It takes ten minutes of frantic searching to find Lottie hiding out in the emergency stairwell with her arms wrapped around her knees, Wonder Women splayed forgotten on the steps beside her. “Hey,” I say, nudging her gently with one ankle. “Can I sit here?”

Lottie shrugs without looking at me. “If you want.”

“Well, with an invitation like that,” I tease, easing myself down onto the concrete. We sit side by side for a while in a silence that, while not exactly companionable, isn’t hostile, either. “You seem pretty pissed about Cal and the race?” I finally ask.

Lottie’s eyebrows twitch. “Yeah,” she says, still staring down at her boots. “I’m pretty pissed,” she echoes.

“I know,” I tell her. “Me too, if you want to know the truth. But that’s part of being in a family, I think—sometimes people you love do stuff you don’t agree with.”

“He’s so stupid,” she rages, shaking her head. “Everyone is so stupid.”

I almost laugh. “I mean, you’re not wrong. But I think you will find, unfortunately, that that’s not something that gets better as you get older.” I reach down and take her hand, cautious. She lets me hold it. “He’s going to be fine,” I promise her. “He’s an old pro at this. And today is a big day for him, and for all the kids who are going to be able to get the help they need, so you want to maybe head back up there and get some more snacks and cheer him on?”

Lottie sighs. “Fine,” she says. “I guess.”

I’ll take it. We head back up to the suite, where the scrum has thickened around Ezra at the window, and even more of the crowd has moved out onto the balcony, milling around waiting for the race to begin. The cars look like so many toys from up here, all of them lined up at the starting line. An announcer’s voice booms over the loudspeaker, introducing each of the drivers in turn.

I’m squinting over some old lady’s shoulder, realizing suddenly that I don’t know which car Cal is supposed to be in, when a hand lands on my shoulder. “Hey dudes,” he says, warm breath sending a shock down my spine. “How’s the race?”

I startle, whirling to face him. “What are you doing here?”

“You were right,” he says with a shrug. “It wasn’t worth it.”

A million emotions flood through me then, but Cal looks at Lottie before I can react. “I owe you an apology,” he tells her seriously. “I wasn’t using my head out there. I should have thought about how something like this would make you guys feel before I said I would do it.”

Lottie shrugs. “It’s okay.”

“Will you give me another chance?” he asks, and she nods.

“Jules!” I turn around again and there’s Ez, his plate piled high with pigs in blankets. “You were right,” he says, the pride of a job well done written all over his face. “I asked nicely.”

“You want to share some of those with your sister, please?” Cal asks, barely swallowing down a laugh. The kids set about divvying up their spoils while he leads me over to a quiet corner near the bar. “You want to keep fighting?” he murmurs. “Or you want to kiss and make up?”

I swallow back my emotion. “I don’t think I was wrong,” I tell him slowly. “But I do think it’s possible I was hard on you. And I’m sorry for that.”

Cal smiles. “Nobody’s ever hard on me,” he says, taking a step closer. I can feel the body heat radiating off him, and smell his familiar cologne. “It’s not the worst thing in the world.”

I raise my eyebrows. “It’s not?”

“I kind of liked it,” he admits.

“Shut up,” I laugh. “You did not.”

“I did,” he says, curling a hand around my waist. “In fact, maybe we could get back into it, and you could be hard on me in some other contexts.”

“Cal!” I start to say, but by then he’s already kissing me, our smiles bumping together. “Thank you for not doing that,” I say against his mouth. “For them and for me.”

---

We watch the race and mill around in the suite for a while longer, the kids picking over the dessert buffet as the late-afternoon sun starts to sink in the western sky. Gavin turns up again—he won and the flush of victory is all around him, his smile wide as he swings a friendly arm around Cal’s neck. “Pussied out, huh?”

I’m expecting it to annoy him, but Cal just grins. “You got me, Jenks,” he says wryly. “I did indeed pussy out.”

“Typical,” Gavin chides, but it’s friendly. “You going to be at the gala tonight?”

“Can’t.” Cal tilts his head toward Ezra and Lottie, who are sitting side by side on the sofa tucking into ice cream sundaes. “Got big plans for make-your-own pizzas and an encore viewing of Frozen.”

