me. She tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear; a nervous tell of hers. “That sounds dangerous.”

“I won’t ask anything I don’t want to know.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

I ignored her protest, which was usually the best way to overcome her objections. “What happened with Pierce Cunningham? I’m told you humiliated him wonderfully. After whatever you said to him, he unloaded that Benz faster than he shorts stocks.” Somehow, I took a little too much enjoyment in knowing that last part. I liked being one of the few people who got behind Thayer’s walls. Plus, it made it marginally less terrifying that I had let her get past mine.

Thayer shot me a look that could wilt a plant at thirty feet, much like the look I imagined Pierce had received. “He should have been embarrassed. There was a used condom on the passenger side floor of his car when he picked me up. It was disgusting, and I said as much.”

“Ah.” Well, that wasn’t so unreasonable on her part. In fact, that was understandable. But now I was even more curious whether the other things I’d heard were true or if they had also been distorted. Often, the rumor mill—specifically, Millie—twisted stories.

“What about Abbot?” I asked. “Everyone thinks you tore his heart out on his birthday.”

That particular rumor grew more and more salacious each time I heard it. According to the first version, Thayer gave him the old, ‘it’s not me, it’s you’ routine. A couple weeks later, the story had morphed into a dramatic tale where Thayer slapped him and dumped a Grey Goose martini over his head in the middle of the restaurant. The second version didn’t ring true. Thayer was too practical to waste good vodka.

She grimaced and looked away, toying with the black satin tie of her pajama pants. “He wanted to move in together.”

Huh. Will Abbot was, well, a lot like me. Or the version of myself I was a few months ago, at least. Enjoying the benefits of being young and conventionally attractive by banging his way across town. He wasn’t exactly known for being a fan of monogamy, which meant he must have been crazy about Thayer. It bothered me, even though I knew it shouldn’t.

My hold on her thigh tightened. “I didn’t know you two were serious.” I tried to sound casual and failed.

“That’s the thing,” Thayer said, seemingly oblivious. “We weren’t. We had dated for maybe a month, tops, and all of a sudden, he took me out to dinner and asked me to move in with him. On his birthday. It was awful. I didn’t want to say no, but I couldn’t say yes. I tried to be nice about it, or as nice as you can be when you’re breaking it off.”

“Poor chump. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt on the Crosby rumors.”

Thayer made a sour face. “He tried to pull up my skirt under the table at Culina on our first date. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was leave or stab him with a seafood fork.”

Wish I hadn’t asked that, because now I had the urge to find him and stab him myself. Crosby was tall, broad, and twice Thayer’s size. The scenario she was describing did something dangerous to my blood pressure. If I ever saw him again…

“Wait a minute.” She swatted my arm. “Why am I giving you my life story? It’s your turn.”

“Ask away.”

Everything was fair game, with the lone exception of the unspoken elephant in the room. I didn’t want to get into that with her now—or ever. After Mexico, I’d decided to put it to bed and move past it. It didn’t matter anymore.

Thayer sat up and criss-crossed her long legs, clad in grey-and-black plaid pajama pants. My breath caught in my throat while I waited for her to speak, hoping for anything but that.

“Have you ever had a girlfriend?”

Or that.

“Like someone I dated for a while?” I clarified. Even then, the answer was no unless I was being extremely generous with the definition of “dated” or broad with the interpretation of “a while”. With the exception of Thayer, I tended to lose interest quickly.

“A girlfriend,” she repeated. “A real relationship. Someone who met your parents, that kind of thing.”

“Uh…no,” I admitted. “No one that meets those criteria.”

“Oh.” Her expression stayed neutral, but something flashed behind her eyes. While she was working hard to hide it, I could tell she was more than mildly horrified by this disclosure. She reached over and tugged her on her black knit cardigan before continuing. “Next question. What actually happened with Adam?”

I regretted starting this game.

“He pulled the plug without any warning at a highly volatile time for the company, leaving me left scrambling for cash to buy him out.” AKA, he screwed me.

“I know that part,” she said patiently, “but why? You must have worked well together at one point for Flux to go as far as it did. Millie said the split was acrimonious, so I’m curious about the history there. Did something happen with you two?”

“Well…” I ran a hand through my hair, trying to formulate a response that didn’t paint me in a negative light. There was fault on both sides, if I was being brutally honest—and I did want to be honest with her. “It wasn’t a good match. We both wanted to run the show, which meant we butted heads a lot. Ian is a lot more chill, which means we work better together. I guess in some ways, Adam and I are too much alike.”

