Between Marriage and Merger Read online

  “Um, I’m pretty sure, but why don’t you fill me in.” Sawyer was still poring over the Hannafort reports, dismissing this conversation as if it was nothing.

  “Hugging. Holding hands. Kissing.”

  “Sounds about right. I know you remember how to do all of those things.” Sawyer flipped to another page.

  “But am I not supposed to be staying away from Lily? You were the one who wouldn’t stop going on and on about how I needed to pretend that she was my sister. Don’t mess things up, Noah. Stop making up excuses to be around her, Noah.” He planted both hands on Sawyer’s desk and stared him down. “This could easily mess things up with her. Then what? We lose our best employee because of some stupid stunt?”

  “Now you see the validity of my original argument? When we’re being forced to set it aside?” Sawyer closed the binder and looked him square in the eye. “I think the one thing that video proved is that you have no problem with walking away, so I’m certainly not worried about your feelings. As for Lily, she’s being rewarded handsomely and she seems completely comfortable with the idea. She’s a very strong person. I’m a little concerned, but I’m not overly concerned. How confused can two people get over the course of three days?”

  “Honestly? I have no idea. I’ve never been fake engaged before.”

  “And that’s the important thing to remember. This is fake. It’s not real. It’s not the same as if you had actually pursued her. That would have hurt her feelings when you decided to end it. Or...”

  “Or what?”

  “Or maybe she would’ve ended up ending it. Maybe she would’ve turned you down. I’m sure it’s hard for you to imagine, but it could’ve gone down that way.”

  “You think I don’t worry about that every time I ask a woman out? Because I do.” Noah had thought about that a lot when it came to Lily, if only when he was trying to convince himself that going there in the first place would be a huge mistake.

  Surely Lily dated a lot. She simply never mentioned it. In fact, she rarely talked about herself. He could only assume that she didn’t have a serious boyfriend right now. She never complained about working late and she was always doing her Friday night visit to the bookstore she liked so much. It was silly, but a few weeks ago, Noah had been dateless and bored on a Friday night, so he’d gone for a run and accidentally on purpose ended up there. He’d peeked in the window, but couldn’t see the corner she’d talked about. He’d also been too embarrassed to walk in. So he’d pretended his shoelace was untied and jogged back to his apartment, realizing how stupid the whole thing had been in the first place. What would he have said if she’d seen him? I always go for runs in neighborhoods that are totally out of the way from where I live.

  “And don’t forget, Lily’s a tough cookie,” Sawyer said. “I’m not as concerned about it as I was when we first started working on the Grand Legacy project and you couldn’t keep your eyes off her or your tongue off the floor.”

  “You act like I’m the horniest guy you’ve ever met. Have you not noticed how stunning she is?”

  “I noticed. Believe me. I’ve noticed. As have lots of our clients.”

  The worst part...or the best part, Noah couldn’t decide, was that Lily didn’t seem to know it. Or if she did, she didn’t seem driven by it or obsessed by it. She simply seemed comfortable in her own skin, which Noah found very sexy.

  “Okay. Well, I guess I’m going to go back to work with my fake fiancée. This is officially the craziest thing I’ve ever done, just so you know.”

  “I don’t want to be a jerk about it, but this was your own doing. I appreciate your willingness to make it right. It’ll all be fine. We’ll do the deal with Hannafort and you and Lily can quietly break up. I doubt it’ll even be on his radar at that point. But we need to remove any doubt he has now.”

  “Got it.” Noah reached for the door.

  “Wait. There’s more. We need word of the engagement out before we leave and Lily is also going to need a ring. Everyone will want to see the ring.”

  Noah groaned in frustration. “How do we go about announcing an engagement? Do we call the society page?”

  “I don’t think we have time for that. I’ll talk to Kendall. We’ll figure out a way to leak it to the press.” Sawyer’s wife, Kendall, was a PR master. She’d done a brilliant job on the reopening of the family’s historic hotel, the Grand Legacy.

