Arielle strode into her hotel room, ready to do battle.
The staccato rhythm of Mitchell’s footsteps on the flat hotel carpeting behind her sounded angry, and the door shut hard.
She whirled to face him because she had to get out in front of whatever he had to say. “Look, I know I’m not the best actress, but I’m trying as hard as I can. I’m sorry that it’s really hard for me to fake a relationship.”
Mitchell ran his hand through his hair, and the dirty-blond waves sprang into curls. “Our entire performance was not believable. From that screwed-up kiss at the press conference to you nearly climbing out of the booth when I held your hand at supper, no one in their right mind would believe we’re a couple. This isn’t going to work. Maybe we can fake an argument and break up in public for them. That shouldn’t take too much acting from either one of us. I’ll pay you the ten percent cancellation fee as per your contract since we’re still in the first half of the contracted time period.”
Ten percent? That would help her parents a little bit for this year, but it wouldn’t last long. “Maybe I can take acting lessons or something. We’re in Los Angeles. Surely there’s an emergency acting coach somewhere in LA.”
“A coach wouldn’t be enough. It’s more than that.”
“Or maybe we can just practice kissing or something. We can make it like a dance. You step up, I step up, hand goes here, hand goes there, and noses always go to the right. I can’t believe you went left.”
He shook his head. “While I’m certainly not opposed to practicing kissing in the slightest, I don’t think it will be enough.”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. We just have to make sure we can perform a plausible kiss, and people won’t even think twice. No one will suspect a thing.”
“Every time I touch you or reach for you, you tense up. Is there a problem with me?”
Arielle flopped down on the hotel bed and sat, holding her head in her hands. “It’s not you. It’s the whole situation. It’s so dishonest. Lying to everyone about something as important as a relationship is just the worst.”
“You might’ve mentioned that before.”
“I know I harp on it, but especially about relationship stuff, being fake messes with me.”
“So, what happened to you?” he asked, his voice low and casual.
“Nothing,” she stated, making it as flat and emotionless as she could manage.
Mitchell shook his head. “Most people don’t have such earnest positions on honesty unless there’s a reason. Look, if we were in an actual relationship, we could take months to tease this out and work on your trauma, but we don’t have that kind of time. This is a business relationship. In business, you have to lay your cards on the table. You have to be more honest, not less. It’s just business, not love, not family. You don’t have to protect your heart because your heart isn’t involved. I need to know what happened so we can figure out how to get around it.”
Arielle pondered the weight of that.
Mitchell wasn’t her friend, and he wasn’t her boyfriend. If she was going to be able to fulfill the contract and help out her parents with their retirement, she had to figure out a way to act like his girlfriend for eight months.
He was right. They were being honest with each other, even though they were being completely dishonest with the whole rest of the world. They weren’t lying to each other.
She said, “I dated a guy for five years. We met when I was barely eighteen, and he was twenty-seven. He cheated on me the whole time, and I didn’t know. I didn’t have anything to compare his behavior to because I’d never dated anyone else. Every time I got suspicious, he told me I was crazy and making things up, gaslighting me, and then he’d love-bomb me for a week or two until I thought it was just me. But it wasn’t. I wasn’t making things up. He screwed around on me the whole time. There was never a time when he wasn’t seeing someone else. When I finally figured it out and confronted him, he told me that if I really loved him, then it wouldn’t matter, but it did. So I broke up with him, and he loved-bombed me for a year, trying to get me back. I found out he was dating other people the whole time he was doing that, too. I’m such an idiot for believing him. You must think I’m so dumb.”
Mitchell shook his head. “You weren’t dumb, but my opinion doesn’t matter. You don’t have to worry about what I think because this is a business relationship. Thank you for telling me so that we can figure out how to work around it. What was his name?” Mitchell asked.
“Nick.”
“That’s a stupid name.”
She chuckled.
“If we were actually together, I wouldn’t even look at another woman.”
Arielle sighed and stood, stretching because the day had been long. “Oh, come on. All men say that.”
“I don’t.”
