Pretend For Me Read online

  I glanced in the mirror and stared at my reflection in shock. She was right. The dress was a dream and I could already see how perfectly it would go with the painful shoes Lorraine had already picked out for me.

  She took me to the accessories drawers then we both chose some necklaces and bracelets to go with our respective dresses then we headed out.

  I was starting to get just a little excited about what the night had in store for me. There was no harm in just sitting back and seeing what happened, right?

  "Okay, next stop hairdresser," Lorraine announced, linking her arm through mine.

  I couldn’t help but smile at her. She kept life so exciting. I wasn’t sure what I would do without her. Probably a whole lot of sitting around at home, reading and drinking too much wine. "So who is this hairdresser then?”

  “Gary is just this gay guy I met at the laundromat," she explained.

  I frowned. “Laundromat?”

  "Yeah, remember that time our washing machine broke. Anyway, we got on like a house on fire and he told me he works in a high-end salon, so if I ever needed to get done up for an event or something he would fit me in."

  "Are you sure he’ll be all right with me tagging along?”

  "You don’t have to worry. He’s going to fit you in. Stylists probably can’t wait to get their hands on your type of hair. Its virgin hair, isn’t it?"

  I patted the thick bun I had tossed my hair up into. True, this would be the first time I visited a salon in a year or so. I probably should make the effort to get in a little more frequently. My hair was dark brown, lush and one of my favorite things about myself. I loved the way it looked and felt, even if I hadn’t had it styled, shaped or colored. Maybe even because of that. There wasn’t a lot that I let flow wild and free about myself, but my hair was one thing I allowed to be natural and loose. As long as my locks were tumbling down my back, I could deal with keeping the rest of my life in careful check.

  Lorraine took us to the salon and sure enough, Gary was able to find us both some spare seats and some helper stylists to wash our hair.

  "You know, we should probably come up with personas for ourselves," Lorraine remarked from the chair next to mine as the stylish massaged our heads.

  "What do you mean?” I asked. "Sounds like we’re just making things more complicated than they need to be."

  "I mean, we can’t just turn up and say that we got the invitation from a lady at a restaurant who gave it to us in lieu of a tip," she pointed out. "We want to come up with something cool. Something that sounds impressive."

  "What, like a princess of a made-up country?” I joked.

  "Tempting," she conceded. "But no. I think we should aim for something that’s a little more believable."

  "Like?”

  "Maybe CEOs? Could be fun, right? We could come up with the kind of company that we run and everything..."

  "I guess we might as well get into this all the way," I admitted, as I felt a shiver run down my spine. I knew this was crazy, one of the craziest things I’d done in a while, but Lorraine made it all sound so plausible so doable. Almost as if it could be fun!

  "Alright, so, what’s your name going to be?” she asked.

  I looked at myself in the mirror, as the stylist massaged my scalp. "Roberta," I replied.

  "I like that." Lorraine nodded. "I think I’m going to go with Sophie. Sounds classy, right? Like it could be European or something..."

  At this point, both the women washing our hair interrupted us simultaneously and wanted to know exactly what we were up to. Lorraine told them and together with their input, it was decided that we should pretend to be the heads of a publishing company. Lorraine thought I’d read enough books to be convincing she – wait, no, Sophie – would be the CEO of a secretive PR company that celebrities went to whenever they were embroiled in a scandal and needed another coat of whitewash on their reputations.

  Once our hair was washed, we were taken to different stations to have our hair cut and blow dried. Barry did Lorraine and a woman in her forties who had her lips set in a hard line approached me, but she lit up when she pulled the towel from my head and my hair cascaded down my back.

  "Oh, my goodness,” she exclaimed with a laugh, running her fingers through the wet strands. "There’s so much to play with here. I understand you’re going to a big party tonight. What sort of style were you looking for?"

  "I don’t really know anything about hair," I confessed. "So just do whatever you want, I don’t mind."

  "Sure thing," she replied, and began snipping. She trimmed the sides aggressively, but retained a lot of the length at the back. Once she switched off the hairdryer, she began to style my hair. "Alright, you’re all done," she announced.

  I turned my head from side to side and was surprised at how cool my reflection looked. She had plaited the front of it and let the back fall down over my shoulders in long, carefully-cultivated waves. "It’s amazing," I blurted out. "Thank you, seriously. I could never have done this myself..."

  "You’re welcome. I hope you girls have an amazing time tonight.”

  Of course, Lorraine looked like a Princess with her lovely blonde hair pulled up on the sides and allowed to flow down to her shoulders.

  The two of us headed back to the apartment to finish getting ready. Since Lorraine had made our transformation possible, I agreed to spring for a limousine so we could arrive in style. Lorraine clapped her hands together. "Oh, this is going to be so much fun!”

  After we applied makeup, we got changed into our gorgeous outfits.

  "Okay, but you look fantastic," Lorraine gasped as soon as she laid eyes on me. "You should dress like this more often. You look like a movie star."

  "Yeah, and since I have so many red-carpet premieres to go to… but you look like a million dollars," I said sincerely, gesturing to her whole look.

