Page 42 of Love in Fine Print

He had brown hair, brown eyes, and tattoos on his arms and hands. He reminded me a little bit of Tom Hardy and I wasn’t mad at it.

“Law always interested me, and being a child of divorced parents left an impression on me.”

“I bet.”

My phone buzzed with a text alert. It was Trevor letting me know that my 9:00 a.m. had canceled so I could stay out and party tonight with Tom Hardy, who I’d told him Levi reminded me of during his mid-dinner text check-in. As I read the message, I found myself disappointed that the text wasn’t an emergency so I had an excuse to leave.

Levi was good, great even, but I knew as I sat across from him that I couldn’t marry the man in a few months’ time. I realized, at that moment, that the fatal flaw in this plan wasn’t finding a good guy to marry; it was my conscience not allowing me to go through with it.

I wasn’t an idiot. I’d seen my mother woo countless men and get engagement rings out of them in as short of a time period as I had. I knew that if I put my mind to it, I could also get the job done.

But that’s what it would be. A job. Even if I genuinely cared about the man who I said I do to, the only reason I’d be doing it would be to make partner. I would be entering into our union under false pretenses because the foundation of the relationship was built on ulterior motives.

People would probably be surprised, considering my chosen career, but I loathed and detested lying. That’s what these dates were. They were lies.

If I wasn’t on such a tight timeframe, I would have definitely gone on another date with Levi. Hell, if this was just for shits and giggles, I’d give Neil another shot.

But that wouldn’t be fair. Not to Levi, or Neil, or any man. Which meant this night had to end so I didn’t waste both our time. The tab was already paid, I’d insisted on splitting the bill. We were just finishing our dessert.

“I’m so sorry. I need to head back to the office.” If I was Pinocchio, my nose would have grown several inches. I stood from my chair. “Thank you so much, it was so nice to meet you.”

At my abrupt announcement, Levi stared at me with a deer in the headlights look. I felt as though I’d just given him emotional whiplash. “Yeah, you too.”

On the way out of the restaurant, I realized that my epiphany, while morally and ethically sound, did not change the fact that I needed a husband. And I needed him in the next couple of months.

As I climbed into my SUV, a plan began to formulate in my head. I’ve always been a solution-based problem solver. I never focused on what the issue was; when I faced an obstacle or difficult situation, my brain began to work at solving the puzzle to get the outcome I needed.

Sometimes, I felt very mad scientisty as I mentally storyboarded an idea and bubbled all the ways that would bring me my desired resolution. This was definitely a mad scientist time, and when my light bulb moment happened, I felt like I’d just solved the Da Vinci Code.

I needed to go to my office now and draft a contract. If I went home, I would just be tossing and turning all night with this flash of lightning brilliance I had just been struck with.

Like I’d told Neil, I’d finished high school by the time I was sixteen and started college. My dad died when I was twelve, and I knew that there was no fucking way I could live with my mother another six years until I turned eighteen. My weekends with him were the only thing that had kept me sane.

I’d spent two weeks crying, grieving, and generally feeling sorry for myself. Then, I’d put on my thinking cap and devised a solution. A month before my eighth-grade graduation, I’d made an appointment with a high school counselor. I’d gone into thatmeeting with a notebook filled with questions, and a timeline to meet.

When I walked out the door two hours later, I could tell that Mr. Lucario did not believe I’d be able to graduate high school in two years’ time. It involved summer school, night classes, and taking a zero-period course evening class.

If graduation had been my sole goal, then maybe he would have had a little more faith in me. But it hadn’t. I’d also wanted to get into an Ivy League school to get my law degree, which meant I would be taking AP classes and have to have extra-curricular activities as well.

I remembered he’d warned me that I wouldn’t be able to have any social life and I’d barely be at home. He’d said it as a negative, but little did he know, that had only made me more determined to keep up with the schedule.

Thanks to having a fairly promiscuous mother who loved sleeping with married men and who confused the PTA for a dating service, my schoolmates pretty much treated me like I had the plague. I was the girl whose mom broke up marriages, caused fights during holidays, and caused her schoolmates’ parents to get divorced. I might as well have had a scarlet letter on my chest as a proxy for my mom. That was the way everyone treated me.

No social life. No time at home. Those both sounded like perks, not deterrents.

As I pulled into the underground parking lot of my office building, I remembered those two years being a total blur. Thankfully, I hadn’t been alone in my pursuit of graduating high school and getting the hell out of Dodge. There was another kid in my class who was on the same track as I was. Maddox Cruz.

I didn’t know him well. He grew up in the foster care system, and I assumed also knew his ticket out of his situation was a good education. He did have one thing going for him that Ididn’t, he was a genius. Like Einstein level IQ. Actually, I’d read that Einstein’s IQ was said to be around 140. Maddox Cruz’s IQ was in the high 150s.

I wasn’t as smart as he was, but I did have the same goal. He was the Coke to my Pepsi. The Apple to my Microsoft. The Ford to my Chevrolet. The Visa to my Mastercard.

He was the rival who inspired and challenged me. I, however, was not the same to him. He was always kind to me, but it was clear that he had no idea of the made-up rivalry I’d concocted in my head. Most of the time, he didn’t even remember that we’d ever met before. Not that it mattered. Just having him as a rival had been all the competitive juice I’d needed to push through the times when my schedule and workload were too much.

When I finally made it up to the forty-second floor, I saw that most of the offices were empty. Rose, our night cleaner, was vacuuming and smiled at me as I walked in. Since I spent a lot of nights in my office, we’d gotten to know each other pretty well.

As I passed by her, I thought about running my brilliant plan past her to see what she thought, but then stopped myself. If I was going to do this, I needed to control the narrative which meant the circle of people who were in the know would be very small. Like three people small.

“What are you doing here?” Trevor asked as I rushed into his office and plopped down in the armchair facing his desk.

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