Chapter Seven Amelia

SEVEN

Excerpt from R.C.’s bullet journal, written in blue ink, with multiple crossed-out words

Mission statement: To live each day with courage, compassion, and curiosity. To become a better version of myself each day and inspire others in my path to do the same.

Feelings:

Distracted. (I came to this coffee shop to try and bullet journal my way back to executive functioning, or whatever that dumb bullet journaling site called it, but Amelia Collins and her friend are inexplicably HERE? And STARING at me?)

Confused. (How in this city of millions have A.C. and I crossed paths TWICE in 24 HOURS?! And why is she checking me out?)

To-do list:

Ignore A.C.

Focus on decoy magazine I nicked from gangly-looking teen on my way here (The Collective won’t be looking for someone wearing boring Frederick-clothes and reading a magazine about dragons and their dungeons) and on bullet journal.

Okay, she looks like she’s trying to decide whether to come talk to me. She looks nervous. I see none of the fierce determination I saw in her the other night. (Hades, she’s pretty. I’ve been so distracted by everything else I’d forgotten just how pretty she is.)

Okay okay yeah, she actually IS coming over to talk to me, shit, SHIT, more soon

Amelia

When I got to the guy’s table, I dug my fingernails into the meat of my palm, willing the pinch to ground me.

He hastily slammed shut the notebook he’d been writing in and set it to the side. Then he fixed me with those startling bright blue eyes. “Um. Hello?”

I hesitated, teeth worrying at my bottom lip. “I need a favor.” I hated how small and nervous I sounded. Too late to back out now, though. I pulled out the chair across from his and sat down.

His eyes widened in surprise. “You need a favor?”

I gathered my courage as he continued to gaze at me. Up close, I couldn’t even lie to myself and pretend he was unattractive. I reminded myself that that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he said yes.

“I do,” I confirmed.

He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t usually do favors for people.”

His voice dripped with condescension. I stared at him, astounded that someone reading a literal dragon magazine could sound so cocky.

“You know what? Forget it.” I’d come up with some other way—some grown-up way—to deal with this situation. I didn’t need to resort to pranking my family. I was an adult. I was an accountant . This was beneath me.

I pushed back from my chair and stood to leave.

“Wait,” he said. It sounded almost like pleading. “I didn’t finish.”

“Was something going to come after telling me you don’t do favors for people?”

He shook his head. “No, what I said was I didn’t usually do favors for people. But I did disrupt your evening last night, and I did say I’d make it up to you.” He shrugged. “I didn’t think you’d take me up on that since I didn’t think I’d see you again. But since here you are…I’d be willing to consider it. Depending on what the favor is, of course.”

He motioned for me to join him. I hesitated. What sort of person had a default no-favors policy? But I was without options.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the chair I’d just vacated.

“You’re welcome. So…what do you need, Amelia Collins?”

I could do this. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and said, “I need someone to pretend to be my boyfriend at a family wedding.”

He stared at me. A group of noisy teenagers filed past our table and made their way over to the counter. We paid them no mind.

“I’m sorry, but… what ?”

“I know this sounds bonkers—”

“It does,” he agreed. “Very deeply bonkers.”

“I swear this will all make sense after I’ve explained.” I paused, considering. “It’ll maybe make sense,” I amended.

“I am all ears.” The corner of his mouth quirked up into an amused half smile. Damn it, his lips were extremely distracting. It occurred to me that I didn’t know his name. I hadn’t put know his name on the list of fake date criteria I’d just made, but it suddenly felt like important information to have.

“Actually, could you tell me your name first?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“You know my name, but I’ve just been thinking of you as Mr. Fedora Asshole .” That earned a surprised laugh from him. Dammit, did even his laugh have to be attractive? “It puts us on unequal footing.”

His half smile slid into a smirk. “So you think about me, do you?”

I’d always thought blushed to the roots of her hair was just a figure of speech. Turns out I’d been wrong. If my shoes could blush, they’d have been doing it. “Not at all,” I lied. “I mean, except for last night, when you nearly killed me when you mowed me down on the sidewalk.”

“You have an exceptional flair for the dramatic for an accountant.”

“I have a completely average flair for the dramatic for an accountant,” I said, feeling a little unhinged. Talking to this man felt like trying to walk in a straight line on a listing ship. “Which is to say, I don’t have one. And you’re certainly one to talk. Last night you were wearing a fedora and a trench coat when it was, like, twenty degrees outside. You were dressed like you…like you…” I trailed off, flailing for the right words.

He winced. “Like I wanted to be seen?”

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly like that. You seem dramatic as hell if I’m being honest.”

