Marrying the Billionaire - Macie St. James Page 0,18

right back.”

This was his chance to get more food. He gave it a millisecond, then, when Charlie didn’t give him a pleading look, rushed off to the buffet table. It wasn’t really a full buffet. It was a dessert and finger food buffet. He wasn’t sure what the technical term for that would be. All he knew was that it was getting so late, nobody was really lining up for food anymore, which left it wide open for him to stack his plate with everything he’d wanted to try earlier.

“Chocolate. You can’t beat that.”

The voice of a woman to his left pulled Nicholas’s attention from a tower of some sort of fudge concoction. It looked messy. The woman was eyeing him, not the food. The way she looked at him was similar to the way he’d looked at the Swedish meatballs he’d just plopped on his plate.

“I’m Jamie Quinn.” She held out her hand, giving him a big smile that emphasized the dimples on either side of her mouth.

To shake her hand, Nicholas had to shift his plate to his left hand, which annoyed him. But he needed to be friendly. “Nicholas Shaw. I’m here with Charlie McLaughlin.”

The woman’s smile faltered slightly as she shook his hand. She tilted her head slightly, dropped her hand to her side, and turned to face the food again. “Well.”

Nicholas frowned. He had no idea what that meant. The head tilt was unreadable, too. Did she recognize the name or was she trying to place Charlie McLaughlin?

“So you and Charlie…?”

The question left it for him to fill in the blank. They could be married, dating, just friends, pretending to be married… What it didn’t do, though, was tell him whether she even knew who Charlie was.

“Engaged,” he said without looking away from the food he was loading onto the small plate. He knew this conversation would be important to Charlie, but he hadn’t eaten since lunch, and that had just been a quick sandwich he’d choked down between video calls.

“Oh, wow. Congratulations. That’s awesome! I didn’t know Charlie was engaged.”

Nicholas turned and smiled at her. “She’s right over there if you’d like to congratulate her in person.”

“I’ll do just that. Let me grab one of these pieces of fudge. They look delicious.”

She reached around him and put her body fully against him, looking up at him as she did so. Nicholas flashed her an awkward smile and moved forward, grabbing an egg roll he didn’t even want as an excuse to put some distance between the two of them.

As she walked away, she gave him a flirtatious wave. “See you over there.”

The whole thing put Nicholas in an awkward position. He didn’t want to reject one of Charlie’s classmates and give them a reason to ostracize Charlie. But flirting back would be even more disastrous. Never mind the fact that he had no desire to flirt with anyone but Charlie at this point…

Grabbing a fork and napkin, he headed back toward Charlie, shoving a meatball into his mouth. Halfway there, he realized he was supposed to be putting on the successful billionaire act. No matter how much money he had, no matter how much he’d achieved with his business or his investments—all that mattered this weekend was how it looked to her classmates. She could have hired an actor and probably gotten better results.

The good news was Charlie was surrounded by people when he approached. There was the guy who had been standing there when Nicholas walked away—Bobby Johnson, Nicholas finally recalled. Then there was the flirtatious woman from the buffet. But there were four other women and two men standing there, as well, and Charlie was smiling and laughing.

“Nicholas! Come and meet Shellie.”

At Charlie’s invitation, Nicholas’s eyes widened slightly. A woman stood next to her, but that couldn’t be Charlie’s rival. She wasn’t even close to the glamorous, poised person he’d pictured. In fact, she shrank in comparison to Charlie.

Nicholas quickly swallowed the rest of the meatball, then dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. The last thing he needed right now was a big gob of food on the side of his mouth. He just hoped he hadn’t dropped anything on his suit.

“We met at the buffet line.” Jamie, who stood next to the woman Nicholas had decided couldn’t possibly be Shellie, beamed at Nicholas.

“Yes. Hi, again.” Nicholas nodded at Jamie, then looked at the woman, whose nametag did, indeed, read “Shellie.” “Nice to meet you.”

“Charlie was just telling us you’re getting