Love Happens Anyway Read online

  I opened my mouth to explain why I was there, and that it wasn’t for an escort job, and maybe what I did for a living, but Alan shook his head in my peripheral vision, so I stopped.

  Also, wait, did he mention thirty thousand dollars? For what?

  “And you’re perfect,” Mr. Henderson said. “I’d need you to commit to four dates though. Can you commit to those functions? Of course, after that time I would break up with you, maybe after the last date, but before Christmas. There would be a mix of company and family events, and you would need a much better suit. Do you have one?” He looked me up and down, a frown on his face.

  I tried to follow the flow of information and realized that this wasn’t starting well, because I’d worn my best suit for the bank. Well, actually my only suit, to be fair. I didn’t have the money to spend on fancy duds, not even with the compensation that had just landed in my account. All I needed was twenty-thousand more, but not even my best suit had swayed the bank rep, or the computer he’d typed everything into.

  “What’s wrong with my suit?” I asked Mr. Henderson, attempting to get the conversation back on level ground.

  He wrinkled his nose, but I don’t think he was being nasty, just judging me by some unknown standard that I had no hope of achieving. “What is it? Off the rack from Kohl’s?”

  “No, it’s from Burlington.” As though that was any better, but hey, it was my best suit.

  Mr. Henderson curled his lip a little, but I was used to people thinking shit about me for various reasons, so fuck his gorgeous face, and the horse he rode in on.

  Alan cleared his throat. “Again, Mr. Henderson is looking to hire someone for an extended period of time, and is willing to pay thirty-thousand.” Alan shot me a pointed look.

  There it was again, that magic thirty-thousand payout. My confusion cleared and was replaced with a sick sort of hope.

  “Really?” I asked, because…what?

  “Oh my God,” Henderson snapped, “You call him one of your professionals?”

  Alan cleared his throat, “I know you decided you were coming off the books.” He was daring me to disagree. I said nothing, still in a semi-shocked state at the concept of earning thirty-thousand in a couple of weeks. Henderson was talking up to Christmas? I could do that, as long as I got money up front to cover the work that needed doing on the bar right now. “But I’d like you to consider this one last contract.”

  Mr. Henderson still stared at me, although his gaze had moved south, not quite to my groin but to the stain on my shirt, which had happened as a result of me colliding with a pedestrian by my car before the bank meeting. One cappuccino later and I stank of coffee. I’m not sure the stain helped in the bank, although the computer couldn’t see stains. Unless the officer had ticked the box that said I wore a cheap suit with a stained shirt and ticking that box made a difference.

  Mr. Henderson had lovely eyes—that was all I could think of—framed with dark lashes, they were a clear pale blue, like chips of ice. And yep, that icy cerulean gaze wandered lower. But, when his focus returned to my face he appeared embarrassed. As if he’d allowed himself to look and was ashamed of doing so. This was one closeted dude, or at least someone with some real hang-ups. No wonder someone even as handsome as him was searching for a fake partner.

  “You are gay, right?” The potential client asked.

  Was I supposed to answer that question? “Yes.” The answer was clearly what he needed to hear.

  “I’ll take him,” Henderson said, in a kind of awkward not-really-aware-of-what-he-was-saying sort of way.

  Why did it sound as if he was bartering me for a camel?

  And hell, he didn’t stop talking after that, about contracts, and timing, and confidentiality, and then he leaned forward with utter determination. “I’m not willing to negotiate on the thirty-thousand and I would let you know I have full access to a legal department who will, at the drop of the hat, sue the daylights out of anyone who revealed what is happening here.”

  “That won’t be an issue.” Alan looked meaningfully at me again.

  “I won’t say anything,” I said, “that’s part of the contract.”

  “My thirty-thousand buys your discretion, understand?” He sounded as if he wanted to be firm, but I could see the nerves in the words

  Discretion was part of this job. I may not have been an expert at this, but that was one rule I knew very well.

