My (Mostly) Fake Wedding - Penelope Bloom Page 0,38

you a little more.”

“It was calculated. I can’t have you falling for me all at once. I like watching you squirm—thinking you’re going to be able to fight it. It’s cute.”

“Bastard.”

He laughed. “I won’t argue that one.”

22

Chris

Belle asked if Damon and I could meet at Rose Athletic a few days after the tux fitting. Unfortunately, she’d done a surprisingly good job of avoiding me in the meantime. I’d of course tried a barrage of suggestive texts and even showed up at her apartment one time. It had all proved fruitless.

The truth was, I knew I was only putting a thin veil of humor and a carefree attitude over what was really going on. I wanted Belle. I didn’t just want one more fling or one more flirtatious encounter. Against all my better judgment, I wanted more. I wanted to know I’d get to see her every day, to know she was exclusively mine, to know that Lance bastard and his dumb turtlenecks he wore in half his posts on social media wasn’t going to creep into her life.

I wanted Belle, plain and simple. And the closer the wedding got, the more I started to dread the expiration date on our little arrangement. Because I might be able to get her to smile and play along when I flirted and I might even be able to get her to let her walls down and fuck me, but I didn’t have her. There was still something she was holding back, and I wanted that, too.

I was surprised when I felt like my breath caught just to see her walk into Damon’s office. She had her hair pulled back in a braid that fell over her shoulder. She was dressed in an ivory colored, silky top that let me see the outline of her bra and the little pad of soft flesh bulging above her bra line. Yes, I was desperate enough to study her like Sherlock fucking Holmes for any hint of sexuality. She’d gotten into my brain like a large-breasted, fine-assed virus.

Belle had a way of looking at me, then looking away like she’d been caught doing something naughty. Maybe it was more innocent than I let myself believe, but it always made my dick hard. She got this ashamed look in her eyes like she couldn’t even see me without imagining the things we’d done together, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

“Thanks for coming,” Belle said. She sat as far away from Damon and I at the conference table as she could, then set down a thick stack of papers and folders. “I wanted to get your approval for some funding to take a trip to Europe and explore a few venues I had in mind for the wedding.”

“You’re still set on doing Europe?” Damon asked.

“It’s the trendy thing. Almost all the big celebrity weddings are abroad right now, and if you don’t want to raise the wrong kind of eyebrows, we should seriously consider having Chris’ wedding overseas, too.”

“Our wedding,” I corrected.

Belle shot me a look of warning, then started shuffling through her papers again. “I had a few places in mind, but if you don’t want to dig through the list, I also have a figure for the cost of travel and lodging. It’s everything combined and—”

Damon interrupted. “Cost isn’t an issue,” Damon said with a wave of his hand. “I just want to make sure this sells to the media. We’ve already got quite a bit of worry from Chris’ sponsors after the change from Mindy to you. I don’t know if you’ve seen, but they’ve made the connection to your mishap in Texas, and they’re having a blast trying to turn this into some sort of conspiracy. It’s not exactly painting Chris in the calm, settled down light we were going for.”

“What are you suggesting?” Belle asked.

“That you two need to do some work selling the fact that you’re madly in love to the public. Pretending you were trying to keep things private and intimate was fine before the talks of a scandal started. Now I think it’s going to take more.”

“Then double whatever that figure is she gave you for the trip,” I said. “I’ll go with her to scout out the venues. My wifey and I can get some quality time in together and pose for a few pictures. Maybe some poolside shots. A staged, but believable clandestine shot of me rubbing oil on her bare back from our beachside balcony? Oh, wait. What about