“Well, you weren’t my boyfriend, anyway. Nick was. I wasted years with him when I thought I was building a long-term relationship and a family, and now I don’t know what to think about anything a guy does. Everything that everyone does seems fake.”
“I’m not being fake with you.”
“Yes, you are. We have a contract that says you have to behave that way, but it’s all fake because we aren’t really together. Everything you do is an act for the reporters.”
Mitchell stood and walked toward her, his eyes narrowed.
When he neared her and didn’t seem to be slowing down, Arielle backed up until her butt hit the wall. “What are you doing?” Her voice came out breathy.
He glared down at her, his tight expression angry. “You’re right. It is all an act for the reporters. I’m not behaving like we’re together. If we were together, baby doll, you’d be in my bed every goddamn night, and I’d make you scream my name until you were hoarse.”
His tall, lean body was so close that Arielle couldn’t seem to breathe, and the dark, woodsy scent of his cologne drifted into the air around her like he was surrounding her.
Mitchell grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head, holding both her hands with one of his. “I’d show you the world and take you to ballets and concerts in London and Paris, not golf trade shows in LA. I’d move you into my enormous, empty house in Stamford that overlooks a cove off the Sound instead of flying you back to Phoenix during the week.”
Arielle could not look away from the scalding intensity in his green eyes.
He said, “I’d dress you in hot, sexy clothes like this every day.” He palmed her waist and smoothed his hand down her hip. “And then I’d rip them off you at night and have my way with you.”
A hot flush ran through her that was not panic. Her lips became sensitive and felt already swollen like he’d been kissing her. “Then what would you do?”
He growled, “I’d tie you to my bed and keep you for myself rather than let all those asshole single golfers look at you and talk to you and touch you. I wanted to pick every one of them up by their throats and throw them out of the tent today. I’d keep you in my house, and I’d let you know where I was and what I was doing every minute of the day because I would have no secrets from you, and I wouldn’t even look at another woman if you were mine.”
He ducked his head, and his lips captured hers in a kiss so hot and sweet that Arielle felt like she’d never really been kissed before. He pressed her back against the wall with his body, a crush that soothed her while his mouth plundered hers and wreaked havoc in her mind. Her soul centered on his mouth caressing hers, his hand moving up her side to cup her breast and run his thumb gently over her clenched nipple, her belly tightening with every stroke of his tongue on hers.
He broke his mouth away and leaned his forehead against hers as if exhausted, and his wine-scented breath brushed her mouth with sharp pants. “When I got home from the office every day, I’d back you up against the wall and kiss you like that, and then I’d strip off your clothes, throw you down on the floor in the foyer, and suck your clit until you came on my tongue. And then we’d eat dinner after I’d eaten you, and then I’d bend you over the dining room table and have you for dessert so hard that the candelabra would fall to the floor and shatter around us. I’d ram my cock in every hole you have. I’d make you come so hard you’d think you might die if you were mine. That’s what I’d do if we were really together.”
The air was too thin, and Arielle couldn’t suck it in fast enough. She lifted his chin so he could kiss her again and then let the night go from there.
Mitchell blinked, his eyebrows lowering, and he lifted his head away from hers. He exhaled a long sigh as he scowled. “But you’re not mine. We have a business contract that governs our behavior, and you blame me for your father’s poor business decisions like not buying advertising.”
He stepped back, releasing her.
Arielle grabbed the wall with her palms so that her limp knees wouldn’t give out and drop her down on the floor like a rag doll.
Mitchell clenched his fists and stared down at the carpeting to his left. “The trade show this weekend was only today. Your flight leaves at ten tomorrow morning. Be in the hotel lobby at eight-thirty for your limo. I’ll see you next weekend.”
He turned on one heel and stalked out of her room, closing the door gently behind himself.
Arielle finally allowed her knees to give out, and she slid down the wall into a crumple on the floor.
Damn, it was unfair as hell of Mitchell to do that to her, to kiss her like that when he knew he felt nothing for her, to say those things to her and teach her, if only for a second, what a real man was like in a relationship.
To expose what a shallow travesty her relationship with Nick Chauvin the cheater had been.
A sigh that became a sob escaped Arielle’s body.
She’d really screwed up her life.