BS Boyfriend: A Standalone Fake Fiancée Romance Read online

  “Was a practical joker bordering on psychopath,” Warren continues. “Laxatives in the morning coffee. Stink bombs in the office. He once spent an entire week pretending he was going to abandon his whole career as an investor in order to become a jazz singer. Ha! He even had recordings and posters made up for his ruse.”

  Hazel says, “That actually reminds me of when I was working my first year at the hos—”

  She stops herself, and the suddenness, as well as the sudden shock in her voice draws more attention than what she actually said. The whole table is staring at her now in confusion.

  I smile as if I didn’t notice anything and place a gentle hand around the back of her chair again. “What’s that, honey?” I say as nonchalantly as I can. “When you were working at the hospital? When you were working as a nurse a few years ago?”

  “You worked as a nurse? I thought you were starting a health business?” Sam asks interestedly, the whole table focused on her now.

  “I do—I mean, I did, work as a nurse. That’s how I got into the whole healthcare arena, of course.”

  “I see…” Sam says.

  “And anyway…I was…” Hazel continues, then sighs and laughs, a little less naturally now as she shakes her head, hiding behind her hair a little. “Oh, I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to say now.”

  “How’s your business doing?” Gabrielle asks as she breaks a breadstick.

  “Great,” Hazel responds. “It’s doing really well.”

  There are a few more frowns around the table, and Eddy says what they’re thinking.

  “Nate told us you were having some problems getting it off the ground.”

  Hazel looks at me and is about to talk but I decide she’s bearing too much of the burden as it is.

  “Well, you know,” I say, forcing a smile and pulling her toward me affectionately, “she’s always the optimist. And there isn’t a business in the world I can’t find a problem with.”

  The frowns fade a little, and I feel like the worst has passed, but I’m grateful when the waiters arrive to ask if we’re finished, ready for dessert.

  The final course passes without any more hiccups. Mainly because everyone is fatigued from spending the whole day in sessions and saunas, and also because by this time the alcohol has mostly been drunk. I almost find myself in a good mood. The last stretch. I pulled it off. We pulled it off. She did.

  When Keith and Selena announce they’re done for the night, and Eddy quickly jumps in to say he’s setting off too, it feels like the finish line. The argument over who’s going to pick up the bill is complicated but formal (Sam winning), and as several of the others push back their chairs I say, “We’d better get to bed ourselves. I’m beat. What do you think, honey?”

  Hazel nods, her hair bouncing. “Good idea. It’s been lovely to meet you all.”

  We’re on our feet and ready to end this whole elaborate con when Warren decides to add the kicker.

  “Oh, before any of you leave,” he adds casually, still chewing his sorbet desert, “I forgot to mention: I’ve rescheduled my flight back. They brought the yacht in from the Bahamas in record time, so I thought I’d stay an extra day. Get a little seafaring in, perhaps a spot of fishing. I expect you’ll all be interested in joining me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Of course.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  Warren turns to me and Hazel once the others have confirmed their enthusiasm. “Hazel? Any chance you’d honor me and perhaps drag your workaholic husband-to-be along?”

  “Sure!” Hazel says brightly. “Sounds fantastic.”

  I want to look at her incredulously, to wear my shock on my face. I want to ask why the hell she just agreed to do this whole thing all over again when we were so close to making it. But to do so would be to reveal too much, to ruin it all, so I just put my hand on the small of her back and gently urge her away from the table.

  5

  Hazel

  Nate’s holding my hand as he leads me out of the restaurant and through the hotel lobby, and for the first time on my vacation I feel pretty great.

  I came here to escape my regular life after all, and it turns out pretending to live a completely different one is the best way to do that. I feel full of expensive food and alcohol. Full of compliments and optimism and the buzz of social success.

