"It's not?"
"No, you just said 'stunning dress.'"
"Well, I meant you look stunning. The dress just complements it."
My eyes drifted to the floor, instinctively. Accepting complements gracefully was not among my talents. "That's very nice of you to say," I muttered.
"Look at me," he said, his voice soft and persuasive.
I did. He looked as if he were struggling to say something, or perhaps struggling not to say it.
"Hey," I said. "I'm really tired. We can talk tomorrow, okay?"
"Yes," he said, finally. "Of course. I'm sorry. Good night, Maddy."
He withdrew abruptly, and was gone in a moment. I shut myself in my room and flopped over onto the bed, trying not to let myself think too hard about what had just happened between us. For the first time, I was sure I'd seen Daniel's façade crack. I wassure he had some genuine attraction for me, beyond what he was required to display for the sake of our "relationship."
Then again, maybe he'd just been swept up in the seductive atmosphere of the evening. Hell, maybe he'd had a sex dream about me.
I sat up, biting my lip. It had been a joke in my own head, but the idea of weighing so heavily in this thoughts that he couldn't even escape me in his dreams…a powerful man rendered helpless, writhing between the sheets, wanting me, needing me…
No, no, no. I had to keep my head screwed on straight. These weren't harmless fantasies; not when I was going to be living with his man and pretending to be his wife. I was going to lose sight of what we were really doing. I was going to fall for him if I wasn't careful.
There it was. That was the first time I'd really admitted it to myself, in as many words. Was I really that pathetic, to fall in love with a man simply because he was creating a believable facsimile of wooing me? Admittedly, he was good at it. The dress, the restaurant, the way he'd looked at me, like I was the only thing in the world he'd ever wanted. It was enough to turn anyone's head around.
I was pretty sure I remembered reading somewhere - or maybe learning in a class - about how a large percentage of humans' affection for each other is purely related to proximity.
"Well, I'm f**ked," I said out loud to the empty room.
Chapter Five
I wasn't sure if it was the sunlight or the noises from the kitchen that woke me up. I dragged myself out of bed and down the hallway to the bathroom with some difficulty; I'd finally been able to drift off to sleep after hours of staring at the ceiling in the dark, but I definitely hadn't gotten any decent rest.
After a quick shower, I felt slightly more human. I wrapped up in a thick, fluffy robe and padded down the hallway towards the kitchen. Daniel turned around when he heard one of the stools at the elegant breakfast bar scraping along the floor.
He was wearing jeans and a tee shirt that said something about a corporate fun run in 2008. So he did know how to dress like a normal person. That was encouraging.
I just wished the sight of it didn't make my mouth water.
Well, maybe I was just hungry.
"Good morning," he said, smiling at me. His eyes flicked up and down a few times, as if he hadn't expected me to come to breakfast in a bathrobe. But what the hell - we were going to be married soon, right?
"Hi," I said. His hair was falling loose over his forehead, and I couldn't stop staring at it, wanting to push it back into its proper place. "I like your…shirt."
I'd almost said pants. Clearly, I just needed to keep my mouth shut.
"Thank you," he said, taking it as gracefully as anyone might be expected to. "How do you take your eggs?"
"Over medium, I guess." I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten eggs that I didn't prepare for myself. As it turned out, he made them just the way I liked - gooey but not runny, no uncooked whites. While I dipped my toast in the yolk, I watched him eat the frittata he'd made for himself. There was a veritable rainbow of chopped vegetables mixed in, almost more than there were eggs. No toast. So this was how he maintained his figure. For some reason, I'd always imagined him as one of those people who can eat absolutely anything and never gain an ounce. It was comforting to know he had a human side after all.
After breakfast, I got dressed in the surprisingly casual clothes he'd picked for me, and we settled down in the living room. Daniel pulled out a small notepad and pen.
"We need to get our story straight on certain details of our relationship," he said. "Since we'll be living together, and acting as a couple, we ought to be able to give genuine answers to most of the questions. But there will be questions about the beginning of our relationship, about very personal things we might not know about each other. They'll be the sorts of questions that are difficult to fake. When it comes to the time of the interview, if they ask you a difficult question that we haven't prepared for, simply say that you don't know or you can't remember the details of what they're asking about. Never try to guess or make up an answer."
I nodded. Just the thought of the interview was already making me nervous, even though it was likely to be months and months away.
"You'll probably be expected to describe the features, layout, and décor of this place," he said. "But that shouldn't be too difficult after a while. When it comes to those sorts of questions, make sure to be accurate, but not too thorough. You don't want to sound rehearsed."
"Jesus," I said, more to myself than him.
