Page 48 of Accidental Fiancé

“I didn't realize we were playing a game.”

“I'm not. Bad metaphor. If you could just hear me out and see things from my perspective maybe we could?—"

“No need.” I grabbed my keys and headed for the door. “Jules, I'm a big girl. I can handle the truth. I don't need you to make this into anything more than it is. You want things to be cut and dry? Fine. That's what they’ll be.”

“Maggie, don't leave angry.”

“Like you said, I'm your fiancée when we're around your family. Until then, I'm on my own. Like I've always been. So I get to decide how I feel about things, not you. And if I want to leave angry, then I will fucking leave angry.” I slammed the door behind me and ran to my car.

I couldn't handle the thought of Piper seeing me like that. I had to get out as fast as I could.

I drove so fast that I passed the bar before I realized it and had to do several illegal turns to get into their parking lot. But once I parked, I didn't want to go inside. The rental car was a safe place. No one was there to tell me what to do or how to feel. No one telling me that they'd pay me to be their girlfriend.

What the hell did he think I was?

I smacked my hands on the steering wheel a few times in an attempt to get the anger out. But it only made it worse. I reached absentmindedly into the glove box for the package of Altoids I always kept in my car. They weren't there. I shouted obscenities as I remembered that I was not in my car. I was in a car that Julian had provided to me. My rental. His rental, really.

I got out and slammed the door. Being in the rental felt like being surrounded by him. And I just couldn't take that right now.

The distance from the rental to the door was short. The place looked like a thousand other dive bars I'd been to in and around LA. Sticky floors, black painted walls, neon lighting, and a fully stocked bar with a grungy-looking bartender behind it waiting to serve me. Exactly what I needed at a time like this.

I ordered a whiskey and coke and found a booth in the back to wait for Nora. If she ever showed up though I wasn't sure how much it mattered. Not until I was flooded with relief when she walked in. She ordered her drink and joined me at the table.

Sometimes I hated that she had a big fancy lawyer job because it meant she was always well-dressed when I looked like crap. “What's the emergency, doll?”

That was all it took before I became a blubbering mess. I told her the whole story, including what had happened on the third floor and the memory that the yearbook had conjured along with how I felt when I saw Julian after that.

I also told her about the consultant title.

She drummed her perfectly polished nails on the gross table. “Get it in writing.”

“What?”

“The consultant title and everything that goes along with it. Not just the money but any perks he's offering as well. Get it all in writing.”

I braced my forehead on my fingertips, trying not to scream. “Nora, that's not the problem here.”

“Oh, I'm well aware of what the problem is. The problem is that you’ve found yourself falling for your crush again. But what I'm telling you is to focus on the things you can control. Your tender little heart is gonna do stupid things. You can't control that. But you can get this newfound bullshit in writing. At leastwalk out of the situation with some serious money in your pocket.”

“Take off the big lawyer hat and put on the best friend hat because that's the kind of advice I need right now.”

She yanked a napkin out of the dispenser and passed it to me. “Clean yourself up, doll. And for the record, that was the best friend advice. The lawyer in me is screaming right now because there is so much legally wrong here, not the least of which is the fact that you could get one of the most powerful men on the planet brought up on charges for being a john.”

That made me laugh. “Sure, that's exactly what I want.”

Her lips turned upward at the corners. “Got you to laugh, didn't I?”

In spite of myself, I laughed again. Then I kicked her shin. “I owed you, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah. Seriously, are you going to go through with this?”

“Honestly, I don't know. I don’t know what the right call is anymore. I was just starting to realize my feelings for Julian when he came at me with this and now I don't know what to think. Was all of this just some kind of conquest because he wanted me back then?”

She smiled at me with nothing but kindness in her eyes, and I knew something bad was coming. “Remember how we talked about the two of you hanging out a lot, especially when I wasn’t around?”

“Yeah.”

“I know you said it was platonic. Maybe you thought it was but I don't think it was that way for him. And I really wonder how much it was for you too.”

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