“Ordinarily that observation would please me,” he said, looking very displeased. “But given present circumstances, I’m not thrilled that my best attempts at blending into the background didn’t work.”

I had no idea what that meant. It didn’t matter. We were getting off topic here. We were wasting time.

“Listen,” I said. “Are you going to tell me your name or not?”

“Oh,” he said, as if just remembering I was there. “Sure. Reginald.”

“Reginald?” That was…certainly an unusual name for someone my age. “Is that actually your name?”

“Why would I give you a fake name?”

I shrugged. “You seem the type.”

He snorted. “Fair. But Reginald is my actual name.”

“And your last name?”

He sighed. “My last name is Cleaves. My full name is Reginald Cleaves. So. Now that you know who I am, will you explain to me why you need me to pretend to be your boyfriend?”

Right. That. “Reginald,” I began. “Actually, is it all right if I call you Reggie?”

“Why?”

“It’s less of a mouthful than Reginald .”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Okay. Reggie,” I tried again. How could I explain the situation to him in a way that didn’t make me sound like a petulant teenager? Maybe that was impossible. “So, my family gives me a lot of passive-aggressive grief about being single. It kicks up several notches every time another cousin gets married. And I just found out my cousin Gretchen is getting married soon. I just thought…” I trailed off, racking my brain for a way to put what I was intending into words. “I thought that if I showed up to the wedding with a person I present as a boyfriend, they’ll back off.”

Reggie’s smirk was back. Honestly, I couldn’t blame him. I’d be smirking too if our positions were reversed. “And when you saw me here, minding my own business, you thought I’d be good in this role.”

“Yes.”

“Why?” He folded his arms on the table and leaned towards me. “We don’t know each other, but I think I’ve already demonstrated that I’m not exactly a good, reliable person. Not only do I run into innocent accountants on sidewalks, I also read magazines upside down. On purpose. ”

He gestured to his discarded magazine with such a self-deprecating twinkle in his eye that I couldn’t help the small smile that twitched at the corners of my lips.

“I don’t care about that.”

“No?”

“No.” I looked him right in the eye. “Are you a serial killer?”

His smile slipped. The hand resting on the table clenched into a fist. “I beg your pardon?”

“All I need from my plus-one is for them to not be a violent felon or a murderer or whatever.” I shrugged. “My standards aren’t high. I’m just asking for a few hours of your time, not for your hand in marriage. After the wedding, you’ll never see me again. As for why I’m asking you specifically—”

“You’re asking me because you find me devastatingly handsome and irresistibly charming,” he deadpanned. “Right?”

I flushed at his words. “Uh…no.” I floundered, trying to work out how to say, Aunt Sue’s dinner is Sunday and I don’t have time to find anyone else, and you seem just bizarre enough to agree to this plan, and if I show up to these events with somebody who is a little bit terrible, it might remind my parents that there are worse things than me staying single—and yes, I do find you unfairly handsome and weirdly charming, but that has nothing to do with it in a way that wouldn’t be offensive to him or make me sound any more pathetic than I felt.

“It’s because I’m in the right place at the right time, isn’t it,” he said, as though he’d read my mind, not even bothering to phrase it as a question. We might have been discussing the weather.

I hesitated. Might as well admit it. “I’m out of time. I need to find someone tonight, basically. And like you said before, you’d said you owed me one.”

To my surprise, Reggie leaned back in his chair and laughed, loudly enough to make the teenagers ordering their drinks at the counter turn their heads and stare at us.

“This is the best practical joke ever,” he said, still laughing. “Families have needed to mind their own business about things like this for centuries. I’m in.”

I gaped at him. “You don’t think this plan is ludicrous?”

“Oh, I think it’s beyond ludicrous,” he said. “But that’s why I want in. If I can help you out of this particular jam and do something hilarious at the same time it would be my pleasure.” He sighed, fiddling with the handle of his coffee mug. And then, in a much softer tone, he added, “And I probably do owe you one.”

If his voice was sexy when he was being a cocky jerk, his voice when he was trying to be conciliatory was…

I didn’t want to think about what it was.

Fortunately for me, the next time he spoke, he was all business. “Okay, so if we’re doing this—what do I need to know?”

I considered that for a moment. What did he need to know before we got started?

I thought of all the Tinder dates I’d been on where sex had been expected from the get-go. Might as well address that now.

“Sex won’t be part of this arrangement,” I said.

Reggie started coughing. Whatever he’d expected me to say, it clearly hadn’t been that. Once he’d recovered, he shifted a little in his chair. “I…Okay. Understood.”

“Sex just isn’t what this is about, you see,” I continued.

