Four weeks later

It was a gorgeous, cloudless afternoon, the temperature a perfect seventy-two—one of those days that made the hassles of living in California worth it. Standing on the opposite corner of the Bayview block where the construction was set to begin, I took in the sight of the run-down apartment building I’d finally gotten approval to tear down.

“You did it, lady,” said Bess as she stepped to my side.

“Not quite,” I said.

“OK,” said Bess. “You’ve done the first step in a very long process. Not everyone can navigate the red tape necessary to get approval on a project this size, but you did it.”

She was right. The last month had been a baffling journey through San Francisco city bureaucracy. It’d had dozens of phone calls, sent hundreds of emails, and made more than a few trips across the city to various offices where I had to fill out all sorts of forms and meet with so many pencil-pushers that I felt on the brink of insanity at times.

But it was done. I’d finally gotten the approval to tear down the apartments and start the project.

I glanced over at Bess, who was looking around the neighborhood. It wasn’t the nicest part of the city—more abandoned buildings than just the one in front of us lined the streets—but it had potential. Someone just needed to get the ball rolling, and that someone was me.

“You’d think they’d be begging you to take down one of these ugly buildings,” said Bess. “Instead it’s like they want to leave these things here.”

I’d enlisted Bess as my personal assistant in the new social enterprise division Bryce had put me in charge of, and she’d been worth her weight in gold.

“Yeah, no kidding,” I said. “I knew that the city had strict building codes and all that, but I never would’ve thought it’d be such a process just to knock down some buildings.”

Bess wrapped her arm around me and gave me a quick squeeze.

“But that means the hard part’s over, right?” she asked.

“A hard part is over,” I said. “Not the hard part. Now we have to actually knock the buildings down, clear the lot, and get construction underway for the development. And then after that we have to get the places furnished and the tenants moved in, and hire crew to look after the property, and—”

I was getting overwhelmed just thinking about it.

“Calm down,” said Bess. “We’ve got a ton to do, but we’ll take care of it a piece at a time, just like we did with this first step. And then once this building’s done, we move onto the next one and the next one and the next one until they rename this neighborhood Chelseaburg.”

“Good to see we’ve got all points of this process covered,” I said with a smile.

“But right now,” said Bess, “I think we’ve got a very important task to attend to.”

“Oh?” I asked. “And what’s that?”

“Drinking some damn wine to celebrate.”

I laughed.

“Sounds good to me.”

Thirty minutes later, Bess and I were back in the city center and seated at a window table at one of the trendy wine bars where she and I liked to go to have our little “meetings.” It didn’t take long before we had a bottle of white wine in front of us, along with a delicious meat and cheese plate.

“So,” said Bess, “how are you feeling about all of this?”

She gestured to the window, as though she were talking about the entire city.

“You’re going to have to narrow it down,” I said. “There’s a lot of ‘this’ going on right now.”

“I mean you being in charge of your own division,” she said. “You’ve become one of the biggest names at Carver right now. That’s the ‘this‘ I’m thinking about.”

“Every day is a new kind of overwhelming,” I said. “But Bryce sold this to me as being able to be in charge of my own company-within-a-company, and that’s what it’s been. It’s kind of amazing.”

“That man sees something in you,” said Bess. “And I can tell by the way he looks at you that he’s totally crazy about you, fake marriage or no fake marriage.”

My eyes went wide.

“Hey, hey,” I said. “Ex-nay on the fake-marriage-aye,” I said, speaking in the worst Pig Latin I’d ever attempted.

“Sorry,” she said, her hand shooting to her mouth. “Forget that this is top-secret information sometimes.”

“It’s double-ultra classified,” I said. “And you’re the only one aside from me and him who knows.”

“I know, sorry,” she said. “But at least you guys are for-real dating—that makes it all a little less crazy. How’s that all going, by the way?”

“Really, really well,” I said. “I knew that he and I would make a good couple, but I wasn’t ready for how good.”

“Perfect,” she said. “If anyone deserves a good guy, it’s you.”

Bess poured glasses of wine for both of us and raised hers into the air.

“Cheers to getting shit done,” she said.

“I’ll drink to that,” I said, lifting my own glass.

