Page 21 of Last Minute Fiancé

“So, he’s a misogynistic prick?”

“Yes, but that’s not it. Well not all of it. Travis is engaged.”

I frowned. “And that makes you sad? You’re not still hung up on him, are you?”

She waved that off. “Not in the slightest. I wish him well. Or I wish him out of my life. I don’t care, she can have him. It’s more the fact that because Travis will now be a family man, he has one up on me, according to the boss. So I did a thing, a really bad thing.”

I had an awful idea about where she was going with this, but I couldn’t say anything. I needed the train wreck to come to me.

“They don’t know about the baby,” she added, and I didn’t feel relieved about that like I think she thought I would.

“Okay,” I said, drawing out the word.

“But I did say that I was engaged. To you. And that you’re going to come with me to the work trip that I have in two days. You know, the one that’s going to make or break my career? The one where I totally said I was getting married and I actually said your name and now you’re going to have to come with me.”

I blinked at her, marveling at the absurdity of this. Because of course she would. Why wouldn’t we make this farce of our relationship even worse?

“Did you really just make up a fiancé for your job?”

She stood up and began to pace. I moved back to give her space. I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t firing on all cylinders right then.

“Of course I did. Because it’s so absurd and ridiculous. But I really need this job. I love this job. And this promotion’s going to do amazing things.”

“And what about the baby?”

“I don’t know about the baby. I don’t know how it’s all going to work. All I know is that if I get this promotion, it’ll mean things will be easier. I can make my own schedule, I can work from home, I can have the chance to come to the realization that I’m going to be a mom and you’re going to be a dad and we’re going to have to talk about that. And we will. But first, I actually have to get the promotion.”

“And you need me to be your fake fiancé for that to happen.”

“Yes. I know it’s last minute, but will you marry me? At least for pretend. At least for the weekend.”

I heard the words, and yet they didn’t seem real, because this had to be a dream, not quite a nightmare, but one of those anxiety dreams when you were stuck at school and you didn’t realize that you were enrolled in so many classes. I still had those to this day.

“That’s not exactly the proposal I was dreaming about.”

When she went pale, I cursed under my breath. “Okay, okay, so we don’t joke about the realities of our relationship, just the fake part. Got it. Do you need me? For real?”

“I really do. This will help. I promise. It’ll make things easier once we actually deal with the reality that we’re having a baby. Because if I don’t get this promotion, I don’t know what I’m going to do. And I just lied to my boss and everyone there. And now I can’t back out.”

I cursed under my breath again and did the math on how I could make this happen. I could, because I had a good team. And I would, because Addison was my best friend.

And she needed me.

And I was a sucker.

“Hell. Okay. What do you need me to do?”

She broke down in tears and threw herself in my arms. I just held her close and hoped we weren’t making yet another mistake.

Knowing we probably were.

ChapterSix

Addison

“So, how are we going to do this?”

I looked over at Luca, who had driven us here, and sighed. We sat in his car in the driveway, the engine off, both of us having taken off our seat belts but not making another move to get out. There was an almost silence in the car, when the engine cut off but you could still almost hear the vibrations in your inner ear canal. It didn’t make much sense, but the silence felt deafening.

---