“No, of course not,” he agreed, quickly. “I wouldn’t have assumed otherwise. This will be one of those good old-fashioned platonic fake dating arrangements.”

I breathed an internal sigh of relief. So that was that taken care of. “The only other thing I probably should tell you is there’s an engagement dinner before the wedding,” I said. “Could you come to that with me, too? I think at least one family event before the wedding itself needs to happen to convince everyone.”

“Makes sense,” he agreed, stroking his chin. “Most of your family will be paying attention to the bride at the wedding, not to me. Or to us. The impact of our little practical joke will be greater if it’s a multiple-event ruse.”

Damn, he was good at this. “That’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “But I admit I’m flying by the seat of my pants here. I haven’t—”

“Thought this through?”

I bristled—both at the admonishment and at the fact that he was right.

“How did you know what I was going to say?”

He snorted. “If there’s one thing I can recognize in another person, it’s when they’ve embarked on a course of action before they’ve thought the whole thing through.” He inclined his head towards me before adding, “It’s the way I tend to operate, myself.”

Somehow, that didn’t surprise me. “Well, it isn’t the way I operate at all.”

“Isn’t it?” He peered at me. “The two encounters I’ve had with you—one: rushing out the door of your office without looking where you were going, and two: asking a complete stranger to pretend to be your boyfriend to get back at your family—suggest otherwise.”

“I’ll—I’ll have you know I’m an accountant ,” I spluttered, feeling like an idiot.

“I am well aware.” There it was again—the softness in his tone that I just didn’t know what to do with. Then he added, “It suits you, by the way. Your choice of profession.”

I didn’t know what to do with that , either.

“Right,” I said lamely. I needed to regain some semblance of control over this conversation. “Anyway, the engagement dinner is on Sunday. It’s in Winnetka and it starts at six-thirty. And although my mom says it’ll be casual, we’ll probably be expected to dress up a little for it.” I looked at him, trying to gauge his reaction. “Are you free?”

I expected him to pull out his phone to check if he had anything scheduled. But he answered without missing a beat. “I am wide open at six-thirty next Sunday and I’d be delighted to come with you.”

I fidgeted with the handle of my coffee mug to distract myself from the way he had lingered on the word delighted . As if he really meant it. “Great,” I said. God, what the hell was I doing? “It’s a date.”

“It’s a date,” he agreed.

“I should warn you, though,” I added, “I can’t promise the food will be any good. Especially if you’re lactose intolerant or a pescatarian.” I shook my head. “If you happen to have the bad luck of being both, like me, there probably won’t be much you can eat besides dinner rolls and raw veggies.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t usually eat at events like these anyway.” He cleared his throat and looked pointedly down at his mug. “But why does your family not provide food that you can eat? Do they not know about your dietary limitations?”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, they know. They just tend not to think much about me when planning these things.”

He looked seriously affronted. “And yet they make you feel obligated to attend anyway?”

I shrugged. “At some point I just got used to them ignoring my polite requests for fish or bean dishes and gave up trying.” When he didn’t say anything in response to this, and just continued staring at me, I added, “I usually try to eat a small meal before getting together with family. It’s fine.”

I tried to play it off as not that big of a deal. I could tell by the intensity on Reggie’s face and the tight set of his jaw that it wasn’t working. I didn’t like that he was reacting to this so much. It made it hard for me to keep pretending that it didn’t hurt that my needs were seldom considered at family events.

And then, a moment later, he shook it off. He cleared his throat again. “Okay. So, there’s the dinner on Sunday. Are there other wedding events I should attend?”

My face burned. There was no way I was inviting a stranger to join me on a couples’ weekend up to Wisconsin with my family. “The engagement dinner on Sunday is the big one. But”—I looked away, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear—“I’ll let you know if others come up.”

Reggie nodded. “Fine.” He held out a hand. “Your business card?”

I stared at his hand. Long-fingered and graceful. I wondered if he played the violin, or some other delicate musical instrument. He certainly had the hands for it.

It seemed entirely unfair that hands like these belonged to a man I would never see again after this wedding. I bet he could do all kinds of things with them.

Stop that , I chastised myself. This is not what this is about.

“Why do you need my business card?” I asked, tearing my gaze away from his hands with difficulty. “And why do you assume I have one with me?”

“If we’re going through with this, we’ll need some way to contact each other,” he said. “I assume your business card has your contact info?”

Oh. Right.

“And I assume you have a business card with you,” he continued, “because you’re an accountant.”

“Ordinarily I would have business cards with me,” I conceded, thinking of the little metal business card holder I’d left in my office last night. “But I don’t have any with me now. I…haven’t been operating on all cylinders for a while.”

