Okay, I admit it: when I was in seventh grade, I made a wedding scrapbook.

It was pink. It was lacy. It featured carefully cut out and pasted wedding dresses, shoes, and bouquets from the wedding magazines of every grocery store, hairdresser, library, and newsstand within a twenty-block radius of my house. Next to those pictures were the kind of lovingly detailed and copious notes of a complexity usually only seen in medieval Biblical commentaries, though with significantly more use of hearts for periods, the bottom half of exclamation points, and the dots of the I’s.

I had worked out the wedding location: Paris, London, or worst case scenario, that really nice church with the phoenix stained glass window on Main Street. I had worked out the identities of the maid of honor (there was never any real choice besides Kate, whose bubbly lettering occasionally appeared beside mine in this notebook to add choice commentary such as “sexy beast!” or “super hott!” to select dresses), and the groom, or should I say the grooms? Because, you see, there were so many options. Justin Timberlake might spy me at a concert and know instantly that I was the one. Leonardo DeCaprio might be swinging through town on the way from a movie premiere and stop at the same fro-yo place as me and know that we shared a deep connection. Tommy from fifth period might finally notice me and dump his bitchy girlfriend for someone who understood the importance of classic British spy-fi television shows.

Justin, or Leo, or Tommy, would of course propose to me in the most romantic fashion possible. Maybe under a beautiful full moon glowing with the promise of our future lives together, a band softly playing sweet Caribbean melodies in the distance, lilac scenting the air as he—whichever one he ended up being—whirled me gracefully in a waltz across the green and flowered expanse of the park where we had had our first date. He would stroke my hair with infinite tenderness, gaze deeply into my eyes, and whisper in my ear, so softly that at first I would think I had imagined it: My love, will you marry me?

For better or worse, though, my current love life was not being scripted by my seventh-grade self.

And somehow, my thirteen-year-old self had never quite imagined a scenario with a marriage proposal coming from the full pouty lips of a man I couldn't even stand—and that I’d say yes to those lips. I mean, that man. Who I can’t stand. And whose lips are irrelevant to the current conversation, no matter how good they are at kissing my lips. Or at kissing their way up my thigh to my—yes, completely irrelevant. I’ll just stop talking about them right now. Yep.

Oh, if I knew then what I knew now

But I didn’t, and so here I was, older but not feeling much wiser, applause and congratulations breaking over me like a tidal wave as what felt like the entire population of planet Earth—with possibly a few extra visitors from outer space—surrounded me to let me know how pleased they were with my impending marriage to Grant Devlin.

…impending marriage to Grant Devlin. Holy shit.

Keeping up with all the well-wishes was the only thing that kept my brain from breaking under the strain of that impossible fact—I’m getting married to Grant Devlin—like a twig under an elephant’s foot. I lost track of the smiles and happy tears—at least I assume they were happy tears; possibly everyone was just heartbroken that Grant had been taken off the market. Everyone seemed to be testing how many different ways the English language could be rearranged to say “I’m so happy for you!” while actually meaning “But what did you do to get him to even look at you in the first place?!”

“Congratulations.” The voice of Grant’s godmother Portia cut through the crowd. “How marvelous for you, Lacey. What a…coup. And for you, Grant, what a…words fail me.”

“Thank you,” I said through a clenched smile. I willed my tear ducts to not activate immediately at her presence. So what if she embodied all the imperious disapproval of the entire upper class that had been actively shitting on me my entire professional life? There were scarier people in the world. There had to be.

“I’m so delighted you’re one of the first to know,” Grant said to Portia. “You know how I rely on you.”

“Indeed I do,” Portia said so coldly I was amazed the people next to her didn’t all develop cases of severe frostbite and hypothermia. “We’ll have lunch tomorrow, Lacey dear. Noon.” She managed to make ‘Lacey dear’ sound like ‘scum of the earth,’ and ‘noon’ sound like the time of my planned public execution. “We’ll get to know each other better then, I’m sure. I can’t wait to learn all about you and your many…attractions.”

