Bargaining with the Bride (6 page)

The whole set-up was so foreign, she had trouble trying to decide what to ask first, but then something on the stove began to sizzle and the question was out of her mouth before she’d thought it through. "So, uh, what are you making?" It was far from the first thing on her mind, but the briny smell floating all around her would not be ignored.

Garret’s brow crinkled for a minute, but then his features quickly returned to normal before he answered her—thin, straight line of a mouth, thoughtful stare and all.

"Bacon's in the oven. Scrambled eggs on the stove. Biscuits are in a basket near the sink. Oh, and I made a pot of coffee."

"I only have a single cup—"

"But I have a pot. It's under the plate cabinet."

She glanced toward the counter nearest the door, and there it was. A full pot of fresh coffee.

Things were just getting weirder and weirder by the second.

She crossed the room and pinched Garret hard on the bicep, shocked both by the lack of anything that seemed pinchable atop the hard stone of his arm, and also by the little surge of energy that rushed through her as she touched him.

"Ouch," he rubbed his arm for a minute, "what was that for?"

“I had to know if this was a dream."

"Don't people normally pinch
themselves
in that case?"

"What do I know? It's only..." She glanced toward the clock and took in a sharp breath. "What the hell are you doing at my house at seven in the morning on a Saturday?"

"Normally you're at work by eight thirty on Saturday so I thought I'd treat you to a little breakfast first. We need to spend the day bonding if we're going to convince your family that this is real." He pushed the eggs around with his spatula.

"You're going to lose a whole business day over this?" She shut off her mind and bit a chunk out of a nearby biscuit. In a minute, he'd probably explain that he was the king of Spain anyway, so he needed to keep a low profile at her house for a while, or something equally wacky.

The past two days had been so crazy that it was nearly impossible to believe anything anymore. No, the best thing was just to let the good times roll, and if there wasn't some horrible catastrophe at the end, then so much the better.

"This is an investment in my business. It's like any other business project. Complete and total dedication until the mission is successful." His tone was matter-of-fact, but she noticed the pointed way that he avoided her gaze as he spoke. Like he was hiding something.

"All right then, awesome. Thanks for breakfast, but, uh, where did you happen upon my hidden key?"

"You know, most people keep it under their door mats? It's not really a safe hiding place."

"I figured it would be so easy to find, burglars wouldn't bother to look there."

"Sound logic," his voice dripped with sarcasm as he slid the eggs onto a plate and moved to set them on the table.

“Listen, I’m going to ignore the blaring sound of your judgment if you’ll explain why all of your stuff is here and also,” she pointed out the window. “What teen wolf out there is doing here.”

“That’s my pug, Tesla, and all my stuff is here. Well, really, it’s only some of my stuff, but it’s all here because I’m going to live here until the wedding.”

Her mouth went dry, “You’re what now?”

“
I
did a lot of thinking
, and the best option at hand is to immerse ourselves in the culture of the other person. You know, like Jane Goodall,” he said.

“Are you calling me a monkey?”

“She studied gorillas, but that aside, I’m not saying it’s the perfect metaphor. It’s simply a science project.”

Spluttering sounds gurgled from her mouth, but she had no words. Instead, she plopped into the kitchen chair directly behind her and waited for Garret to set a plate in front of her. There were no other options than to quietly accept that this chaos was her life now, even if it felt like there had to be some kind of reality TV crew hiding in her bathroom. Like she was the pilot episode for
Punk’d: Nobodies Addition
.

“It’s really the only way to account for mannerisms and intimacies that we otherwise wouldn’t know about each other. Things you wouldn’t think to mention to the other person that could conceivably be mentioned at such an intimate affair. Don’t you think?” He slid the bacon out of the oven, his tone too rational to acknowledge the lunacy of his words.

“Um, I guess,” she stuffed a biscuit into her mouth. So now he wanted unlimited opportunities to catch her sneaking ice cream at two AM in nothing but her unmentionables? She wasn’t trying to send out invites to that nightly shame party. No thanks.

And even if he was to live with her, just for the next month, did she need to face her fears on a daily basis just to get someone to pretend to be her husband?

Probably, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.

“And, um, what about Tesla? He needs to be a part of this? My family knows how I feel about dogs, they won’t buy it.”

