Page 4 of Never Say Yes To Your Fake Husband

Right freaking here.

She’s right around the corner. In fact, I nearly plowed right into her. I bring myself up short, and my sharp athletic reflexes save me.

But they don’t save her. I guess I’m a little bit too close because even though I come up short, she must sense the air shifting or something, so she spins around. Her drink goes flying out of her hand and lands right on the front of my suit.

Because yes, I’m one of those guys who wore a suit to a club. To be clear, it’s not a formal, suit-wearing kind of place.

“Oh my holy smokies and onions! I’m so sorry! I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Oh my goodness, you scared the life out of me, and it just went flying. I’m…jeez, well, you did sneak up on me. You shouldn’t do that in a club. People get the wrong idea. Something about darkness and weird lights and too much music and too much booze, and ahhh, look at me. Talking too much. Hold that thought.” She holds up a hand. “I’m going to run to the bathroom and get some paper towels to wipe you down. Again, I’m so, so sorry about the suit. It looks expensive. Gah, look at me. I’m still talking too much when I should be moving. Okay, moving now. Right now. Right nownow.”

She’s nervous, but she’s over her scare. With those wide blue eyes, the adorable way she’s biting down on her bottom lip, and the way she won’t look me in the face after that first initial shocked glance, it all tells me that she likes what she sees, and she’s flustered from more than just her projectile drink, which honestly, appears to just be water.

I brush at the wetness and raise my fingers to my nose. I don’t care that I give them an undignified sniff. Yup, it’s just water, which is funny because when I look over at the other women—there are at least fifteen or so in the stagette group, and they are all packed into one big booth—they all already look beyond slightly inebriated.

“It’s not a problem. Don’t worry about it.” I don’t think club bathrooms are a safe place for a woman to go alone. Is any bathroom safe? God, I want her to be safe.

Catching a plane from London, I literally got here just in time. Smitty did the rest, finding out which club the stagette was going to take place at, and if there were more than one, he would have found out the specific times. I have no idea how he did it, but he gave me the time, address, and name of the place, and he had it for me within twenty minutes of the phone call with Weland.

It sounds a lot like he tattles and spies, but in reality, he doesn’t do either. Not much. But maybe kind of. I have to keep tabs on my wife, okay? The marriage thing was a rocky idea at best and fucking straight-up awful multiplied by infinity and spiders at worst.

“No, I need to worry about it. I’m sorry again.”

“It’s alright. It’ll dry,” I tell her.

Weland sighs. She has one of those open, honest faces, so I’m not surprised by what she says. “I’m not even drunk. That’s the sad thing. We took a bus here. This is my first night out in forever. The woman getting married? That’s Kate, my bestie. I should be really, really drunk, but I don’t know. I thought this would be super fun, and it’s alright. I just feel…” She pauses, her eyes fluttering upward. The lights flash over her face. She’s dressed quite conservatively for a club, with a vintage white lace blouse and a high-waisted skirt that looks handmade, also trimmed in lace. She’s rocking red vintage cowboy boots. I had no idea she liked vintage fashion. But maybe she doesn’t. Maybeshe just put on that outfit because she really thought a stagette at a club meant polka night with a hint of line dancing at some hall where no one would be under the age of a hundred and eight.

Whatever her likes or dislikes, the strange outfit is adorable on her. She’s totally cute from head to toe. I knew what she looked like from her videos online and the few photos I have, but she’s a knockout in real life. She has sunshine eyes and is beautiful in an old-fashioned and new-fashioned way mixed together and stirred with a hint of sea breeze that clings to her. She reminds me of someone who would look good wearing flowers, and seriously, isn’t that out of style already? But no, not on her. On her, they would never go out of style. She’s got that petite, sweet little frame that would look good in anything, new or old, in or out of style.

She’s not the kind of person who fits in here. Or maybe even anywhere. She’s all around too sweet and honest for the world.

“Can I interest you in a walk then?”

“A walk?” Her light blue eyes flash as they dart over to her group. They’re mostly sitting around one of the huge booths, all of them crammed into one, though I don’t know how they’ve managed even with a few of the women sitting on each other’s laps and one of them perched half on the table, and two standing at the ends. “I was just going to take a walk to order a round of water, actually. I told them I was getting drinks, but I think water is what’s needed. We’ve only been here for an hour, and it’s already getting out of hand. No one needs to get alcohol poisoning tonight, and ending up on the floor or holding back someone else’s hair while they upchuck for hours isn’t how I want this night to go.”

“Alright, a walk to get water then.”

She gives me a once over, and it looks like she’s trying to assess my level of stranger danger. Her cheeks turn pink, which makes me think that maybe there was a little bit of truth to what shesaid to Smitty about finding some dude and getting laid tonight, though I didn’t think it was possible. From what I know of her, it didn’t seem like more than an empty threat. Even Smitty didn’t think she was going to do it, and he usually has a pretty good read on people.

But here I am, ready to prevent anything from happening. I take all threats seriously, especially when it’s a threat to my personal privacy and the stupid will that still hasn’t gone to bed yet because five years aren’t up, and I have a pack of ravenous cousins waiting in the wings who could put any salivating, aggressive, and snappy wolves to shame.

“Don’t worry. I won’t try and seduce you,” I add, with just a hint of velvet burr in my voice. I don’t know why I do that. The last thing I’m going to do is seduce my wife, and that sounds like I mean the opposite. Total creep zone, but Weland throws her head back and laughs.

“Don’t worry. I’m not so easily seduced. Certainly it would take more than a walk across this club. Although it is packed, so it will take us a while to get over to the bar. We’ll also have to wait because there’s a long line, and we’ll no doubt get shoved together by all those people waiting rather impatiently. And if we didn’t, we’d still have to lean intimately close in order to not yell at each other with all this music blaring.”

“Do you like it? The music…” I ask. Her smile falters, and she gives me another long, searching look. She’s trying to figure me out. She senses that I know something about her that I shouldn’t know. I try and give her an innocent smile but probably come off a little bit dopey. I haven’t done this in a very long time. Bars, smiling at women, thinking about anything other than business, talking to my wife. “I’m just trying to make conversation. Ignore me,” I add.

“No.” She’s trying to be polite, I can tell. “No, I don’t have to ignore you. The music is…interesting, I guess. It’s not my favorite. My jam is more singer-songwriter and country.”

Does she even want to be standing here having this conversation, or would she rather be crammed into that booth, laughing and screeching uproariously with her friends? It doesn’t look like she wants to be doing that. Maybe she thought she did, and then she got here and found she craved the quiet she was used to.

I’ve asked Smitty about her so many times. What she’s like, what she likes. He’s always told me that she’s kind and quiet and that she loves her family above anything and will always put them first.

“That’s quite a far cry from this,” I comment.

“Yeah, but this is okay too. Everything is okay. Some music is better than none. I like to give anything a chance.”

She’s so open-minded. Smitty was right about the kindness. She radiates it like chocolate chip cookies radiate deliciousness.

I motion to the bar with a nod of my head. “Shall we then?”

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