He made a sympathetic noise. He pulled out his cell phone, typed in a passcode, and then slid it across the table to me. “We’ll do this the old-fashioned way, then. Put your number in my phone.”

I glanced at the display. A stab of something more than surprise went through me when I saw the contacts already in his phone.

Partly because there were only two of them.

Mostly because I knew who they were.

Frederick Fitzwilliam I only knew by name. Cassie Greenberg, though, I’d known for years.

She’d been my brother’s best friend since they were kids. I hadn’t thought much of her when we were growing up. She’d always struck me as an extremely unserious person who accidentally fell into things instead of achieving anything through deliberate effort. But she’d always been nice, and a good friend to Sam for many years.

The last I’d heard, Cassie had found a steady job as an art teacher and had actually started dating Frederick. Which…

Well.

Good for her, I supposed.

Regardless, it was downright weird that the only two contacts in this man’s phone were my brother’s best friend and her boyfriend. No parents, no siblings—just Cassie and Frederick.

“How do you know Cassie?” I asked. This situation suddenly felt like too strange a series of coincidences to actually be coincidental. Running into this person twice in two days was bizarre enough. But this?

“You know Cassie, too?” The surprise in his expression was too genuine to be fake. Which was oddly reassuring. If this were all an elaborate setup to rob or murder me, he probably wouldn’t look and sound like I’d just shocked him witless.

“I do,” I confirmed. “She’s my brother’s best friend.”

“Your brother,” he repeated. I watched as he mentally sifted through what I’d just told him. After a long moment, his eyes brightened. “Sam,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Your brother is Sam. Right?”

A shiver ran down my spine. “You know Sam?”

“Only by name,” he said. “I know Cassie has a best friend named Sam. And Cassie happens to be the girlfriend of my…” He trailed off, eyes going distant as he seemed to search for the right word to describe the person whose girlfriend she was.

I raised an eyebrow. “The girlfriend of…” I prompted.

“Frederick. The other contact in my phone. Frederick and I are…” He dragged a hand through his hair. “We go back a long way.”

“I have a best friend like that,” I said. “Her name is Sophie. We’ve known each other since middle school.” When he didn’t say anything in response to that, I asked, “Have you and Frederick been friends since you were kids, too?”

His face darkened a little. “No,” he said. He didn’t seem inclined to clarify. Which was fair enough. He didn’t owe me an explanation.

“Well, now you have three contacts,” I said. I typed my name and number into his phone before sliding it back.

“So I do.” I handed my phone across the table to him, unable to look away from his graceful hands as he deftly added his own name and number.

“You don’t talk to your parents?” I asked.

He paused, blinking. “Why do you ask?”

I shrugged. “It’s just strange that you don’t have anyone else in your phone besides two friends. That’s all.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “I don’t talk to anyone in my family anymore, no.”

That made me sad. My family drove me bonkers, but we were still close. I loved them and couldn’t imagine a life where we never spoke. “I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it.

He smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s fine,” he said. “I’ve had plenty of time to get used to it.” He then looked at the place on his arm where a wristwatch would be if he’d been wearing one. “Oh, look at the time. I’m afraid I have to go. I have an appointment.”

“An appointment at eight in the evening on a Wednesday?” I asked, surprised.

He ignored my question and held out his hand. “Before I go…I’m not a lawyer, but I think we just entered into a contract. We should shake on it to, you know.” He cleared his throat. “Make it official.”

I stared at his hand. The idea of clasping it in mine sent an unexpected thrill through me.

Reggie’d been right. I hadn’t thought this through. While I’d decided from the outset that sex wouldn’t be part of the deal, it hadn’t occurred to me that touching him in some way—while we were in front of my family, at least—would probably be necessary.

We needed to convince everyone we were dating, after all. And couples touched.

I had to get a grip on myself. If I couldn’t handle a simple handshake in a coffee shop, how would I make it through touching him in front of my family?

I could do this.

I had to.

I took a deep breath. And then, tapping into the same inner source of courage that saw me through the CPA exam, took his outstretched hand. It dwarfed mine, his palm smooth and surprisingly cool to the touch.

I’d had no idea my hand had so many nerve endings. Somehow, I could feel the handshake all the way down to my toes.

“Good night, Amelia,” he said, his voice smooth as silk. He was still holding my hand. He didn’t seem inclined to let it go, even though he’d just said he needed to leave. “I look forward to faking it with you.”

If it was possible to spontaneously burst into flames, that little double entendre would have done it for me right then and there. Reggie’s grin was absolutely wicked, as if he knew exactly what his joke was doing to me.

My voice sounded like it was coming from far away when I said, before I could stop myself, “I look forward to faking it with you, too.”