Page 21 of Never Say Yes To Your Fake Husband

“Who do you work with, or who have you signed?” Weland pauses right there on the sidewalk. “Never mind. I don’t need you to name-drop. Your company obviously did well and is doing well because you have lots of money now.”

“Even after it took off and I tried to pay my aunt back, she never wanted to sell her shares. She was proud she invested in me when no one else wanted to. She and my uncle had put away money for their kids’ college since they were born, so she didn’t have to spend money on that. Then, she got the house from my uncle, and it was mostly paid off. As such, she wanted to keep the money invested.”

“Except her shares were worth almost nothing, and then suddenly they were worth a lot when the company blew up,” Weland says.

“That’s right. She wasn’t my mother, but she was always telling me that I should find someone to be happy with. That special someone.”

“Was she a hardcore romantic?” Weland asks.

I wrinkle my nose, but this time, there isn’t any bad smell. We might be in the middle of the city, but this particular neighborhood smells as fresh and clean as any other summer morning, and there are trees here and there lining the street. We might not be in a park or the country, but it doesn’t feel closed in or too busy here.

“You know, she wasn’t. At least, not that I ever knew. She was practical. She had ideas about how things should be done. All my cousins are married now. She liked all their wives, even if they were unlikable. She wanted them to be happy, and in her mind, that meant finding that special person. Maybe she was sad it never worked out with my uncle, or maybe she never got over that. It could be that it all stemmed from there. She never remarried or dated, so either he was it for her, and she mourned their broken relationship for the rest of her life, or she nevertruly loved him and regretted never finding theonefor herself, and she didn’t want to see her kids make the same mistake. She was a hard lady to read.”

“How did she pass?” Weland asks quietly.

“My aunt used to say my mom was reckless and irresponsible, which she did sometimes say. Well, she lived her life the opposite. She wanted to be around for her boys, and probably me too, I guess. But when it’s your time, it’s your time, though. She never told any of us she had cancer. Pancreatic cancer. She said goodbye in her own way, but none of us knew that was what she was doing. She shocked us all. She downsized the house and sold everything off. She said she wanted to retire and didn’t need a big place, and then she went on a vacation down to Mexico.

“She was getting treatment there, but she didn’t tell a soul. She ended up passing away down there, and my cousins…god, the oldest one is a real asshole, but he dealt with all of it. All the legal stuff and getting her body back here to bury. It was a nightmare. It was the one time in my life I actually felt sorry for Joseph. Lucas and Tony were wrecks too. My aunt left them all her savings divided between them and everything she hadn’t sold. But to me, she left her shares in the company, though she did put stipulations on it. If I didn’t get married within a year and stay married for at least five years to prove it was real and not just something to meet the parameters of her will, then her shares would be divided up amongst my cousins, also equally. At the end of five years, if I were still married, then they would be mine.”

Weland stops dead. Beans sits down and looks up at her, even though she did not give him a command. He waits patiently for her signal, but she looks at me with a gathering storm of fury building in her eyes. I don’t want her to release it here on the sidewalk, so I put up a hand.

“I know what that sounds like, and for someone who lived her life quite conservatively and unromantically, it’s wild and nonsensical, but it was what it was. I couldn’t let my cousins have it. Not what I had built from nothing. I was shocked when I read the will, so I did what I’d been doing for years. I went out to a few little bars in the middle of nowhere that had live music and then lost myself in it. It was the strangest thing. At four in the morning, I was driving around aimlessly, wondering how I was going to save my company and having the crisis to end all the meltdowns in the world.

