CHAPTER SIX

As she pours sugar into her cup, her eyes widen. As she adds a drop of half and half, they turn into saucers. And as she brings the coffee to her lips, her eyeballs practically pop out of her head.

When I mention the dinner tomorrow, she nearly spits out the hot beverage.

Then she clutches her belly, clasps her hand on her mouth, and shudders with laughter. “How do you get yourself into these situations?”

“I like to think it’s my wit and charm, but in this case, it might have been my big mouth,” I say, with a what can you do? shrug. Thing is, there’s only one answer to that question—I have to show up with a fiancée. Which means she has to say yes, so I turn serious. “Will you do it? Will you pretend to be engaged to me for a week?”

The laughter doesn’t stop. “That’s your brilliant idea? That’s your best solution to the foot-in-the-mouth problem?”

“Yes,” I say, nodding, staying firm to the plan. “It’s a great idea.”

“Oh, Spencer. That’s fantastic. Really, truly, one of your best ideas ever.” She leans against the creamer counter at this hip little coffee shop near her place. “And by ‘best idea,’ I mean ‘worst.’”

“Why? Tell me, why is it such a bad idea?”

She takes a deliberate pause, then holds one finger in the air for emphasis and speaks. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you want this fake engagement to work, right? You want to pull it off?”

“Yes. Obviously.”

She stabs her finger against her sternum. “And so your bright idea is to ask me?”

“Who else would I ask?”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re aware that I’m pretty much the worst liar in the universe?”

“I wouldn’t call you the worst.”

She stares at me like I’m crazy. I think I might be. “Do I need to remind you of the time in junior year when you and your friends pranked my dorm? If memory serves, I not only witnessed your prank, thanks to skipping out of The Notebook screening early, but my roomies got the truth about whodunit in about five seconds.”

“You couldn’t have caved that quickly,” I insist, taking a drink of my coffee as I flash back to college. One of my buddies had been dating one of Charlotte’s friends. The girlfriend had hung his TV remote from a fourth-story window, since she thought he watched too much TV, and to get even he enlisted a bunch of us in a little furniture switcheroo. Trouble was, Charlotte caught us in the act, so I swore her to secrecy, promising we’d return everything after midnight.

“Oh, I did. I absolutely did. It wasn’t hard to get the truth out of me,” she says adamantly, looking me straight in the eyes. “All they had to do was ask who relocated all the common room furniture to the laundry room, then tickle it out of me. If I could have made it through that movie I never would have walked in on the prank. I still blame Nicholas Sparks for my failure to protect your trick.”

“I promise you won’t be forced to sit through a Nicholas Sparks film under this fake engagement scenario. And I swear there won’t be any tickle torture confessions.”

“Look, I just think this is not only ridiculous, but also highly likely to blow up in your face.” She softens her tone. “I care about you, Spencer. I know you want to make this pretend engagement work for your dad’s sake, but of all the women you know in New York, why on earth would you pick me? Even an escort agency would be smarter. Those women know how to be believable fiancée types.”

I scoff at the idea and then clasp my hand on her shoulder, squeezing her, like a coach trying to persuade a free agent to join his team. I need to convince her she can do this. Because she can. She knows me better than anyone. Plus, I can’t just call up an escort agency and order up a fiancée for a week. “Hello, can I have the full girlfriend experience with a side of fries to go, please?” One, I don’t know any escort agencies. Two, the buck stops at Charlotte. I offered her up this morning as my bride. It’s Charlotte or nothing.

“It won’t even take up that much time. It’ll just be a few events to go to together—picking out a ring today, then this dinner thing tomorrow. You can do this. It’s you and me, babe,” I say, and she furrows her brow at the last word.

“Is that what you call me as your fiancée? Babe? Or is it sweetheart? Or something else? Snookums? Honey bear? Sweet cheeks? Snuffaluffagus?”

“I assure you, it’s not Snuffaluffagus.”

“I kind of like Snuffaluffagus,” she says, and now she’s just trying to pull my leg…or maybe avoid giving me an answer.

“I guess it’s babe then,” I say, staying the course, as she drinks some of her coffee. “I don’t know why I called you that. Except for the obvious. You’re a babe.”

She smiles again and says in the softest voice, “Thank you. So are you.”

See? Charlotte and I can both appreciate each other’s appearance. That’s one of the great hallmarks of our friendship. I can acknowledge she is a babe, and she can do the same with me, and we’re still all good. That’s why she has to be my pretend fiancée.

I gesture from her to me, confidence coursing through me. Maybe it’s a false bravado. Maybe it’s real. But it’s all I’ve got, and I need her. The clock’s ticking on the two p.m. opening curtain at Katharine’s. “My point is this. We’ve done this. It’s our game,” I say, like I’m convincing her to join the crew I’m assembling for a Vegas casino heist. “We know the drill. I play fake fiancé with you all the time, and you with me.”