“That is a hitch I hadn’t expected. Why didn’t you mention this fear on the questionnaire I emailed you?”

“Questionnaire?” She raised her eyebrows and he promptly averted his gaze.

“It doesn’t matter. The point is, it’s an unavoidable complication. I can’t leave him alone at my house, and I’m not really comfortable with strangers in my home.”

“
You’re
uncomfortable with strangers in your home?”

Apparently the humor of the situation was lost on him. He just nodded and slid into the seat next to her, shoveling eggs, bacon, and biscuits onto his plate and looking contemplative. It was almost unnerving, how easy all of this seemed to him. Like he thought this was an in and out kind of thing.

"
Seriously?
" She tried to bate him again, but his only response was to crunch into a crisp slice of bacon and nod again, saying between chews.

"It's creepy."

"Like, almost as creepy as finding your boss in your kitchen while you’re, um, indecent?" She pulled her tank top and his gaze followed her, searing through the thin fabric until she felt distinctly naked. After the way he’d kissed her last night, though, he might have made her feel naked with all of her winter sweaters piled on top of her.

And what was with the kiss? That was the real question, wasn’t it? More so than all this talk of moving in or studying her. She had to know how her felt. Or if being around her made him feel even half as exposed as she felt.

She cleared her throat, trying her best to sort through the mountains of questions he’d unleashed. "Thanks and everything. For the breakfast. But this is still pretty bizarre. Imagine if I showed up at your house in the wee hours of the morning and set up shop."

"Would you have brought bacon?" He raised his eyebrows before shoveling a helping of eggs into his mouth.

She sighed and munched on another buttery, flaky biscuit. She may as well give up. This was a moot point. Checkmate. Spock would be her constant companion until her fake wedding and then she'd head back home to take care of another person who needed her. Such was life. A series of complete and utter catastrophes.

At least she had food to ease the weirdness.

"Probably not. I don't like bacon. Or eggs. I guess you should know—"

"You what?"

“I don't like breakfast food. Maybe half a bagel, but bacon and eggs are gross."

"What about sausage?"

"Groady."

"There is no logic in this place."

She shrugged and swallowed the last of the warm dough, "That's not really the point right now. Even if I don't like bacon—"

"Which is probably a crime in several states—"

"It doesn't help us figure out what exactly we're doing here. What's your plan?"

“I made a few lists." He pulled a pile of folded papers from a side pocket on his shorts and spread them out on the table, trying to force out the creases in the paper with his powerful fingers.

"These look like—"

"Itineraries, yes. I thought we'd have a few things to do for the wedding still. I need more details, location and whatnot, and then we can spend any extraneous time getting more familiar with each other."

His deep voice was as impassive as ever, but something in the phrase "getting to know each other" made her heart jolt with excitement...and not a little bit of fear.

"Do you mean, like, the way we did last night?" She wasn't sure what answer she wanted. It had been a simple thing, their kiss. Really, it was. They hadn’t crossed any lines. They hadn’t even kiss for very long. But something about it still ran through her mind whenever she looked at him, and she had trouble gazing at his chiseled features without also feeling the shadow of his light stubble on her cheek. It was so hard to hear him speak without imagining the feel of his soft, firm lips against her own. And how could he keep moving so gracefully across her room without forcing her to remember the way his pecs and biceps had pinned her down?

She couldn't.

It was a fact that had kept her up for half the night, and even she couldn't talk herself out of it. She was hot for her boss. And not just normal, school-girl-crush style stuff. She wanted him more than anyone she'd ever been near before, and the more she considered it, the more her raunchy fantasies seemed to be the ideal way of settling the score on how fantastically awful everything else in life had turned out.

So he was her boss. She could find another job.

So he was her friend. She had others.

All the mattered was that he was there, and he was hot, and he would be around her. Twenty four seven for the next fourteen days. Suddenly, her two AM ice cream raid didn't seem so shameful if there was someone else there who was willing to eat it off of her stomach.

Lost in her thoughts, she hardly noticed the deafening silence that greeted her question. No, as Garret chewed his food, she was more focused on what else his mouth could do rather than remembering what she'd asked him.

And what had she asked him, again?

He looked thoughtful, but for the first time in their entire bizarre conversation he looked puzzled. Almost tense. And if she didn't know him better, she might even think he looked uncomfortable.

