Читать книгу The Rancher's Fake Fiancée - Amy Vastine - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

“DID YOU SERIOUSLY buy one first-class ticket?” Hadley watched as he handed his suitcase over to be weighed.

“I always fly first class,” he said, ignoring her obvious reason for asking.

“Are you really the type of man who would let your fiancée sit in the back of the plane while you’re pampered in first class?”

The woman from the airline tagging his bag gave Tyler a well-deserved dirty look. Hadley had no issue with shaming him.

Tyler, however, appeared completely unfazed. “You’re not my fiancée until we step foot on Blackwell land.”

“So there’s still time to change my mind?” Hadley lifted her suitcase onto the scale.

Tyler slid his driver’s license back into his wallet. “Don’t start with me before we even leave Portland.”

“You can’t marry him,” the woman behind the counter whispered. “You deserve better than that.”

“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t marry him even if he had bought me a first-class ticket.” Tyler Blackwell was the last man on earth she’d want to end up spending her life with.

He was already headed toward the security checkpoint. Hadley weaved through the crowd of anxious travelers to catch up.

“You’re a real charmer, Ty,” she said just as her carry-on with its one bad wheel veered left when she wanted it to go right. It crossed paths with an older gentleman walking past her, ramming him in the leg.

Hadley apologized profusely as Tyler took the bag from her and carried it to the security line. “How was that for charming?” he asked as he handed it back.

“If that’s all you got for charm, our engagement is doomed.”

“I’m fine with that. It only needs to survive the next two weeks. After that, we go back to boss and employee.”

“Boss and brand strategist.”

“Boss and whatever you want to be called.” He got out of the line. “I have precheck. I’ll meet you at the gate. Try not to take out any other unsuspecting passengers with that thing,” he said, pointing at her bag.

“I’ll try.” Hadley had to keep her eye on the prize. Two weeks and she would be promoted. It didn’t matter if Tyler was so standoffish. She wasn’t his real fiancée. They didn’t have to sit by each other or walk through the airport side by side. She was fine with the fact that the act began and ended at the ranch.

Once through security, she stopped and bought a coffee. There was no reason to buy one for Tyler since he’d be sipping whatever his heart desired once he boarded the plane. They weren’t together until they were on Blackwell land—his words, not hers.

She lugged her defective bag to the gate and took a seat without even bothering to look for Tyler. She stared down at the ring on her finger. A fake diamond ring for a fake wedding. Tyler had bought it a couple of days ago. It was so cheap Hadley wouldn’t get it wet for fear it would turn her finger green or something.

How was she going to pull this off? Her phone chimed with a text from her best friend, Maggie, asking for an update on this nightmare adventure. Maggie already thought Hadley was taking a risk by going on this trip without having the promotion secured. She feared that Tyler might not hold up his end of the deal. What if Kellen wouldn’t agree with the change?

He’s sitting in first class without me, she texted.

Are you kidding me? Maggie wrote back.

Doesn’t matter. I’m going to enjoy my alone time while I can, Hadley messaged.

I swear if he doesn’t give you a promotion for this, you better quit. You’ve gone above and beyond! He’s a schmuck. Hot but a schmuck.

Hadley smiled. Maggie had developed this weird crush on Tyler after she stopped by one day to take Hadley to lunch. One look at him and she thought she was in lust. Hadley had popped her bubble real fast. Tyler wasn’t anyone’s Prince Charming.

“Thanks for getting me a coffee.” Tyler stood in front of her with his eyebrows raised. “And after you made me feel guilty for only thinking about myself.” He held out a new boarding pass. “Here, you’ll need this.”

He had upgraded her to first class and she suddenly felt like the schmuck. “You didn’t have to do that. I was only giving you a hard time earlier.”

He sat down in the empty seat next to her and took a deep breath. “I want you to know that I appreciate what you’re doing for me. I might not know how to show it all the time, but I want you to know I feel it.”

“Thanks,” she replied, staring down at her new boarding pass in her lap. Hadley had never flown first class. Her brother had once bragged about how he’d never fly with “the averages” again. Asher always had a way of making her feel small without even trying.

“Hopefully it won’t be torture.”

“It’s only two weeks and we’ll be working most of the time. It won’t be much different from any other day at the office. The only difference is you’ll have to be nice to me the whole time.”

Tyler’s brows pinched together. “Am I not usually nice to you?”