  "Thanks," she replied, checking herself out in the mirror one last time. "You think that the limo’s going to be out there by now?”

  "I think we should go down and check," I replied, feeling slightly nervous all of a sudden. I turned to her. "Hey, have you got the invitation? I don’t want to get turned away after we put all this effort in."

  "I’ve got it.” She held up the card and waved it at me.

  Then the two of us, hardly able to believe that we were actually doing this, headed to the door and out to the party of a lifetime.

  At that moment though, I had no idea just how much the evening would change my life.

  Chapter 4

  Gabe

  I still couldn’t fucking believe it. After all this time, after all the effort, and apparently, I still hadn’t done enough for him to give me what was due to me.

  From the moment I stepped into the lawyer’s office, I knew it was going to be bad news. The look on the guy’s face told me that. His expression was something between shock and bemusement, as if he himself couldn’t believe what he was about to tell me. But I never for one moment thought he would do something like this. If you had told me it would end up being like this, I would have laughed in your face and called you crazy.

  And yet…here I was.

  My whole life, well, from the time I was seventeen years old, I put all my energy into the family business. When I came into the distribution company that my grandfather, Nathan Grayson started when he was a young man, it was worth at most a million, nothing overly impressive based on what the rest of the industry was pulling in. But I had seen how I could grow the company and seen all the new ways I could breathe more life into it.

  "You kids are all the same. You think money grows on trees. Go ahead and try, my hot-blooded boy," my grandfather had said, dismissively. "But I don’t think you’re going to get it any further than I already have."

  "We’ll see," I had replied, and I knew at that moment I would prove myself to him and anyone else who happened to be paying attention.

  Skipping out on college, I taught myself business on the job, learning the ins and out
s of the industry through hands-on work at his company. My grandfather ran a tight ship and often, we were short staffed. I did everything I could. Nothing was too lowly for me. At that time, we only had a small fleet of trucks so whenever we didn’t have enough drivers to go around, I’d drive the trucks full of local produce to the fancy hipster places who prided themselves on selling local ingredients.

  I started making contacts and friends. One of my new contacts was a banker. I knew we needed to be bigger so I approached him with my business plan.

  Soon, we had built a reputation, first in Chicago, then in the state, and then across the whole country. I had proved to myself and anyone else paying attention that I could do anything I set my mind to.

  I shifted from driving trucks to working at the office to sign up new clients and field media requests; Grayson Distribution ‘changed the face of the food industry,’ according to a few profiles I had managed to rustle up about our business. People were talking about us.

  People had heard of us. And we were only just getting started.

  By this time, my grandfather had been only too happy to step aside and let me take complete control. He sat back and got a front seat view of how far I took the humble company he had built up.

  I knew where the real big money was. I took a gamble. I invested everything and entered the cutthroat world of shipping. The rest, as they say, was history.

  For the last twenty years, I had been running the company, but he had never signed over official ownership of the company to me, which had been something of a sore point in our relationship for the last ten years. It was frustrating to know I was running an empire I had built but it wasn’t officially mine.

  I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t let me buy him out, but he always said I would get it when he kicked the bucket. Then I would understand everything when I read his will.

  "I’m just worried that you’re putting too much of your life into this place, Gabe. I want you to have a wife and kids. When am I going to have some grandkids from you," he once remarked.

  I had shaken my head with irritation. "There is still plenty of time to start a family.”

  "I’m saying, you need to take a step back and focus on the most important things for a change. When you’re as old as I am, you will realize nothing is more important than family. You won’t lie on your deathbed thinking I wish I spent more time in the office," he’d replied.

  “Granddad, I’m thirty. I’ll start a family when I find the right woman.”

  “You never go anywhere. How are you going to find a woman?”

  “Now is not the right time. I want to grow the company. I want Grayson Distribution to be the biggest player in the world.”

  “You should take time off from the business, blow off steam, and have fun. Look at Austin. He is five years younger than you, but he has a good balance going on. ”

  "I’m not sure I would call it a balance," I’d muttered. Austin was my cousin, my uncle’s son, and occasionally, he would make some noise about working at the business with me, but he never actually meant it. He was a slacker, a good-time kid first and foremost, but I didn’t want to hurt my grandfather’s feeling.

  My grandfather didn’t understand that I didn’t want to go out and have fun. My fun was sitting on top of the billion-dollar company that I had built up with my blood, sweat, and tears.

  When my grandfather passed away a week ago, I’d been more devastated at his loss than I had thought I would. In a way, the old man and I shared something that no one else did. A deep love for Grayson Distribution. For almost all my adult life, I had worked in the shadow of what he’d created and I felt the only way I would be able to honor his legacy was if I threw myself into making his company as great as I could.

  When I went to the reading of the will, I was prepared to take full ownership of the company, relieved it would finally be mine, determined that the Grayson name lived on through his company.

  But turned out, taking ownership of his company wasn’t what he’d had in mind for me at all.