She shook her head. “You’re nothing like Adam.”

“Why did you date him, anyway?” I asked, as the green-eyed monster that had been tugging against its leash for weeks finally broke free.

Those rumors about other guys she’d dated may have annoyed me, but remembering her with Adam made me homicidal. Seeing it for myself had been even worse. I was in peak physical shape the whole time they dated, because it was either to channel my rage into lifting heavy weights or risk throwing one at Adam’s head. Worst part was, I knew I had no reason to feel that way or claim to her, which meant I couldn’t even hold it against him. And I hadn’t.

But now that I thought back on it, I was sure Adam exactly what he was doing. He might have been a prick, but he was also highly observant. You had to be, in order to be as good at fucking people over as he was.

Thayer looked away, pursing her lips, and her shoulders heaved with a sigh. “This is embarrassing to admit, but I think I just wanted a boyfriend. First and last time I ever did that. He’s living proof that it’s better to be alone than to settle.” She paused. “You know, your questions all seem to have a common theme. Are you jealous?”

“No,” I insisted, but it didn’t sound convincing even to my own ears. Guess she hadn’t missed my not-so-subtle reactions after all.

“Uh-huh.” Her mouth tugged into a smug, sexy smirk. There was probably something fundamentally flawed about the fact that I loved it when she gave me a hard time. Still, it didn’t change the fact that I did.

“Fine,” I said. “Maybe I don’t like picturing you with anyone else.”

She blinked and her lips parted in surprise. The implications of what I’d admitted hung in the air. On the coffee table in front of us, my phone lit up with a text.

“Sorry,” I said, reaching for it. “I need to make sure it’s not Holden. We were texting earlier.” More specifically, I was trying to convince him to restart weekly therapy sessions.

When my eyes dropped to read the message, my heart sank like a block of concrete in the Hudson River. Of course. The most inappropriate message with the most inopportune timing ever.

Thayer’s gaze drifted to the screen, and she swallowed audibly. Her small frame stiffened against mine. “That’s not Holden.”

“That’s someone I haven’t spoken to in a long time.” I offered the phone to her so she could read the whole message. There was nothing to hide; while receiving a booty call invitation wasn’t a great look for me, Phoebe’s message referenced this past summer, making it clear that we hadn’t seen each other in several months. “See?”

Thayer eyed the phone warily, reluctantly taking it from me and skimming the message. She slid the phone back into my hands, but she still radiated uneasiness. Sometimes, I felt like I was one wrong remark away from blowing things up permanently. I didn’t know if changing that would take time, or if there was something more she needed from me. I’d already opened up more than I ever thought possible, and she wasn’t the only one who was a little scared.

“Define long,” she said.

“Well before Starbucks, Thay.”

She studied me, worrying her bottom lip. “Have you violated our agreement at all? Be honest.”

Pretty sure we’d ripped our agreement to shreds between all the things we’d done, but I hadn’t violated it in the ways she was worried about.

“We had sex, so I think you know I did.” But my attempt at a joke fell flat, and the tension in her body didn’t dissipate.

“I meant in any other ways,” she said, reaching for her glass of Malbec. “Even early on.”

“No,” I said honestly. “Have you?”

Thayer winced, mid-sip. “Maybe.”

What? Now it was my turn to sweat—and it showed. I fumbled for my own wine glass and threw half of its contents back in one gulp.

“Oh my God, no.” Her hand flew to her mouth, and she laughed softly. “Not like that, Bennett. I haven’t slept with anyone. Who do you think you’re dealing with? But I may have let our arrangement slip to Lola over brunch.”

Oh. Well, that was far better than her sleeping with someone else behind my back, but hopefully Lola knew how to keep her mouth shut better than Quinn or Millie.

“How much does Lola know?” I asked, trying not to sound as terse as I felt.

“Um…” Thayer pursed her lips thoughtfully. She reached over, and her fingers landed on my sweatpants-clad thigh, slowly inching higher. And higher. My cock stirred, even though this would make round three for us today.

While I should have been tired, I had way more stamina than normal when it came to her. Until now, I’d never understood what my friends meant when they had said that sex was better with someone you cared about. But that wasn’t the only thing that surprised me; it was how much I liked having her around in other ways, too. Even without sex, I’d have happily been around her all the time. It was a new feeling for me, and I didn’t know what to make of it.

“Are you trying to cop a feel to distract me?” I asked.