“Then, I pulled over by this park. I got out and sat on a bench just to think. It was so quiet, and I had to wreck it. I pulled out my phone, and after a little bit of browsing, there you were. You. Singing. Your songs. An angel in a sea of despair. Smitty had been my lawyer for a while at this point, but he was also a friend. I skipped over everyone else—my assistants and the rest of the office—and called him. I wanted to know two things. If you were single and if you were willing to save me. For the former, I suppose anyone could have helped me find that out, but for the latter, I needed it to be entirely secret. Naturally, each of my cousins got a copy of the will, and they’re pretty eager to get their hands on those shares. Considering they’re worth a few million dollars a piece for them, it would probably have brought the greed out in anyone.”

“But for you to just announce you were getting married out of the blue, they must have known it was fake.”

We start walking again, passing a string of houses that all look the same. Literally, they’re just different colors, but at least a row of a hundred have the same design. Two stories with porches on the front and alternating red and yellow and dark blue.

“Not at all. I’d been so quiet and private for such a long time. I’d get tired of my aunt telling me to find someone, so one time, I told her I had someone, but it was my own business. Therewasn’t actually anyone, and I hadn’t really ever dated seriously because I was so busy with work, college, and then building a company after that, but she didn’t have to know that. I was just so sick of her harping on it, so the lie slipped out. Maybe that’s why she made the stipulation in her will. Hoping I’d take my happiness seriously. Or maybe she knew I was lying. My cousins believed I was seeing someone, though, and it was only natural for me to get serious about it and accelerate things to meet the terms of the will. As long as I was married and stayed married, and it appeared real, they couldn’t do anything.”

“So that’s why you were so worried about finding me and proving it was real.”

“Yes. They would have had a hard time proving it was fake. It would have been my word against theirs unless they got a hold of the contract, but Smitty would never give it up. I know I can trust him.” Two angry squirrels in a large tree across the street fill up the fairly quiet morning with a rapid burst of sudden chatter. “I’m not one of those people who live in the spotlight. I’m more behind the scenes, and even if some artists I’ve discovered, signed, and helped along the way are famous now, no one cares about the head of their label. I always wanted to remain unseen, and so I am, for the most part. I do meetings all over the world, and I have enough money now, so privacy isn’t an issue. My cousins know that. For a guy who was always half in the shadows and half living secrets before my aunt passed, it wasn’t much of a stretch to figure I did have a girlfriend and would never usher her into the fame I myself didn’t want. I guess my desire to go unnoticed was a stroke of massive luck.”

Weland stops again. She drops the leash, steps on it even though Beans stops too—the most alert dog to his owner’s commands I’ve ever met, and he barely even knows her—and thrusts her hands onto her hips. It pulls her sweater a little bit tighter over her chest, revealing curves and the swells of herbreasts, and I have to pull my eyes away. My dick jumps to life, yet another reminder that all parts of me have spent years and years working and cherishing my privacy.

“Why now? Why did you just suddenly decide that now, of all times, you want to make it real?”

I’m at a loss here. I still haven’t answered that for myself. It’s not going to be adequate, but I give her the only answer I have. “Because no one who met you in person and saw your smile and heard your laugh and basked in your light could ever turn around and go back to the shadows and pretend like it never happened.”

Chapter eleven

Weland

Iguess I’m riding on the hot mess express right now. It’s something to do with the inner cavewoman coming out and distracting the hell out of my normally rational brain because there’s a delicious man in my kitchen, and his presence is giving me all the tingles in all the spots.

After our walk, we came back to my condo, and I attempted to make breakfast for us—attempted being the keyword here. But after the eggs nearly caught on fire and the bacon sizzled down to little burnt crisps, I decided I was too distracted to cook and instead went with what I knew.

I could literally make these marshmallow peanut butter squares blindfolded. Not that I want to try. It’s hot and scary in the kitchen, and I wouldn’t actually like to do it without being able to see. You’d think this would involve a higher degree ofdon’t fuck upthan bacon and eggs, but apparently not.

I’m just melting the peanut butter and butterscotch chips into a big pot when Sterling walks into the kitchen, pulls out a chair, and sits at the table.

There goes my ovaries.

There goes my nipples.

There goes my cooking skills.

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