Epilogue
Morgan
2 Years Later
“Argh, why is this bed always so full?” I groaned playfully as yet another leg kicked into my side. “It almost feels like there are three people in here.” Cue a whole round of giggles. “Hey, who was that?”
I snapped my eyes open to see my daughter’s sweet round face looking right back at me. Her circular cheeks were filled with the beautiful bright grin that I mostly now associated with her. It was my smile really, she’d definitely inherited it from me, but I spent much more time looking at her than at myself.
“What are you up to, Arianna?” I asked, while taking her chin in my hand. “Are you being cheeky again?”
“Dada let me in,” she insisted, always convinced that she was right, even when maybe she wasn’t. That came from her father, along with those sparkling green eyes I could never resist.
“Oh, did he now?”
Terrance turned his body over as he noticed us talking about him, or maybe he felt my stare prickling on the nape of his neck. “What am I being accused of now?” he grumbled sleepily, rubbing the tiredness from his eyes.
“Nothing, it doesn’t matter. Just get up and make me breakfast, or are you both forgetting that it’s Mother’s Day?”
As Terrance’s eyes widened in mock surprise, which didn’t fool me one bit since I’d been reminding him for weeks, Arianna burst into giggles all over again. She tried to stuff her fist into her mouth to hide it, but there was no escaping the laughter.
“Uh oh, we better get in the kitchen, Arianna,” he whispered to her, as if I couldn’t hear. “See what we can pull together last minute.”
As they scurried from the room, I glanced at the collage of photographs we had sitting on the wall, documenting the past two years perfectly. There was me with a massive bump, with my arm around Nickie; me and Terrance in the hospital room the day Arianna was born; my mom doting on the little pink, newborn baby; Auntie Nickie caressing her gently; all of us at Braxton and Emily’s wedding.
It really was a blessed life. I was the luckiest person alive. My heart was filled with all the love in the world, and I really didn’t feel like I needed anything else.
When I tried to remember the difficult times, the times when I didn’t think that Terrance would step up, or that horrible period that Braxton spent in hospital, or when Mom and I didn’t exactly see eye to eye, it all felt like it had gone on in another lifetime, or to someone else entirely. It was strange to recall that things hadn’t always been this smooth sailing.
“Here we are!” Terrance presented a plate of food as if it was golden, which considering what his cooking used to be like, it practically was. “A continental breakfast, just for you.”
“And flowers!” Arianna yelled in glee. “For you, Mommy.”
“And of course that isn’t all, we didn’t forget at all, did we, Ari?” Arianna shook her head, barely paying any attention because she was so busy picking things off of my plate to eat. “So we have a whole day of awesome stuff planned for you. Breakfast, then out to a movie – sorry about that one, Ari picked out that new animated movie that she’s utterly certain you want to see.”
“Sounds good to me.” I ruffled Arianna’s hair, glad to have the day with us all as a family. Although I only worked part time now, to fit around Terrance’s hours at his own company, these precious family moments were to be treasured. “Whatever this little angel wants.”
“Then a walk in the park because we all know how you love the park, and afterwards Auntie Nickie is taking Ari for a sleepover, and I’m going to cook you dinner.”
“Ooh, two meals in one day, I am spoiled!” I laughed as I shoved a piece of crispy bacon into my mouth. “But seriously, all of that sounds incredible. Thank you so much for planning it you two, especially you, Ari. I know you must have done all the hard jobs.”
She nodded, accepting the praise willingly, prompting me to kiss her on the head once more.
“I’m just going to clean the kitchen,” Terrance smirked as Arianna and I ate. “Having help is wonderful, but sometimes a little messy. Once you’re ready – and take as long as you want the movie doesn’t start for a while yet – we’ll get going.”
He left us behind to snuggle and watch some morning television, both picking at the breakfast alternately. To think that this was the baby I was so scared to have, to think that I would fear not knowing what to do, or making a mess of things... Motherhood had come naturally to me.
Maybe that made me one of the lucky ones, or maybe everyone got the same instincts once that beautiful bundle of joy in their arms. Either way, having Ari had changed my life for the better in every single way. Without her, I had no idea where I would be now, and I truly didn’t want to find out.
***
“What’s this?” I gasped loudly at the floaty red material, draped across our bed. “It looks like...” I picked it up to examine the item closer. “Yep, it’s a dress. What is this for? I thought that we were staying in for dinner?”
“We are,” Terrance called from the kitchen, the room I’d been instructed to stay out of for at least the next hour. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t look nice.”