  He pauses in the lobby to turn to me and say, “You did great.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No,” he says, shaking his head a little. “Not great. That was phenomenal. I thought there was a real chance I’d have to come out with the truth tonight. I thought the best I could hope for would be a weird evening that I could explain away later. But they didn’t just buy it—they liked you. Warren liked you. And that’s going to reflect on me when it comes time to decide whether to offer me the job. I’m…I’m so grateful, Hazel.”

  I can’t stop myself from blushing, even with my face already warm and flushed from all the drinking and laughter. It’s not even the words, more the way he looks at me with genuine admiration, appreciation, and perhaps even a little fascination.

  Suddenly he looks away, back toward where we came from, smiles and nods. I turn to see Gabrielle and Mickey there, leaving the restaurant themselves. They wave back and before they come near, Nate puts his hand on my lower back and steers me away casually.

  “Come on, I’ll walk you to your room,” he says.

  Heading toward the bank of elevators—the hotel being big enough it’ll take a few more minutes before we reach my room—I say, “You know, it was actually kind of fun.”

  Nate lets out a gentle, low laugh. “Yeah. It was. Best time I’ve had in a long time.”

  I look at him while we walk, our pace slow, neither of us in a rush. Perhaps Nate is as reluctant to call it a night as I am. A part of me immediately wonders, wants to ask, if he means that. If he’s including the time he spent with his real fiancée—ex-fiancée. Something about the way he said it made me think it was, and as we stop pretending, it starts to feel a little too real to get away with such a personal question.

  In the elevator I feel like sparks are skittering across my skin. Perhaps the silence has gone on for too long. And even though we’ve spent the entire evening touching each other with pretend affection, the fact that we’re standing so close, not touching, feels even more genuinely intimate.

  The elevator doors ding open on my floor and we step through, but Nate pauses and turns to me before heading on.

  “Listen,” he says, as if suddenly remembering something. “Don’t worry about agreeing to the fishing trip tomorrow. I get it. Warren wouldn’t have taken no for an answer, and you were in an agreeable mood. I’ll just tell them you aren’t up for it. That you have a migraine or something. In fact, I’ll probably bail on them myself.”

  “Oh…okay,” I say, as we continue on the short distance to my door.

  Nate stands aside while I use my key card and push it open, and says, “I know you’ve already done enough, but just be a little wary of that. Be careful not to bump into anyone in the morning.”

  “Yeah. Of course. It’s fine,” I say, stepping into my room, then turning back to face him. I laugh gently. “I’ll probably sleep until long after noon anyway.”

  Nate nods to express his trust and faith in me. And there are a few more seconds of agonizing silence between us.

  I don’t allow myself to even consider inviting him in. I don’t even address the fact that I’m so buzzing with good feelings I’d love to continue, to spend more time with him, to make this night last a little longer. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Nate in the single day that I’ve known him, it’s that he doesn’t give in—least of all to himself. Not so much oblivious to the signals as immune to them.

  I smile, he looks at me with that admiration in his eyes again. This time the silence is only a little uncomfortable, maybe excitingly so, though I know it’s probably just my imagination.


  “Thanks again, Hazel. I really mean it,” he says, patting his hand to his muscular chest. “I owe you one. I owe you everything.”

  He pauses, reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, then draws a card from it. He hands it over and I take it without looking away from his face.

  “So, um. That’s my card. My number’s on it. Since this is the last time I’ll see you… If you’re ever in Chicago, or if you ever do figure out your price, give me a call.”

  I wave the card and nod. “Okay. I’ll text you my number tomorrow so you have mine too. Just in case you ever need me to put on a performance again.”

  He smiles and nods. “I doubt it,” he says. “I think tonight…you…is going to push it over the line for me.”

  “Good. I’m glad. I hope so,” I say, masking my disappointment at his certainty we won’t do this again.

  I try to think of a way to suggest I go on that boating trip with him tomorrow without sounding desperate, or like I’m doing it for any other reason than to help him, but in this quiet, conclusive moment, it feels like the doorframe is a gigantic distance between us, and I can’t find the right words.

  “Well Hazel,” he says, offering his hand, “take care of yourself, friend.”