She hadn’t meant to offend. It wasn’t like Tyler was a tyrant, he simply wasn’t warm. He was all business, all the time. Which was fine with Hadley but one of the reasons everyone in the office liked Kellen better than Tyler. It was also a huge reason the staff asked Kellen to force him to take a break.

“You’re very focused. On whatever it is that you’re working on. Which is great,” she added. “It’s the reason 2K is doing so well as a company. But if we are supposed to convince your brothers that we’re in love, you’re going to have to make an effort to pay me a little attention.”

Tyler gave an understanding nod. “I’ll work on being extra nice.”

“The upgrade was a good start.”

“Well, maybe I’ll be a fast learner.”

He wasn’t the only one who would have to learn a thing or two. All she knew about Tyler was that he was the hardest-working person she’d ever met. She didn’t know what he liked to do in his free time, the little that he left himself, or what his favorite anything was. She knew practically nothing about the person sitting next to her.

It wasn’t like her to be going into something so woefully unprepared. She’d been following Tyler’s lead thus far, but his way seemed like a recipe for disaster.

“Speaking of learning, perhaps we should do a little getting to know each other before we face your family. I mean, I know how persistent your brothers can be. What if they have a lot of questions? What’s the plan here?”

“We’ll be on our own most of the time. I wouldn’t worry.”

Not worry? He didn’t know her very well if he thought she was capable of not worrying. Meeting the family was nerve-racking when she was the real girlfriend. Being the fake one made it a thousand times worse.

* * *

TYLER KNEW TWO of his brothers had way too much going on in their own lives to worry about his. Ben and Jon weren’t going to pry too much. Ethan, on the other hand, could be a problem. He was running the ranch presently, which made him troublesome. But there was one person who might be more of a hard sell than his brothers.

“I think the only person I’m really worried about is Katie, our ranch hand. Growing up, she was like the annoying little sister we didn’t ask for. Always in our business. Ratting us out for everything we did. She’s the one we might need to be wary of.”

Hadley paled. “Wait a minute, I didn’t realize we had to outsmart a woman. Not that I haven’t been nervous about pulling the wool over your brothers’ eyes,” she quickly clarified. “But women are more attuned to the intricacies of relationships. They pay attention to things like body language and the details that are shared with them.”

She had to be kidding. Katie was female, yes. But honestly, she was more like one of the guys than a woman “attuned to the intricacies of relationships.” Annoying? Yes. In touch with her feminine intuition? No.

Tyler chuckled. “Then maybe we should be more worried about Grace, my brother Ethan’s pregnant fiancée.”

“Pregnant!” Hadley was loud enough to attract the attention of more than a few people sitting near them. “Pregnant?” she repeated in a whisper.

Tyler was confused by her outburst. “What’s the matter with being pregnant?”

“Pregnant women are freaks of nature!” Hadley threw her hands up. “They have superpowers you can’t imagine. Do you even realize the amount of blood flowing through their bodies, feeding their brain? Not to mention the fact that all of their senses are in overdrive during pregnancy. She might be able to smell our lack of pheromones.”

Pheromones? Tyler was quickly reconsidering his lack of a plan. Not because he feared being unable to convince everyone because of Grace’s apparent bloodhound sense of smell but because Hadley was hysterical. He had chosen her because she was the smartest, most put together person in the office. He hadn’t expected her to lose it over pheromones.

He placed a hand over hers. “Look at me,” he said as calmly as he could. Her blue eyes locked onto his. The vulnerability he saw there was definitely new and created this strange sensation in the center of his chest. It was such a foreign feeling, he forgot what he was going to say.

“Are you going to tell me we’re going to be fine?” she asked.

That was it.

“We’re going to be fine. Grace and Katie will be preoccupied with a hundred other things while we’re there. We’ll just have to save our best stuff for the few times we’re around them, okay?” he said with a wink.

The tension seemed to leave her body as her shoulders relaxed and she gave him a small smile. “You’re right. We’ll be fine.” She thankfully sounded sure. “Good thing you got me that upgrade. We’ll have plenty of time to cram.”

“Cram?”

The gate agent announced they were ready to board first-class passengers. Hadley stood up. “Get ready to learn everything there is to know about me. I know I can’t wait to become a Tyler Blackwell expert.”

Tyler swallowed hard. No one was a Tyler Blackwell expert. He never let anyone get that close and he wasn’t sure he could start now.