Before I could reply, a reporter shoved a microphone into my face and said, “Lacey, tell our viewers: how did the two of you meet?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could blink, two more reporters popped up like sharks scenting blood in the water, microphones and notepads at the ready in place of teeth: “When’s the wedding? What’s he like as a person? How do you feel about marrying into San Francisco’s premier business dynasty? What’s your favorite—”

There was a glass of champagne in my hand and I drained it.

“How many children do you want?”

“Have you encountered any ethical issues inherent in dating your boss?”

“What would you say to anyone who might wonder if you’re just in it for the money?”

Did I just compare the reporters to sharks? I should have said cockroaches. They were swarming all around me, hemming me in with their questions and cameras so that I couldn’t move if I didn’t want to squash them—and wouldn’t that have been good publicity, a viral video of Grant Devlin’s fiancée mowing down an innocent reporter with a glass of alcohol in her hand. I tried to keep my smile pinned to my face and reply in innocuous clichés—I was so happy, I was floating on clouds, gosh, what a wonderful occasion—but they kept cutting me off, I couldn’t understand how they could even hear me under the constant barrage of questions, damn but I needed more champagne—

A firm hand on my arm, and Grant was pulling me away, like a lifeguard pulling me out of the ocean’s grip. “Sorry, ladies, gentlemen…” The reporters parted before him like the Red Sea; I was going to have to get him to teach me that handy little trick. “Got to get the lovely lady home before she comes to her senses and takes back her answer!”

A polite smattering of laughter greeted this statement, and the reporters let us pass with only a few more questions, even those waved away by Grant with a casual flap of his hand, as though he were swatting a few annoying flies. The cool night air felt like heaven on my skin, like a draught of sweet cold water after a trek through the burning hot jungle of public scrutiny. His car pulled up, and he held the door for me as I slipped into wonderful anonymity behind its tinted dark windows. The door shutting behind him cut off the roar of sound from the party like someone had hit the mute button on my life; what a relief.

“I need more champagne,” I informed him.

“I have three bottles,” he said, reaching into the car’s mini fridge.

“Just keep them coming,” I said, and he laughed as he poured me a fresh glass.

I gulped it like it was the elixir of life, and closed my eyes. Unfortunately, when I opened them again, I was still there. “What the fuck did I just agree to?”

I swilled the champagne in a doomed effort to settle my nerves.

Grant quirked his eyebrow. He was smirking. Of fucking course he was. “It was your idea, Lacey.”

I nearly spat out my champagne all over his car’s expensive leather interior. “In what crazy alternate universe was this my idea? Did you just beam in from the alternate universe where up is down and Spock has a goatee and I have absolutely terrible ideas? Because I hate to break it to you, but this is not that universe!”

“Charmingly put, as always,” he almost purred. He put his hand on my shoulder, warm and comforting and strong. His fingers stroked my skin, toyed almost absentmindedly with the silk strap of my dress. “Relax, it’s just a PR strategy.”

His hand slid down my arm, stroking it soothingly. His voice was soft and gentle, and my head was swimming with champagne and longing, and I wanted nothing more than to rest my head against his shoulder and let him tell me that it was all going to be fine, that I could trust him, that he would take care of everything...

“This isn’t Beauty and the Beast; I’m not going to lock you in a castle with a bunch of singing household appliances.”

“What, you don’t have one of those?” I shot back automatically. My head traitorously leaned down against his shoulder. Oh, it was so comfortable there. I could stay there forever.

“Oh, I have three castles,” he said offhandedly, as if he were talking about three bikes or three armchairs or three lightly used paperbacks and not three goddamn castles. His arm came up around my shoulders and pulled me closer into him. “But singing appliances are overrated; always breaking down. I blame the shoddy manufacturing techniques of the factories we outsource them to.”

I frowned up at him, not sure how serious he was being about the singing appliance thing, and not certain whether to be sarcastic about that or—

He pressed a kiss to the top of my head and took advantage of my wrong footedness to continue: “This isn’t a life sentence, Lacey. We can stay engaged long enough for the share price to stabilize and to secure the buyout of Jennings’ company. Nothing could be simpler.”

