Leaning back, I reveal my bombshell. “Mine.”

She gapes and I’m lost again in naughty thoughts about her lips. “Close your mouth, Alayna. Although it’s quite adorable to see you flabbergasted, it’s also very distracting.”

Though she closes her mouth, I can see she’s still aghast. I pass her my wine. She takes a swallow—her taste mixing with mine—and then speaks. “I didn’t realize you were engaged.”

She blushes as she says it and I have to look away. She’s too delectable. I consider abandoning the scheme and focusing on seduction instead. But there’s still a lot of groundwork to lay so I deny myself a little longer, and explain to Alayna Withers the strange relationship that Celia and I have found ourselves in. Though much is omitted, almost none of what I say is a lie. I tell her how our parents are friends, how they want us to marry, how my mother thinks there is no one but Celia for me.

I don’t say that our parents’ belief that we should wed is based on a relationship that Celia and I never had. The Werners and my mother—they’ve partnered Celia and me in their minds ever since that summer ten years before. That’s not an important part of this charade, though, and it’s a time I prefer to not think about. So I leave that out.

I leave too much out. Because she soon says, “I’m missing something.”

I nod. “I suppose you are.” I take my glass back from her and finish it off before clearing up the last detail. It’s another truth—the most important truth of this scheme, and one that I’ve never been ashamed to admit. Until now. “Alayna, if there is anyone in the world who has any power over me, it’s my mother.” And Mirabelle, but that’s neither here nor there for the moment. “My mother knows that I am…” I don’t need to search for the word, but I pause anyway. “…incapable…of love. She worries that I will…end up alone. A marriage with her best friend’s daughter, at least, insures that won’t happen.”

I wish I had more to drink as a new doubt starts creeping in. Am I really incapable of love? Or was it merely an idea planted by a psychiatrist in my teenage years with no basis in reality? I’ve never cared to challenge the notion, and suddenly, out of nowhere, I wonder if I should.

But that challenge could threaten to disrupt everything I know.

So I quickly abandon it, and move on with the setup. I explain that if I were in love with someone else, our parents would be delighted. More than delighted—my mother would have a f**king heart attack. Or she simply wouldn’t believe it. That is the more likely scenario.

At one point, Alayna narrows her eyes and asks, “So I’m supposed to be the floozy you’re in love with?”

This amuses me greatly. There is nothing common or lowly about the woman sitting across from me. “No one would ever mistake you as a floozy, Alayna. Even when you dress like one.” I was particularly naughty with that last line. It was an excuse to think of that corset one more time. Fuck, she was lovely in it.

She’s not quite so happy with my comment. “Why don’t you hire a real floozy to put on your charade?”

“My mother would never believe I’d fall for a floozy. You, however, have particular qualities—qualities that would make the story quite believable.”

“What sort of qualities?”

Her patience is wearing. Frankly, so is mine. I can’t skirt my desire for her any longer. I catch her up in my stare. “You are exquisitely beautiful, Alayna, and also extremely intelligent.”

“Oh.”

She’s stunned. As am I. Because in her eyes, I see the reflection of my own want and I yearn to explore it further. Yearn to explore her further. Carnal fantasies fight for playtime in my conscience. The things I could do to her…

Not yet. Soon.

I break the eye contact. “And you’re a brunette. All three make you ‘my type’ so to say.” I don’t date, but I do f**k. The women I f**k are beautiful. They are intelligent enough for me to make it through an evening in their company. And they are, by and large, brunette. I don’t know if I like them dark simply because of preference or if it’s got something to do with Celia being blonde. Whatever the answer, Alayna fits the bill.

She fits the bill so entirely that it’s all I want to think about.

But there are details to work through. I lay out the hook of the scheme. Payment.

As I suspect, she laughs at my offer to pay off her eighty thousand dollars in student loans in exchange for her participation in the scenario. She doesn’t realize that I’ve already paid it, and I’m sure if she knew, she’d be gone by now.

She isn’t gone, though. She’s still here listening intently to my every word, but Alayna isn’t buying my proposition. I feared it would take convincing, and it seems I was right. It doesn’t help that I’m distracted from my task. All I can think about is getting her beneath me.

But that’s not the point of this meeting, I remind myself. My goal tonight is to get her to agree to pretend to be my girlfriend. The salary should have been the selling point. It wasn’t, and I’m glad of that.

Still, she wants to know more. I’m glad of that as well.

“What exactly would you want me to do?” she asks. It’s beyond her better judgment. She can’t help herself.

I relax. My scheme hasn’t caught her interest yet, but I’m near done trying to entice her to play the game I’m asking her to play. “Pretend we’re a couple. I’d invite you to several gatherings where my mother would see us together. I’d expect you to hang on my arm and behave as though we’re madly in love.”

“And that’s all?”

“That’s all.” That’s not all I want, but it’s all I had planned to ask tonight. My plans are on the verge of changing.

It’s only because I’m studying her so closely that I notice her swallow.

“This pretend relationship—to what extent would I be expected to perform?”

I don’t know if I’m angry or turned on that she’s so nervous about the prospect of sleeping with me.

Turned on, I decide. The way her eyes dart up and down my body, the way her gaze keeps returning to my lips—I know she’s as attracted to me as I am to her. She simply doesn’t want to be considered a whore, and neither would I want that for her.

She’ll have to become more comfortable than that if she expects me to give her what she wants—what she needs. I can tolerate innocence but I won’t take ambiguity when it comes to a physical relationship. “Don’t pu**yfoot about it. You’re asking about sex.”