  I take his hand and shake it, smiling and nodding a little too happily. Burying my disappointment that this is what it all comes down to. An evening of fake intimacy and affection that was so easy to slip into, of calling each other “honey” and co-writing on the fly an invented whirlwind romantic past—it ends with coming back to reality. Back to the truth. That once again, I’m in the role of the “good friend” and nothing more.

  I shake his hand and feel like a fool for hoping it could be anything else.

  “You too, Nate,” I say, for the first time today struggling to fake it. “All the best.”

  I release his hand and step back quickly, my hand on the door, ready to close it. Unwilling to make these final moments last any longer, the strain of my forced smile feeling like a burden now. He steps back, gives me one more nod, then turns and walks away.

  After I shut the door I face my empty room, sighing and dropping my smile. Immediately biting my thumbnail to get rid of some of the nervous energy inside of me. That prior, satisfied, sparkling sensation across my skin now a fidgety irritation I want to expend.

  I take a few steps into the room, which is so quiet and sparse that I can’t help all the memories and thoughts rushing in now. I think about telling Mia, Maeve, and Toby what happened to me here. How would I even word it? How would I even describe Nate? I’ve dated a lot of guys, and learned a lot about them, but none quite like Nate.

  The sadness I felt shaking his hand and looking at him for the last time moves aside now, a giddy afterglow when I think about the evening in its place. I laugh a little and move to the bed, letting myself fall back onto it, arms above my head. I let the odd cocktail of emotions and memories flow through me, in no rush to even get back up to take my heels off.

  Until a knock at the door snaps my body upright. I sit teetering at the edge of the bed for a moment, staring at the door, then checking the time. It’s a little late for hotel staff…

  I stand up and hurry to the door, using what few seconds it takes me to pull down the hem of my tight dress.

  I hesitate a second before opening it, then look through the peephole—

  It’s him standing out there. Nate.

  My body acts before a thought is even formed, as if it needs him too much to think about this. I reach for the door handle and open the door slowly.

  A million possibilities sprint through my mind—that something’s wrong, that we’ve been found out, that I made some stupid mistake during dinner that has wrecked his chances—but they’re dismissed just as quickly by the unmistakable desire in his face. His jaw clenched and his eyes like diamonds drilling into me.

  I open my mouth to say something but instead just gaze up, lips parted, eyes widened, the moment feeling electrifyingly dangerous and illicit. A few seconds where I know what’s about to happen, but I’m still not sure, afraid that it won’t, or perhaps that it will, and trying to figure out what I can do to make it happen, but too stunned to act on it.

  And then his hand reaches around my neck and his perfect face crashes into me. I catch his lips with my open mouth, tongue already lashing. A whole day of trying to pretend he’s not as hot as he is, that I don’t want him as much as I do, but in this moment I can let myself feel it, and it comes in a giant rush of desperate physical yearning.

  His kiss is ferocious and wild. The kiss of a man who’s all appetite. A lust that’s been burning inside him for so long that it threatens to burn everything now that it’s unleashed.

  Even as he bears down on me like some fierce animal—tongue in my throat, tight grip on my neck, engulfed in his giant, muscular frame—it’s so good that I feel like I’m floating. Weightless even on these heels, softening even in this tight dress. Only realizing that he’s lifted me off my feet when he smashes my things off the low dresser to set me down, pulling my thighs apart, around his hips, stretching my dress until it feels like it could burst. Until I feel like I’m going to burst.

  Ass on the dresser, shoulders pressed against the wall, feet off the ground and my legs around him, constrained by the dress but pushed apart by his girder-firm body, I feel like I could slip and fall at any second. Unable to steady myself around a center of gravity, nothing to cling to but him.

  He’s just rough enough with me, one hand moving up and down my thigh, the other pulling and pressing on my ass, holding me in this off-balanced position, making me entirely dependent on him. And his mouth won’t relinquish mine, his tongue exploring, lips sucking and insistent, as if he’s grabbing and reaching inside of me to get at the swelling, glorious glow I felt the second he shoved me here.

