Chapter Eight – Day Five

Sarah

Today I have a shopping date with Katherine. I should know better than to mention what happened last night to her, but I also have to tell someone because I'm just so...confused.

On one hand, she's my best friend, so of course she's the first person I run to, logically. But I should have been prepared that word would get around about the sudden “engagement,” and I should have known that she would be one of the first to find out – and that she would be all too happy to throw it in my face.

“What colors are you thinking of?” she asks, a shit-eating smile plastered across her face. “I was thinking silver and Tiffany blue...”

“Shut up, Kate,” I say. “I told you already – I let my big mouth speak before my brain thought it through. And he picked this as the one and only time to agree with me and go along with it, and now we're falsely engaged.”

“I know,” she says. “How stupid do you think I am? I knew the moment I heard about it that it was a scam. You know exactly what one thing will set your dad off like this, and of course you find it too irresistible not to use.”

“How did you find out about it so quickly, anyway?”

“Oh sweetie,” she says with a laugh that oozes pity. “You've been out of the social circle far too long. You've forgotten how it works. Party line – your dad tells your mother in rage, your mother calls my mother in elation, and mother is bursting at the seams to tell me.”

“I should have known the bastard wouldn't keep his word when he said he'd let me tell my mother,” I say with bitterness.

And then I realize – I sound like I care. And why? It's a fake engagement.

“Our mothers are in full planning mode,” Katherine continues, by the grace of God looking as if she totally missed my moment of animosity towards my father. “Should you actually decide to go through with this, you'll be happy to know that you'll have a wedding and you won't have to lift a finger.”

“Yeah, and when I tell them it was all a scam, I'll be paying my dad another fifty-thousand for a wedding I didn't go through with,” I say.

“You could avoid that issue entirely and go through with it,” she says with a grin.

I chuckle. “Yeah. When all else fails, just go through with the fake wedding. Don't I have enough problems already?” I stop with her as she's looking through a rack of clothes. “I am primo at backing myself into corners that I can't get out of.”

“Maybe this is a good corner to back yourself into,” she responds.

“Is any corner a good corner to back yourself into?”

“Any corner with Lance in it is a good corner to back yourself into,” she says with an eyebrow raise.

Oh, Lord.

“Katherine, I'm just trying to figure out what happened last night. I'm not ready to jump even further ahead without knowing what I'm doing.”

Her eyes pop up at attention.

“What happened last night?”

The plan going into the day was to tell her and get it off my chest, but I can't help but feel the butterflies in my stomach launch into flight as I prepare to actually do it.

“He kissed me,” I whisper.

Her eyes go wide.

“He kissed you?” she asks.

I want to shake my head and tell her to wipe that lovesick, dreamy look off her face.

“It was...it wasn't like that,” I say, trying to act like I'm brushing it off. “We were both stressed out from the encounter with Daddy. I had straight vodka just to get through that encounter and then we went to dinner and I had wine too. I was probably half-drunk, so was he, we were both just...on edge. It...it's not really that big of a deal.”

“It's a massive big deal,” she says. “You and him – under stressful circumstances you argue, you fight, sometimes you even get ready to throw punches. You guys have never kissed before. I'd say that's a big deal, Sar.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” I say.

No, I'm not afraid – I'm terrified.

“Sarah, we all know how you feel about each other,” she says. “You love him. And he loves you. You two seem to be the only two that don't know it.”

“It was just a kiss, Katherine,” I say.

“Even you know that's not true, Sarah,” she says.

I sigh, because as dippy of a dumb blonde she can be sometimes, she can be right sometimes too. As much as I don't want to care about any of it – my family being excited about the wedding, my father actually allowing me the privilege of sharing the news with my mother – it's impossible to not care. It's what every girl dreams of, after all.

“What is your heart telling you that it wants?” she asks.

I'd like to tell her that my heart wants nothing, absolutely nothing to do with him; that I just want to get through the next ninety-five days of this stupid contract, earn my money, pay off my dad, and finally get Lance out of my life forever.

