Chapter 1 - The Man I Borrowed
“Please pretend you love me.”
The stranger beside me turned his head.
Twenty feet away, my ex-boyfriend stood beneath the lights of the Harbor Ridge Country Club terrace with one hand on his fiancée’s waist.
“Some women just never recover when you leave them,” Grant Mercer had announced a moment earlier.
His fiancée smiled behind her champagne glass.
His mother laughed.
So did mine.
That was the part that sent me reaching for a stranger.
He wore a charcoal suit, and his dark hair had surrendered slightly to the ocean wind. His eyes moved from my face to Grant, then back.
“What’s your name?”
“Laurel Bennett.”
He offered his arm.
“Take it.”
I hesitated.
“If we’re doing this, Ms. Bennett, you should probably touch me.”
My fingers closed around his sleeve.
He covered my hand with his and smiled as though finding me had been the best part of his evening.
“Sorry I’m late, sweetheart.”
Grant stopped talking.
The stranger lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles.
Someone behind us whispered, “That’s Wyatt Calloway.”
I nearly pulled away.
Everyone in New England knew that name. His company owned hotels, resorts, restaurants, and enough waterfront property to make every zoning meeting a public spectacle.
Grant’s family had spent six months trying to get him to invest in their struggling hotel.
And I had just borrowed him.
My mother approached so quickly she almost stepped on her own dress.
“Laurel. You didn’t tell us you knew Mr. Calloway.”
Wyatt’s arm settled around my waist.
“She keeps the best parts of her life private.”
For twelve minutes, I experienced the peculiar satisfaction of watching people reconsider my value because a powerful man stood beside me.
Then the satisfaction curdled.
I excused myself and escaped outside.
Wyatt found me sitting on a stone wall beside the parking lot.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“Assaulting you with fake affection.”
“You requested convincing work.”
I laughed despite myself.
He sat beside me.
“Who was he?”
“Grant Mercer. Four years of my life. He’s marrying Caroline Ellis in five weeks.”
“You wanted him jealous?”
“No.” I looked down at my hands. “I wanted him to stop looking at me like something he threw away.”
Wyatt was quiet for a moment.
Then he told me about his aunt Eleanor, who considered his unmarried state a family emergency.
“Three weeks,” he suggested.
I stared.
“We pretend to date. Mercer stops pitying you. My aunt stops seating eligible women beside me.”
“And then?”
“We walk away.”
“No buying me things.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“No fixing my life,” I added.
He studied me.
“Someone tried that before?”
I watched headlights move along the road beyond the gates.
“Grant called it helping. He wanted me to close my flower shop and run charity events for his mother. He said my business was an expensive hobby.”
“What did you call it?”
“The business my father built with me.”
Wyatt waited.
My father had died three years earlier. Bennett Blooms occupied a narrow storefront near the harbor, where the windows fogged in winter and the front door stuck every August.
It was mine in every way that mattered, except one.
I rented the building.
“After Dad died, Grant started making decisions for me,” I said. “He’d order dinner, answer questions, tell people what I thought. When I objected, he said I made everything difficult.”
“And you believed him?”
“For a while.”
The answer embarrassed me more than my request on the terrace.
Wyatt didn’t offer sympathy. He simply nodded, as though believing someone who claimed to love you was an understandable mistake.
“What happens during these three weeks?” I asked.
“Dinner with my aunt. A few public appearances. Anything else we agree to.”
“No surprise photographs.”
“Agreed.”
“No touching unless I’m comfortable.”
“Of course.”
“And if either of us wants out?”
“We say so.”
He took out his phone.
I gave him my number before I could become sensible.
At my truck, he opened the door and stepped back.
“One more condition,” I said.
“Go ahead.”
“You can’t look at me like that when nobody’s watching.”
His expression changed.
“Like what?”
Like I wasn’t difficult.
Like I wasn’t disposable.
Like he might have chosen me without an audience.
“Never mind.”
He waited until I started the engine before returning to the club.
When I arrived home, my phone held eleven messages from my mother and one from Grant.
Grant’s read: Whatever you think you’re doing, stop.
Wyatt’s arrived seconds later.
Home safely?
I answered yes.
Then another message appeared.
Dinner tomorrow. My aunt already knows your name.
May you like
I smiled.
For the first time that evening, nobody was there to see it.