  Noah stifled another sigh. “Let me know.” As he walked down the hall, he noticed that Lily was not at her desk. He rounded into his office. She was putting things away in his filing cabinet. He came to a dead stop. He didn’t say a thing. Lily had this habit when she was standing, but concentrating on something—she’d step out of one pump and balance on her opposite leg, rubbing the back of her calf with her bare foot. Up and down, over and over until she was finished with the task. It was one of the many inexplicably sexy things she did.

  Maybe this fake engagement had a bright side. Maybe this was the chance to get Lily out of his system. His brother couldn’t say a thing about holding hands, long embraces, or kisses now. And if those things continued behind closed doors, and Lily wanted him, too, clothes could come off and he could finally know what it was like to make love to her, to have her hands all over him, and at the end of the weekend, they could part ways on the romantic front. It was perfect.

  A little too perfect.

  Noah couldn’t escape the notion that his plan sounded like something his dad would do. He was not his father, and he would do anything he could to prove it. That meant he would have to be doubly careful and keep things especially chaste between them, all while trying to create the illusion that they were hopelessly in love. He had no idea how he was going to pull this off.

  Lily whipped around, surprise in her eyes. She dropped down onto her bare foot and pressed her hand to her chest. “You scared me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to startle you, but you were so deep in concentration.”

  Lily worked her foot back into her black pump. “You could tell?”

  “Yeah. You do that thing with your foot when you’re focused.”

  Her cheeks turned the most gorgeous shade of pink, like cherry blossoms in spring, except brighter and more vibrant. It made him want to embarrass her more often. “I do?”

  Noah swallowed hard. He hadn’t had time to get used to the fact that it would be okay for him to say something about this now. Before, a topic like this was best avoided. “I did. I’ve noticed it for a while now. I’m sorry if that bothers you.”

  She shook her head. “No. Of course not. It doesn’t bother me at all.” Was that a hint of flirtation in her voice? If so, he liked being fake engaged to her, even if the clock hadn’t yet started ticking on their charade.

  “So, are you okay with our arrangement? There’s still time to back out if you want.” He didn’t want to come off as unsure, but it was important to him that she not feel as though she’d been cornered. There had been three Lockes in that room and only one Lily Foster. It wasn’t entirely fair.

  “I’d be lying if I said that I was completely comfortable with the idea. I’m not much for faking something.”

  “Yeah. Me neither.”

  “But I’m also smart enough to know that people do all sorts of things in business to make a deal happen. And maybe if you aren’t willing to be daring with something, you’ll miss out. This would be a big thing to miss out on.”

  “The Hannafort deal.”

  “Of course.”

  It was good to have clarification, if only to keep things straight. “Well, our next step is for me to take you shopping for a ring.”

  “Wow. A ring.” Lily looked down at her own hand as if she were trying to picture it. “I guess that’s a must-have, isn’t it?”

  “Can’t be fake engaged without a ring.” He smiled when she shot him a knowing glance. “Except the rin
g will be real. I’m not putting a fake ring on your hand.” Lily absolutely deserved a real ring, but he did have to wonder if this harebrained plan was going to end up ruining any fantasies she’d had about getting engaged. He didn’t want to make assumptions based on her gender, but she did prefer books with happy endings.

  Noah had zero fantasies about marriage. Or engagement. He’d never imagined the moment when he’d get down on one knee. He’d never thought about what it would feel like to love someone so much that the only thing that made sense was to be with them forever. It had always seemed, at best, unlikely and, at worst, doomed. Would he ever be in love? Would he ever feel as though he couldn’t live without someone? Seventy-two hours or so and he usually knew that the woman of the moment wasn’t the one. Or, admittedly, he’d gone into it with the assumption he would not find love. It wasn’t the best attitude, but time and again, things played out that way. It was hard not to assume that the common denominator—his heart—wasn’t built for love.

  “Good to know that you’re not going to force me to be excited about a cubic zirconia. Not that I wouldn’t be happy with whatever you gave me. But, you know. A girl wants a diamond if she can get it.”

