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“I don’t feel so good.”

Cliff didn’t look good, either. In fact, he looked awful. My boss’ round face was always ruddy, but right now he was puffy, beet red, and his ordinarily beady eyes were bulging out of his swollen eye sockets. Throughout the short drive downtown from the Austin airport, he’d only been getting puffier, itchier, redder, and grumpier. I was starting to get genuinely worried about him.

“I think you’re having an allergic reaction to that bee sting,” Annie said from the backseat. This was the third time she’d said it, and I was fairly sure she was right.

Cliff dug his thick fingers beneath his collar, scratching at the hives that were spreading over every inch of visible skin. He loosened the tie that had grown too tight around his neck.

“I wonder if I might be having an allergic reaction,” he mumbled as if he’d just had some kind of spontaneous insight. “What kind of rental car company lets their cars be infested with fucking bees?”

Infested was probably a stretch. There was a bee. One. It probably flew in the open window looking for a sugary taste of Cliff’s soda. Cliff just happened to be unlucky enough to swallow it—or attempt to swallow and then spit it out—getting stung on the inside of his mouth in the process.

I made eye contact with Annie through the rearview mirror. Her expression was more uncertain than offended by Cliff’s blatant, casual misogyny. For once, I was willing to excuse it, too. Although the joke in the office among my female coworkers was that Cliff was so named because his mother took one look at him when he was born and wanted to jump off one, I’d never seen him like this. He was often obnoxious, and generally dismissive of women’s ideas, but not usually totally unreasonable when we were obviously right.

“I think we should get you to an emergency room just to rule out anything serious,” I said, attempting a reasonable tone.

Cliff harrumphed. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped at me. “I’ll be fine in a second. We can’t be late to this meeting. But why is it so hot in here? You girls always want it to be so damn hot.”

“I’m not hot,” Kyle volunteered from the backseat. That earned him a glare from Cliff.

It wasn’t hot. If anything, the car was cooler than comfortable. Cliff cranked up the air conditioner anyway. He was sweating profusely, and he’d begun wheezing a bit with every breath.

I was driving us to a preliminary meeting with a new target company. This was a crucial meeting, and the first of many in which would try to convince our target that he wanted to sell his business to us after letting us investigate every square inch of it. Since I was the second most senior person here, Kyle and Annie, the technical members of our evaluation team, were looking to me to do something about Cliff.

In my three years working for the Azure Group, I’d never led an onsite acquisition team before. I’d worked my way up to second in command, however, and I was well aware that my only chance of moving up further was by replacing Cliff or someone like him. As hard as Cliff was to work with, however, and despite my boundless ambition, I had no desire to take his place because he’d died from a simple bee sting. Still, I sensed that a battlefield promotion might be near.

And that wasn’t the only thing near. “We’re here,” I told the group. I put the car in park in front of The Lone Star Lounge and turned to Cliff. “You need to go to emergency room,” I ordered him. “You’re not well. You can’t meet with the client like this.”

Cliff, who was fighting a coughing spell, shook his head furiously. His mouth framed an obvious “no” but no sound escaped, even after his coughing sputtered to an end. When he finally did manage to make a noise, it was a small panicked wheeze. He clutched at his throat in a panic.

Shit.

I’d seen “My Girl”. I knew how this ended. Not willing to waste another second, I threw my door open and prepared to sprint across the parking lot.

God dammit Cliff. Don’t you fucking die you pompous, chauvinistic pig. Not before you recommend me for a promotion.

“Annie call 911!” I hollered over my shoulder. “Kyle get his jacket and tie off.”

“On it,” came the in unison reply.

I’d run track in high school. Even in the three-inch heels and pencil skirt I was wearing, I was fast. I dashed across the asphalt, garnering stares from other patrons who were making their way to happy hour. I threw open the door to the bar and marched into the middle of the room.

“Does anyone have an EpiPen? There’s a man in the parking lot going into anaphylactic shock. He was stung by a bee. It’s an emergency.”