“I can take them tonight,” Diana says, coming up behind us and laying a hand on Cal’s arm. “You take Jules and go.”

I raise my eyebrows, surprised.

“Are you sure?” Cal asks his mom. Off her nod, he looks at me, eyebrows arching. “You want to go to a party?”

Which is how I wind up in the ballroom of a fancy hotel in a floor-length Oscar de la Renta the color of red wine, borrowed diamonds glittering at my ears and wrists and throat. “You clean up nice,” Cal murmurs as he leads me through the hotel lobby, eyes flicking up and down my body in open appreciation.

“You don’t look so bad yourself.” It’s an understatement: he’s wearing an honest-to-God tuxedo, freshly shaven with his dark hair combed back.

He looks amazing.

“Thanks.” Cal smiles. “I always feel like I’m going to the prom when I put one of these dumb things on.”

“Prom, huh?” I grin. “Well, who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky at the end of the night.”

“So it will be nothing like my actual prom, then.”

It’s not every day a person gets invited to a white-tie charity ball. I used to get excited about the free Starbucks K-Cups in the Harper Wells break room, but it’s starting to occur to me that there are better fringe benefits out there. The ballroom glitters with candlelight, the tables festooned with tall vases full of pale roses mixed with herbs and winter branches, and a twelve-piece jazz band plays standards at the far end of the room. I’d be happy to stand around and gawk for a while, but Cal leads me directly to the bar and orders a couple of strong vodka cocktails. “Drink up,” he advises quietly, downing his own in two long gulps. “This is about to be really boring before it gets fun.”

He’s not wrong. I spend the next hour tagging along while he makes the rounds saying hello to an endless parade of business associates, asking after this executive’s kids at Andover and that mogul’s trip to Cannes. I smile at about a hundred different plucked, Botoxed women whose names I have no hope of ever remembering after tonight. “She’s having a torrid affair with the Lieutenant Governor,” Cal murmurs as an immaculately made-up lady saunters away after a few minutes of small talk.

My eyes widen. “Really?” I ask, and Cal grins.

“I mean, maybe.”

“Oh, I see how it is.” I glance around the room, my gaze landing on an older man in an ill-fitting suit, the overhead lights gleaming off his balding head. “What about that dude?”

“Almost couldn’t make it tonight,” Cal deadpans immediately. “Complications from hair plug implantation. Very unpleasant.”

“Sounds like it.” I nod at a geriatric couple sitting boredly at a table in the corner. “Those two have been embezzling from his accounting clients for years,” I say, getting into it, “to support her tragic addiction . . . to the Home Shopping Network.”

“It’s the small appliances,” Cal agrees sadly. “She can’t help herself.”

We go back and forth like that for a while, coming up with one absurd backstory after another, and suddenly this event doesn’t feel so stuffy after all.

Finally I excuse myself and slip off to the ladies room to powder my nose—that is, to make sure my boobs aren’t popping out the top of this dress, Las Vegas-style. I scan the crowd for Cal when I get back to the ballroom. He’s standing near the silent auction table chatting up a striking brunette in a long, emerald-green dress.

I pause. She’s got her arm on his elbow, grinning, and his face is tilted attentively to hers. She’s not plucked nor Botoxed—in fact, there’s a kind of effortless elegance about her, the kind of moneyed sophistication you can’t fake. She probably goes to events like this every day, because she’s an actual heiress and not an unemployed junior law associate. Suddenly I feel like I’m playing dress-up, which I am, in my borrowed outfit, here under false pretenses.

I hesitate, shifting my weight in my sky-high heels. I know I’m being insecure, but there’s a part of me that wants to bail out like Lottie did at the race today, to find a stairwell to sit in and spend the rest of the night with my shoes off, playing Candy Crush on my phone. I’m seriously considering it, but just then Cal catches sight of me through the crowd, and his grin spreads wide as he motions for me to come over.

“There you are,” he says, planting a hand against my bare back. “I thought you fell in. This is Candice Martin, the kids’ godmother. She was Mel’s college roommate. But no stories,” he warns Candice, laughing.