But I can't.

“I really don't know.”

“Well...do you want him?”

She stops sorting through the rack of clothes she's standing in front of, and looks at me with a leading expression, waiting for my answer.

But what do I say? Do I want him? I really don't know. Do I want more from him than what I have now? I suppose I do, although I don't know if I want just a better friendship than we have now. Do I have feelings for him? Most definitely – though I don't know what those feelings are, or what they mean.

I could tell her the truth...but I'd probably just end up more confused than ever. So maybe it's better to lie to her, or at the very least, hide my true feelings.

“No,” I say. “I don't.”

She raises her eyebrows but if she has any sort of verbal reaction to it, she hides it. She simply goes back to sorting through the rack of clothes.

Thank heavens that haute couture is more interesting to Katherine than my love life ever will be.

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After a day of shopping, I come home to the beach house. I have at least five bags; things I probably shouldn't be spending money on. But after the past couple days I've had, a little retail therapy never hurt anybody.

“Lance?”

It's strangely quiet. I throw my bags down next to the couch and maneuver my purse strap off my shoulder, laying it down on top of the bags. It's odd to hear the house so quiet. I mean, since day one of this stupid contract, every time I've walked into the house it's been a weird flashback with 80's music and reenactments of Footloose; he's either singing at the top of his lungs or dancing while he makes dinner.

Today, the house is pretty much silent.

“Lance?”

I wait for a few seconds – no response. But there is the slightest noise coming from the kitchen.

I walk that way and push through the swinging door, to see him with the phone tucked between his ear and shoulder, and see him setting the table in darkness, with only candles illuminating the room.

“Yeah, I just don't...” That's when he looks up and sees me, and he stops with the phone still to his ear. “Hey, let me call you back. Better yet...we'll just talk tomorrow, okay?...Alright, bye.”

He lets the phone fall from his shoulder and he grabs it quickly, disconnecting the call with a single beep.

“Sorry, I'd hoped to be done by now,” he says. “I didn't hear you come in.”

“What is this?” I ask.

“Candlelight dinner,” he says. “It's probably lame, I know, but I figure we ought to take advantage of the fact that we're living in a beach house for the next three months. Do things we wouldn't normally do.”

“Like dine by candlelight?” I ask with a smile.

“You hate it,” he says.

“No!” I regret it the moment I say it, with far too much enthusiasm. “No, I just...I mean, it was unexpected. That's all. I don't hate it.”

He smiles at me.

“So, what's for dinner?”

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Like we have so many times since we've been here, we end dinner with a bottle of expensive wine, only this time we take it to the living room. He lights a fire, even though it's only slightly chilly outside, and we're sitting on the couch with our legs folded underneath us.

He's telling stories, I'm telling a few myself, and I can't tell you how it starts, but...by the time the sun sets, I'm laughing. I'm laughing and actually enjoying my time with him.

But then the laughter dies down, and it starts to get quiet. I'm on my third glass of wine and feeling quite over-indulgent, alongside slightly-tipsy and nearly-drunk.

“I never...apologized,” I say. “For my dad the other day. The way he just burst in your office like he did.”

“He did take me by surprise a bit,” he says.

“He...God, he drives me nuts.” I can feel my frustration taking over. “It's like...everything is either black or white, and there's no gray area because there's no room for gray area. And I, unfortunately, live my entire life in the gray area.”

“There's nothing wrong with living your life in the gray area.”

“According to him, there is,” I tell him. “I'm a complete screw-up. I could have lived a great life just like him, working hard telling other people what to do as the head of some fancy-schmancy hotel. Then I could have settled down, married someone I didn't even remotely like, let alone love, and been the perfectly miserable housewife and mother to two-and-a-half perfectly miserable children.”

“Some people like that,” he says.

“Yeah, well, not me. White picket fences are worse than the bars of a prison cell. Even worse is iron bars in a rich, gated community. He wanted me to be a prisoner...and he was the warden.”

