Page 4 of Boss's Baby: A Fake Fiance Romance

And despite being at the damn near the top of my career—executive marketing director at my New York firm, thank you very much—something about being home around all these faces had a way of making me feel like I was that same girl in secondhand clothes, hoping no one would notice me.

Still felt like the case. Part of me wished I was back home with Mom and Dad, spending the holiday the same way I had spent every other one when I’d come to town.

“You seriously look like you’d rather be any other place on the planet than here.” Katie took a sip of her drink, Sprite and whatever else.

“Well, you aren’t wrong about that.”

She elbowed me. “Come on—it can’t be that bad. There are a ton of girls here that you used to hang out with back in school.”

“Not exactly a ton.”

“Like her,” said Katie, pointing into the crowd.

It took me a second to see who she was talking about. When I realized who it was, my jaw nearly dropped.

“Kendra McDonnell?” I asked. “Kat, she went to Gray.”

Pointing out that someone “went to Gray” had always been a good shorthand that they were from the other part of town—that is, the rich part, the part where houses sat on estates surrounded by tall fences. Places where teams of landscapers kept the grounds instead of dads mowing the lawn on the weekend. Places where, unlike I had, kids could be kids without having to always think about money—specifically, a lack thereof.

“I know,” she said. “But didn’t you guys work together at Two Scoops?”

Two Scoops was the ice cream place where I part-timed back when I was a teenager. Decent ice cream, but more importantly it was how I managed to save up for my first car—a ’94 Honda Civic that I still remembered fondly. Not necessarily because it was the nicest ride in the world, but because it was my first taste of the independence I’d been desperate for.

“We did,” I said. “I mean, she worked there one day a week because her dad made her. And whenever she worked all she did was complain, complain, complain. Plus, she never cleaned the damn milkshake machine at the end of the night.”

“OK,” she said. “What about those other girls—you know, the, um…” She trailed off, and I knew right away the word she was looking for.

“You mean the weird girls?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to say that, but you know…”

For lack of other friends, I’d fallen in with a small group of artsier girls, the ones who all had big dreams of moving to New York or LA and making their names in some kind of creative career. I’d never really been that type of girl—what I wanted was money, and lots of it. After a humble upbringing, the starving artist lifestyle didn’t appeal to me in the slightest.

“We were weird—you can say it.”

“OK, then why not shoot them a text? Be weird together tonight.”

“We all stopped talking after graduation. Not like I had much in common with them other than not fitting in anywhere else.”

Katie pursed her lips for a moment as she looked me over. It was a look I’d seen all my life, the expression that seemed to say “What on earth am I going to do with this sister of mine?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’ll, you know, have my drink here and go back home.”

“Come on,” said Katie. “You’re really going to have one drink and peace out? I brought you here to have some fun for once in your life!”

“Hey—I have plenty of fun.”

“Sixty-hour workweeks are absolutely no one’s idea of fun. Really, I’m wondering if you even know what to do with yourself if you’re not at your job.”

I opened my mouth to say something in my defense, but she was…kind of right. But it wasn’t like I wasn’t happy with my life. I mean, I had a great job, a killer place in the East Village, and enough money in the bank to make my less-than-affluent upbringing a distant memory.

But she had me on the “fun” thing. Katie was different—she lived in the city like me but worked as a bartender at some hip place in Williamsburg, ground zero for cool. It seemed like every time I checked her Instagram, there was a new pic of her at some wild rooftop party or on some beach during one of her spontaneous vacations around the world. Sometimes I wished I could be as carefree as her, but it wasn’t who I was.

“Wait,” she said, glancing down at my hand, a look of surprise on her face. “What…what the hell is that?”

At first I was totally perplexed at what she was going on about. But when I raised my hand in front of my face to see what she was talking about, my eyes went as wide as hers were.

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