I didn’t bother to argue. I’d been thoroughly spoiled all day long, so there was no point in resisting now. Instead, I grabbed the dress and held it up against me. I was a little rounder now after having Ari, my body slightly more curvaceous, but Terrance seemed to like that, so I did, too. I knew my body wouldn’t snap back to exactly how it was before, so what was the point in worrying about it? My body had given life, it no longer mattered how it looked.
Still, I got the sense that this dress would actually look very flattering on me.
In sheer excitement, I tore my jeans and tee shirt off and tried it on. As I pulled it over my head, the expensive material glided softly over me, reminding me for a second that not everything I wore had to be practical and easy.
As it fell to the floor, and I got a good look at myself, I was taken aback by how good I looked. I didn’t get a lot of time to fuss over my hair and make up usually, my priorities were on my little girl, but now I had a whole hour to kill and a strong desire to make myself look presentable.
I grabbed all the beauty products I could get my hands on and I got to work making myself look like the princess I felt like I looked. Terrance was right – it did feel good to get dressed up for once. Maybe I would even pull some of my best underwear on, too...
I’d had the loveliest day of my life, and I was excited to see what tonight would bring. Terrance seemed to have some big plans; he wanted to make this Mother’s Day as special as possible, and it would be silly of me to ignore that.
***
“Wow, you look... I’m speechless,” Terrance gasped as I finally joined him in the kitchen. “I knew that dress was going to look amazing on you, but wow. I had no idea how much. It looks fantastic.”
He pulled me close to him, and I fell against his suit clad body with absolutely no resistance. “You know, you don’t look too bad yourself. I like you in a suit.”
“Me, too.” He pressed his lips gently against mine. “Even more so now that I feel like I deserve it.”
“What on Earth do you mean?” I whispered against his lips.
“Well, now I work for my suits. I have my own business. I’ve earned them.”
We kissed for a little while longer, just enjoying one another. Having Ari was wonderful, but it did mean we didn’t get enough time to just be us. Luckily, Nickie adored our daughter, and she was always happy to babysit.
“You know, since we’ve had Ari, I think we’ve gotten a little wrapped up in her, haven’t we?” Terrance asked, clearly thinking along the same lines as me. “It’s been busy; these last two years have simply flown by.”
“I can’t even recall year one,” I laughed happily. “It was all crying and milk and diapers on an endless circle. Totally worth it, though.”
“Oh, of course. That isn’t what I meant at all.” Terrance stepped back and flicked his eyes up and down my body appreciatively. “What I meant was I haven’t had enough time to pay attention to you and your needs.”
“My needs are met just fine.” I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively at him. “But right now my needs are more geared towards food. I’m starving.”
“Will you just wait a minute? I have something I want to say to you?” I watched in awe as Terrance fell to one knee, his eyes sparkling at me with love and desire. “I love you, Morgan, you know I do. I’ve loved you for a very long time now. You crashed into my life and very unexpectedly turned it all around.”
Tears welled at my eyes. I felt the need to interrupt, to say something, but I managed to clamp my lips together to keep it all inside. If I knew Terrance, which I did very well, then he’d been planning the moment for ages. The last thing he needed was for me to jump in and wreck it for him.
“You were my angel in the beginning, and then you quickly became someone that I couldn’t go a day without thinking about. I never wanted to get to know anyone and I never wanted anyone to know me, except for you. You changed everything. And not only that, you’ve given me my daughter, the girl who makes everything seem that little bit brighter. You’ve given me the family that I never had before, and now I want to finally make that official and complete.”
He pulled a box out of his pocket and clicked it open to reveal the most beautiful red ruby ring that I’d ever seen in my life. The gem sat on a gold, thin, elegant band, the sort I just knew would look incredible on my finger. Everything became more real in that moment, I knew then that we really were going to become the family that I’d always desired.
“So, will you do me the honor of making me the happiest man alive? Will you agree to marry me and become my wife?”
“Of... of course I will,” I stammered as emotion filled my throat. “I would love nothing more.”
Terrance slid the ring onto my finger, solidifying our love further, and he jumped up to wrap his arms tightly around me. He embraced me hard and kissed me gently, protecting me and loving me with everything that he had. Never before had I felt so loved by him, and it was honestly the best sensation in the whole wide world.
I belonged to Terrance, and him to me. It was all that I’d ever wanted.
“Oh, and I definitely think it’s time for baby number two...” He cocked his head to one side, trying to gauge my opinion on that one. It was what I wanted, too, but I had to have the wedding first. I didn’t want to be swollen in my dress.