  “The only thing about the ring shopping is that we have to plan it out in advance. Sawyer’s going to have Kendall leak it to the press so it will hopefully make its way back to Hannafort. And if not, we will at least have countered the bad publicity with good.”

  She nodded. “So the video was that bad?”

  The thought of it made his stomach sink yet again. He hoped Lily never saw it. He hoped she never looked it up on the internet, although if the roles were reversed, he definitely would have done some due diligence. He truly didn’t want her seeing him in that light. Even if it was biased, and pulpy, it wasn’t a lie. There was a whole lot of truth in it. “It wasn’t my best showing, that’s for sure.”

  Lily patted him on the shoulder. When she moved her hand, it felt as though she’d marked him for life with her touch. “Hopefully we can make it go away. We should probably start tomorrow.”

  “Do I have a hole in my schedule?”

  “No meetings from eleven to three. A nice big window.”

  “Perfect. Tomorrow at eleven we have a date to buy that ring.” Noah could hardly believe the words after they’d left his lips. For a guy who’d sworn he’d never get engaged, he’d said it like it was no big deal, when he knew for a fact that it was.

  Three

  Lily did her best to stay busy at work the next morning, but knowing where she and Noah were going at eleven made it tough to focus. A mere twenty-four hours into their fake engagement and Noah was about to take her to buy the ring. She’d be lying if she said she’d never thought about stepping into a fancy jewelry store with a sweet, handsome, romantic guy. Her broken engagement had come with a ring that was a family heirloom, no shopping required. She’d had no idea that Peter wouldn’t be able to go through with the promise that accompanied that ring, but returning it had been a simple process. She’d thrown it at him in a quiet room just outside the nave. He’d cursed her, scrambled on his hands and knees for it, nearly ruining his tuxedo pants. She’d cried and braced herself for what followed—telling a church full of invited guests that they were welcome to enjoy the reception, but there would be no wedding.

  The events of that dreadful day were precisely why her fake engagement to Noah, although fun in premise, was about business and nothing else. She’d never had financial security in her life and that became her top priority after the love part went south. She had to take her chance to secure her future. It would be one fewer thing to fret about, in a world fraught with things that could make a woman worry, like whether or not Mr. Right would ever come along.

  Out walked Noah from the confines of Sawyer’s office. “So we’re all set with the photographer or whoever is supposed to be outside the jewelry store?”

  Sawyer followed his brother. “According to Kendall, yes. As to who it is and where they’ll be, I have no idea. You’ll have to be as convincing as possible. These people are very good at sniffing out a fake. And, honestly, you need to act like someone is watching, even when you don’t know for certain that they are. The video should have taught you that much.”

  Noah cast his sights at Lily. It was as if he was saying Can you believe what we’re doing? To which Lily would have replied No.

  “I don’t want any obvious signs that this is a Locke and Locke purchase, so put the ring on one of your personal cards instead of the company’s. We’ll find a way to reimburse you for it,” Sawyer said. “I don’t know if they’ll let us return it when it’s all said and done, but I suppose we could always sell it if we had to.”

  This was all too strange, an unromantic transaction. Lily dug around in her purse for a piece of gum, just to distract herself from this deeply uncomfortable subject.

  “Sawyer, listen to yourself. We’re not doing that.” Noah grabbed his coat and slipped it on. The man had incredible shoulders, but the black wool brought out the strong line of them, enough to make her stifle a sigh. “If I give Lily a ring, she gets to keep it. I’m not asking for it back, even if this is fake.”

  Lily’s heart broke out in a gallop, fierce and strong, like a young horse discovering it could run for as long and as far as it wanted to. That might have been the most romantic thing a man had ever said about her.

  Even when his sweet sentiment was tied up with a satin bow called “fake.”

  Sawyer stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. Lily, whatever you choose today, it’s yours to keep.”

  “Oh. Well, thank you. I guess we’ll call it combat pay?”

