Page 9 of His Perfect Woman

Flashes of the anger on her face and the hurt in her voice haunted me. She was right—I had acted impulsively. But some part of me honestly thought she’d find it funny...maybe just a little? But that seemed ridiculous now. I’d never expected her to be so pissed. She obviously hated the idea of being with me so much that she couldn’t even stomach pretending it was true for the sake of the press.

It was a vicious blow to my ego, but one that I had seen coming for a long time. Just not in this way. It confirmed everything I’d always feared. The one girl I wanted the most, the only one I ever wanted, was the one girl who didn’t want me back.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it all night and it was plummeting me into a depression. I knew that the next morning, I’d have to pull myself together and waltz back into the office like everything was fine. But until then, I planned to pig out on delivery pizza, beer, and ESPN.

The sun had gone down with still no word back from Victoria. I hadn’t bothered turning on any of the lights in my apartment, and now everything was as dark as I felt inside. This wasn’t like me—to sit and sulk. I was always the first one to buckle down and try to find a solution rather than waste time wallowing in self-pity. That was what had led us to starting Heartstring in the first place.

With that in mind, I peeled myself up from the couch and walked around to turn on all the lights. After shutting off the TV and tossing out the empty pizza box and beer bottles, I was desperate for a long, hot shower. I checked my phone the minute I stepped out and dried off, but still nothing from her.

That’s when I started to pace, convinced I would find a way to smooth this over. We were both in predicaments of our own, and now we shared one as well. All the pieces to the puzzle—she wanted a family, but had no interest in love. I wanted my company to succeed, but had no interest in anyone but her. I just needed a family for appearances.

Then it hit me. If I couldn’t have her in the way I wanted...maybe there was still some part of her that I could claim as my own, and not just as a fake fiancé in front of the press. If she could continue posing as my fiancé, and maybe eventually my wife...and I gave her the family she wanted in return...she would be tied to me forever, just not in the way I’d always hoped.

I laughed at myself for a moment. It was absurd, right? Pretending to be engaged? Faking a marriage? Me essentially acting as her sperm donor? Then again...there was no one else in the world I would rather have as the mother of my children. And I had looked.

All those one-night stands weren’t just for fun and the obvious sexual relief. Each one was a glimmer of hope that maybe someone could prove Victoria wasn’t so great and that she wasn’t the only one for me. I kept an open mind, but every single one of them proved disappointing in comparison. If I was doomed to feel this way for the rest of my life...why not go ahead and start a family with her? Even if she never did feel the same way…

Those two pieces of the puzzle fit together perfectly in my mind—and more importantly, when they came together, it also solved the mess I had brought crashing down on us earlier that day. I was convinced it was the best way to move forward for both of us.

Now I just had to find some way to convince Victoria of the same thing.

5

Victoria

I glanced up at the clock over my stove. It was after eight and I was still just as pissed as I had been earlier that day at the press conference. After heating up leftovers from last night’s dinner out, I had barely eaten a bite. I just stared at the sad-looking chicken, sauce, and pasta, occasionally shoveling them around on the plate with my fork. The dish had looked so much better freshly cooked, when it was being served up at one of my favorite restaurants. Before everything was hit by the shadow of Lucas’s big, fat lie.

What he did was selfish, immature, unprofessional, impulsive, and stupid. I had about a million other negative adjectives rolling around in my head, too. But mostly, I was still in disbelief.

I kept playing it over in my head, but the part that was most disturbing...was the way my heart had fluttered a little when he pulled me to his side and called me his fiancé in front of all those people. Before the pounding and then the burning rage...there was a flutter. A certain giddy rise that I couldn’t shake, no matter how angry I was. It left me completely perplexed and disoriented, which I assumed was why I had zero appetite.

I’d had all the symptoms of a crush on Lucas back in the day. Who didn’t? He was a jock, but not one of the stupid ones. He was smart as a whip, clever, funny. Loyal to his family and friends. Ridiculously built and very attractive. If you couldn’t have him as a boyfriend, you wanted him as your best friend. I never took my luck for granted.

But it wasn’t just luck. We were kind of perfect for each other. Okay, exactly perfect for each other. We were both stubborn and impatient, but smart enough to know how to play the long game. We handled high school and college like a high-stakes game of Risk, and it was the perfect training for our careers. We looked at the bigger picture and carefully calculated our best moves, analyzing all the possible outcomes so we would always be one step ahead.

Which was another reason why I was so baffled by his move during the press conference. When we got backstage, I half-expected him to have some kind of bigger plan I hadn’t been privy to. But nope. He’d just word-vomited whatever he’d needed to, completely throwing me under the bus.

I clung to my memories of how it used to be. The way my stomach turned flips when I saw him come around the corner in the halls, and how clammy my hands would get when he wrapped his arm around me. I never read too much into my feelings. After a while, I got used to it. Any girl in my position would have felt the same. It didn’t mean anything.

Besides, even back then, I had no room in my life for distractions. In high school, I was already plotting out the next ten years of my career. On top of that, I saw the way he was with other women and I decided I would much rather be his friend than another one of his casualties in love.

Up until that afternoon, he had always treated me with respect, which was rare to find with men in business, even friends or associates. I would have never risked losing that, but it seemed Lucas could afford to be a lot more flippant with both me and my respect for him than I was.

I was feeling the wave of my anger all over again when a knock came at my door. I flew to answer it, not bothering to throw a robe on over my revealing silk spaghetti-strapped pajama top and matching lace-trimmed shorts. My hair was twisted up in a messy bun around the high pony I’d worn earlier that morning, though it was ragged now after I raked my hands through it all day. And I had a whole bottle of wine in my hand, not bothering with a glass. It was probably just my neighbor knocking to tell me something she had read in the news that day, as she often did in the evenings when she was lonely.

“I can’t talk right now, Martina,” I huffed as I flung the door open.

But it wasn’t sweet old Martina standing there at all. It was Lucas. The last person I wanted to see, and yet the moment I saw his distraught expression, I felt myself soften up. Maybe he had been right and I did need to stop only looking at this in terms of my career. He was my oldest friend after all.

I opened the door wider and stepped aside. “Come in,” I sighed in defeat.

He looked briefly relieved, but then his expression changed as he took in my appearance. I looked myself over just like he was and remembered what I was wearing.

“Shit. Be right back.” I raced into the bedroom to throw on a big fuzzy robe—anything to cover all that bare skin and my nipples, which were plainly visible through the thin pink silk of my top.

When I walked back into the open-concept living room and kitchen area, he was surveying the scene—one empty bottle of wine on the counter and my uneaten food, all topped by a sprinkling of the chocolate wrappers I had littered about throughout the day. I wished I could throw a robe after them, too.

“You look like you’ve had about as great of a day as I have,” he stated dryly.

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