  I could see the pleasure in Alan’s expression. I don’t remember him saying he charged that much when we’d last met up with the rest of the college guys. Something about two-hundred for an event, and that was pretty much it.

  I held out my hand. “Luke Davers.”

  He smoothed his hands on his pants, and then shook mine . “Derek Henderson, Henderson McCormack Advertising.” Weird that he felt he had to add his company name to the introduction, as if it was part of his identity, and one he needed to reaffirm every so often.

  “That’s a long name.” I laughed, attempting to lighten the tone.

  Gone was the hard-nosed businessman who’d threatened to sue anyone who didn’t act with the utmost discretion under this agreement. He was flustered, “No, that isn’t my…oh.” He realized I was teasing and released his grip on my hand. “So, details, contracts, and so on.”

  “I haven’t agreed to do it yet.”

  “Oh,” Derek repeated. He did that quite a lot, as if he couldn’t believe for one minute anyone would have an issue with anything he was saying. He was probably used to getting his own way at Boggit and Stumpy or wherever it was he worked.

  “Have a seat Mr. Henderson,” Alan interjected. “Luke, if you wouldn’t mind taking a seat also.”

  I wanted to take a seat all right, preferably back in my small apartment where I shared the space with my mom, and the bar below that was my home. It didn’t matter that there was money to be made here, enough to pay off the rest of the contractor’s fees and buy the remainder of the stock.

  I didn’t walk though, something in me sparked with a determination to see this through. So I sat down, next to the gorgeous preppy guy and looked from Alan to the desk and back again.

  “This wasn’t what I had in mind—” I began.

  Alan held up a hand. “Mr. Henderson, would you like to explain a little more about what you need from the AlGetz Agency?” AlGetz was a throwback to college where Alan’s slogan was ripped off from Lethal Weapon, where he would say, you want, Al gets.

  Derek made a deliberate show of looking at his watch, which was all bling and huge. I was fascinated by the face of it dwarfing his fine-boned wrist, oh and how he smelled, which was just subtle and sexy and—

  “Luke? Is that okay?”

  Derek and Alan were watching me, all the while I’d been staring at the flash of Derek’s wrist. I really needed to get out more if the inches of a man’s wrist were enough for me to have thoughts that wandered away from the meeting and onto kissing the skin.

  “Sorry?” I sure as hell wasn’t going to say yes to anything I hadn't heard.

  “Mr. Henderson was suggesting you and he go for a coffee to discuss this and he’s willing to pay for your time.”

  Derek reached for his wallet, pulled up a couple of twenties and held them out. “Ten minutes,” he said, “just to smooth over any issues you have.”

  I wasn’t going to take forty dollars off the man to sit and have a coffee with him, and I stood. He didn’t need to pay me to talk to me, for God’s sake.

  “Coffee’s on me,” I wasn’t going to argue about this, “let’s go.”

  Behind me, Derek cleared his throat. “Oh.”

  Derek

  I’d never seen someone like Luke. Someone as tall, as gorgeous, as broad, and sexy as Luke.

  Well I had. In my head.

  He was Marcus come to life.

  It was as if someone had reached into my fantasies and pulled Marcus out fully formed. He walked with a limp—that much I noticed as I followed him down the stairs and we
ended out on the street. He had to take the steps one at a time, but I didn’t ask what was wrong, thankful for the extra moments to gather my thoughts. I hadn’t created a man with a limp, but I could work it into the story somehow. I was an ad man—I created words for a living.

  I’d tried every legitimate agency for what I was trying to pull, and AlGetz was the last on the list. The agency had been recommended by the last guys, as a new player in town, even if they hadn’t been sure it wasn’t just a front for buying sex.

  God, what if it had been just that, and I’d been caught in their offices? That didn’t bear thinking about.

  Son and heir to Henderson fortune found in sex office.

  Or whatever the place was called. Seemed, though, that I was wrong, or at least I hoped I was. I’d have done anything to have Luke pretend to be Marcus for a few occasions, because he was so perfect.

