Pretend For Me Read online

  Pretend For Me

  River Laurent

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Coming soon…

  Also by River Laurent

  Come Say Hello!

  Pretend For Me

  Copyright © 2019 by River Laurent

  The right of River Laurent to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the copyright, designs and patent act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  978-1-911608-32-5

  Acknowledgments

  Thank You

  Leanore Elliott

  &

  Brittany Urbaniak

  Chapter 1

  Willow

  “The most amazing thing happened to me today,” Loraine declared as she burst through the front door of our tiny apartment.

  I lowered the book I was reading. “What?”

  “You WILL never believe what I’ve got in my hand,” she shouted, dancing the rumba, and waving a black card in her hand. Her eyes were shining like two very green buttons.

  I looked at her expectantly. Unlike me, Lorraine was an extremely dramatic person. She had what one would call a big personality. She was always the live wire at any party. The one that hit the dance floor first and the last to leave it. She was also my best friend and the only person in the world I trusted.

  I was born a heroin baby, no father, no mother, and suffering withdrawal symptoms. It was in my records that a nurse called Miriam sat for hours in front of my incubator stroking me through the holes in the incubator. I still wonder about her because after her, I knew no love throughout my childhood. Just foster families, five to be exact, who took care of me in exchange for money. I guess I have to count myself lucky since I was never beaten or sexually abused. I was just ignored.

  I couldn’t blame them. I was a mousy, bespectacled, quiet child.

  My life had been dull and loveless and the only pleasure I found was from reading. At first, fairy tales and books about child detectives, then when I was thirteen, I read my first romance book. That was it. I was hooked. Within those pages, I slipped into another wonderful world where gorgeous Alpha men saw beauty in ordinary gray girls like me, and fell in love with them. I spent hours and hours absorbed in that delightful fantasy world.

  Lorraine had stopped dancing, so I put my book on my lap and gave her my full attention. “What is it?” I asked mildly.

  “What is it?” she demanded. “That’s your reaction to me saying the most amazing thing has happened to me?”

  I hid a smile at her annoyance. “All right. Tell me what is this amazing thing that has happened to you.”

  She rushed to the sofa and held the card in front of me.

  I took it and glanced at it. The card was thick and black the writing was embossed in gold. It seemed to be an invitation to a party, and I honestly could not for the life of me imagine how it could be classed as amazing.

  “Well?” she prompted.

  I looked up at her and shrugged. “What is it? It just looks like an invitation to a party to me.”

  “Just an invitation to a party?” she screeched. “Have you never heard of the Ambonnay Gala?”

  I shook my head. “No. Should I have?”

  She sank down next to me. “Guuuurl, it is time you got your cute little button nose out of those romance books of yours and live a little. The Ambonnay Gala is just the most important party in the world. I mean, people kill to go to these events.”

  I made a disbelieving face.

  “I’m serious. This party is where the crème de la crème of society go. It is packed with the 0.1 percent. Last year, Kim Kardashian tried to go. She hinted about it on Twitter, but in the end she couldn’t get an invite, so she had to pretend she didn’t want to go because she was too busy bickering with her mother, one of her sisters, husband, or kids.”

  I gave the card back to her. “Right. So how did you get your hot paws on this then?”

  “That is the second most amazing part of my story. It was purely by chance. It could so easily have gone to someone else.”

  I smiled and sat back in anticipation of a good story.

  She gave me a grin and put the card on the table. “Bella was sick today, so Matthew asked me to take over her section. At about eight, a couple came in. The woman was one of those Hollywood actress types. She was wearing a divine red dress and her face was so done up you couldn’t tell if she was in her late twenties or seventies. The guy though, was very handsome and young, maybe in his early twenties. I got the impression he was subservient to her, like he was her bodyguard or masseur. Even so, they made a good-looking couple so I showed them to table nine.”

  I nodded. That’s what I would have done too, if I had been working in the restaurant tonight. Table nine was where we put the beautiful people because it was right in the middle and everybody got to see them. It made the restaurant look glamorous.

  “The whole time they kept holding hands and looking deep into each other’s eyes. They were so madly in love the woman hardly touched her meal. Then over dessert, the man gets on his knees in front of the whole restaurant and proposes to her.”

  My eyebrows rose in surprise. All the time I’d been working in that restaurant nothing like this had ever happened.

  “She was so happy she cried. Well, she didn’t really cry, but she dabbed away some imaginary tears from her perfectly made-up eyes. She paid the bill, and when I brought her receipt back, she gave me this invitation. She said, she was leaving her husband so she no longer needed it. I mean, can you believe it? I was just at the right place at the right time.”