I wasn’t using my inside voice, and when I want to be loud, I am loud. It comes from being a born New Yorker, telling off catcallers in a big city, and working in a heavily male-dominated business. I was no shy, retiring flower at the best of times. When I need to be scary and pushy, I’m terrifying. As expected, the room fell instantly silent. People stared at me like I’d just announced the rapture.

Lucas Stevenson was somewhere in this bar, but I couldn’t spare more than a passing thought about this possibly being our first interaction. The tech wunderkind had created what was probably another brilliant innovation, one that the Azure Group desperately wanted to acquire. I would focus on that later. Right now, my annoying boss was potentially going to die if I didn’t make a scene. So, I would make a scene.

“Please! Anyone! I need an EpiPen!” I repeated. I stared around me at the faces of strangers, entreating them to listen. In New York, people are good at ignoring strangers, but when there’s a crisis, a real emergency, strangers will help. I prayed it was the same here in Austin, Texas.

“I have one.” The bartender, an extremely petite blonde, extended the slim injector to me.

My breath slid out in a relieved rush and I flew over to grasp it. “Thank you,” I managed.

“I can show you how to administer it, if you need me to. Did you call 911?”

“Yes, and yes. Follow me.”

The blonde and I ran back outside to where Kyle and Annie were desperately trying to assist Cliff. My trip back to the Four Runner was a lot slower than my trip from it. My new, tiny blonde friend had very short legs.

“I’m Rae Lewis,” I told her as we ran. “Thanks for your help.”

“Emma—” she panted, “Emma Greene.”

“Ok, what do I do?” I asked when we got near to Cliff. He was still in the passenger seat, clutching at his throat and obviously struggling to get enough air. His reddish color had turned a deep, ugly purple.

“Pull off the blue cap and then hold the orange end against his thigh,” Emma explained as I unwrapped the injector. “Keep it there until it clicks and then count to five.”

“I’m going to inject you with this,” I told Cliff, in a loud, clear voice. I shook the EpiPen in front of his face. “Your airway is closing up. We have to stop your reaction from getting worse.”

He shook his head furiously as soon as I said the word ‘inject’. What a baby. Did he want to suffocate? Too bad.

“This is happening,” I told him. “Don’t test me.”

Cliff tried to bat my hand away when I did as Emma directed, but Kyle and Annie helped me hold him still. The click of the needle was tiny, but I felt it. Cliff definitely felt it. He made a noise somewhere between a whine and a moan. Cliff jerked a bit, and then glared at me like I’d just poisoned him. Then he started to shake violently. I blanched.

“That’s normal,” Emma said when my gaze snapped to her delicate, elven features. She was as cool as a cucumber. “It’s good, actually. It means the medicine got in him. He’ll shake for a while, and may feel frightened, cold, or paranoid. But he won’t die, and he’ll be able to breathe better soon.”

All four of us stared at Cliff anxiously while he shook like a leaf. He shook and jerked, but just like she said, he was starting to breath more normally. He took deep, grateful gulps of air. His plum color began lightening into a healthier, but still unnatural pink. He wasn’t able to speak, but over the next ten minutes he became increasingly alert and responsive.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I stuttered at Emma, and she patted my arm comfortingly with her little hand. I’m not used to be touched by strangers, but somehow, I found myself appreciating her contact rather than resenting it. I managed a small smile.

“You don’t need to thank me,” Emma told me. “It’s all ok.” Whether she knew it or not, she was my angel afternoon. I could not imagine what I would have done without her help.

I relaxed a little bit at her words, and then a lot more when the high, familiar squeal of an ambulance began to grow closer. The white and red van peeled into view around the corner, bringing with it flashing lights, lots of questions, and professional help. The next hour was a bizarre, dizzy whirlwind.

