Page 38 of The Temporary Fiancée
“Of course,” I tell her. Olivia nods, though I can tell it’s a little reluctant.
“Great.” Marcia closes her binder with a snap, then tucks it under her arm as she stands. “We’ll put the announcement out by the end of the week.”
Under the table, Olivia grabs me by the arm. Her grip is tight enough to cut off my circulation, but I don’t react to it—not in front of the PR team. Instead, I just nod at Marcia. “That sounds fine. If all of you don’t mind, could the two of us have the room?”
The PR team seems confused at that, milling around the edge of the table.
“We have to discuss something upon my father’s instructions,” I add, trying to clear them all out. Mentioning Lionel seems to do the trick. Nobody wants to be onhisbad side, even if they don’t have much respect for me.
Once the team is gone, I turn in my chair to face Olivia. Without seven pairs of eyes scrutinizing her, Olivia has dropped the confident mask she wore throughout the meeting. Now, she looks like she’s in full panic mode.
“Reed,” she says, her voice high. “Did she just say ‘by the end of the week?’”
I nod apologetically. “We gotta get this show on the road.”
Olivia swallows. I can practically hear her mind churning—she looks like she’s internally freaking out all over again. “That’s a big step, isn’t it? There’s… there’s no going back from there.”
I take her hands in mine, rubbing my thumb across her knuckles instinctively. “It’s gonna be okay,” I tell her soothingly.“I promise. I know it’s scary, to make this whole thing ‘real’… but listen… it’ll be easy. And I’ll be right there with you, the whole time.”
She bites her lip, inhaling through her nose as if to calm herself, and nods. “Yeah.”
I give her hands a gentle squeeze. “We’ve got this. Maybe it’ll even be fun.”
“Yeah.” She flashes me a grateful look, and for a moment, I feel a rush of protectiveness. This is my mess, and I pulled Olivia into the thick of it. I owe it to her to make sure everything turns out okay.
I remember the clause she added to our personal contract, the one about her reputation. That must be the thing she’s most afraid of—that her reputation is on the line. Silently, I turn that clause over in my head.
For better or worse, we’re a team now. My failures are her failures, and vice versa. If we get through this with our respective images intact, it’ll be because we did it all together.
But if everything falls apart… well. We’ll be together for that, too, bound by our promises to each other and by the ink of the contracts we both signed.
Chapter 11
Olivia
It’s strangelyeasy to coexist in the penthouse with Reed.
I’m not sure what I expected. That his place would be a mess, probably. That he would trash it every night and wait for maids to crawl out of the woodwork and clean up after him the next day. That he would treat me like staff, look past me like I was lower than him.
But… he doesn’t. His apartment is always immaculate, and watching him move through it is humanizing. It takes him from the party animal on the tabloid covers to a man who loads his dishwasher, tends houseplants by the windows, and sometimes prepares me sandwiches for lunch, which I never expected.
And, most importantly, he’s kind to me.
It made me laugh to find his waiting stack of T-shirts and its accompanying note, but it didn’t stop me from wearing them. Now that he’s pointed it out, it feels weirdly disrespectful to wear an ex’s shirt in his house, even if this is all just for show.
At first, I was surprised that he noticed it at all. Over the past few days, though, I’ve realized that Reed is an observant person.
He noticed that I always wear fuzzy socks, and the day after the PR meeting, I found a bundle of new ones lying on mybed, arranged to look like a bouquet of flowers. The gesture was adorable, sweeter than anything a man has ever done for me.
When I found him later in the living room and asked him why he’d done it, he told me that he was practicing.
Practicing.To play the perfect fiancé.
“From where I’m starting, that’ll take a pretty hefty amount of practice, wouldn’t you say?” He gave me a crooked smile, and I laughed in lukewarm agreement.
But after how Reed handled the PR meeting, I’m not so sure it’ll be a huge stretch. Not for him. He has a surprisingly soft side, for a man who’s infamous as a player and a heartbreaker.
With the PR meeting over,I thought I’d seen the last of Eastwood Hotels and its charming executives, but unfortunately, this particular aspect of the charade is a never-ending torment.