  I grasp clumsily and frantically at him, scratching at his back, pulling at his shirt, feeling the hard rippling of his muscles as he works me over. I want to press my swelling breasts against him, widen my thighs and fix his rigid body between them, but my dress is like a kind of bondage now, constraining me from doing the things I want to do, giving me the delicious agony of being impossibly close to what I want.

  Sparks inside of me catch alight. Cold fire suddenly making me hyperaware of every pore in my skin. I almost bite his tongue, almost slide weakly from the dresser. It’s only after the first shiver of liquid sweetness passes that I realize it was his fingers, searching between my thighs, pulling my panties aside to touch softly at my clit that triggered that sudden quake.

  He breaks his lips from mine, leaving me open-mouthed and gasping, then lets his brow touch my sweaty forehead.

  “Fuck…” he growls with frustration. I jump when he thumps a fist on the dresser.

  “What? Don’t stop,” I respond, tenderly trailing fingers from his hair down across his cheekbones.

  “I don’t have a…”

  His hot, angry breath on my lips, his hands still firm but constrained by his sudden awareness of practical reality. I reach down to his pants and feel his thick hardness there, searching out its shape and gripping it in my fingers. God, I want him. Now.

  His breathing quickens, jaw clenched so it comes heavily through his nose. I tighten my grip, as if unwilling to let him go, refusing to let him torture me by bringing me here and leaving me stranded with no way back, already turning myself on with all the other things we could do—and then I remember.

  “Wait. I might have one,” I say, sliding off the dresser to hurry on my heels over to the bedside table.

  Feeling like I’ve got seconds to defuse a bomb, I kneel in front of a drawer and start rummaging around the things I dumped there when I arrived. Phone charger and vitamins, tickets and pens. Then I find them. A couple of condoms I’d thrown in my luggage thoughtlessly, without any real intent or anticipation.

  As soon as I have one in my hand I feel his presence behind me. He puts one hand on my waist, freezing me in position
, while the other reaches around and plucks the condom from my fingers. Then, with the ease of his strength, he moves me to the side, gentle and firm, before splaying me across the bed on my front. Knees on the soft carpet, my elbows on the low mattress. Rough hands massaging my body into position, so that my ass is sticking out to where he kneels behind me.

  I feel an aching sense of anticipation, staring at the sheets in front of me, not knowing what he’s doing. My flesh tender and quivering, my breath stuttering and short. Suddenly the room feels quiet, the air shimmering and still. The sound of him tearing the packet open like a crack of thunder, unzipping his pants like the hiss of an animal about to strike.

  His hands on my body again cause me to twitch with the tension that not being able to see him is building up in me. My dress tighter as my body swells with heat. Hard nipples tingling against the fabric, ass stretching it almost to the breaking point the way he’s got me bent over. And yet even as he holds me here I can’t stop swaying a little, winding against the bedsheets, facedown and faceup as I spend each moment agonizing for his touch. So that when he finally lifts the hem of my dress over my ass and up to my waist, it feels like some great release, and I let out a low moan, arching my back a little harder.

  Strong fingers tease my panties down to my knees, returning to tease my soaked pussy with their rough knuckles. Even though I can’t see him, I’m so sensitive to his touch now that I can feel his increasing desire. In the way his hands move more quickly, more roughly. Sculpting me delicately then grabbing me as if to tear me apart.

  I feel his teeth on my ass and moan again, arms splaying forward, face burying into the sheets. He smacks my ass, making me raw and sensitive, only to bring his lips there to kiss and lick tenderly. Then teeth again, biting as if manic, followed by his soft searching of my pussy. The sweetest torture, keeping me perfectly between the presence of pain and the otherworldliness of pleasure.

  I’m clasping the sheets now, biting them to stifle my groans, pressing my ass back into his touch, into his mouth.