He looked up, mildly startled. "You're not having second thoughts, are you?"
"No, no." I played with the hem of my new shirt. "It's just…it's a lot, is all."
"You'll do fine." He touched my shoulder, rested his hand there for a moment, and then pulled it away abruptly. His eyes flicked back down to his notepad. "Your birthday…May 16th, 1986. Yes?"
I nodded.
"Mine is November 7th, 1982. Memorize it." He turned the page. "What were some of the first things we talked about, when our relationship became personal? What did we have in common?"
"Are you asking me to make something up right now?"
"If we discuss these things, we'll both be more likely to remember."
"All right, so…Woody Allen movies?"
He blinked. "Sorry?"
"That's what we had in common. We both liked Woody Allen movies and we started talking about it."
His brow was just slightly furrowed.
I sighed. "Fine, what's your idea, then?"
"I don't know."
"But you don't like mine."
"It just…sounds made up."
"Those are some awfully judgmental words coming from a man with no ideas."
"Fine." He scribbled on the notepad. "We'll put it down as a temporary answer and we can revise it later if I think of something better."
"I don't think that's a good idea. If we keep changing things, we're going to get confused. We need to pick something and stick with it. Don't you think?"
He exhaled. "All right. We both liked Woody Allen. What about our first meeting? Can you describe it?"
"In real life, or are we coming up with an alternate reality for this too?"
"In real life. Everyone knows you work for me, so that's obviously when we met."
I crossed my arms, thinking. "I'm not sure we ever really did 'meet.' I saw you, obviously. But I don't know if we were ever formally introduced until you called me into your office to…discuss the special project."
"About that." He cleared this throat. "You found out later that there was, in fact, no special project. I only called you into my office because I wanted to talk to you. I'd become smitten from a distance. I wanted an excuse to have a conversation with you, and get to know you better. Or at all. That's when we discovered that we both liked Woody Allen. Over the next few days, I kept calling you to my office for more 'meetings.' Things became…physical, very quickly. We both kept it a secret, due to the conflict of interest. But then, I finally decided I didn't want to keep our love hidden anymore. So I asked you out to dinner with me. Shortly after that, you quit your job and moved into my apartment." He looked up, smiling slightly. "So, that's the story of us."
"Your alternate universe doppelganger is very aggressive," I said. "Did I have any say in the matter at all?"
He looked mildly offended. "Of course," he said. "What kind of fictional man do you think I am?"
I had to laugh. "All right, okay. What if the ask me if I knew about your…you know, predicament?"
"Of course I told you, because I didn't want you to think I was only marrying you for that. You were skeptical at first, of course, but as time went on, you realized that I genuinely loved you."
"That's very touching. Do you think they'll fall for it?"
"There's no law against marrying someone if you're at risk of being deported. What's illegal is marrying someone because you're at risk of being deported. It's all right for them to be suspicious that we might have rushed into things because of my situation, as long as they can't prove that was the only reason we got married."
"That sounds incredibly dodgy, just so you know. If I worked for the INS I'd be driving you across the border myself."
"Your vote of confidence is much appreciated," he said dryly, flipping the page in his notebook. "But I told you, I have inside help. I have to go through the formalities, and I have to not trip over my own feet while doing so. They're even going to make a special exception for me. Normally, it would take two years of marriage before I could apply for a permanent visa, but they've reduced it to one."
"Thank God," I said out loud, without thinking.
He raised an eyebrow at me. "I realize you have no way of knowing this, but I promise being married to me won't be an actual nightmare."
I could feel my face turning bright red. "I know," I said, hastily. "I didn't mean…it's just, you know, a year of my life. That's scary enough to think about."
"Relax. I'm teasing you." He glanced down at his notepad again. "We need to pick a favorite sexual position."
I stared. "Is that a comment, or a question?"
"Just pick one," he said, still looking down at the paper.
"Uh, fine," I said. "Doggystyle? Is there like…a scientific term for that? Or something classier?"
"I don't think so," he muttered, scribbling something down.
"I hope you're actually writing down 'doggystyle' then," I said, willing myself to stop blushing furiously, even if there appeared to be no imminent danger of him raising his head.
I was wrong - he looked up at me then, frowning. "I'm not writing any of this down," he said, sharply. "And neither will you."
"Jesus." I raised both of my hands. "Do you see me taking notes?"
"I'm sorry." He toyed with his own pen for a moment. "I just…I can't emphasize how important it is that we don't have a written record of any of this. I'm taking notes that will help remind me of what we decide here, but no one else would be able to interpret them. Even so, I won't let this notebook out of my sight."