The Billionaire's Fake Fiancee - Lauren Wood Page 0,41
to make himself out to be. He puts on this big playboy show, but while he may go out with a lot of women, he doesn’t sleep around as much as he lets everyone think.”
“You’re kidding me.” I leaned back in my chair with a groan. “Great. Well that makes this all even more confusing.”
“Whether he’s sleeping with every woman he goes out with or not, he definitely has some issues when it comes to letting himself get close to women. But it sounds like he definitely wanted to be different with you … ”
“Even if that’s true, he wasn’t different. I don’t know what I was thinking telling him how I felt that last night we were together,” I whined, still kicking myself.
Paige responded, trying to stop me from beating myself up, but I didn’t hear a word of it because Chuck suddenly appeared in my office doorway.
“Hey, one sec,” I pulled the receiver away from my mouth. “This is a personal call, Chuck. I’ll be out to start prepping for the meeting in just a minute.”
But, to my surprise, Chuck walked right into my office and closed the door behind him. He sat in the seat across from me and crossed his legs with a smug smile.
“What are you doing? I told you I’d be out in a minute,” I barked.
“I heard everything, Kate.”
“What!?” I pulled the phone back to my face. “Paige. I gotta call you back.”
I quickly hung up and looked back to him with panic setting in. “What do you mean you heard everything?”
“I mean I heard everything. I heard you on the phone with your friend explaining how you lied about being engaged to Ben. That you actually barely knew him when you told Greg that. That Olivia isn’t even his kid.” He laughed to himself. “Oh boy. This is gonna be good. I can’t wait to see the look on his face when I tell him all of this. There’s no way he’ll promote someone who would do something so crazy … lying to all of us like that. I knew this whole thing was suspicious from the get go! I knew it!”
“Chuck, come on. Everything with Ben is over. You know it’s not fair that Greg wasn’t going to give me a chance just because I’m not married with kids. All this did was convince him to consider my work just the same as he would yours,” I defended.
“I don’t care about fair,” he scoffed. “I care about getting a raise and the corner office. And if you hadn’t conned all of us into believing in your little insta-family … I would be pitching to the clients today. Not you.”
“But my idea is better,” I said sternly. “And we both know it. It’s not even about Greg’s opinion. My pitch is the best strategy for the client and their products. Your pitch is a miss. Their new line will tank with that marketing plan. It’s generic and overdone.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” he grinned. “I’m going to let you walk in there for your pitch. I’m just going to make sure Nesters and Greg know what kind of person they’re dealing with before you have a chance to try and sell them on anything. Don’t you think they have a right to know they’re dealing with a master manipulator before they sign on to work with you?”
“Chuck, please …” I pleaded hopelessly one last time, but he was already making his way out the door.
Shit. What was I supposed to do now? I was officially fed up with my own big mouth. I was the one who blurted out to Greg that I had a fiancé. I blurted out to Ben that I loved him. And now running that same big mouth to Paige was going to be responsible for ruining everything! I collapsed back into my chair, thinking I’d be better off just slapping a big piece of tape over my mouth for the rest of my life.
I checked the time on my phone. The clients would be arriving soon, and Chuck would wait for the perfect moment to tell them everything...exposing me, humiliating me, and ruining my career.
I decided to text the only person who truly understood what a disappointment this was. I was so close to pulling it all off, and now it was about to be ripped out from under me. Ben may have never wanted to hear from me again, but he had worked hard to help convince them. I thought he had a right to