  Sawyer laughed. Noah did, too, but it was far less convincing and came only after his brother had started it. He seemed so tortured over this whole thing, it was impossible to feel good about it.

  “I’m kidding. Of course. If I wanted combat pay, I’d ask for cash.” She smiled sweetly and got up from her desk, wishing there was a protocol somewhere for interactions with your fake fiancée and your fake future brother-in-law. She felt a bit like she was failing right now.

  “You two have fun. Try not to get into too much trouble,” Sawyer said, heading back into his office.

  “No promises,” Noah muttered. “And we’re going out to lunch afterward.”

  “On the company dime?” Lily asked.

  Noah unleashed a devilish smile. “Of course.” He then offered her his arm, which he held in midair while Lily struggled to keep up with what she was supposed to do. “Remember what Sawyer said. We need to act like someone is watching at all times.”

  “Right.” She hooked hers in his and he snugged her against his body, sending a lovely shock right through her. One touch, through layers of coats no less, and she felt like her shoes might shoot right off her feet.

  They took the stairs down to the street. Noah’s driver was waiting for them, standing outside the sleek black town car. He opened the door as they approached and Lily struggled to stay in the moment, to not let her consciousness become too detached from what was happening. This was a fantasy brought to life, and she should embrace the good parts. There would surely be bad moments when she would end up with flickers of regret over doing this crazy thing. For now, Noah Locke, Mr. Unattainable, was taking her to buy an engagement ring. She wanted to soak up every minute.

  They got settled in the back seat. “Warm enough?” Noah asked.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “Yes.” Wow. So this is what the world’s worst small talk is like.

  “I was thinking...” He looked out the window and shook his head.

  “What? You were thinking what?”

  He turned back and looked at her so earnestly she thought she might disappear into his green eyes. “What do people do after they buy an engagement ring?”r />
  Have sex? Lily thought for a second about putting it out there, but decided there were only so many inappropriate jokes she could make. That would not be professional. “I don’t know. Kiss?”

  “Yes. Exactly.” He nodded a little too fast, almost as if he was nervous, which seemed impossible. She’d witnessed more human moments out of Noah in the last day than she’d ever seen before. It was nice. “And, obviously, we haven’t done that yet. I don’t think it should be awkward. It should seem natural, especially if anyone is taking a picture.”

  She put her hand on his. “Right. Like Sawyer said.”

  “Following orders.”

  “He needs us to put on a good show. We should practice. At least once.” The instant she said it, the air crackled with electricity. She’d pushed things to the next level. With the help of some convenient excuses, of course.

  Noah’s clever half smile crossed his lips, and his eyes swirled to a darker shade. The city whizzed by outside the window. Lily was overcome with the freeing feeling of being given permission to do something you shouldn’t. Kissing Noah was such a bad idea, but when you’d thought about a bad idea for two whole years, it was hard not to be excited by it. His hand slipped under her hair and around her neck. She sat straighter. She angled herself closer. Every nerve ending in her body was cheering him on. His thumb settled in the soft spot under her ear. His touch was more than warm. It was a superhuman zap of heat. It might turn her into something she’d never been before.

  His lips parted ever so slightly and she raised her chin as he lowered his head. His hair slumped forward. She loved that. She’d fantasized a million times about running her hands through it, feeling the thick strands between her fingers and smoothing it back. She wanted to stare at him forever, but she also wanted to savor every delicious heartbeat of anticipation. Her eyes fluttered shut. When his mouth met hers, she waited for it to change her life, but it was a soft brush of a kiss. A first date kiss. An oh hi nice to meet you kiss. It was nice. So nice. But nice wasn’t going to cut it. Her body didn’t merely tell her so, it was screaming it in both ears. She slanted her head and pushed up from the seat, aiming her shoulders straight for his. He pulled back. Her eyes flew open. Their gazes connected, both of them searching. It was an entire deliberation about their next kiss, wrapped up in two seconds. He smiled. She swallowed. He was coming in for the real thing.