“What?” she laughs back. “You mean, not even that night over Spring Break in Cabo with the tequila and—”

“Especially not that,” Cal cuts her off, grinning. They chat more, trading old stories, until finally she gives me a smile.

“It was good to meet you, Jules,” she says finally. “Cal, I’m sure our paths will cross again soon. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you with Vivian.”

Once she’s gone I let out a breath. Despite all our games, I’m beginning to see what Cal meant about boring and stuffy. “Maybe I should head back,” I say awkwardly. “I don’t want to cramp your style.” He looks blank. “You know. If you and Candice want to get, like . . . reacquainted.”

He snorts over his champagne. “Are you serious?” Then he looks at me more closely. “You are jealous! You know, I was teasing you about those moms at Ezra’s school the other day, but you kind of have a green-eyed monster thing going on, don’t you?” He runs a finger along the strap of my dress, teasing. “It’s kind of working for me, I won’t lie to you.”

“It has nothing to do with being jealous!” I insist, although I’m totally busted. “But, you know, this is a business arrangement, and so if it ever gets to a point where it doesn’t make sense—”

“You keep saying that,” Cal interrupts me, frowning. “Does this feel like a business arrangement to you?”

I look at him. Of course it doesn’t, and it hasn’t for a while now. But I don’t know how to untangle what’s real from what’s just the two of us playing house for the sake of the court.

“Listen,” Cal says quietly, reaching down and lacing his fingers through mine, “I told my mom we’d pick the kids up in the morning. There’s a room upstairs with our names on it, if you’re interested in bailing out of this excruciatingly dull party and finding out just how much I don’t want to get reacquainted with Candice—who, by the way, is married.” He raises his eyebrows. “To a woman.”

“I—oh.” Oh God, I am such an idiot. “Cal—”

“Come on, Jules,” he says, leaning close, his warm breath sending goosebumps up and down the length of my backbone. “Come to bed with me.”

I force myself to think for a minute, waiting for my lawyer brain to kick in and separate fact from fiction. But the reality is I’m tired of trying to figure out what’s real and what’s just for show. I want to be alone with him and see for myself.

“Okay,” I finally say, “I’ll go with you, but it’s going to be hard to top the penthouse suite at Caesar’s Palace.”

For a moment Cal just looks at me, and I shiver at the naked intent in his expression. Then he grins. “Let me try.”

We duck out of the ballroom and take the elevator to the top floor of the hotel, where Cal keys us into a lushly-outfitted suite, all thickly piled carpets and a four-poster bed. I wander over toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, taking in the view of the Public Garden spread out like a dark quilt below.

“I really love this city,” he admits, coming up behind me and gazing out over my shoulder. “It’s not cool. It’s not flashy. Our sports teams only just got good in the last fifteen years. But it’s just . . .”

“Home?” I supply, and I feel the curve of his grin against my cheek.

“Exactly.”

We stand like that for a long minute, looking out at the treetops and Beacon Hill beyond, the lights in the narrow windows of the brownstones glowing warmly against the blue-black sky. I lean back against him, teasing, and Cal hums quietly in my ear. “Something on your mind?” he asks, curling his hands around my waist.

I shrug inside his grip and rock against him with a little more purpose, the silky fabric of the dress slipping against the front of his suit pants. “Possibly,” I admit.

I feel his smile more than I see it. “Want to elaborate?” he asks, palms sliding up my body to cup my breasts.

“Later,” I tell him, reaching up and carding my fingers through the hair at the back of his neck, tugging a little. “Use your imagination.”

Cal’s hands drop back down to my hips, tugging me closer so that I can feel his cock hard and insistent against me. For a second I imagine letting him fuck me right here, dress rucked up around my hips and my hands planted flat on the glass, my head thrown back in pleasure. I arch back, letting out a soft moan of anticipation.

“Fuck,” Cal growls, spinning me around to face him. I’m expecting to get kissed but instead he just gazes at me, his expression hungry. “You’re beautiful.”

“A four-thousand-dollar dress will do a lot for a girl,” I say, teasing, but he shakes his head.

“Not because of the dress,” he says urgently. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, the dress is fucking gorgeous. But I’m talking about you.”