  I frowned. “So you’re going to go to this party?”

  “We are,” she stated with a grin.

  Chapter 2

  Willow

  “No, no, no,” I said shaking my head vigorously. “Count me out.”

  “Oh, come on, Willow, it’s going to be so fun!”

  "Yeah, I really don’t think that it’s my kind of thing.”

  "What are the chances that we would get an invite to something like this?” She pointed out eagerly. "I mean, of all the people in the world she could have given that invite to, she gave it to me. That means we have to go, doesn’t it? It’s fate! It’s kismet! It’s a chance to buy fancy dresses and drink champagne for the evening!”

  The way she was selling it, I knew that I should just concede and accept her invitation to an adventure unlike anything I’d ever known before. Then for her, a rambunctious ball of energy that sparked to life every time she walked into a room… Hell, she would s
et the world on fire if she got the chance… while I stood on the nerdier end of the spectrum.

  “I’d be like a fish out of water in that kind of environment.”

  “Oh no, you wouldn’t. Just leave it to me. I’ll take care of everything. I’ll be your fairy godmother. I’ll make you look so beautiful you’ll be like Cinderella at the ball. It’ll be a chance to see how those kinds of people live.” She hugged one of the couch cushions while widening her eyes at me pleadingly.

  “Listen Loraine. I know you mean well and you think you’re doing me a favor by taking me to this party, but I really don’t want to go. Why don’t you take Susan or even Bella? They would love it,” I argued, although I got the feeling any argument on my part would be thoroughly steamrollered. When she got an idea into her head, it was impossible to shift it, and this one seemed like it had taken a very particular hold in her brain.

  “But I want you to go with me.”

  “I would be so awkward around all those celebrities and billionaires.”

  “No, you won’t. You’ll be with me. I promise I won’t let you out of my sight. Come on, it will be such a great experience. It’ll be something to tell our grandchildren.”

  I shook my head. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  She sat back and stared at me. “Remember that time when you came down with the female version of man flu?”

  “I had pneumonia,” I corrected dryly.

  She waved her hand carelessly to show she had no interest in petty details. “I covered five shifts for you, which means I didn’t have a break for two whole weeks. When I said I didn’t want you to pay me back, you said you would owe me one. Well, I’m calling in the favor now.

  I gazed into her serious eyes. She really wanted me to go with her. Thoughts about our lives together flashed into my brain. How hard we worked just to cover our bills. Both of us working every shift and Lorraine worked as a housecleaner in a swanky apartment two mornings a week. At least, I had my books to hide in. She had nothing. We were both orphans. This was Lorraine, my best friend. The person I cared about most in the whole world and I’d do everything in my power to make her happy. Going to a party where I would feel awkward and self-conscious all night would be nothing if it would make her happy.

  I smiled at her. “Of course, I‘ll go with you. We’ll be like two Cinderellas at the ball.”

  As if she had been stung in the butt, she leaped into the air with a scream. Pulling me up by my wrists and laughing madly, she dragged me along as she energetically did her happy dance. “I got a good feeling about this. I promise, you won’t regret saying yes,” she gasped.

  I probably would, but what the hell. If it made her happy, I was good with it.

  "Right. First thing we’re going to need are some gorgeous designer outfits," Loraine said, giddy with excitement.

  "Hang on, I’m not dropping big money on this night," I warned her. "I don’t care if it is how the other half lives. I’ve got rent to pay at the end of the month."

  "Oh, we’ll just make it look like we dropped a big pile of money," she assured me. "We won’t actually pay that much. We’ll have to buy new shoes, of course, but other than that, we won’t need to spend any money. I have a friend, who works at a salon not far from here, I’m sure she could squeeze us in for some updos, and you know the place where I clean.”

  I nodded. She cleans for a woman called Beverley, who lives on her own in a penthouse suite. The youngest daughter of a billionaire, she’s forever jetting off to parties all over the world.

  “Beverley’s gone on vacation,” Lorraine said. “But she once said if I really needed to borrow a dress for a special event I could look through her collection. Since you and I are more or less the same size…"

  And just like that, I was swept along on her crazy adventure. I knew I was getting wrapped up in something I didn’t necessarily want to be entangled in. I also knew I had no choice in the matter either way. Once Lorraine set her mind to something, she would not be swayed from it, no matter what. She could usually convince me that whatever she was up to was a good idea for me, too. Apart from her taste in men. That, she would never get me on side with.