* * *

THEY’D BEEN IN the air for over an hour and Hadley was already a lifelong fan of first class.

“Favorite color?” she asked, starting with an easy question to get Tyler to open up.

“Don’t have one.”

“Come on, everyone has a favorite color.”

“Not everyone because I don’t. I have no preference.”

Of course he was going to be difficult. “Favorite food?” she tried.

Tyler glanced out his window. They were flying high above a white blanket of clouds. “Nothing really stands out as a favorite.”

“Favorite movie?”

He stared blankly back at her.

“Book? Television show? Band? Coffee shop? Come on, Tyler.”

“What? I’m not a favorites kind of guy.”

Hadley took a deep breath to keep her anxiety at bay. She’d told Tyler everything she could think about herself. Perhaps embarrassingly too much about her obsession with Harry Potter during middle school. The important thing was he’d be prepared with plenty of Hadley knowledge.

He seemed determined to leave her completely in the dark about himself, however. She couldn’t go into this knowing next to nothing.

“Tell me about your brothers. What are they like?” she asked, hoping he’d be more willing to discuss the other Blackwells.

“Jonathan is my oldest brother, the only one who isn’t a twin, but he does ironically have twin girls.”

“What’s Jon’s wife’s name?”

“No wife. Jon is divorced. Although, he recently got engaged to his nanny, Lydia.” Tyler raised his eyebrows like it was a bit scandalous.

“He left his wife for the nanny?”

“No, no. His ex has been out of the picture since the twins were born.” The invitation to talk about someone else was all it took to open up the floodgates. “Jon’s the quintessential good guy in the white hat. He’s a hardworking cowboy. He was my dad’s favorite, probably because they were so alike. You’ll never see the guy in anything other than jeans, a plaid shirt and cowboy boots. Total opposite of Ben. Ben is all city boy. I’m sort of shocked he gave up his life in New York to settle back down in Falcon Creek, especially since he got dumped at the altar a few years back. No one likes getting dumped, but it was worse than that. She left him for our grandfather.”

“Whoa, wait. What?” Hadley knew about family dysfunction, but that was really messed up.

“Trust me, I think Ben got the better end of the deal. Zoe was nothing but a superficial gold digger. Ben deserved better and I’ve always thought that maybe Big E proposed to her because he knew Ben would have been miserable if they had ended up together. Ben has always been our grandfather’s favorite. The two of them have the same cutthroat mentality.”

“What’s keeping him in Montana, then?”

“Since he’s been home, he somehow managed to fall in love and get married to Rachel, an old friend whose family lives on the ranch next to ours. You’ll meet her, too.”

Fantastic, another woman in the mix. Hadley needed more information if she was going to trick three men and four women.

“In fact, the latest is that Big E filed for divorce and Zoe is back in Falcon Creek heartbroken,” Tyler said with a smile.

“Will I have to meet Zoe, too?”

“Lord, I hope not,” Tyler said as the flight attendant offered them a refill on their drinks and a warm cookie. Hadley might never be able to fly economy ever again.

“Jon and Ben will be busy with their own ranches. Ethan will be with us. Ethan is Ben’s twin,” Tyler continued after devouring his cookie. “Ben will tell you he’s five minutes older so that makes Ethan the middle child, which fits his personality. He gets along with everyone and always tries to be the peacekeeper. He was the softy in our brood and our mother’s clear favorite. The two of them had the same love of animals. She’s probably the reason he became a vet.”

For someone who didn’t have any favorites, he was awfully aware of how his family played them. “So let me guess, you and your twin brother were the black sheep of the family. No one’s favorites?”

Tyler chuckled. “Chance would tell you he’s the lone Blackwell black sheep because living in Big Sky Country wasn’t for him, but when we were little and our real grandma was still on the ranch, he was by far her favorite. She used to sing and play songs on the piano with him. I’m the only one in the family who didn’t have anyone’s undivided attention.” His gaze drifted back out the window. “I was the invisible one.”

Hadley knew exactly how it felt to be the invisible child. How frustrating it was to never quite be enough. She had felt that way her entire life. Being the younger, less successful sister of Asher Sullivan wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

“Maybe we have more in common than I thought,” Hadley said, turning her body in his direction.

“You don’t want to be like me. No one loves me the most for a reason.”

“Oh, come on. You aren’t that bad.”

His jaw tightened and he took a deep breath through his nose. “Trust me, Hadley. I’m the worst.”