“One step at a time,” I giggled, pushing him playfully. “One step at a time.”
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FAKE GIRLFRIEND FOR THE BILLIONAIRE
By Alexa Davis
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Alexa Davis
Chapter One
Adam
Monday
“Yo, how’s it going?” I called out loudly as I entered the Cutz barbershop in the middle of the afternoon. “Max, what’s going on, it’s like a ghost town in here. The rest of New York is absolutely buzzing and in here…no one.”
My best friend snuck around the corner with a sheepish look on his face. He ran his fingers through his shaggy light brown hair and gave me a grin. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You don’t need to give me shit about it. We were rammed in here early on; you’ve just happened to come in during a lull.”
He ran his eyes critically up and down my body. “Which I’m sure is a good thing for you, considering you spend most of your life out partying, or hungover to fuck. I don’t know how you still do it at twenty-seven years old. Honestly, I’m the same age as you and one night out crushes me for days.”
I took his teasing in the good humor it was intended, just like he did with me. “Just because you’re an old man, doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t hack it.”
I glanced at my reflection in one of the endless mirrors that stretched across Cutz, running my hands down my slightly worn cheeks. My dark hair looked fine because I always kept it cut short and my light green eyes still sparkled, but the strain was starting to show on my sallow skin. Maybe all the late nights were becoming a bit too much for me – not that I would ever admit that to Max.
“I can hack it, I just have adult things to do in the morning,” he continued to mock me. “Some of us have real life businesses to run. We don’t have mommy and daddy to pay for everything.”
I rolled my eyes and chuckled. My endless source of money from my family was always a point that Max picked up on. It was fair enough – if I was in his position I would be exactly the same about it.
“You might think it makes my life easy, but it really doesn’t,” I warned. “I have to go and have dinner with the old bastards tonight. Brandon, too.”
He went silent as that, just as I expected him to. Max and I met in high school, right when my parents were at the height of piling their expectations on my shoulders, so he knew just how fractured the shitty relationship was.
Maybe in another world, without our father always pitting us against one another, my older brother Brandon and me could have been friends. There was only four years between us, after all. But he was always better than me, setting the bar too high. He always did exactly what Dad told him to without complaint, even going into the accountancy department of the family investment firm without even wanting to try something else.
It drove me nuts and drove a wedge between us so huge that it was almost the Grand Canyon. There was no coming back from how things were between us.
“Yeah, well good luck with that,” Max muttered while fiddling with his scissors. “Rather you than me, anyway.”
I didn’t comment on that because Max had a great relationship with his family. They loved him unconditionally, supporting his dream to open a barber shop without even questioning it. He might have been the only person who saw my point of view, but even he couldn’t fully understand it.
“Thanks, man.” I patted the counter loudly and turned towards the door. “I better get out of here before the stampede of people rush through the door.”
“Oh, get lost, Adam,” he sneered with a laugh. “I am actually booked up to the rafters in the next hour, so the joke’s on you.”
I chuckled and pushed the door open, leaving out into the chilly air. Much as Max and I always gave each other hell, I was glad to have him in my life. There wasn’t anyone I trusted quite like him…especially not my family.
***
My hand shook as I reached up to open the front door to my parents’ mansion as nerves cascaded violently through my system. It was weird to think that I had spent most of my life growing up in this house because it felt nothing like home. I could barely recall myself even being inside there, never mind creating memories.
Inside my own home, the one I purchased as soon as I hit eighteen, was my real comfort zone.
“Mother!” The tight knot that coiled around in my chest as Debbie Britt, my wonderful mom, stood on the other side of the door. She was the only person in the entirety of my family that I felt connected with in any way. She chose not to get in the middle of the pettiness between me, Dad, and Brandon. “How are you?”
“Oh, Adam.” Her face crinkled up into a smile as she threw open her arms to embrace me wholly. She never cared if her designer dress got wrinkled slightly or her make up wasn’t perfect. That just wasn’t her. “It’s so wonderful to see you. What have you been up to?”
“Oh, you know.” I took her into my arms and let her rest her head against my chest. At six foot one, it was damn near impossible to find anyone as tall as me. I overtook my mother when I was thirteen. “This and that.” I always kept my answers vague, even with Mom. I preferred to keep my life away from my family separate just to make everything much less complicated. “What about you?”
Before she got a chance to answer, the much less welcoming presence of Richard Britt came into the room. Maybe I looked more like him than I did Mom but that was where the similarities ended.
