Bad Engagement (Billionaire's Club #10) - Elise Faber Page 0,1
off in a panic.
“. . . and Katie, love, he’s going to be at dinner this Friday so that you two can get to know each other better—”
Fucking hell.
Family dinner and the Christmas Extravaganza?
Please. God. No.
“Um, Mom—”
“Remember he’s got all his hair—”
“Actually, Mom. I’m kind of seeing—”
“And his stomach doesn’t hang over his belt—”
“That’s not—I don’t really care about that—”
“And he’s got the loveliest blue—”
“I’m engaged!” she screamed, cutting off her mother’s soliloquy of all things doctor, and successfully drawing the attention of random strangers on the sidewalk. Which was a hard thing to do in San Francisco—because it was San Francisco, and these streets had seen a lot of shit—but also could only further confirm that she’d screamed it like a complete and total lunatic.
Shrieking I’m engaged on street corners.
What every man wanted.
It was a wonder she was single.
“Katie?” her mom asked. “Did you say you’re engaged?”
No. No, she wasn’t. Not even close. She was on a break from anyone with a Y chromosome, mostly to save them from herself.
But also . . . there was joy in her mom’s tone.
Absolute joy that she had never heard directed at her. She’d heard it leveled toward her siblings. To her brother, when he’d announced he was proposing to Steph, who was really fucking cool and way too good for her brother—something he’d be the first to admit . . . because he was really fucking cool. She’d heard it expounded lavishly again at his wedding this last summer (during which Kate had spent her time fending off the worst setup of all setups, The Can’t Take No For An Answer Setup). And obviously, it had rung with crystal clarity in her ears when her sister had announced she was pregnant, and again after her adorable niece had been born.
But her mom had never given it to Kate.
Which was probably the reason she let the crazy keep rolling along instead of stopping the joy in its tracks with the truth.
Why instead of saying, “No, Mom. You heard wrong,” she said, “Yes, I am, and you’ll get to meet him Friday at dinner.”
Horror flowed through her as intensely as her mother’s excitement poured through the airwaves, expressing her joy at meeting him, her joy at Kate having finally found a slice of her own happy.
“What’s his name, honey?”
Oh fuck.
“What’s that?” Kate asked, panic swarming to overtake horror. “You’re breaking up.”
Oh shit. Oh shit. She hadn’t thought this through. She needed—
“I asked his name—”
“Hello?” More panic. More horror. More pretending the call was cutting out because she had to end this conversation now. Hell, she should have never picked up the call in the first place. “Mom? Hello?”
“Katie!”
Shit. Shit. Shit. “I can’t hear you,” she said. “If you can hear me, I’ll call you later.” She hung up.
Call her later.
Ha.
More like never.
As in, she’d never call her family again. As in, she was moving to a deserted island and changing her name and living off the grid in a tent with the most technically advanced thing being one of those compostable toilets.
Fuck.
She hated camping.
Which meant . . . she’d be there at the family dinner.
Because despite all of the setups and the pity and the fact that they’d found their happy, she loved her family. So. Damned. Much. And she also loved that stupid fucking Christmas party, even when she was lonely.
“Ugh.” Kate groaned, feet sliding to a stop on that dirty San Franciscan sidewalk.
She had a choice here.
She also knew she wasn’t going to make the right one.
Because, instead of calling her mother back and telling her that she wasn’t engaged, Kate opened Instagram, tapped on the profile of a man she’d been following for a while now, who’d followed her back and commented on a few of her posts, and . . . sent a message.
Later, she’d want to pretend she’d been drinking.
But in that moment, the only thing she was consumed with was desperation.
And lust. She couldn’t deny lust was also her downfall.
Because surprisingly, shockingly, insanely the man from social media, the one whose abs had made her fall just a little in love with him, who had an actual man bun, but not one of those gross, greasy ones that looked like octopus tentacles—a nice one, sleek and shiny and way better than any bun she could wrestle her own locks into. But anyway, that handsome stranger . . .
He said yes.
And suddenly, Kate had a fiancé.
Two
Kate
“What am I doing?” she asked herself two days later. “Oh my God,