"You know, I don't think that would be a good idea," her biscuit suddenly felt very dense in her throat, and she cleared it, trying to find a way to breath. Her chest tightened, but through it all she willed herself to look nonchalant.

"Yeah, me too," her voice sounded casual, and the slight strain she hoped was only noticeable to herself. Inside, her subconscious was patting itself on the back, ignoring the fact that she was, in fact, very chalant. Possibly the chalantest.

"Really? Good. I was a little concerned given," Garret cleared his throat, "the, um, circumstances."

There was no mistaking it now. He was genuinely uncomfortable, and shiny possibility of bating him was all too tempting to pass up. Her subconscious had practically burst into doing the wave.

But, keeping her cool, she sipped her coffee and tilted the cup just above the ridge of her nose. He could only see her eyes as she said, "The circumstances?"

Oh, yeah.
Smooth.

She wasn’t so open and closed now, was she? She was an enigma. A goddamn piece of Sherlock-Holmes-level intrigue.

"Well, the inherent, um, situation between us as made evident by experimentation." He cleared his throat again, slightly flexing those delicious biceps in the process.

"I'm not sure I'm getting it," her kingdom for a recording device. She glanced at her sad, dead cell phone with despair.

"You know what I'm saying,” he said.

Dammit. He wasn't taking the bait.

"It sounds like you think I'm hot." She leaned back in her chair, trying to suppress her laughter.

"Well, it was more of a mutual experience as far as I was aware."

"Oh, so not only do you think I'm hot, you think
I
think you're hot, too?"

"That was my understanding—"

“But you don’t think we should act on your objective observations?” Her fingers traced quotes around the word “objective,” but he ignored her.

“No.”

“Do you have a hypothesis about why not, or should we draw some sort of ven diagram?” She rose from her chair and slowly moved across the room, her back to him as she swayed her behind deliberately with every step. She could practically feel his eyes boring into her naked legs, poring over the crease where her ass met her thigh.

It might have been her imagination, but she thought she could hear him swallowing as she turned around to face him again.

Apparently, the scientist wasn’t so cut and dried as she’d thought. Somewhere in his
Bicentennial Man
exterior, there was a beating heart. And based on the way his pupils dilated when she turned to face him, that heart of his was going at a pretty solid rate.

"Well, as I said before, this is a business arrangement and we should keep things professional. I think anything else might be inappropriate,” he sipped his coffee, indecision etched into every feature.

“So, sorry, it’s still early and I’m a little slow. If I’m hearing you right, you think that it would be inappropriate for us to have sex—” a look of shock lit up Garret’s features, but she pressed on, “but it’s perfectly fine for you to live in close quarters with me for a month and spend every waking moment together? That’s cool?”

“Well, it’s not really foolproof, but yes. That’s the general idea.”

“You’ve got one thing right. It’s
definitely
not foolproof.”

“Be that as it may, it’s our best option at present. I’ve sent in the paperwork to notify the company of our relationship status. I feel it’s best for us to avoid the office for today while the memo circulates, and then by Monday most people will have gotten used to the idea.”

She blew on her coffee, if only to give her suddenly dry mouth something to do. She blinked once, twice, and then blew out a sigh, “So, you mean to tell me that you notified everyone in the office that we’re in a fake relationship. Including the secretaries and the people I’m in charge of?”

“I didn’t see another option—“

She held up a hand to stop him. This was the way with corporate men. They didn’t understand, and maybe that wasn’t their fault. They had no context for what it was like to be a woman in a position of power in an office.

But come Monday? Everyone would be wondering what sort of position she’d gotten into for him in order to earn her title.

Fabulous.

Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “I’m not going to worry about that right now. Unfortunately, I’m woefully behind on all my wedding planning and I have a bunch of appointments to go to today. So…you and the dog can make yourselves even more comfortable. I’ll be back tonight in case you want to hook me up to wires or something.”

She turned to make for the stairs, but Garret’s voice stopped her, “Wait, don’t you want me to go with you?”

“Why would I want that?” She furrowed her brow.

“Wedding planning is difficult. Shouldn’t the groom be involved?”

“I…guess.”

“Excellent. It’ll be the perfect opportunity to learn your preferences and—“

She stalked from the room before he could add anything else, calling over her shoulder, “Be ready in five.” And then, to herself, she muttered, “God save me from this day.”