“Lots of things could be simpler,” I muttered into his shoulder. “Calculus is simpler. Gerrymandering is simpler. Peace in the Middle East is a goddamn cakewalk compared to this tangled-up mess of a—”

And then his hand was in my hair, gentle but insistent as he titled my chin upwards for a kiss, his lips covering mine. It was a slow, warm kiss, tender at first but then increasing in intensity, his mouth growing greedy as he pulled me into his lap, my breasts pressed against his chest as his tongue slipped between my lips, as his other hand gripped my hip. I could feel him hardening against my thigh, and heat flushed between my legs, I could feel myself already wet for him—

He grinned against my mouth, pulled away just a fraction of an inch. “We seem to get along so much better when we communicate like this, don’t we?” he murmured, that voice like dark chocolate and sea salt and sin.

He tried to kiss me again, but I pushed him back into the seat, away from me. I couldn’t do this. We couldn’t do this. Not again. I had to keep my head on straight. “There’ll be none of that.” I tried to clamber off his lap; he held me tight. “Dammit, Grant, this is business!”

Oh, why did I drink all that champagne, why did he have to be so warm and firm and lovely, why he have to be my boss and off-limits, why did he have to be an asshole when all I wanted to do was touch him, feel those firm shoulders like the foundation of a building, those cheekbones that could cut diamonds, those soft and supple lips that lit a fire in me—no, no, no!

“I’m serious, Grant, we have to stay on the ball here.”

“I can think of other things I’d like you to stay on,” he murmured with a rakish grin.

Dammit, no one had a rakish grin in real life! Rakish grins were for sexy pirates and dashing seventeenth century French spies with ruffled shirts! I refused to melt for an attribute real people weren’t even supposed to have.

“You’re not a pirate,” I informed him. “You don’t have a parrot or a hook hand or anything except the sexiness, so you can just stop with the pirateness right now and get back to business.”

It’s just possible that I was becoming tipsy. Maybe. You make a not entirely weak argument for the tipsiness hypothesis.

Grant didn’t even blink at my verbal sidetrip into pirate territory. “Business, hmmm? Ah, a girl with her eye on the prize. Are you into diamonds? Or did you see that movie about blood diamonds and become a sapphire girl?” His hand came up to stroke my cheek; I leaned into it without thinking. “Rubies would certainly be enchanting with your complexion.”

“Please stop talking,” I said into the skin of his palm. Oooh, nice skin. Just slightly weathered enough to be rugged, and so warm.

“If you insist,” he replied with a glint in his eye. He leaned closer.

I slapped him away. “Not like that! I’m pretty sure you can stop talking without using my lips as a breaking mecha—mechamis—stopping thing!”

He pouted. I was nearly overcome with the urge to kiss him in order to stop him from pouting. It would have been for the greater good of humanity. Pouts like that could drive the entire female population of Earth to sex-based insanity.

“Is that really how you want to treat your fiancé?” he asked, his eyes wide in a parody of tragic disappointment. “Lacey, I do believe you’ll give me a complex.”

“You’re not my fiancé,” I mumbled. “The question is invalid.”

“I know a few hundred people who would disagree,” he said.

“Fuck those guys,” I said eloquently.

“I’d rather fuck you,” he said bluntly, and my entire body lit up like a volcano, magma pulsing through my veins as I swooned towards him, melting. “Though if you’d prefer to wait for the wedding night, I might let myself be persuaded.”

Contrary to this statement, his hand began a leisurely journey up my thigh, occasionally pausing to take in the sights and soak up the atmosphere. I was torn between derailing it and telling it to stop snapping vacation photos and get to its final destination before its hotel reservation was canceled.

“Now, as to the wedding dress and wedding ring—”

The beacon light of the neon Steddy Tatts sign had never looked so inviting, like the shining beam of a lighthouse saving me from the stormy seas of hormones, really bad decisions, and future humiliation. I practically leapt out of the limo almost before the driver had come to a full stop, avoiding spraining my ankle Lord-only-knows-how as I blurted: “We will talk about this tomorrow goodnight goodbye!!”

Grant’s voice pursued me up the steps to my apartment, his accent only broadened by his obvious amusement: “Don’t leave me in suspense, Lacey: do you prefer princess, or square-cut?”

Princess, but there was no way in hell I was telling him that.