When Charlotte arrived, pen in hand, Bradley was banging the realtor against the kitchen counter.
“I never did care for those steel counters,” Charlotte had said, and I’d been so proud of her for coming up with that zinger in the heat of the moment.
Of course, in reality, she’d been devastated. She’d loved the guy. She’d cried on my shoulder as she told me the story, zinger and all. That had been ten months ago, and when Bradley finally ditched the realtor, he embarked on a campaign to win Charlotte back.
With gifts.
Abhorrent gifts.
I stuff the flaccid balloons into the garbage can on the corner. “The animals are safe now from his reign of terror.”
“Thank you,” she says with relief, as she grabs a tie from her wrist and yanks her hair off her face and into a quick ponytail. “That was like a pastel explosion of pathetic. Once you killed them, they were pretty droopy, too.”
“Like Bradley?” I ask with an arch of the eyebrow.
Her lips quirk into a tiny grin. She’s trying not to laugh. She covers her mouth. Charlotte has never been one to kiss and tell. She never shared details of their sex life—not that I wanted to know any. But she was a vault.
So the fact that she’s holding up a thumb and forefinger, and mouthing a little bit is a huge deal for her.
For me too, it turns out.
I’m a guy, and therefore I’m in competition with all men, all the time, so I can’t help but feel a surge of triumph.
That is so not an issue for me whatsoever.
“Let’s get you that coffee and I’ll tell you why I was acting like a lovesick weirdo.”
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.