“Thank you so much!” I cried, waving goodbye to the Ambulance and letting them take Cliff to the nearest hospital for further evaluation. They confirmed that we’d done the right thing injecting Cliff with the EpiPen, possibly even saving his life. Getting an airway open during an allergic reaction apparently became exponentially harder the longer you waited. Even Cliff, although he was in and out of consciousness, admitted that he appreciated what I’d done. Annie and Kyle called me a hero.

I didn’t feel like much of a hero. I felt exhausted. More than anything, I felt like I’d just been in a fistfight. I slumped down on the curb and put my head against my knees, utterly drained of energy. Kyle and Annie were going to follow the ambulance over to the hospital and I’d meet with the client and follow by Uber. Meeting with Lucas Stevenson alone and in my current state was not ideal, and we were already horribly late, so I figured taking a moment to collect myself while sitting on the curb was allowable.

My phone beeped in my purse, and I saw that there were a number of things waiting on my attention. Four new emails, dozens of texts, and interestingly, the app belonging to our client. The app that we were here to acquire. It had a notification for me.

Curious, I pressed a button and the minimalistic interface of Notable Match popped up. I’d installed it on my phone during the flight from New York. The new notification had come in about the time we arrived at the bar, but I was just now seeing it.

You have a new match, the app informed me. Lucas Stevenson is within two hundred feet of you. A man’s face, square jawed, hazel-eyed and devastatingly handsome, blinked on my screen. The man in the photo looked a lot more like a model than a tech guru. That’s Lucas Stevenson? I doubted it. He probably used a fake photo. A small heart icon spun, grew and exploded into dozens of smaller hearts.

His app had matched us? I was still staring at my phone while sitting on a curb, dumbfounded, when someone cleared their throat behind me. I twisted around, looking up and into the face of Lucas Stevenson. He looked just like his picture.

“Can I buy you a drink?” He asked with a smile.

Chapter 2 – Rae

“So, is Cliff going to be ok?” Lucas asked me a few minutes later. We’d snagged a table out on the patio of the Lone Star Lounge, and I’d been explaining why our meeting was an hour late.

“I think so,” I told him, sipping at the beer he’d recommended. It was a Heffeviesen from a local brewery, Live Oak. I liked it. I liked it even more with the orange slice he’d insisted I add. “I apologize. This isn’t at all how our initial client meetings usually go. I can’t even show you the PowerPoint, since my coworkers took the rental and all my stuff to the hospital.”

I could already tell that this meeting wasn’t going to get more normal, either. He wasn’t a normal client. About the only similarity between Lucas and our average client were the thick rimmed glasses he wore. He was young, at least thirty years younger than our average client—possibly only a handful of years older than me. He was also wearing a Metallica t-shirt and beaten up jeans rather than a suit. Lucas was well built, too, broad shouldered and with defined muscles visible beneath his clothes. Most of our clients were potbellied, middle aged CEO’s. Honestly, I had to do my best not to stare. The man was gorgeous.

“Well I would hope not,” he laughed, drawing me back from ogling him. It was a good-natured, pleasant laugh that made the corners of my mouth turn up. “I’m glad your boss is gonna be ok. I’ll take a rain check on the PowerPoint.” His sandy brown hair was tousled in a way that was either totally unintentionally sexy or carefully coiffed to look unintentionally sexy. Either way, I wanted to touch it. Him. I wanted to touch him.

Get it together, I told myself firmly. You’re in a business meeting, not on a date.

“So,” Lucas continued, “tell me about yourself.”

I blinked at him. Me? No. That couldn’t be what he meant. He meant the firm.

I launched into the canned answer: “The Azure Group was established in 1996 at the beginning of the tech boom. Our portfolio is excess of sixty billion dollars and we specialize in acquiring the best in emerging software. We’ve got a full service—”

“Management and consultancy team, as well as an in-house evaluation and due diligence operation,” Lucas interrupted with a smirk. He knew my pitch as well as I did. “I read all about the Azure Group before accepting this meeting,” he admitted. Clearly, he had a photographic memory, too. The consensus in the office was that he was a genius, and I had a feeling I was about to find out if it was true. “Of course, I’m familiar with your firm. I was asking about you, Rae.”