  “It’s down here.” Luke gestured down the alley by the office building. It didn’t look as the best kind of place to walk, but hey, Luke was a big guy but he limped. I was a runner and I could outrun an injured man. Easy.

  Talking of which, I needed to add the limp to my list of things to talk about. We’d need a backstory for the limp. Maybe a heroic one where he was rescuing a baby, fighting his way through flames and getting the baby out only to dramatically drop to his knees on the lawn, metal or glass in his thigh.

  “Hello?” Something waved in front of my face and I realized it was his hand. “You want to go for this coffee or what?” I followed him down the alley which opened into a courtyard ringed with kooky shops. I counted a holistic store, a coffee shop and some kind of craft place with wood shavings on the ground under this weird-looking table. This was eclectic, I guessed, the kind of place my cousin Lilly would go to in her days off from art school. I didn’t hold out much hope for the coffee store here; they probably made vegan smoothies, or coffee with recycled twigs.

  I was surprised when it turned out that The Coffee Bean smelled of freshly ground coffee. My taste buds tingled and I perused the menu.

  “Coffee, black,” Luke ordered and then the barista turned to me. I was still stuck that Luke just wanted black coffee? That was so…puritanical.

  “Hmmm,” I looked at the last few entries on the list, and the nerves in the pit of my belly made me unable to even make a decision. “Do you happen to roast your own beans?” I asked, just to give myself time.

  “Of course.” The barista seemed bored, as if he’d heard it all before and was sick of people wanting an answer to that question, but I wasn’t finished yet. Abruptly I was in my happy place, talking about things I knew well. He was, no doubt, used to people who didn’t know their coffee.

  I know coffee.

  “Is the roast light, medium or dark?”

  “Medium, seven days.”

  “And the roasting profile?”

  “Each coffee is roasted to suit its optimum flavor profile.” He eyed me suspiciously; probably thought I was playing him for a fool, but I took my coffee very seriously, and this way I looked halfway normal next to Luke.

  “Do you use Straus Barista Milk?”

  “We do.”

  I half turned to Luke, wondering if he’d like an explanation. “It’s a cream-top milk that has been lightly homogenized to create the perfect amount of stability.” I’d memorized that from a Huffpost article.

  “Oh,” Luke said, as if he were interested, but I turned back to the barista who was excited to be talking coffee with an aficionado.

  “Where are the beans from?” I continued. “Because I prefer Tanzanian beans and blends.”

  “Really?!” he perked up a little. “Then you’ll love this, it’s not Tanzanian but it’s close.”

  “And the soil?”

  “Shade grown, fair trade, chocolate undertones.”

  “Sounds wonderful. I’ll have that.”

  “One coffee coming up.”

  That was the moment we connected in our own little coffee club of one, and I relaxed that I’d met a barista that didn’t burn the ever loving hell out of the milk, and then spend an hour on a fancy design that did nothing to mask low grade coffee underneath.

  “I’ll bring it over,” the barista said, and he beamed at me. I followed Luke to a low table surrounded by sofas and took one at right angles to him, all the better for being able to talk to him without being overheard.

  “You sure like your coffee, don’t you?” Luke observed.

  I checked his expression for any evidence that he thought this was a bad thing. The nerves were back. “I guess, some people like wine, I like coffee. Actually, that’s something you need to add to the list of things to know about me.”

  “You think?” he huffed a laugh, but not an unkind one. “You made the coffee creation sound like a military operation.”

  Should I have felt insulted? Was insulted the right word? Slightly annoyed maybe? He’d laughed at me, and I felt weird about it. I could feel myself bristling with irritation, and had to focus on what I needed to get myself back from the edge. A method I’d learned at a very young age.

  Instead, I moved the conversation back to the actual matter in hand.

  “What do you normally need to know to do this job?”

  He looked right at me, as if he had no idea what I was talking about, and then he sighed. “You’d better tell me everything, up to and including the level of coffee roasting.”

