Arielle followed Mitchell to the podium in front of Match Play’s enormous promo tent and stood beside him, a vapid smile plastered on her face.
Yeah, they’d hit their sign-up quota early and exceeded it by nearly twice as many people as Mitchell had figured on, but this promo crap annoyed her.
If the Match Play dating app was a good product, why did they need to talk people into signing up? They should be able just to drop it into the world and let people find them. This active app-slinging felt undignified.
Arielle stood behind Mitchell while he talked to the half-dozen reporters gathered in front of his podium, most of them holding up their phones to record what was said rather than taking notes. Her forced smile began to cramp her cheeks.
After Mitchell had recited a dizzying amount of numbers and extolled the supposed virtues of the Match Play app, he finally asked, “Any questions?”
One of the reporters stood. Arielle remembered her from the front row of the press conference in Phoenix a few days before. The slender blonde with long curls and impressively done eyeliner smiled, and her eyes became dreamy as she said, “Elli Gelashvili of Golf Today for Women. I see Arielle Carter is here with you. Are you two still together?”
Arielle stood as rigid as if she’d been electrocuted.
Mitchell grinned at the woman. “Of course. It’s only been a few days since she was revealed to the world, and I would hope our relationship can survive that.”
Laughter and guffaws from the reporters.
The other reporter Arielle remembered stepped forward. She was the pretty woman who was wearing another tailored black pantsuit, and her long black hair dipped as she looked at her tablet and back up with businesslike briskness. “Monica Matthews of Golfers Digest. Is Arielle Carter the daughter of Franklin Carter, the previous owner of Match Play when it was a tee-times app?”
Everything about Monica Matthews said smart.
Mitchell bobbed his shoulders as he sucked in a breath to answer. “Yes, she is. Arielle worked at her father’s business before and during the app's sale, and that’s why she was allowed into our exclusive, limited beta test. Any other questions?”
The way he’d bobbled his shoulders before answering was odd. Arielle had never seen Mitchell Saltonstall fidget, but that funny little jiggle came close.
Her ex, Nick Chauvin, had flopped around with an evasive jiggle like that whenever she’d asked him where he’d been when he was late coming home from work or why he hid his phone in his pocket when he’d been texting someone and she’d gotten too close.
That little jiggle was an outward manifestation of dishonesty. The nervousness that came from lying shook the body, and neither Nick nor Mitchell could cover it up.
Her mouth tasted sour, and a chill settled over her bare arms and the back of Arielle’s neck.
One of the reporters asked, “How about a kiss for the photos?”
Arielle blinked and rubbed her neck, trying to shake off how Nick Chauvin used to hunch his shoulders and bobble his arms around when he was lying to her.
Mitchell loomed in front of her, dang, he was tall, and she looked way up at him.
His arm latched around her waist and dragged her against his body, and the fingers of his other hand threaded into her hair. He was grinning, but he looked back and forth between her eyes. His grin grew more rigid as he whispered, “One kiss for the cameras, angel.”
Kissing was in their contract. The clauses she had initialed before she’d signed at the end had spelled out that there would be kissing and he would touch her body over her clothes, and she would have to believably act like his girlfriend in public, especially for the press.
If she balked, her dad would have to work until he died, but she could save her parents from that.
Arielle nodded with a tiny vibration so that the cameras hopefully wouldn’t see.
Mitchell’s hand in her hair opened, palming the back of her skull as he bent to kiss her.
She couldn’t figure out which way to tilt her head.
His nose was coming right at hers.
If she tilted to the left, his nose was going to bonk hers. If she leaned right, he would miss her mouth and plant a stupid platonic kiss on her cheek, assuming that he was watching and didn’t close his eyes and open his mouth and go after the side of her face like a suckerfish.
Arielle dodged back and forth, trying to outmaneuver his incoming nose, which wasn’t overly big or anything but it was coming right at her.
Mitchell must’ve noticed her dodging with her head, because he started doing the same waggle while his face was coming at hers.
His hand tightened in her hair, holding her still, but he was already too close.
His parting lips landed on Arielle’s nose.
Oh, God, he was sucking on her nose.
With that hand in her hair, he angled her head back and managed to find her lips, but they were off-center and both of them had their mouths closed, and it was a stupid-looking kiss.
And yet, his lips on hers were delicious. A thrill shivered through her body even as he lifted his head, his smile more forced, and released her to turn back to the reporters.
He said, “Obviously, it’s a new relationship, and we’re not used to doing this yet.”
The reporter in the black power suit snarked, “Yeah. Obviously.”
The reporters laughed, Mitchell laughed, and Arielle huffed a chuckle out of her mouth as she tried to not look like she’d been faking everything.
After the press conference, they went back to their separate booth corners and signed up more people for the Match Play app.
At the end of the day, they’d more than tripled the initial projection of how many members they should have been able to sign up at an event, but Arielle was about ready to vault over the hedges to get away.
What should’ve been the easiest part of her job, kissing a smoking-hot man, had turned into something she could evidently screw up.