My lips parted in surprise. “I’m part of the evaluation team. I help investigate new prospective portfolio companies, like yours.”

Lucas smirked at me and arched an eyebrow. “And?”

I fought the urge to shift uncomfortably in my seat. Why did this feel like a date? “And I work with a technical and financial subject matter team to determine whether we should make an offer to acquire those companies.”

If Lucas already knew all about the Azure Group, he probably already knew all about the team that had been sent to meet with him. Actually, I was certain that he did. I wrote him an email myself explaining about each of us, although Cliff had been the one to attach his name and send it. He loved to take credit for another’s work. He called it ‘delegating’.

“What about you, Rae? I want to know about you.” His hazel eyes were an incredible color, green on the inside near the pupil and golden brown on the outside. I couldn’t help staring deeply into them.

“Me?” I was feeling very out of my depth. I thought I was ready to conduct one of these meetings by myself. I’d seen Cliff do it dozens of times. But none of those meetings had been anything like this. I took another nervous sip of my beer. “Ok. What do you want to know?”

“Where are you from?”

“Um, I’m from Flushings.” Then I remembered we were in Texas, and that Lucas probably didn’t know what that was. “It’s a neighborhood in Queens. I’ve lived in New York my whole life. How about you?” It seemed only fair to turn the tables on him. He was asking me personal questions.

He smiled. “I’m from the west coast. I was born in LA and moved to Texas for school and just… stayed. I like it here. So how’d you get into the private equity business?”

That was easy enough. “I went to NYU and double majored in business and economics. I worked at a hedge fund for a year after college and the pay was good, but I hated every second of it. So, when a former classmate of mine told me about an opening at Azure Group, I jumped. I’ve been portfolio building ever since. I finished my JD this spring and am waiting to find out if I passed the NY bar exam.”

“Do you like working for Azure Group?

What sort of a question was that? That wasn’t what this meeting was about. And how could I answer it honestly while still being professional? I tried. “I enjoy puzzles. Deciding whether to acquire a company and pricing our offer fairly and appropriately requires a lot of the same skills that I enjoy.”

“That’s not an answer. If I say that I like water, and then say that sharks also like water, that doesn’t mean I also like sharks.” His tone was challenging. My heart fluttered. I loved a good challenge.

“Cum hoc ergo propter hoc,” I answered. I took logic in college too. In Latin, the fallacy translated to ‘with this, therefore because of this’. It was also known as the correlation-causation fallacy.

His hazel eyes widened, as did his smile. He was clever. Probably much cleverer than me. “So, you don’t like it?” His question was teasing.

“Assuming that conclusion would be a logical fallacy too,” I told him, still feeling like I was being evaluated.

“That’s a fair point. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.” Lucas grinned. I’d clearly just won a point. The Latin translated to ‘after this, therefore because of this’ and it was also called the questionable cause fallacy. “Do you like your job, Rae?”

What I really enjoyed most about my job, and what was still incredibly rare, were conversations like this one. Times when I was able to match wits against someone who was my equal, or better. I lived for negotiations and the chance to be challenged. But I didn’t say that to Lucas. It was too revealing about me.

“I like a lot of things about my job,” I told Lucas, deciding to be halfway honest. He was quick to display his intellectual ability, but he was a genius. I could hardly blame him for acting like one. “I like learning about companies and distilling what makes them profitable. I like making the argument for or against their acquisition. And then, once I’ve learned everything I can, I like moving on to the next one. Obviously, there are some things that I dislike about my job, too. But on the whole, I can’t complain.”

That answer didn’t seem to satisfy him. “Why do I get the feeling you’re only telling me the positives?”

I smirked. “Because you’re a client, of course.”

“And if I wasn’t?”

I didn’t know what he was getting at, but if he had reservations about the company, I could maybe do something about that.

“If you weren’t a client, I’d tell you that Azure Group is a gigantic faceless corporation. Employees like me are cogs in wheels within wheels. It can be hard to work for a big bureaucracy sometimes, especially if you’re like me.” I shrugged.

