Accidental Fiancé (Unintentionally Yours #5)

15. Maggie

Chapter 15

Maggie

I stared at the ceiling all night long. That moment of the three of us tickle-fighting on the couch was too much. I replayed it over and over in my head, and I knew what the problem was, but I didn’t want to put a name on it. I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I wanted to pretend it didn’t happen because I didn’t want to be one of those pathetic people who imagined themselves in the perfect life with the perfect family.

Crap.

I was one of those people. I had grown up thinking I had the perfect family until my father’s stroke, and even after that, things were hell for a while but we got through it. I wasn’t some child with unrealistic expectations of the world. I knew how it worked.

I understood the kind of work that went into keeping a family together, or in our case, gluing it back together. My parents never had an easy time with money, so I understood the value of hard work, too. Life wasn’t easy for people like us.

So how in the hell did I end up sleeping in a mansion on the beach? Throughout the night, I replayed the events of the past few days, trying to figure out the point where I screwed up. This had become more than just a favor for a friend. And the scary part was my heart wanted exactly that, it wanted things with Julian to be more.

He had saved me from Chloe and Harmony. But that was what friends do for each other. The mistake came when I blurted out that we were engaged, when I let him kiss me, when I went up to his penthouse suite…

The guys I dated couldn’t bribe their way into a penthouse suite much less afford one. That room, that night, everything that happened in it… it all felt like a dream. That was someone else’s fantasy that came true, not mine. Real-life fantasies like that didn’t happen to girls like me.

I didn’t live in a fantasy world. I didn’t even daydream about things like that. My feet were firmly planted on the ground. That was how it had to be otherwise I’d be setting myself up for disappointment. My motto was: keep your nose clean, eyes on the prize, don’t deviate from the plan, and you’ll be fine.

Dad always said stuff like that and Mom concurred. That was how they paid for their house, how they afforded a vacation every couple of years, how they lived their lives. Simple. Below their means. They firmly believed that was the way to get ahead. They taught me to stand on my own two feet and not depend on anyone but myself.

But then my bakery burned down. No amount of keeping my eyes on the prize or sticking to a plan could have prevented my dreams from going up in smoke. It was a freak accident, according to the investigators. They dragged their feet on the insurance payment, as meager as it was. It would take a long time for me to save up enough money to start over.

Maybe I was being na?ve but the fire shook my worldview. I was so focused on the plan—get my bakery established and popular enough to open a second then a third, eventually branching out into a chain of them. Made-from-scratch delicious pastries bringing smiles to anyone that ate them. I’d build a life out of making other people happy while doing what I loved. It was as close to perfect as I could ever imagine.

And then poof. All gone.

Mom and Dad didn’t know how to help get me through it, either. They were just as shocked as I was when the fire happened; all of those years of careful planning and execution going up in smoke, pun intended. Mom simply told me, “Move in with us, and we’ll figure out a new game plan together.”

That was it. My Plan B was figuring out a new plan. I had never allowed myself to have a Plan B before or to think about failure because as Dad would say, “That’s quitter talk. You gotta believe in yourself, kiddo.” But no amount of positive thinking would rebuild my bakery.

I hadn’t told my parents I was staying with Julian. I wasn’t sure how they’d react to me living in a short-term situation, especially one so glamorous. Hell, when I was a kid, they didn’t like it when I watched shows with wealth or magic in them because they said it gave me the wrong impression, that life was easy. I grew up on documentaries and the History Channel instead.

Nothing but reality for the Bryant’s, they told me.

The reality at Julian’s was my sheets were cool and smooth, and felt delicious on my skin. The mattress was firm and comfy. The canopy danced in the ocean breeze. I listened to the sound of the waves echoing through my room as they lapped at the cliffs below, which sat approximately ten feet above a tiny private beach. A wooden stair path led down to it and I loved it.

For a few brief and wonderful moments, I could believe this was my home.

But that wasn’t my reality. Last night I wanted to buy into the fantasy of slipping into Jules’ family, Jules’ reality, and that hurt more than I realized it could. This was not my world, and I had to remember that, no matter how nice it felt to lose myself in it.

In my world, parents couldn’t hire Olympic athletes to teach their kids to swim. People didn’t pass out credit cards like candy or rent someone an SUV so they had better safety features. Buying someone an entire wardrobe as payment for a simple favor was something people in my world only saw on TV.

Being in Julian’s home was like playing make-believe with an adult-sized dollhouse. None of it was real. But it felt real, and that was the problem. Because last night, for just a moment, I let myself believe that it was.

I threw the covers back, got dressed, and headed for the kitchen. I needed to bake some feelings out. Today felt like a bagel day, so I pulled out my trusty stand mixer. Between letting them rise and boiling them before the bake, it took a while to get them right. But a fresh homemade bagel was well worth the effort.

Once the first batch was ready, a pair of curious noses came trudging down the hall. Julian’s hair was still rumpled, which made him all the sexier. “You made bagels?”

“Yep. There’s cream cheese in the fridge.”

“Damn, girl, my trainer is going to love you.” He swung the door open and bent at the waist, making his muscular ass stick out just a little. He did not have that ass in high school.

“That’s great because I think I love him too. There’s lox underneath the cream cheese.”

“You’re my hero.” He grabbed both, and we set up a bagel station on the kitchen island bar.