She shot me a sidelong glance, batting her eyelashes. “Is it working?”

“I think you know it is.”

Thayer squealed as I turned and grabbed her by the waist, pulling her on top of me. Her thighs straddled mine, pelvis rubbing against my half-erection that was rapidly growing harder by the second.

My hands cupped her behind, fingers digging into her phenomenal ass. “Now, none of that Ed Sheeran shit tomorrow, or I’ll spank you so hard you can’t walk later.”

Thayer arched a brow and leaned in, brushing her lips against mine. Her long hair fell in a curtain around us, the clean, herbal scent of her shampoo drifting in the air. “Is that supposed to be a deterrent or an incentive?”

THE NEXT MORNING, Thayer and I enjoyed a nice, leisurely breakfast in bed. And by that, I mean we stayed in bed, and she was breakfast. Unfortunately, she had to leave after to meet Lola for brunch while my presence was required at Flux for an alleged ‘emergency’ per Ian.

Spoiler alert: it was not an emergency.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” I leaned over Ian’s wooden desk, fighting the urge to throw something. Ian had lots of kitschy knick-knacks to choose from. It would have been remarkably satisfying to break a window with one of them. Instead, I snagged a pencil from his pen cup and snapped it in two.

“It’s not illegal to overcharge someone.” Ian leaned his elbows on his desk, and placed his head in his hands, fingers tugging at his hair. “At least, not in this context.”

Disbelief bowled into me. “You’re telling me that Adam ripped us off by marking up services by five hundred percent, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

When Ian summoned me to the office on a Saturday morning, I’d been expecting a bombshell. Some kind of earth-shaking revelation that would enable me to destroy Adam once and for all. All I got was a big, fat dud. Ian’s ‘urgent’ news was that he’d looked into the companies Thayer and I had flagged for possible associations with Adam, but they all seemed legitimate, at least on the surface. Beneath the surface, was no doubt, a tangled web of legal shields, but we didn’t have the time or resources to unearth them.

“IT’S NOT a crime for someone to overpay you,” he reiterated, staring at the desk. “Much as I wish it was.”

“But he vetted the vendor. He was the vendor.”

That shady fucker colluded with one of his friends and charged us through the nose for online advertising, among other services. Over-billing was much harder to act on than straight-up theft; it was basically impossible.

How the funds had been funneled back to Adam and AM Developments, I hadn’t yet determined, but I was confident at least a portion had been. I doubted the IRS was aware of it, either. Bringing that to their attention via anonymous tip was at the top of my to-do list. If they were up my ass, Adam might as well enjoy a rectal exam, too.

“It’s a conflict of interest at best, and good luck pursuing that. He’s not on the board or employed by the company anymore, which would be the usual means of recourse.”

“I will find some recourse,” I said evenly. “Wait and see.”

“I’ve retained a PI to look into him. The most morally grey one I could find without actually breaking the law by hiring him. I’m not entirely confident about that last part, either.” Ian looked at me from over the rim of his stainless-steel travel mug, expression grim.

“Perfect.” I was certain there would be skeletons if we found the right closet.

“How are things with Thayer, anyway? You guys have a nice night in?”

Ian was playing me, and it was working, because it was difficult to stay angry about Adam and think about her at the same time.

“We did.” Night, morning, you name it. All over my apartment. Though if I was being honest, it was way more than that.

Lately, my phone had been inundated with messages from my friends—and several women—wondering why I had dropped off the face of the planet. I guess I had, over the past month, though I’d been too preoccupied to notice. But rather than missing it like I would have expected, I’d come to realize that making dinner and a watching movie with Thay was infinitely more enjoyable than going to some new club like I would have before.

“Good,” Ian said. “You do seem calmer.”

That was a diplomatic way of putting it. If not for her, there would have been a chair through the window right now.

But instead, I just shrugged and entered the pin to my laptop on his desk, drumming my fingers as I waited for it to load. Despite what Ian said, I wasn’t letting this Adam thing go. I would find a way to make him pay. With interest.

“Do you think you’re ready for tonight?” A hint of uncertainty betrayed Ian’s otherwise neutral expression from across my desk.

“We’ve got this in the bag,” I said, double clicking to open the notes I’d compiled to prepare for this evening. “We’ll close him, get the money, and win the bid.” The last part was basically a given; Ian had connections in the planning department, and our project was the front-runner by far. We just had to come up with the cash to make it a reality.

“If you say so,” he said.

“I know so.”