“What do you mean, like you?”

I shook my head. This was getting too personal.

He was looking at me carefully, as if weighing two alternatives. We sat in silence for a moment.

“I have a proposition for you, Rae.”

“Isn’t that my line? And a bit premature?” I arched an eyebrow at him for a change. We were nowhere near the negotiation phase of this process. There were weeks of investigation and due diligence that needed to happen first. I wasn’t authorized to make an offer, and I definitely wasn’t authorized to accept one.

“It’s a proposition for you, Rae. Personally. Not for the Azure Group. I find myself far less interested in them than I am in you.”

My lips parted in surprise. This conversation was wildly out of control. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder where it would go. This was fun. “What’s your proposition?”

“Are you single?” His hazel eyes were bright.

I blinked at him. “What… um, I mean yes, I am. Single, that is.” I felt another hot blush on my cheeks.

He likes me? He must like me!

“I want you to pretend to be my girlfriend.”

Oh.

Chapter 3 – Rae

“Excuse me?” I must have misheard him. I set down my beer and stared at it slack-jawed, worried that I’d somehow gotten myself incredibly drunk from just a half pint of beer. What was in this glass?

“I want you to pretend to be my girlfriend,” Lucas repeated. His gaze was direct, and when I met his eyes, I felt a blush heating my cheeks. I hardly ever blushed. It felt like my body was betraying me that I was doing so now. His smile widened when he saw it.

“Why?”

He was no longer looking directly at me. Instead, he was staring at the table between us. “It’s a complicated thing to explain.” All of a sudden, he sounded a million miles away, although he was as confident as ever. “The why is unimportant.”

“Not to me. I have faith in your rhetorical skills. Why don’t you try to explain?” My voice was dry. If he was going to make such a wildly inappropriate request, he had better be willing to explain it. Private equity deal or no, I don’t let business associates treat me like a piece of ass. I’m not in that kind of business.

Lucas took a very long time to reply. “I’ve got a hunch about you Rae. I might be wrong, and if I am, I apologize, but I think you’re an ambitious, talented, intelligent person who is frustrated by where you are right now in your career. I think I know a way for you to get the edge you want, and it involves pretending to be my girlfriend.”

He could see all that about me from just from our conversation?

“That wasn’t the question I asked,” I stuttered.

Lucas smiled at me, just a quick flash of white teeth that faded a second later. It was a totally humorless smile. “Right again.” His voice was unexpectedly sad. Wherever he’d gone emotionally, it was dark there. The light had gone out of his hazel eyes.

“I should get up and walk out of here right now,” I said as much to myself as him. Even as I said it, I knew it was true. He’d just overstepped the boundary of a professional relationship in a fairly mammoth way.

“Why haven’t you?” He seemed genuinely interested. He took a sip of his drink afterward and regarded me over the rim.

You want him, my traitorous libido suggested, and you’re excited that he just made you an indecent proposal. I ignored it.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe it’s curiosity. Or pity.”

Lucas grimaced and looked like he wanted to spit out his mouthful of beer. He swallowed hard before answering. “Don’t stay here and listen to me out of pity. Anything but that. Stay here out of curiosity, or ambition, or even anger. But not pity. I don’t want your pity.”

I smirked. “Too bad. If there’s something in this for me, you’re going to need to get to the point. Because if I can’t pity you for seriously suggesting something as ridiculous me—a perfect stranger—pretending to be your girlfriend, I’m running out of curiosity very quickly. You don’t get to say something like that and then not explain it.”

My anger seemed to encourage him, or at least snap him out of his funk. “Fair enough,” he said. “Then let me try to explain. I’ve got a situation of my own that would benefit from me having the appearance of a serious girlfriend. You’ve got a situation of your own that would benefit from cinching this deal on your own. I’m willing to trade my app, or rather, the agreement that I will sell the app to the Azure Group at a favorable price, in exchange for your companionship. We will both end up getting what we want.”