Mitchell smiled a fake grimace at her as they left the convention center, but he didn’t speak to her in the town car that drove them back to the hotel. He didn’t even scroll on his phone. He just stared over the headrest of the front seat at the sun sinking into the west.
Arielle shrank in her seat and studied Los Angeles as they drove through the freeways and streets to the hotel where they were staying.
At the hotel, the chauffeur opened her door.
While they were walking through the lobby, Mitchell mentioned, “The restaurant here in the hotel was good last night. We should have supper there.”
Arielle looked down at her tired feet trodding on the hotel’s thick carpeting. “I’m exhausted, Mitchell.”
He stopped walking and looked around the hotel lobby over her head, stuffing his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels before he bent at the waist so he could whisper to her, “After that debacle at the press conference, we need to be seen in public together, acting as if we are a couple.”
Right. She’d screwed up.
Arielle lowered her voice, too, and asked him, “Is there any reason to? LA must have thousands of hotels. No one’s probably here to even notice that we had supper together.”
He muttered back, “The blonde from Golf Today for Women followed us in. I don’t know if she’s stalking us for a story or if it’s just an accident that she’s staying in the same hotel, but she’s here. Let’s go.”
Arielle dredged up her excited smile. “That sounds like a great idea!”
Mitchell’s rigid smile turned a little more amused. “Just normal girlfriend-levels of excitement are all that’s necessary, not escort-level exclamations of how thrilled you are.”
She snorted a giggle through her nose. “And how would you know what that looks like?”
Mitchell ushered her toward the restaurant and signaled the maître d’ for a table. “You would not believe some of the suppers after business deals I’ve been on. I can’t count how many times a paunchy, white-haired guy has shown up with a tall twentysomething ‘date’ whose total contribution to the conversation was to exclaim, ‘That’s so interesting!’ after everything the guy said.”
Arielle chuckled. “Oh, Lord.”
“I felt sorry for them. Their body language always told a different story. They were slumped in their seat, picking at their food except for occasional glances up at the guy to reassure him that they were absolutely fascinated by whatever he was talking about. Occasionally here in Los Angeles, you’d find one who was an aspiring actress and doing her best to stay in character. In New York, you could see the grimace behind their every expression.”
A horrible thought descended on Arielle. They slid into a round booth to sit next to each other, and she ducked her head and asked him, “The reporters don’t think I’m doing that, do they? I mean, I kind of am. There’s a contract and money for me to be here, but I’m not an escort.”
Mitchell shook his head. “Not after that other reporter dug up that Franklin Carter is your dad. They can see we have a logical connection. They might wonder whether we actually met on the app, but no, I don’t think anyone thinks you’re an escort, squishy.”
Weird. “‘Squishy?’ What’s that?”
He shrugged and shook his head with his eyes squeezed shut. “Just a pet name. I have a much younger sister who likes pet names. It’s become a habit.”
“I’m not squishy.”
Mitchell eyed her from the corners of his eyes. “Yes, you are. You’re squishy in all the right ways. Ah, here’s the waiter.”
They ordered.
Mitchell was still watching the rest of the restaurant, and then a shiver of energy shook him and his shoulders bobbled. He turned to Arielle and grabbed her hand. “Look natural.”
Arielle wasn’t feeling natural. When Mitchell’s hand closed around hers, his fingers were tight with evasiveness like at the press conference. The nervous energy emanating from his body screamed dishonesty.
The falseness of him grabbing her hand and then peering into her eyes with his green ones, made darker green from the intimate restaurant lighting and candle on the table, sent the wrong kind of shiver up her spine. Mitchell’s sudden performance felt like every time she’d really begun to suspect that Nick was cheating on her, and then suddenly there was the shining spotlight of his intense attention and grand gestures of flowers and suppers in romantic restaurants just like that one.
“Relax,” Mitchell said. “You look like you’re about to scramble over the back of the booth and run away. That’s not what we want the reporter to see, and she just walked in.”
Arielle started to turn her head.
“Don’t look!” Mitchell whispered.
The supper proceeded with Arielle making error after mistake after faux pas. She couldn’t do a damn thing right. Even with Mitchell whispering to her that everything would be okay and all she had to do was smile, her hands were still shaking, and she was an idiot to think that she could have pulled this off.
When Arielle sneaked a glance behind herself at the reporter who was sitting down the row, she accidentally caught her eye. Arielle tried to pull off a surprised wave, but then they both knew they were watching each other.
After the supper that went increasingly downhill, Mitchell walked with her toward the elevator. “I’ll see you up to your room.”
“Uh, you don’t have to. I’ll be fine. I’m sure the security in this gorgeous hotel is more than adequate.”
“Oh, I insist.”
Even though they’d signed up a bunch of people for Match Play, the whole day was a debacle, and it was all Arielle’s fault.
Dammit. She’d screwed up, and Mitchell Saltonstall was going to fire her from being his girlfriend.
Which meant her dad and mom would be in desperate financial straits for the rest of their lives.