“Is he really that bad?” he asks. “Far be it from me to actually defend your dad, but maybe you're just misunderstanding each other.”

My 'are you serious' look must be evident on my face, because a second later he laughs.

“Okay, that was a stupid question,” he says. “Especially considering he basically sold you to the highest bidder.”

“And then there are times that I think...maybe I should have just gone with it. Maybe I should have just sucked it all up and married Blake. My life would suck, but maybe it wouldn't suck as bad as owing my father all this money and being estranged from my entire family.”

“No,” he says with a shake of his head as he leans forward to place his empty wine glass back on the table. “No Sar, you're not capable of being a captive, like a caged zoo animal. You have far too much spark to be able to live that way. You'd be miserable if you settled – so miserable you probably wouldn't care if you lived or died.”

“Is it so wrong to have dreams of my own?” I ask him. “To want more out of life than just what a shitload of money can buy me?”

“No, Sar,” he says. “It's not.”

“Thank you again for backing me up,” I tell him. “I know that faking an engagement and a relationship is not what you signed up for when you signed up for this.”

“No, because signing up for Kate's little science experiment so I can get money and she can get her rocks off was a far more ridiculous idea than signing up to help you pull one over on your dad.”

He chuckles, and so do I. “Well, you do have a point I suppose.”

It grows quiet, and I wonder if he'll say anything about the kiss. And for a bit, I start to wonder if I should say anything about the kiss. But just when I'm about to, I look over at him and see him staring at me.

“What?” I ask, laughing a little.

He stares a little longer before I start to grow self-conscious.

“What is it?”

Instead of saying anything in response to me, I see him start to lean over. The alcohol has done just a good enough job that it takes me a few seconds to realize his play.

By that time, his lips are already on mine.

But I quickly realize it's not just a kiss. I'm laid out on the couch and my arms are half-pinned to the cushion above my head. He's on top of me, all over me. He kisses me hungrily, like he hasn't kissed a woman in weeks...maybe months. And it all moves so fast that I don't know what to think of it. I should feel taken advantage of, maybe a little violated, like he's being way too pushy right now – because that would be my reaction to him if he had done this at any other time, before this stupid arrangement.

Maybe it's the alcohol – but I don't feel that way at all. In fact, I welcome it.

It feels amazing.

I lean my head back as far as I can, allowing him access, and he takes it – kissing down my neck, to my shoulder and collarbone. I feel him pulling the hem of my shirt up and we both lean up off the couch so he can pull it over my head. It gets tossed to the floor, where I'm sure the rest of my clothes – and his – will find their way soon.

I feel his lips traveling down my breast and cleavage before I speak up, my voice breaking.

“Lance...we should probably...”

“Bedroom,” he says.

And then, for a moment, it's like he snaps out of a haze he's been in. He stops kissing me, leans up away from me, and looks me in the eyes.

“I'm sorry,” he says softly.

I'm confused for a moment, unsure of whether he's changed his mind or not.

“I was going to say,” I say, “yours or mine?”

He thinks for a moment while he looks at me. I'd kill to know what he's thinking. One moment he looks like he's about to throw me back down on the couch, take off the rest of my clothes and do every single thing I could have only dreamed he'd do to me at sixteen years old. Another moment he looks as if he's about to fight it, apologize again and walk straight away – exactly like he did sixteen years ago.

The whole time I feel as if I'm reliving that night all over again.

“Mine,” he finally says.

And that's how I find myself falling down against his bed. He follows shortly after, climbing on top to straddle me. The first thing to go is my pants – then his shirt, and then his pants. Soon all of our clothes land on the floor in messy piles, along with his t-shirts and sweatpants and everything else he's thrown there while he's lived here.

It's not until I'm completely naked and on top of him, with him inside me, moaning and calling out his name that my drunk brain asks the question...

Just what the hell am I getting myself into?