“I’m not a call girl. I don’t sell my companionship. Not ever.” This was non-negotiable. I squared my shoulders and stared down my nose at him.

His eyes got huge. “I wasn’t suggesting that. I swear.” Then he smirked at me with an easy confidence. “You’re a very attractive woman Rae but look at me. I’ve never needed to purchase that sort of female companionship. I’m not about to start now.”

He was extraordinarily handsome, ridiculously smart, and phenomenally successful. And he clearly knew it. I decided to accept his answer. If he made half an effort, he could probably get any woman in this bar to go home with him tonight. Including me.

“Then what were you suggesting?” My next question was softer and less angry.

“That I will guarantee to you that I’ll sell Notable Match at ten percent below whatever we determine is fair market value in exchange for you pretending to be my girlfriend.”

“I’m not going to sleep with you.” It needed repeating. It just did.

“I know. Again, I swear I wasn’t asking that.” He spread his hands wide. I believed him. I nodded.

“Why do you want me to do this? Why me?”

Lucas’s smile was smoldering, and his words were slow. “You’re my type. People will believe that we’re a real couple. People I need to convince.”

I felt hot and squirmed in my seat. I was his type? What did that mean? Curiosity was driving me crazy. Thankfully, he decided to explain.

“Notable Match put us together, and I’ve got faith in my creation. Besides, you look and behave very much like the type of woman I date.”

That almost made it worse. “You exclusively date tall, twenty-seven-year-old strawberry blondes from New York who worked in high-powered corporate jobs and like to argue?”

He smirked again. “Something like that, yeah.”

“And you want me to pretend to date you.”

“Yes.” Behind his glasses, his gaze was incredibly direct. “That’s what I want.”

“I can think of only two reasons you would do something like this, and neither of them are particularly flattering.” In my mind, he was either trying to win back the love of his life, or too ashamed to admit he was gay and needed a beard.

“As long as it won’t get in the way of our arrangement, I won’t hold your opinion of me against you.” His response was dry. Was he always so sarcastic?

I chewed on my lip for a second. “If you’re gay or something, you should just tell people. I won’t knowingly help you live a lie.” Lucas’ eyes went wide, and I continued in a rush. Was I onto something? “My brother’s trans, and he’s my best friend. If he knew I did something that tacitly supported the idea that people should have to hide who they are and who they love, he’d be furious with me. And I’d be furious with myself. There are plenty of valid reasons that some people can’t or won’t come out, but I don’t have to help contribute to the lies.” This was by far my longest speech so far, and I felt a bit embarrassed when I fell silent. I felt very strongly about this, and it showed.

Lucas was quiet for a second. “It’s not that. Really. I’m sure you probably don’t trust me, but I hope you can give me the benefit of the doubt and believe that I wouldn’t ask you to violate any deeply held principals. Especially ones I share. I’m not hiding anything about my sexuality, that isn’t what this is about.” We exchanged a long look. Eventually, I nodded.

“Ok. Then the only answer is that you’re majorly hung up on an ex-girlfriend. Are you trying to win someone back through jealousy?.” I asked it rudely, and it was a guess, but it was really the only possible solution that a man like Lucas do something so ridiculous.

He went stiller-than-still. Bingo. Lucas had an ex that he wanted back.

“I’m not asking you to make up your mind about this right now,” Lucas told me, changing the subject. He clearly didn’t want to talk about his ex, whoever she was. I pushed thoughts of her to the side, she was really irrelevant. Lucas’ plan was probably doomed to fail, but I could still get what I wanted.

“I’m in.” The words were out of my mouth in an instant. This was too good an opportunity to pass up. “I’ll do it.”

He sat up abruptly. “What? You will?”

“Yes,” I told him with a smile. My mind was already running through the terms of the arrangement. This was a business deal like any other. And I may not be a genius, but I knew how to make a good deal, and I knew an opportunity when I saw one. “However, first I think there are several details we need to work out.”

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