Page 51 of Lucky Star

She wasn’t entirely wrong. I’d taken my fair share of cold showers over the past year to help keep my lust firmly in check. Up until this nightmare, the idea of having Sarah all to myself for days on end had sounded like heaven.

As Jillian continued speaking, a slight blush crept up her neck. “I wanted Murray that same way from practically the first moment I met him,” she muttered, almost as if she hadn’t meant to say the words out loud.

“Wait a minute,” I said, putting two and two together and realizing it didn’t add up to four. “You said he was your fiancé’s best friend? How could you have wanted him while planning to marry someone else?”

First, Jillian tells me this whole charade had been her idea, and now she’d admitted to lusting after her fiancé’s best friend? The longer this conversation went on, the less I thought she was someone who could be trusted. How could she have said accepted one man’s proposal while lusting after the poor bastard’s best friend? I didn’t know how they did things in London, but if that was the norm, it sounded worse than Hollywood.

Actually, no. It sounded exactly like Hollywood.

She let out a deep sigh. “It’s not what you think. I loved Aidan and wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, but he was my first love, and we were too young.” She shook her head as if to dislodge some hidden thought and continued. “When I met Murray, we had an instant, indescribable connection, and even though I thought he was the hottest guy I’d ever met, I never let it be more than a fantasy. I never would have acted on my desire for him. Aidan changed that though when I walked in on him having sex with a waitress who worked at his restaurant. Stunned, I ran straight to Murray’s flat in the pouring rain, crying my eyes out. He opened the door, took one look at me, and kissed the sad right out of me. We’ve been together ever since.”

“And that was five years ago?”

She hesitated before answering, stared at me as if trying to discern if there was some hidden “gotcha” behind my question. There wasn’t, I was just curious.

“I’m twenty-eight-years-old, and in ten years I’ve been in two relationships. If it hadn’t been for my relationship with Aidan, I probably would have shagged Murray the first chance I had. In the end, it’s better things transpired the way they did since we probably wouldn’t be together now.” She paused, lost in thought. “Come to think of it, maybe it’s better you and Sarah didn’t act on your impulses. You’ve been able to build a relationship that’s so much stronger than it might have been if sex was on the menu from the beginning.”

She exhaled, smiled broadly, and changed the subject. “Anyway, I didn’t know you had a girlfriend, and Broderick didn’t say anything about it when we had our meeting. I assumed—clearly mistakenly—that you’d want as much extra publicity from this job as you could get. And, me not being a hideous beast—” she batted her eyelashes playfully “—you would be down for a little Hollywood fauxmance.”

When she explained it that way, our “relationship” sounded harmless. Too bad it had proven anything but.

“That’s all well and good, but I wasn’t single, and this has had very real consequences for me. You might be okay with pretending to be with someone other than Murray, but every minute I’m sitting here with you, is one more minute I’ve gone against everything I believe in.”

Jillian’s eyes went dark and her lips flattened. “Remember that whole ‘I have my reasons for doing this that have nothing to do with publicity’ thing I mentioned at the beginning of this conversation?”

“Sure. What of it?”

“This isn’t a game to me.” She closed her eyes and exhaled. “Okay, maybe it is. But not how you think. Let’s just say I’m not exactly loving being your fake girlfriend either, when my own very real boyfriend is back in London perfectly okay with sharing me with another man—even if it is just make believe.”

The fierce glint of her eye told me there was much more to her story than she’d let on. “You’re doing this to make Murray jealous!” I laughed cynically. “Holy Christ, you’re a fucking piece of work.”

Shaking my head, I pulled out my phone to order an Uber. It might take them an hour or more to get out to Topanga, but I didn’t want to sit there with Jillian for one more minute pretending to be on a romantic date. I’d fulfill my end of this devil’s bargain, but I wanted nothing to do with the twisted way she was manipulating her relationship. As it was, my own was already in the shitter; I didn’t need to be party to the breakdown of Jillian and Murray’s as well. They seemed to be doing just fine with that on their own.

I shoved the phone back into my pocket once a driver accepted my fare and raised my eyes back up. “You really have no idea what you’ve done, do you?”

When a few other diners’ heads pivoted our way, I realized I was dangerously close to yelling so I took a few quick breaths and lowered my voice. “Do you know Broderick has Sarah calling bloggers to feed them fake stories about us?” Because of you, my fiancé has to tell complete strangers that I can’t keep my hands off you.” I dropped my head into my hands. “Our friends and family knew about the engagement, for fucks sake.” I looked back up, my eyes sparking with fire. “And they think I dropped her the second I met you.”

She rolled her eyes at my outburst. “Broderick doesn’t have Sarah calling bloggers; Cassie’s doing that.”

Wait, what? Hadn’t those costume people said it was Sarah making those calls? No, they’d just said it was Broderick’s assistant. Which Sarah wasn’t. Not anymore.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

What had I done?

“How do you know?” I demanded.

Jillian blew out a breath and looked away for a couple of seconds and then back at me. Staring me straight in the eyes, she admitted, “Because I’m the one feeding Cassie the stories.”

It took three seconds for her words to register before I stood up, tossed two twenty-dollar bills on the table, and stormed out of the restaurant. My Uber wouldn’t arrive for another ten minutes, but there was no way in hell I could stay inside with that scheming woman.

And yet, when the driver finally did arrive, I didn’t go home to Sarah.

Instead, I went back to my old apartment. I still had three months left on my lease, and while I’d removed most of my belongings, it was still sparsely furnished. Laying in the dark on an unmade bed, I thought back through everything that had happened these past few months, starting with that first night.

I’d been drunk, but not so much that I couldn’t remember how it had felt to kiss her, to recall how, as our lips and tongues had tangled, I’d felt as if I’d found the other half of my soul.

Then, later, when I’d stayed away from her because I’d been ashamed of my behavior, how desperate I’d been to hear her laugh, or watch her lips as she said my name in that playful way she did, like she was equal parts exasperated and charmed by me.

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