She worries away at the corner of her lip. It’s kind of ridiculously cute. Like, if she were really my fiancée, I’d probably think that was adorable, and I would lean in for a quick peck.

“That’s for three minutes, at the most, at a bar,” she points out. “That’s just a quick wham bam, thank you, ma’am kind of thing to save each other from unwanted advances. For this I’d have to keep it up for a week, you’re saying? Under scrutiny? Of the press, your parents, your dad’s buyer, and everyone else? I just think you’re asking for trouble.”

“Yes, but who knows me better than you? You’re the only person who could possibly pull this off,” I say, and as a new rush of customers streams into the tiny coffee shop, we head out, making our way back toward her building, coffee cups in hand as we walk.

“I want to help you. You know I do. I just think everyone will know we’re not really engaged, and then that’s not helpful to you at all.”

Undeterred, I press on. “Then let’s have a debrief. Especially since I’m supposed to buy you a ring at two p.m.” Her eyes go wide, and I keep reassuring her. “Let’s go over every single thing we need to know.”

“Like what toothpaste I use, and whether you hog the sheets?”

“I don’t hog the sheets,” I say as we sidestep a husband and wife, each wearing babies in Björns and arguing about where to brunch.

“And I use minty-fresh Crest. The teeth-whitening kind,” she says. “But let’s be honest. That’s not what anyone is going to ask. Also, have you thought about how you’re going to survive a week or more without your favorite pastime?” she says, as an evil glint lights up her brown eyes.

“I can handle being celibate.”

She nods. “Sure. Keep telling that to yourself.” She stops and points at me. “But I’m serious—if I do this, you better not mess around with anyone else after hours.”

Hope bounces wildly in my chest. “Does that mean you’re saying yes?”

She shakes her head. “Not yet. I’m just pointing out another potential roadblock for you. It’s going to be a loooong seven days for you,” she says, elbowing me in the ribs. “Besides, how are you going to manage the fact that you were basically publicly dating a few weeks ago? What are you going to tell your dad and his buyer about that? Or how about the woman you saw in Miami a month ago at the restaurant opening?”

I wave a hand like the escape artist I am. “Leave it to the master. If anything comes up about that celebrity trainer, I’ll just deny it. No one believes the gossip rags anyway. And the Miami thing was just a friendly, posed photo. Besides, I already devised a perfect story of how we fell in love. I told my dad it happened quickly. In just a few weeks, in fact, and that I proposed to you last night because I realized after all these years that I’d been in love with you the whole time.”

“The whole time?” she asks, lifting an eyebrow.

I shrug playfully. “The whole damn time. I’ve been head over heels. It finally dawned on me what I was feeling, and I got down on one knee to make you mine.”

She doesn’t say anything at first, just parts her lips, and I stare at them for longer than usual. They are really pretty lips. I mean, from an empirical point of view. As her fake fiancé, it’s good for me to be knowledgeable about all her features, including her lips.

Assuming she says yes. She has to say yes.

“That’s actually a sweet story,” she says, her voice completely sincere as we stand on the corner of her block, holding each other’s gaze. “A true friends-to-lovers romance?”

“Yes,” I say quickly, breaking the eye contact because it’s a bit too much for me to handle right now. I have no clue why it feels weird, whether it’s the words or the way she looks at me.

Or really, why I feel weird at all.

We keep walking, and she takes a hearty gulp of her coffee. She straightens her spine and draws in a breath, and I cross my fingers that she’s about to agree.

“I want to help you, but…” she says, her voice trailing off.

My chest craters. Like, worse than those deflated balloons. I am out of air. I’m going to have to tell my dad the engagement ended before it even started, hang my head, cry in my soup, and claim Charlotte dumped me and broke my heart.

“Crap,” she mutters. “Incoming douche.”

It’s the total asshole himself. Bradley “Bend Her Over The Counter” Buckingham walks toward us. He hates me. Not that I give a shit, but he detests me because I had the audacity to advise Charlotte against buying an apartment with him. It didn’t make financial sense to go in together in this building when other residences in the hood were increasing in value faster.

He’s about six feet, which makes him two inches shorter than me. He has blondish-red hair, broad shoulders, and the cheesy grin of a vacuum cleaner salesman. He works in PR. He’s senior VP of Communications for a huge pharmaceutical company that’s always under fire. King of Spin. Ace of Liars. Captain of Scum.

“Charlotte!” he calls out, waving to her. “Did you get the balloons?”

He pulls up next to us, barely making eye contact with me.

“They didn’t fit in the elevator, but it really doesn’t matter. You need to stop sending me gifts. It’s over with us. In fact,” she says, and reaches out to grab my free hand, threading her fingers through mine and surprising the fuck out of me, since she’s not a hand-holder, “I’m engaged to Spencer now.”

Whoa.

That surprise over her holding my hand? It’s nothing compared to the surprise from what comes next.

She thrusts her coffee cup at Bradley, and in the blink of an eye she wraps her hands around my neck, and presses her lips to mine.