  Though perhaps I didn’t have much room to talk when it came to dating, given that I had been pretty much static in my singleness for the last couple of years. There had been a few half-hearted dates here and there, but nothing that I could actually see going anywhere. No-one who seriously did anything for me and it was clear they weren’t too interested in what I had to offer either. Which I supposed was fine, but I was starting to wonder if I needed to assume more of Lorraine’s attitude to get a guy ‒ be out-there, bold, big and brash. Problem was ‒ I wasn’t sure how long I could pull that off before they saw straight through me.

  "Okay, I think these shoes will work," Lorraine declared with certainty once she had pretty much turned the contents of the bottom shelf of my wardrobe out onto the floor of my bedroom.

  "Oh no, those ones hurt my toes.”

  "No pain no gain. You have to suffer a little for beauty," she replied loftily. "Do you have make-up? We need to come up with something glamorous for you. You need to look like you could have come off the red carpet..."

  “Good luck with that,” I scoffed doubtfully.

  Then Lorraine got that look on her face as if she knew something I didn’t.

  Chapter 3

  Willow

  It had been months since I’d been out to a party, let alone one that was meant to be as crazy-exclusive as this one. So yes, there was a growing excitement in my belly, but more than that, there was nervousness that they would take one look at me and laugh me out of the damn place. Which I wouldn’t have blamed them for.

  As we walked the pavement on our way to Beverley’s apartment, I listened quietly as Lorraine ran a monologue about what we would wear, how we were going to present ourselves, and what we would to do once we arrived there.

  I felt like a total fraud. Dressing up in borrowed plumes and pretending to be something I wasn’t.

  * * *

  “Wow,” I breathed out as the elevator doors opened and we stood in a space that looked as if it was made of mostly glass.

  “It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?”

  I walked to a window and looked out over the breathtaking view. “Hell, Lor, you must spend all your time cleaning these windows. Look at them. They’re all so massive and there’s so many of them.”

  “Come on,” she says briskly. “Let’s get you a dress.”

  I turned away from the window. “Are you sure about this? She said you could borrow something but she didn’t say anything about me using anything of hers.”

  “Don’t be such a downer. She won’t care. Wait till you see her wardrobe. It’s bigger than our apartment and most of the time she only wears her clothes once then she sells them to this woman who has a shop downtown for second-hand designer gear. Anyway, we’ll have everything professionally cleaned and back in their place faster than you can say Aladdin.”

  I followed her into a massive all white bedroom. “Wow, how wonderful to be able to live like this.”

  Lorraine threw open a door and I walked into the biggest walk-in wardrobe, I’d ever seen. I could have happily lived in this space.

  Lorraine didn’t waste any time as she moved to one wall and slid all the doors open. Not only were the rails full of clothes, a lot of them still had their tags on them. She turned to me, a wide grin on her face. “Take your pick, Cinderella.”

  I moved forward gingerly. “What if I spill my drink on the dress or something?”

  She rolled her eyes dramatically. “It’s called professional cleaning for a reason. Now stop wasting time. We’ve got appointments at the hairdresser in an hour. You have thirty minutes to pick a dress.”

  “What are you going to wear?”

  Her eyes lit up. “I know exactly what I’m wearing.” She went to the end of the rack, pulled out a criminally sexy red dress with a seductive slit up the side, and held
it under her chin. “This is my ball gown.”

  “Whoa! It’s really beautiful, Lor. There won’t be a red-blooded man at that party who won’t want to tear it off you with his teeth.”

  “I know,” she agreed without the least trace of fake modesty. “Now you.”

  I turned to stare undecidedly at the long row of clothes. Really, it was almost impossible for me to try and chose something. Everything was so divine. So not me.

  Lorraine walked past me and pulled out a black velvet dress. “This is what I think would look great on you. You don’t have to choose it of course, but…”

  What was there not to like about the black velvet number she held up. It had a sweetheart neckline and was beautifully cut to hug a woman’s curves without jamming them in the face of anyone wandering by.

  “Go on. Try it on.”

  I took the dress from her. “Aren’t you going to try the green one too?”

  She raised her eyebrows at me. “Do I look like someone who hasn’t already put on that dress three hundred times?”

  I laughed and started unbuttoning my jeans. I pulled the dress carefully over my hips and turned around so Lorraine could zip me up.

  “Done. Let’s see what you look like then.”

  I turned around.

  "OMG! It’s perfect," she announced triumphantly, clapping her hand to her mouth.