I glanced around the cocktail party, looking for Tessa. She’d told me she’d meet me down here once she finished getting ready. I was talking to a man who owned a factory down in Queens about where he imports his fabrics when I finally spotted her. She was wearing a tight black dress that hit her knees and red lipstick. Her brown hair cascaded down in soft waves that people paid big money to achieve and she had naturally. She laughed at whatever the man she was talking to was saying, and I felt it in my groin. I wanted to take her away from here and have my way with her, the way I’d been dreaming about for over ten years.

Tessa had no idea the kinds of things she did to people. I watched the way she managed to wrap every man in the room around her little pinky as she spoke to them. It was her smile. It was the way she acted as if she was held captive by your words, regardless of what you were saying. She had a way about her that put people at ease and made them talk. Two qualities I needed in order to take this company to the next level. Two qualities my fake wife should definitely have. I only had a few days left to decide. I’d spent most of my time trying to figure out how to get out of it, but the more time passed, the more unlikely it seemed and I knew thinking about Tessa being the woman signing that contract was stupid. She wouldn’t go for that. Hell, she wouldn’t even follow me to college. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe she’d marry me out of convenience. A man could dream, though.

“These are the newest fabrics we got from Peru. They’re even more vivid in person,” Mr. Ferrero said. I made myself look at his phone screen and then took it from his hand. Damn. The fabric was nice.

“You have this in Queens?”

“I have samples of most of it. I just brought back a shipment of the red one and this ivory.”

I let him scroll and show me the ivory.

“Can I show this to my assistant?”

“Sure.” He smiled, allowing me to lead him over to where Tessa was standing.

She looked up, her gaze finding mine before we reached her. I felt a sense of . . . something tickling my chest when she looked at me like that. If I were being completely, no-bullshit honest, Tessa was the only woman who could look at me and send my heart into a frenzy. I pushed the thought away. It was nostalgia. That was why I felt this way. She introduced me to the man she’d been speaking to—Cody, a buyer for Barneys, and I introduced her to Mr. Ferrero. After a moment, Cody excused himself to speak to someone else and I asked Mr. Ferrero to show her the fabrics.

Tessa gasped, taking the phone from his hand when she saw a couple. She glanced up at him with a shy smile. “I’m sorry. Fabric is my jam.”

He smiled widely. I was sure he was excited to have such a gorgeous woman paying attention to his products and launched into the same speech he just gave me about his suppliers.

“The Vietnamese one looks lovely,” Tessa said in awe. “Do you sell to a lot of cloth manufacturers or do you manufacture in-house?”

“We do most of the work in-house unless the purchasing company has their own factory. Normally, the big brands buy the fabric and go elsewhere to make their product.”

“My father used to own a fabric company, and for years the biggest client was the government, but our name wasn’t on any of the final products.”

“It’s like that for us.” Mr. Ferrero smiled, scrolling to the next picture—the ivory fabric. “This is for a well-known dress maker. We make some of the dresses in house for them, but you’d never know it.”

“Oh my god. I would kill to feel this fabric.” She looked up at him. “Do you have lace? Do you only sell wholesale? Is it all in Queens?”

I chuckled. Mr. Ferrero gave a belly laugh that made Tessa smile brightly. Damn, I wanted to kiss her again.

“I can make an exception for you. What do you want it for?”

She took a breath and explained to him that she designs wedding dresses, and even though she wasn’t planning on sewing them, she’d like to start collecting swatches from different places just in case. As she spoke, I could feel her passion, her brown eyes lit with every sentence, her voice got a little higher, a lot faster, and she looked absolutely beautiful. By the end of it, she even had me convinced that I wanted to start dressmaking, and I didn’t know the first thing about it. I thought about the folded piece of paper, the discarded design, that I had in my wallet. Was that the dress she was thinking about when she looked at this fabric? I wondered how often she thought about her own wedding dress, if at all. She shot me a look that said hello, earth to Rowan, and I blinked rapidly.

“I’m sorry. What was that?”

“I was just telling Mr. Ferrero what an incredible company Hawthorne is and that it might be good to go to Queens to see if you could buy any of his fabrics.”

“Oh.” I nodded. “That’s an excellent idea. We can talk pricing and volume.”

“And I can give Tessa the inside scoop on the fabric I’m getting from Colombia next month.”

I smiled because it was what was expected, but the thought of next month made me feel uneasy. She’d be gone next month.

Unless you convince her otherwise.

My wallet pinched my backside, reminding me of the dress. Wedding bells rang out. I took a sip of the wine I’d been holding and pushed the phantom sound away. I let my gaze linger on hers when I excused myself to talk to different people and she smiled, wordlessly telling me she’d keep going around the room. I wasn’t sure how, but I managed to yank myself away from her and walk around the room to network, but all the while, I was thinking about getting right back to her. In short, I was in deep shit.