“Adam,” he said gruffly while running a critical eye up and down me. “You look…”
He didn’t finish that sentence, but he didn’t have to. We both knew that he meant something disapproving by it. That didn’t need to be spoken aloud. I might have been in a tailored charcoal suit, but in his eyes there always would have been something wrong with my outfit, whatever it was.
The tension was so thick it could have been cut with a knife. I darted my eyes between my parents, but neither of them said anything. My father enjoyed the atmosphere, or so I had to assume since he spent most of his life creating it, whereas I wasn’t sure my mother knew what to say. She just wanted it gone.
I parted my lips, scanning my brain desperately to find the right words, but there wasn’t anything there…and as it turned out it didn’t matter anyway. Just at that moment, the front door swung open again to reveal my brother on the other side.
“Brandon!” My father’s tone brightened as my brother walked inside. He acted as if they hadn’t seen each other for months, like he and I hadn’t, rather than a few hours ago at the office. I couldn’t help it; a bitter snake of jealousy tore through my intestines as I watched them embrace. “How’s Helen? Is she not coming tonight?”
Helen – my brother’s wonderful wife that actually managed to make him look like a nice person. I let out a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding at the news she wasn’t coming, and I heard Mom do the same. We both shared our opinion on Helen: she was a no good gold digger. The fact that she refused to have children with my brother until she had “made it as a model” did not spell good news as far as I was concerned.
“Oh, Helen is at a charity event tonight. She’s supporting…” Brandon clicked his fingers as if he couldn’t remember. “Animals, I think. Something about animals.”
Dad led Brandon towards the dining room, leaving me and Mom alone for a second. I laughed as she rolled her eyes and mouthed the words “thank God” at me. Honestly, if it wasn’t for her, I never would come home again! She was the only one worth visiting.
As we took our seats at the table, I inhaled deeply and breathed in all the wonderful scents that emanated from the plates laid out in front of us. Okay, this was another good reason to come back. I didn’t have my own chef, that wasn’t an expense I could justify. And anyway I knew I would never find one as good as Beatrice. She was a goddess in the kitchen.
“This smells great,” I commented happily, allowing my father and brother’s behavior to wash over me as my stomach growled loudly. “I can’t wait to dig in.”
I picked up my fork and hovered it over my plate. My mouth watered as I tried to decide what to go for first, but unfortunately, I didn’t quite manage to get there before Dad decided to address me again.
“Actually, Adam, before any of us eat anything,” he said coldly. “We are having an honorary dinner next week next week at the business awards. I’m sure I’ve told you that I’m winning the Business of the Decade Award?” He hadn’t, but I nodded anyway. “So, of course you shall be expected to attend. I need my whole family there.”
“But…” I started, about to give some fake excuses about why I couldn’t possibly go to something that sounded so utterly boring, but I didn’t manage to complete that sentence.
“There are no buts. There isn’t anything that you could have on that would be more important than this.” Brandon snorted as Dad continued, taking great amusement in what he considered to be my failure. I shot him a glare, but he ignored me. “You will be there.”
“Why do you even want him there?” Brandon asked making me curl my hands into fists in temper. Whenever I was around him, I could feel myself revert back into being a petty teenager all over again. “He hasn’t done anything with his economics masters degree, he doesn’t even have a job. He’s an embarrassment, really; he can’t even keep a girlfriend.”
My blood boiled angrily and a red mist descended over my eyes. Just because I didn’t live my life like Brandon did, didn’t make me wrong. And who the fuck was he to judge? I thought. He married a woman who didn’t love him for anything other than his money, he worked for his daddy, and he was an asshole. He didn’t deserve the credit that he got and he certainly did deserve to push his way of life into my face. It just wasn’t right.
I couldn’t take it.
“I do have a girlfriend,” I heard myself saying, despite the fact that I’d intended to remain silent and dignified. “We’ve been together for a while, actually.” I couldn’t stop myself from talking. The stunned expression in Brandon’s eyes as I took him down was priceless. “We’re serious.”
“Great,” Dad interjected after only a beat of silence. “Well, that’s wonderful. You can bring her along to the meal to show the world that you aren’t a massive failure. Now, dig in. We need to eat before the food gets cold.”
Fuck. I grabbed my fork, but all of a sudden my appetite wasn’t the same anymore. What the hell have I gotten myself into? How the fuck can I get out of this one?
I couldn’t back down without admitting I was lying, which would only push me more into the black sheep of the family category. Somehow, despite it being the most ridiculous thing ever, I needed to find a way to make it work…