CHAPTER FIVE
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Brianna
I ’m dreaming. I have to be. As I stroll back to my apartment, I’m pretty sure I’m either going to get lost or get hit by a car because I can’t seem to get my mind to focus on anything but Michael.
And his proposal.
He wants a fiancée. No, he wants me as his fiancée.
I met him to sell him my dream wedding but instead he wants me to keep it—and have it with him. At least, I think so. I really didn’t sit and ask for details. I’d been too shocked for that, and halfway through the discussion, he’d gotten a business call.
I used that moment to excuse myself. Better than calling him crazy.
Who found their wife through a flyer in a dive bar? Especially Michael Parsons, business mogul and hottest bachelor in town. Or at least before he got a fake girlfriend.
But damn it, I’m actually considering taking him up on the offer. Not only do I get to keep my pretty wedding, I get reimbursed for the cost of all of it. He’d said there was more, but I didn’t stick around to find out what it was.
My luck, he’d say he wanted a baby out of the entire thing, too, and then I’d know I was in a Lifetime movie for sure.
These things don’t happen in real life. But then I don’t think men walk out on their fiancées in real life all that often either, and look what had happened.
I’m a magnet for strange men.
Deb is going to die when I tell her. And then she’s going to order me to never see Michael Parsons again on account of his clear lunacy.
Only a minute after I walk into my apartment, my phone rings. It’s Deb.
“Hey,” I say, dropping my purse on the counter in the tiny kitchen just inside the doorway. “I’m alive.”
“Why didn’t you call sooner?”
“My brain was about to explode.”
Deb speaks in her no-nonsense voice. “You’re not making sense. Tell me he wasn’t crazy.”
I choke on a laugh. “No, I don’t think so. Delusional?” I laugh again. “I don’t know.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No. No. I’m just—no. He was a perfect gentleman.” He didn’t even touch me. He wants me to marry him, but he didn’t even touch me. Perfect gentleman. “He wants to buy my wedding stuff. All of it.”
“Wait—what? Every single thing?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the catch?”
“That’s the funny part.”
“Girl—you need to stop being so cryptic.”
I look around my tiny kitchen, trying to figure out how much food I have. “Come over for dinner and I’ll tell you everything.”
“Okay…but you’re scaring me.”
“I’m scaring myself, too.”
I end the call with her and sigh. I’m scaring myself because I’m considering this. More than considering it, I’ve almost made up my mind. Of course, I need to iron out the details. And force Michael to get a background check, and then—
Who am I kidding? This is ridiculous. I don’t even know the man! Sure, he probably isn’t a serial killer. He’s too busy running a multi-million-dollar company. But he could be an ass like Chet. He could be a lot of things.
I open the menu drawer and pull out the one for the local Chinese place. I need junk food for tonight. And a lot of wine.
Then maybe I’ll get my head on straight and get Michael Parsons out of my mind.
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When my phone rings at eight the next morning, waking me from a hazy sleep, I grumble at it. “Stop ringing.”
It does. And then it starts back up again.
I snatch it off the table and answer in a groggy voice. “Hello.”
“Morning.”
“Who’s this?”
“Michael. You sound hung over.”
I flop on my back, fighting the shiver that wants to run through my body at the sound of his voice. So deep. So confident. I wouldn’t mind waking up to that voice every morning for a while.
No! I made my mind up last night. No Michael Parsons. No wedding.
I need to move on.
“Do you think drinking four glasses of wine would cause a hangover?”
He chuckles. “Maybe. For you? Probably.”
“Are you saying I can’t hold my liquor?”
“I’m saying you’re tiny—and you probably didn’t eat much either. It’s inevitable.”
Tiny? I snort, then slap a hand over my mouth. “I’m not tiny. And I can eat like a pig.”
There. That’ll teach him. I’ll show him I’m the last person he wants to marry. Which doesn’t matter anyway because I already made up my mind.
“I’d like to see that,” he says. “How about today? A picnic?”
“I—what?” I sit up in bed. Okay, so maybe I’m not as hung over as I thought. Just conflicted.
“Lunch. At the park. We can talk.”
That sounds nice. Normal. Shouldn’t he be inviting me for lunch on his yacht? Or his helicopter or something?
“I…there’s nothing to talk about.” I stand and walk to my closet. I’m supposed to work this evening, but before that I should be building my graphic designing empire. It’s not going to build itself.
“We didn’t get to finish yesterday. I’m sorry about that. It was an important phone call and I was hoping you’d wait, but I know you had things to do.”
I didn’t have anything—I was just reeling. “It’s fine. I got the gist of your…proposal.”
“A pun. I get it. Funny.”
I frown. “I wasn’t trying to be funny. I’m telling you, I understand what you were saying and it’s—”
“Crazy?”
I stop with my hand on a silky shirt—one I never wear because I’ll either get coffee on it when I work or because I’m usually being lazy around my apartment in sweats.
“Yes. Crazy. And…you can probably get any girl you want to marry you.”
“I want you.”
The certainty in his voice, the slight huskiness there—it hits me right in the center. Hell—no matter how this ends, Michael Parsons is still sexy.
“It’s…” I swallow. How do I explain this to him? Any why the hell am I not just telling him no? I had my answer last night. It should still be the same this morning.
“A picnic,” he says. “Not an engagement. Just a date. Come on, Brianna. You wouldn’t say no to me if I asked you on a date any other day, would you?”
Damn it. He’s right. “No. Maybe. Probably not.”
He chuckles. “That means yes, right? Yes for the date, I mean.”
“Okay. Yes.”
“Good. The park across from the coffee shop we met at okay?”
“Sure.” I can walk there.
He tells me a time and I end the call. Fine. A picnic. That’s all. At least it’ll be interesting company.
And…I reach out to touch the fabric on the shirt in my closet. Silky shirt, it is. Because I might think Michael Parsons is crazy, but he’s sexy crazy and I want him to think I’m hot.
Right before I tell him I refuse to be his wife.