  Instead, my grandfather had put a strange stipulation in his will. In order to gain ownership of the business, I not only had to marry, but produce an heir within a year of the date of the will. Within a year! I knew this was his way of trying to ensure that I settled down and got my life together the way he wanted me to, but I was still pissed as hell.

  In the event, I could not produce an heir before the countdown period, the controlling share of the company I had busted my gut to build over the last sixteen years would be simply handed over to Austin. That was just salt in the wound to me—it was just unthinkable. Even the thought of it burned my insides because I knew that little slacker hated my guts and would love the chance to oppose my decisions and rub it in every chance he got.

  I had dedicated pretty much my entire adulthood to Grayson Inc. but now it was on the brink of being ripped away from me because I hadn’t bothered to knock anyone up on the side? I didn’t want my grief at my grandfather’s loss all wrapped up in anger at what he had done, but…

  How dare he try to run my life from the grave!

  * * *

  As I stalked into the party that evening, I was like a bear with a sore head. I didn’t even know why I had come. I never attended such events, but I just knew I couldn’t stay in the office or go back home to my empty apartment, all twisted up inside with rage.

  I needed to know the world outside me was still turning.

  Yeah, my grandfather thought he knew what was best for me, but he didn’t have the right to make such an important decision for me. How the hell was I supposed to find a suitable woman, fall in love, and have a kid all inside a year?

  Three hundred and sixty-five days was just not enough.

  "Hey," a voice purred.

  I glanced up, still scowling, to see the kind of woman I normally took to bed. Full lips, big eyes, tight dress, drink in her hand.

  “Gabe Grayson,” she whispered huskily, while her beautiful blue eyes roved over my face. For all their beauty, there was something cold and hard about those eyes.

  And it reminded me again, why I never came to these events. Whenever I did, I inevitably found myself chased around the whole night by gold-diggers hoping they could get claws around my wallet. It was enough to bring me out in a rash.

  "Excuse me," I muttered, brushing past her.

  The room was packed-out with king makers, most of whom I knew: the Davos crowd, old money, a smattering of European and Middle-Eastern royalty, a couple of grinning politicians and of course, the obligatory swarm of high-class prostitutes. The charity the event was supposedly raising money for was dedicated to the improvement of schools in the area… one of the charitable organizations we had partnered with a long time ago.

  Partly, because it was good press, but also partly… because I actually wanted to give back.

  Today, I couldn’t think about anything other than how I could outmaneuver the bullshit stipulations in my grandfather’s will. I was paying my lawyer to work day and night to look for any loopholes we could use. There had to be a way around it, and I’d damned if I couldn’t—

  And that was when I saw her.

  Tall, with long, dark hair that had been plaited and flowed down her back in a richly lustrous braid. She was wearing a clingy black dress that accentuated every inch of her curvy figure. Yeah, she was beautiful and her dress was so flawlessly simple it had be very expensive, but there was something else different about her.

  She stood out.

  I could tell instantly she wasn’t one of the army of prostitutes, but I knew she didn’t belong to the jet set around her either. I couldn’t take my eyes off her as I approached the bar at the other end of the room and ordered myself a scotch on the rocks. He pushed me a triple. She hadn’t noticed me yet, so I took my time checking her out.

  She was sticking close by the side of a woman in a red dress who like she, didn’t belong either. She seemed to be chatting up one of the bartenders. Th
e dark-haired beauty was clutching her glass of wine like it was a life-raft keeping her afloat, while her eyes slid around the room. Whenever they stumbled across someone famous, she bit her lip, as if she was trying to figure out who they were or where she knew them from.

  I took a sip of my drink. Whoever she was, she was nice eye-candy. Very nice.

  It made me glad I came out tonight. Watching her made me feel a lot calmer than I’d felt in a long time. There was something peaceful about her. The more I watched her the more intrigued I became. I realized she knew she didn’t belong, but she liked the freedom it brought her.

  The scotch was good and already it was starting to mellow me out as I waited for her eyes to rove around and finally land on me.

  And then, the idea hit me. I wouldn’t wait for her to notice me I was going on the prowl myself.

  Chapter 5

  Willow

  "Evening."

  As soon as I heard that voice—deep and as smooth as warm chocolate on naked skin—drawling just behind me, I felt something in my stomach curl up with excitement. I knew even before I turned that I was in trouble. His aftershave hit my nostrils. Masculine and smoky. It made the hairs at the back of my neck stand. I wanted to bury my face into his neck and inhale it, commit it to memory.

  "Why hello," Lorraine replied instantly, fluttering her lashes at him.

  Of course, he would be more interested in her; pretty much every guy we had ever met showed more interest in her blonde good looks.

  I took my time. I guess I was putting off the inevitable moment when I locked eyes with the owner of that voice.

  Wiping my eyes of all expression, I turned.

  He was tall, at least a good few inches taller than me in the torture instruments masquerading as my shoes. Wearing an impeccably-cut navy suit that looked as if it must have cost the earth itself and he was goddamn beautiful. His dark hair looked thick and glossy, his jaw was hard and chiseled… his eyes were bottle green and fringed by impossibly long and luxurious lashes.