Читать книгу The Tycoon's Fiancée Deal - Katherine Garbera - Страница 9

Two

Fiancée.

Was he out of his mind?

She shook her head and started laughing. Once she started she couldn’t stop and she felt that tinge of panic rise up that she thought she’d been successfully shoving way deep down in her gut.

“Thanks, I needed that,” she said. “You have no idea what kind of week it’s been.”

Derek leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest, which drew the fabric of his dress shirt tight against his muscles. Distracted, she couldn’t help but notice the way his biceps bulged against the fabric. One thing that had been hard for her in the years of their friendship was to ignore how hot Derek was. He worked out. He had said one time that a surgeon had to be a precise machine. And that everything—every part of his body and mind—had to be in top shape.

“I’m not joking.”

“Uh, what?” she asked. She was tired. Life hadn’t worked out according to her plans and if she’d thought that once she reached this age she’d have everything all figured out, she was wrong. Really wrong.

She pushed her martini glass away, feeling a bit as if she’d followed Alice down the rabbit hole. But she knew she hadn’t.

“I need a fiancée,” Derek said. “The new board member who holds the fate of my career in my hands? It turns out she’s a borderline obsessive I dated a while ago. The only way to keep her off my back is to make sure she knows I’m off the market.”

“And how do I fit into this?”

Derek tipped his head to the side and studied her. “You could use a fake fiancé as well.”

She still wasn’t following. She was tired and her heart hurt a little bit if she were completely honest. Derek was one of her best friends and this sounded fishy to her.

“Why?”

“So your mom will quit setting you up on blind dates. You’re too kind to tell her you aren’t ready to date. If we are engaged then everyone will back off and leave us alone. I can focus on wowing everyone on the board at the hospital so that they have no choice but to name me chief. You can figure out what you want to do next without the pressure your parents are putting on you.”

She put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. When he put it like that she’d be a fool to refuse. “Are you sure about this?”

“I am,” he said.

When wasn’t Derek sure? She should have already known that would be his answer.

“If we’re engaged, why would we have kept it quiet?” she asked.

He leaned in closer to her. “To give Hunter and Nate time in the spotlight. Hunter’s wedding is really taking up everyone’s energy.”

“It is. And Kinley is busy planning it. She’s going to wonder why I never even mentioned we were dating.”

Bianca and Kinley were good friends. They both had been single mothers with toddlers the same age. Of course, Kinley wasn’t single anymore and had found happiness with Derek’s brother Nate.

Derek took her hand in his and a tingle went up her arm. “Tell her I asked you to keep it quiet.”

“Hmm...it might work. Could I have until the morning to think about it?” she asked.

He nodded.

She pulled her hand away and then sat back, linking her hands together in her lap. Her palm was still tingling. She knew that saying yes would be the easy choice. But what about her son? Benito wouldn’t understand that they were just pretending. Though given that he was only two years old he might not understand much of anything that was going on. He was good friends with Kinley’s daughter...so he had been asking about his papa lately. He really didn’t remember Jose at all.

“That sounds like it would be ideal but we live in the real world.”

“Really? I hadn’t realized that when I was operating on two different patients today,” Derek said.

She recognized the sarcasm as one of his defense mechanisms and she didn’t blame him. She was scared. The last time she trusted a man it had been Jose and his word hadn’t been worth much.

“I’m not bringing this up to be difficult. I have a son. He’s not going to understand why you are in our lives for a short time and then gone,” she said. “We aren’t twenty anymore, Derek, it’s not like when you came to Monaco and we were wild. I’m a mom. You’re in line to be chief of cardiology. We’re...we are adults.”

“Dammit. We can be adults and still be ourselves. You know me, Bi. You always have. I’m not going to disappear from your life when this is over. We’re still going to be friends and I’d never cut Benito out. He’s your son and just as important to me as you are.”

Derek stood up. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk where we can talk without worrying who might hear us.”

She looked around and noticed they were gathering attention. She should have realized it sooner. “What about the pool game?”

“The boys can make do without me,” Derek said. “This is more important.”

There was a sincerity in his eyes; she wanted to believe in him. Well, that stunk, she thought. She’d thought she’d somehow become immune to the charm of handsome men. Of course, this was Derek and not some playboy whose parents she didn’t know.

But still she’d like to think that her heart beat a little faster when he said she was important. She’d always liked Derek. He’d been one of her closest friends in middle school. He’d had the classic Caruthers good looks, but he’d been supersmart and once he’d graduated high school early and gone off to college and then medical school, they’d kept in touch first on AOL messenger, then on the different social media apps.

Years had passed before she’d seen him as an adult and she’d been blown away by how attractive her old friend had become. Of course, she had a different life by then, but there were times when it still surprised her. She never grew tired of the strong, hard line of jaw, his piercing eyes and the way his hair curled over this forehead. There was something about him that made her want to keep looking at him.