I brought the drink to my lips, but right before I took my sip, a strange feeling came over me. It was a wave of total disgust, as if my body was telling me that wine was the last thing I should be putting inside me.

I set the wine down and looked at it quizzically.

“What’s wrong?” asked Bess, noticing what was happening.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Wine just doesn’t sound good to me.”

“Are you feeling sick?”

“I’m feeling something,” I said.

“Well, whatever it is, it’s not affecting your appetite.”

“Huh?” I asked.

Bess gestured down at the plate of food between us. A quick look down revealed that nearly all the food was gone, save for a few slices of cheese and a piece of bread or two.

“Damn, we really killed that,” I said.

“Correction,” said Bess. “You killed that. I barely had anything.”

I was stunned. I barely remembered eating anything.

“Are you telling me that I ate nearly entire meat and cheese plate without even thinking about it?”

“That looks to be the story, lady,” she said.

“This is so weird,” I said. “And I’m still hungry. But my stomach hurts.”

“Well. Either you ate too much or you’re starving. Only one way to find out. Get another,” she said. “We are at a restaurant, after all.”

I pushed the glass of wine toward Bess.

“You can have this,” I said. “It just sounds like the worst thing in the world to me.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” said Bess, taking my glass and dumping it into hers, the wine nearly overflowing the rim.

I flagged down the waiter and ordered some more food. Meat and cheese didn’t cut it—I was craving something heavy and rich.

“Can I do the rib-eye sandwich?“ I asked. “And a side of the raspberry crêpes, too.”

The waiter nodded and headed off.

“How are Becca and Walsh?” I asked, wanting to take my mind off how strange my body was feeling.

“They’re… I don’t know how to put it. I mean, I’ve been working more with you than with them recently, so I’m going on rumors here.”

Now I was curious.

“What rumors?”

“OK, like I said—this is just what I’ve heard through hearsay. But Kendra told me that she overheard them talking about you and Bryce, that they’re convinced there’s something weird going on between you two.”

My stomach sank.

“You think that they know?” I asked.

“How could they?” asked Becca. “But they definitely think something’s up. And I’m getting the impression this is because they’re jealous at how quickly you’ve moved up in the company. Though good luck getting those two to admit it.”

The idea made me sick to my stomach. Becca and Walsh were the last people I wanted to find out about the fake engagement.

But I reminded myself that there was no way they’d be able to find out, assuming Bess had been able to keep her mouth shut about the whole thing.

“Don’t worry,” said Bess, as if reading my mind. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“I know, I know. It’s just that with everything going on I keep forgetting that there’s this whole pretend engagement to worry about. But I think I can keep everything sorted out, just as long as I don’t have to add anything else to it all.”

“Good, positive thinking,” said Bess with a smile.

I picked a little more at the meat and cheese plate as Bess happily drank her wine. Before long, the server arrived with my two meals, each of them looking totally delicious. The smell of the meat mixed with the scent of fresh crème from the crêpes, my mouth watering.

“You sure you’re going to be able to eat all that?” asked Bess.

“Maybe,” I said. “I’m so freaking hungry I can’t believe it.”

I took the top slice of bread off the rib eye sandwich with one hand and with the other took one of the fruit-and-cream-laden crêpes and unfolded it on top of the meat.

“You’re not—” said Bess.

I flashed her a look that said “oh, but I am,” before taking a big bite of the sandwich. It was a bizarre combination of flavors, but it scratched a strange itch I didn’t know I had until just now.

“OK,” said Bess. “Sweet and savory—I get it.”

I took another huge bite of the sandwich, then another, then another. I added more crêpes as I ate, and before too long, both plates were empty.

“Impressive,” said Bess. “Kind of freaky to watch, but impressive nonetheless.”

I was full and happy. But as I realized what I’d just done, the amount of food I’d eaten and the bizarre cravings that had accompanied it, I knew something was out of sorts.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Bryce, asking me to meet him back at the office.

“Duty calls,” I said. “You ready to hit it?”

As Bess drove us back to the office, I placed my hand on my stomach, which was now bulging out with food.

Dread washed over me, and I knew deep down that whatever was wrong, it wasn’t going to go away.