  Not everything, not every little detail, because he didn’t need to know it all, but I knew where to start.

  “For reasons,” I began, and then stopped when our friendly barista lovingly placed a beautiful coffee in front of me. I thanked him and he beamed at me.

  “Come again,” The barista said, soft and seductive, or was that the scent of the coffee that pinged my senses? Whatever, the barista left after my first sip and I was alone with Luke. So I began again.

  “For reasons that I don’t need to go into, I need someone, you, to accompany me on a few events.” I counted them off on my fingers. “Dinner with my parents. Two Christmas events at my company, and one event that will necessitate an overnight stay in a huge cabin. I’ll need you to mingle and make nice and tell everyone how wonderful I am.” U winced at the fact I was asking this man to lie. “I’m thinking that, at these events you could hint that while we are together, that you sometimes think you’re not the man for me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t expect… the explanations.” Fuck. “I just need you to sow the seeds of our breakup—that is all you need to do.”

  “Wait, you’re hiring me, to then break up with me, I get that, but why not just break up with me now, when no one has met me?” Luke sounded and looked confused, sipping his coffee and wincing. I knew he should have got milk in his.

  “It’s complicated.” That was the only explanation I could give. “The next event is a family dinner, which is the minefield as it will likely be just you, me and my parents. Again, I’d like you to mention how you don’t feel good enough for me at times.”

  “Wait, why couldn’t it be the other way, why would they think that I don’t feel good enough? Surely any boyfriend of yours would have to be confident; I don’t think you’d find someone who doubted themselves to be a very sexy thing.”

  What? He really thinks for one minute that I am a strong enough person to only attract the confident types?

  Little did he know. Most of my previous relationships had been with men needy for my support, financial or otherwise.

  “You have a point,” I lied, because I wasn’t that man he was describing at all. “We’ll work on that. I’m sure you’ve come across this issue before.”

  He was startled, but covered it up, “Of course.”

  I didn’t know him well enough to call him out on lying, but he wouldn’t quite meet my eyes and I thought maybe he was exaggerating.

  “So, that brings me to the overnight stay. This is a two-day, one-night event with college friends of mine. We have the same event every y
ear, and you will be expected to share a room with me, but not a bed. The contract doesn’t indicate sexual relations.”

  Luke nodded and gulped a mouthful of coffee. I took that time to gaze at his eyes, a curious mix of green and brown that I guess a lesser person would’ve described as hazel. Me, I described them as like the forest with sunlight dappling the leaves. After all, I’m an ad man; I have a whole supply of alternate descriptions for what others view as mundane.

  “I get it, shared bed, no sex.” He gave me a look that indicated he had something to add. “What if I can’t control myself?”

  What? Hang on; what kind of agency is this?

  “I’m not paying for sex,” I pointed out, firmly, and Luke bit his lip, probably to stop himself teasing me anymore.

  “I was joking you know. So, what part am I playing?” Luke prompted and I realized I had lost myself in those forest eyes of his. Rookie mistake.

  “You will be Marcus, and your cover is that you are a firefighter, and that you rescue kittens.”

  His eyes widened and then he frowned and I couldn’t see a reason for the frown.

  “Kittens,” he said.

  “Absolutely. Five of them. Buttons, Socks, Miffy, Petal and Spider.”

  “Someone called a cat Spider?”

  He looked so confused that I wanted to reach over and pat him on the leg. I didn’t though, I just expanded my explanation, hopefully at a level he would understand.

  “Yes, you did. You called it Spider after you rescued it, I’m not sure why I came up with that, I always get confused about that being as the entire building burned up and there wouldn’t have been a spider left.”

  He paled, and I knew I should have worded that all a hell of a lot better. So I forged ahead before it became too much,

  “Look, I’ll give you notes, or that is what I assume you work from?”

  “Notes,” he repeated, and then nodded. I took that as a yes.

  “I mentioned some other things about you to my parents. You work hard, you don’t get a lot of time off because of your charity work. Also I noticed your limp.”