Dangerous.

As dangerous as listening to his idea for this fake engagement. Was there ever an idea that sounded dumber?

Maybe her mom setting her up with young men she knew in the South Texas area.

“What would this entail?” she asked.

* * *

Derek didn’t allow himself to relax. This was Bianca. Bianca Velasquez. She’d been the prettiest girl at the Five Families Middle School. Though he’d taken an accelerated course in Houston so he’d be able to leave Cole’s Hill and go to college early, they’d always kept in touch. At first he’d thought it was because of their families. Growing up there had been a lot of cotillion dances and Junior League events where their moms had thrown them together. But then as they’d both become adults, he’d thought the crush would fade.

It hadn’t.

He knew that she wasn’t the girl he’d dreamed about in middle school and high school anymore, but there was another part of him that wanted to claim her. That wanted to know that he had won over the prettiest girl from the Five Families neighborhood. That she was his.

Even just temporarily.

She was watching him cautiously. Almost as if she were afraid to trust him. That hurt.

More than it should have.

Granted, he was coming to her with a harebrained scheme, the kind that make his dad laugh his ass off at him. But she did need a break from the blind dates. And he did need a fiancée. He wasn’t about to get involved with Marnie again and she would be relentless if he didn’t provide a distraction.

“The hospital board has promised to make a decision in two months’ time. So I’d need you to be my fiancée for about three months just so that you can attend the gala after I’m announced chief and the wing is opened,” he said. Three months. That should be enough to convince him that any crush he’d had on her was well and truly dead. He could go back to being her friend and stop having hot dreams about her.

“Three months? Would we live together?” she asked. “I’ve been looking for a job and have some modeling gigs set up so I won’t be in town continuously during that time. Would that be a problem?”

Derek leaned back in his chair trying to stay cautiously optimistic, but it seemed to him that she was almost on board with the idea. “I don’t think so. In fact, I might be able to swing some time off and go with you. It would probably enhance the entire engagement story.”

“Fair enough. What about the bachelor auction? I see you’re already on the list. Would an engaged guy be on there?” she asked.

“Yes, because we were hiding our engagement. You can bid on me and win me now,” he said with a wink.

“If we’re engaged why do I have to bid on you?” she asked with a wink back. “My brother is already into me for a month of babysitting if I win him.”

Derek had to laugh. The bachelor auction might have been one of the Five Families Women’s League’s largest fund-raisers but the men were always trying to get out of it. He just didn’t like the idea of being at the mercy of someone who’d “won” him.

“I’m offering you three months of no blind dates,” he said.

“That’s something that Diego can’t match.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure people would not believe you were dating your brother.”

“Thank God,” she said, laughing. This time there wasn’t the manic edge to her tone that had been there earlier when he’d first mentioned the whole engagement scheme.

“Yes. So what do you say? Are we going to do this?” he asked.

“Where would I live?” she asked.

“With me or not. Your choice,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

He hadn’t thought of anything beyond finding a woman who’d agree and then telling Marnie about her. But now that Bianca had mentioned living with him he knew he wanted her in his house.

Then he immediately had a vision of her in his bed. That thick ebony hair of hers spread out on his pillow, her chocolaty brown eyes looking up at him with sensual demand. Her limbs bare...

“Derek?”

“Huh?” His mind was fully engaged in the fantasy that had taken hold.

“I said, would you mind if I lived with you? I’ve been staying with my folks but we really need our own space.”

He nodded. Living with him worked. “That sounds perfect. What do I need to do to get the place ready for you? Are we doing this?”

She leaned forward and he saw that same concern and uncertainty in her eyes and he realized that fantasies aside, he never wanted to put Bianca in a position where she was anything but a friend to him. He wanted her to be able to count on him. Even if that meant ignoring his own need for her.

“I want to say yes. Can I have the evening to think it over?” she asked, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I want to make sure I haven’t missed any details and I want to run it by Benito. Make sure he’s okay with another man in my life.”

“He’s two, right?”

“Yes, but he and I are very close and I just...after losing his father, I want to make sure he’s going to be okay,” Bianca said.

Derek nodded. He wasn’t going to force her. He was surprised she’d considered his offer and was willing to go along with it as far as she had this evening.

“That sounds fair,” he said, pulling his phone from his pocket and checking his calendar. “I don’t have any surgeries scheduled for tomorrow morning so I’m free. Would you and Benito like to come over to my place for breakfast? You can check it out and he can meet me.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Too bad she didn’t seem so convinced of that. He wasn’t too sure how to convince her. This wasn’t like the operating room where he knew all the variables and could make sure nothing went wrong. This was life where he tended to make mistakes, and he really hoped this didn’t turn out to be a big one.

