Page 2 of The Fiancée Farce
Ashleigh’s eyes made a slow, pointed sweep across the room, landing and lingering on Tucker. “All I’m saying is, it wouldn’t be the first time Tansy deluded herself.”
Tansy’s back teeth clacked together, her face burning and blood simmering. As tempting as it was to tell Ashleigh exactly where she could shove her barbed comments that weren’t nearly as clever as she thought they were, all Tansy really wanted was to get through tonight unscathed, hopefully without drawing any more attention than she had already. Telling Ashleigh off would only achieve the opposite.
“You want to dial it back, Ash?” Jackie frowned. “You’re being a real bitch tonight.”
“Are you going to ask the earth to stop spinning next?” Tansy muttered under her breath. “You’d probably have better luck.”
Ashleigh’s eyes flared minutely before narrowing. “What was that?”
Whoops.So much for keeping her thoughts to herself. Tansy cringed. Maybe she was a little chagrined that Ashleigh had heard her, but she wasn’t sorry for what she’d said, and now that it was out there, she refused to take it back. “You can think whatever you want, but I’m not delusional.”
Desperate, maybe, and she might be lying to everyone else, but these days, she was nothing if not brutally honest with herself.
A storybook wedding? Someone to sweep her off her feet?
Never going to happen. Tansy knew it; she’d accepted it; but that didn’t mean she relished everyoneelseknowing it.
It had been bad enough when Tucker and Madison had started dating and he had begun attending most family gatherings. But after he’d proposed? The thought of attending a lifetime of family dinners and parties not unlike this one, trying in vain to ignore Tucker’s leering eyes and his smug little smirk, the smile that once made her stomach flutter and the reason why every butterfly now felt like a red flag was just—it wastoo much.
Maybe it was latent self-preservation kicking in, too little, too late, but as soon as she’d learned that Tucker had proposed, every last atom in her body had recoiled at the thought of celebrating his and Madison’s engagement. She’d begged off with a bad case of the stomach flu, then skipped out on three consecutive dinners, claiming she was too tired, too busy with the bookstore’s virtual events and supply chain snafus. All tiny, harmless fibs. But then Katherine had called and told Tansyno more excuses—no more behaving like a recluse; if Tansy wanted to be a member of this family, she needed to act like it. It was Tucker’s birthday, the entire Van Dalen family would be there, and Katherine had it in her head that wealth rubbed off. Unless Tansy had a decent reason for missing the party, Katherine wanted her there. Tansy’sfatherwould’ve wanted her there.
Tansy had swallowed the retort that Katherine hadno ideawhat Tansy’s father would’ve wanted for her. That knowing him for two years in no way trumped the fifteen Tansy had had with him. But that would’ve been unnecessarily harsh, and Tansy was a lot of things, but intentionally cruel wasn’t one of them.
She’d racked her brain for any excuse that might’ve qualified as a decent reason in Katherine’s eyes, because Tansy would’ve rather spent an entire backbreaking evening single-handedly unpacking the store’s newest shipment of paperbacks—inevitable pesky paper cuts included—than celebrate the day Tucker van Dalen was born.
I have a date, actually.
She’d held her breath until, to her relief, Katherine had cooed.A date? You could’ve just said. Don’t be stingy with the details, Tansy. Tell me more.
Tansy’s eyes had landed and lingered on an open box of romance novels waiting to be shelved, had taken one look at the cover within, and blurted—
Gemma. Her name’s Gemma.
No sooner had the name popped out of Tansy’s mouth than had she full-body cringed. She couldn’t have made something up on the fly, a passable blend of two objects in her bookstore’s back room, like... likeApril Calendar. Heck, the author’s name wasright there, low-hanging fruit if there ever was some. Butno. Leave it to Tansy to complicate something that should’ve been straightforward, blurting out the name of the stunning cover model whose Instagram she’d spent an embarrassingtwo hoursscrolling the night before, all thanks toUnder the Covers, an IGTV series wherein cover models took readers behind the scenes of romance cover shoots.
Six months ago, a fake date had seemed like the Swiss Army knife of fibs. Only, one lie had led to another, and suddenly it wasn’t justadate; she and this Gemma weredating. Tansy knew none of it was real; she hadn’t fallen prey to some particularly pathetic parasocial relationship, the way some people believed they were kindred spirits or, heaven forbid,soulmateswith some celebrity all because of a polite, impersonal interaction on a public forum that the star probably promptly forgot about.
Tansy didn’t know the real Gemma West, and Gemma West sure as hell didn’t knowofTansy, let aloneknow-know her. Shedefinitelywasn’t under the delusion that she and Gemma would evermeet, let alonedate.
No, the idea of actually dating Gemma West was painfully laughable. Not that she’d told anyone she was dating Gemma West, specifically, keeping the details of her lie scant to be safe. Not that anyone would have believed her if she had.Breathtakingdidn’t begin to do Gemma West justice. With her striking green eyes, long blond hair, and sensual mouth, Gemma was the sort of pretty that if their paths were ever to cross—in some strange twist of fate—it would tie Tansy’s tongue.
What was meant to be a short-term solution to an enduring problem had snowballed out of her control, taking on a life of its own. And it needed to stop.Sheneeded to stop it. Not only was the guilt giving her a near-constant case of indigestion, but she was in over her head. By some stroke of luck, she had managed to fool everyone for six months, but secrets rarely stayed secret for long. It was a miracle she hadn’t yet slipped, only a matter of time before she put her foot in her mouth, before someone went digging.Truth will out, and all that came with the inevitable, humiliating fallout.
After tonight, she was going to do the right thing and end this, once and for all. Fake a breakup before the whole thing blew up... or she developed an ulcer.
“Then where is she?” Ashleigh pressed.
The double doors to the ballroom burst inward with a bang, saving Tansy from fumbling through another lie. The last note the harpist plucked reverberated discordantly as a hush fell over the room, all eyes turning to—
Tansy choked, champagne dribbling down her chin.
The woman standing confidently in the doorway, an impish smile flirting at the corners of her full lips and a wicked gleam in her green eyes, looked as if she’d stepped out of one of Tansy’s wildest daydreams. As if she’d stepped straight off the cover of one of Tansy’s favorite romance novels.
Because shehad.
Gemma West swept inside the room as if she owned it, the black satin of her slip dress clinging to her curves, the side slit revealing miles of smooth-looking skin all the way to—Tansy gulped—the crease of her thigh. Without breaking stride, Gemma plucked a glass of champagne off a table as she passed, knocked it back, and, upon reaching the center of the room, greeted Madison and Tucker each with an air-kiss. Tucker looked as dumbstruck as Tansy felt.
This was no daydream.
