Page 14 of The Pucking Fake Marriage

“Let me get this straight.” She runs her hand through her short black hair, not taking her gaze from me. “You went to Las Vegas without even telling me?”

Maybe I shouldn’t have shared this with her. I knew my plan was a little bit off the charts, but I didn’t expect my best friend looking at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world.

“Yes.”

“Andyou convinced Ken to leave his friends behind to go on a drinking binge with you?”

“Yes.”

“Thenyou got him to marry you in one of those cheesy chapels?”

I feel a guilty squirm in my stomach. I skipped a step. The one in which Ken thrust into me all through the night.

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe this,” she mutters. “You did this all because of the restaurant? And your dad?”

I bow my head in shame. “Yeah,” I mutter.

Becoming a business owner was something I planned since I started college and put my ballet dreams aside. I majored in business and minored in entrepreneurial studies, deciding I wanted to own a restaurant during my second year. I love cooking. I hung out at the Edwards house a lot, trying out healthy recipes with their mother. I talked it over with my dad, and he loved the idea. My grandmother had run a small deli when he was growing up. The idea of a family business that could be passed down appealed to him. That settled my decision.

My plan was perfect. First, to work for four years in other businesses, painstakingly saving up money and learning everything I could. Then to look for a location. One of the cutesy little restaurants in the 13thStreet Corridor was selling, and scrapping together all of mine and Haley’s savings—plus a loan from my parents—meant we could buy it. Yeah, there was competition, but I was sure I could manage. Many of the old staff quit, and I had problems getting a chef that aligned with my concept, but things still worked out fine.

Until barely three months after I took over, a nasty review was printed in the local newspaper, labeling my restaurant as the “worst place to eat in Center City.” Apparently, the reviewer had visited incognito and claimed that he had uncovered a large, dirty nail in his salad.

True or not, the nosedive started from there, which got even worse when a brand-new restaurant was opened downthe street—one that focused on vegan fusion cuisine for half the price, headed by a Michelin star chef. Just one year after opening, my restaurant is in shambles. I have no staff except for Haley, who’s only staying because she invested her savings in my harebrained scheme and has no choice but to go down with the sinking ship.

I could call it quits and admit defeat. But that’s not my style. Seeing the disappointment in my parents’ eyes—again—would ruin me.

So, I decided to revamp. Change up the menu, redecorate, rebrand under a new name, hire competent staff, the whole shebang. Only, that all costs money. I needed a loan.

Which wasn’t as easy as I had hoped.

“We can’t give you anything close to this amount,” the bank manager, Mr. Holloway, a good looking, middle-aged man, informed me flatly. “We simply do not have any indication we’re going to get it back from you. You’ve got no landed property, no cars, no family who’s willing to take the payment up if you default…”

I felt a pang, recalling my mother’s words when I’d asked for her help again. “You can’t ask us to mortgage our house on your vanity project, Charlotte. Not when we’ve already given you money. We need all the resources we have for your father’s treatments; you know that.”

She was right. With his cancer diagnosis, my father was hanging onto life for two reasons: to see me get married and to see me become successful. If I couldn’t do either of those, the least I could do is not drain him even more.

“If you were married,” Mr. Holloway continued, “we could take the risk and give you the loan if your spouse had considerable assets, but…”

“I’m not,” I finished for him. I rarelyget touchy about being single, but being reminded of yet another failure was a little too much to bear.

“Shame,” Mr. Holloway said. “A marriage certificate added to your other documents could make a worldof difference.”

A marriage certificate was all that stood between me and my loan.

People marry for all sorts of reasons. A marriage to get a loan wasn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things.

But it still went against my values, somehow. Even though I didn’t see myself marrying one day, I respected the institution enough to be wary of faking it. But then, a few more calls from my mother, some well-placed barbs about how my father’s treatment would be more bearable if their only daughter could help out with payments, and I decided to go for it. My failures weren’t just impacting me anymore. A turnaround would help my family, too.

Once I decided, I realized it couldn’t just be anyone. Since it had to be a successful man, I narrowed the list down quickly. And Ken Edwards was by far the most successful man I knew. Granted, we’d not spoken in ten years, but I knew I could find a way to make it work.

A way that did not involve groveling at his feet and begging him to marry me.

“But youknowhim.” Haley furrows her forehead, looking puzzled. “You could’ve asked him to lend you the money…or you could’ve told him you needed to marry him.”

“No,” I say, so sharply that Haley rears back and hits the TV. “Sorry,” I say in a calmer voice. “It’s not that straightforward.”

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