* * *

As she sat there with Derek, Bianca knew that one night wasn’t going to be enough time to ensure she made the right choice. But then a two-year-long engagement to Jose hadn’t really been beneficial in hindsight. This would work. She needed it to.

She had been struggling since she’d returned to Cole’s Hill. She’d stayed in Spain for nine months after Jose’s death and then just after Benito had turned twenty-two months old had decided to come back to Texas but she was no closer to figuring out what was next. She was the first to admit that her knee-jerk reaction of divorcing Jose when she’d found out about his mistress had been just her way of getting out of a bad marriage. She’d never thought beyond hurting him the way he’d hurt her. Now that he was dead, she’d hoped the anger would be gone, but she knew it was still there.

And not working, living with her parents where they had a cleaning staff and wanted to hire a nanny for her, just gave her too much time to think about—dwell on—the past. It was humiliating and not productive.

This idea of Derek’s was a little bit on the crazy side, she knew that, but there was a part of her that really liked it. From certain angles, she saw it as the solution to all of her problems. She wanted to be out of her parents’ house and out from under their overprotectiveness. She could research some career options besides modeling and give her a chance to be the kind of mom to Beni that she wanted to be.

“Yes. That sounds good to me,” Bianca repeated. She realized she might have been staring at Derek. As their eyes met something passed between them that never had before.

A zing.

An awareness.

Oh, no. Had he figured out that she’d been secretly crushing on him for the last few months? How embarrassing. She gave him her cotillion smile—the one she always used to put boys in their place back in the day—and then pushed her chair back. “I think I should be getting home.”

“I’ll walk you back,” he said. “Or we can steal one of the golf carts.”

She shook her head. “I thought we both agreed to never speak of golf carts.”

“No one will suspect a thing,” he said.

“That’s what you thought the last time. And I’m pretty sure that the groundskeeper knew it was us, even though he could never prove it.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re right. So, walking might be the safer option,” Derek said in that easy way of his.

She felt silly thinking that there might have been something between them. It was probably all on her side. It had been a very long time without sex—since before Beni was born—and she wasn’t dead. She had been hoping she’d at least feel okay hooking up with one of her mom’s blind dates. But so far it hadn’t worked out.

“You okay?” he asked, coming around to hold her chair while she stood.

“Yes. Sorry. Just tired. Being ‘on’ with a stranger is draining,” she said.

Derek put his hand on the small of her back and she felt that zing again. This time a shiver spread up her spine and she stepped aside, fumbling for her handbag.

He followed her out of the dining room. She had an account at the club like all of the families who were members, so they didn’t have to settle any bill.

“I need to let my brothers know I’m leaving,” Derek said.

She nodded, still more in her head thinking about what he’d asked of her. His family was large, like hers, and she understood the dynamics of having siblings around.

The evening was warm; the unseasonable heat of the day hadn’t dissipated yet. The parking lot was full of cars and though it was the middle of the week it felt like the weekend. The night was busy and full of life and she realized that was what she’d been missing.

She hadn’t felt busy in a long time. She wasn’t saying she had the whole mothering thing licked but she and Beni had fallen into a routine where she knew what to expect. And life had become routine instead of fun. She knew that was why she was thinking of taking Derek up on this idea. It was the first unexpected thing to happen to her since...well, for a really long time.

“I’m glad you’re back in Cole’s Hill,” he said.

“Me, too. Remember how badly we wanted to get out of here?” she asked. “I really thought modeling was going to be the life for me. I mean I figured I’d be like Kate Moss and spend the rest of my life living in the jet set...but now, I’m sort of glad that I’m right here.”

“Was Benito planned?” he asked.

“That’s kind of personal,” she said, but only because he’d stumbled onto an argument she and Jose had had many times.

“We’re going to be ‘engaged’ and we’re friends,” he said. “Just asking because your dream life didn’t sound like it included motherhood.”

“It didn’t. With all my brothers, I never thought about having a family of my own. I figured I’d be the cool auntie to my nieces and nephews,” she said.

“So what happened?” he asked.

“Well...” She paused as they turned off the sidewalk onto the path that led to the manmade lake adjacent to her parents’ house. She stopped on the bridge over the lake.

“Well?”

She put one hand on the railing and looked over at Derek. He was her good friend but there were so many things about her he didn’t know. The embarrassing stuff that she shared with no one. And this was something that she never needed to tell him. This bit of humiliation had died with Jose.

She looked into Derek’s eyes and started to tell him what she always did when she was asked about the baby. But in her heart, she remembered Jose saying that a baby and a family would stop him from looking outside of their marriage bed for company. That a family would ground him in a way nothing else could.