Page 22 of Fake it For Good
“Like?”
“Your name is Cane,” I said.
“Yes.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Thirty-six,” he said. “You?”
“Thirty-two.”
He nodded as he chewed. “Siblings?”
“None. You?”
“Nope,” he answered. “Just me. My parents are gone. Is your family in the city?”
I didn’t even flinch when he asked the question. “No. I have no family to speak of.”
“I guess we have that in common,” he said with a soft smile. “You know what I do for a living. Is this, uh, is this your job?”
“No, but if this works out, it might be,” I said, laughing. “I work for a nonprofit. It’s very small and the overhead is next to nothing. My salary is not much. I clean office buildings on the side to make ends meet.”
He looked surprised. “Oh. How did you hear about the agency?”
“My friend,” I said with a shake of my head. “I was looking for a job to make some extra money for the holidays. She told me about Faux’s. I thought she was crazy, but I found myself sitting in a chair and signing up.”
“Me too,” he said. “My friend Denton was supposed to be looking for a Mrs. Claus. The next thing I know, I’m signing up for a fake girlfriend.”
“Who has already been promoted to fake fiancée,” I teased.
“I move fast,” he joked. “What else? I know where you work and how old you are. What else is pertinent to selling this story?”
I frowned at him. “Didn’t you tell me you had been married before?”
“Yes,” he said, and the muscle on the side of his face twitched. “I was.”
“You knew more about your wife than that, didn’t you?”
“I’m not sure I did,” he replied.
I was sensing bad blood. I didn’t want to make the guy feel bad and decided to drop the subject. I didn’t need to know him that well. Marriages ended all the time. It was none of my business. I decided to switch things up. “Pets?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you have any pets?” I asked. “Dog, cat, fish?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m not home enough to try and take care of another living creature. I don’t even have houseplants.”
“I see,” I said. “Married to the job. That should make it easy to explain why we haven’t walked down the aisle. I’ll say you’re focused on work and I’m not worried. We have all the time in the world.”
“Good plan,” he said. “What about you? Any pets?”
I snorted. “I live in a box.” The man looked like he was going to choke. I realized he took me literally. “Not an actual box, but a very small apartment. There’s barely enough room for me. But I do have a couple of plants.”
“There, now we know each other,” he said with a small laugh.
This wasn’t going to be so bad after all. My first impression of him hadn’t been great, but he was actually kind of funny. And he was definitely easy on the eyes. This job might not be the worst thing to happen to me.