I blush. He’s still just looking at me, his face open and honest as I’ve ever seen it. I think of waking up beside him this morning. I think of what his mother told me earlier today. I think of going back to New York by myself after the custody hearing tomorrow and my heart aches inside my chest.

I should never have taken this assignment, I realize sadly. I am definitely not a girl who can spend a week faking an engagement and come out the other end unscathed, not with anyone and certainly not with Cal, who has beautiful eyelashes and a nice laugh and rough hands. Cal, who I’ve spent the last week pretending to be in love with.

And maybe not pretending much at all.

Fuck. I need to pull myself together. At the very least I need to stop thinking, so I put my hands on his face and press my mouth against his—biting gently at his bottom lip. “Bed,” I tell him, and my voice is reasonably, convincingly steady. “Now.”

Cal raises his eyebrows. “Bossy,” he says.

“Leadership abilities,” I remind him, yanking him into the bedroom and shoving him down onto the crisp white sheets. I want to be in charge for a change. I want him to let me. “You said you wanted me to be hard on you, right?” I ask, reaching down and tugging the slippery red fabric of the dress up over my head, so I’m almost naked in a thong and heels.

Cal’s eyes almost fall out of his head.

“Um, yep,” he says, looking at me delightedly, eyes devouring my body. “I did.”

“Good.” I strip his clothes off, nibbling at the muscles in his stomach as I peel his undershirt up over his head. “Don’t move,” I tell him, batting his hands away when he reaches for me. I close my lips around his nipple and suck. “If you move, I’m going to stop.”

“Jesus Christ, Jules.” Cal complains, but he does what I tell him. I yank his pants and boxers down and toss his dress shoes on the carpet, then sit back to admire my handiwork. His cock stands straight up to attention, thick and hard and hot.

“What do you want?” I ask, ducking my head like I’m going to suck and then teasing away. “You have to tell me what you want.”

“I want you,” Cal says immediately, hips coming clear off the mattress. He reaches for me on instinct, but I wrap my hands around his wrists to stop him, pushing them up into the pillows over his head.

“Nice try,” I murmur, dropping my face to kiss him. I’m rougher than I normally would be, biting at his clavicle and raking my nails over his skin. I want to leave marks on his body. I want to claim him as mine. “You need to be more specific.”

“Jules.” Cal looks up at me, his eyes dark and desperate. “I want to fuck you,” he says, and his voice is like gravel. “Holy shit, sweetheart, please.”

“Well,” I say with a smile, “since you asked so nicely . . .” I rip the condom packet open and roll it onto him. I’ve got one hand on his chest to hold him steady, his heart thudding away underneath my palm. I pull my thong to one side and sink onto him in one motion.

Fuck, he feels so good. Every damn time.

“Touch me,” I say quietly.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Cal gasps, and then his hands are all over me, stroking and pulling, drawing tantalizing circles around my nipples. “I need to touch you all the time, Jules,” he groans, like he hardly even knows what he’s saying. He’s running his palms down my rib cage, reaching back to grab at my ass. “I want—”

“I know.” I plant my hands on the mattress beside his shoulders, gasping as he grinds up against something electric and good inside me. It feels powerful, to be able to undo him like this. But it’s deeper than that, I realize, more than just being the boss for a little while or the thrill of a truly excellent fuck. This connection is real, and fuck, that scares me more than anything.

“Jules.” Cal surges up inside me, and then I’m coming, hard and fast. He forgets the rules, or maybe we’re just way past them now, and flips me and bears down hard, fucking me through my climax until he finally comes with a shudder.

I fall against him, my heart racing. It feels like the first moment after an earthquake. I’m afraid of what I’ll tell him if I open my mouth. “Okay,” I say finally—needing to break the tension somehow. “You win. You’re the biggest ever.”

Cal laughs, a gorgeous belly laugh that shakes the bed. “You are something else, Jules Robinson,” he mutters, pressing a gentle kiss against my temple.

“Yeah, well.” I shrug inside the warm circle of his grip. Suddenly I’m exhausted, wanting to leave all my complicated thoughts and feelings for another day. “I could say the same thing about you.”

We fall asleep that way, limbs tangled, the silent city spread out underneath us like we’re the only two people in the world.