Piper devoured her breakfast without a word. Moments later, she went back to bed.

“Is she okay?”

He nodded. “She has night terrors. According to her doctor, it’s best if I let her work out her own sleep schedule. We tried a strict one before, and that only made them worse.”

“Poor thing.”

“What do you have on tap for the day?”

I wasn’t used to telling someone my plans, and even though it was an innocent question, I still bristled at it. “I think I’m going to hang out here today. Get more acquainted with my surroundings. I haven’t been to the third floor yet?—"

“It’s just old books mostly,” he said with a shrug. “Mementos, that kind of thing. But feel free to explore.”

“Not worried about me finding your kinky sex dungeon?” The moment the words left my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have said them. It was too flirty. Too suggestive.

A slow smile formed on his lips. “Are you?”

My heart sped up, and my mouth went dry. “Should I be?”

His smile widened a little more. “Get as acquainted as you like.” He picked up his bag. “I’ll see you later.”

When he left, the lack of a kiss this time was felt. “Stupid,” I muttered to myself. Julian was not mine. As I scrubbed the counter, I reminded myself that the only things in the house that were mine were my stand mixer and my clothes. Hell, not even the car was mine. I had to keep myself tethered to that reality, no matter what.

When it came time to take Piper to school, I gently knocked on her door. “Piper?”

She opened the door, dressed and ready to go. “You’re taking me again?”

“I am. I will be for a few weeks if that’s okay.”

She bobbed her head and took my hand. Hers was so small, and for some reason, that made my heart wobble. I didn’t understand it. I’d never been a kid person, but maybe Piper was a grown-up person.

In the car, I turned on the music and sang along to each song, teaching her the words so she could sing along with me. It was a party until we reached Etta’s doorstep. I smiled and kept things pleasant if for no other reason than to be the bigger person.

Back at the house, I ventured up to the third floor to find Julian was right. It consisted of books and an area with boxes full of memorabilia. There, I found his dusty old yearbooks and pictures from childhood. Rosewood High School spared every expense on the quality of such things—I was surprised they hadn’t fallen apart. The materials were so shoddy that a stiff breeze could easily have blown them away.

Flipping through the pages, I found a picture of me and Julian sitting outside laughing. He and Nora made high school pleasant for me. Without them, I might have gone into mean girl territory myself just to survive. Kind of like Emma. How easy it would have been to end up like her, had I not had Julian and Nora.

A few pages later, I found a picture that took my breath away. My hand clutched at my throat when I saw it. I’d let Nora braid my hair that morning, something I rarely did. In the picture, I was upset, walking down the hallway with Nora. About ten feet behind us was Jules. He looked bereft. That day came to mind so fast that it was like being there all over again.

We had gone behind the cafeteria where no one hung out, so I could rant without getting yelled at for bad language. I was mad about getting a B on a calculus test because I had shown my work, and the teacher still said it wasn’t enough, that I had done too much of the math in my head. I was frustrated and distracted so I hadn’t noticed when Julian moved in. Not until I had a close-up view of the gray specks in his iris. The next thing I knew, his lips were on mine, a lustful, hungry kiss.

I told him the first thing that came to mind—that a kiss wouldn’t fix my grade. He laughed it off and said he was willing to try anything to help. But then the bell rang, and I had to get to class. We didn’t have the chance to talk about any of it afterward.

The moment I saw Nora, I knew I couldn’t say anything to her about the kiss. I loved her, but she would have teased me about it, and I didn’t want to hear it. I just wanted to forget it ever happened. Julian was my friend. Nothing more.

At least that’s what I told myself. But maybe he had always been more.

It wasn’t hard to believe the narrative she mentioned yesterday. That he and I were always hanging out if she wasn’t around. Was it more than a friendship? Had he told himself it was and that’s why he had kissed me? Or was he just experimenting with me to see how I’d react?

That was what I had told myself back then, that it was just a harmless kiss to distract me from being upset. Maybe I had told myself what I needed to believe at the time because seeing this picture of him following me in the hall with that look on his face was not the face of a boy who had tried to make his friend feel better. It was the face of a boy who just had his heart broken. I had humiliated him with a casual joke and he had been kind enough to let it go so he didn’t upset me any more than I already was.

I flopped onto my back on the rug and told the ceiling, “Ugh, I’m an asshole.” I could not believe I didn’t see it sooner. Maybe it was because in high school we all had multiple types of pressures we were under, and we were all just trying to survive.

Shortly after the kiss, Julian’s father died, and that overshadowed everything that had come before it. He was emotionally distant for a while and I was too young to have the grace to handle it well. Eventually, we came back to each other right before he left for college. It wasn’t the same, easy-breezy thing we had before, but we were still us. I worked to put myself through culinary school while he was away and we were both too busy to keep up with old friends.

But things were different now. We were adults with bills, responsibilities, a kid in his case. Every time I thought about Jules a passionate warmth filled me up, making me want his goodbye kiss every morning. I liked him, and I was tired of pretending otherwise. My parents were right—embracing reality was the smart thing to do. Even though we agreed in the beginning things would be short term with us, that didn’t mean we couldn’t keep this going.

The alarm chime rang loudly, letting me know a door had opened. I ran down the stairs with the yearbook still in hand and found Julian walking into the kitchen. I was still back in high school in my head so I saw the cute boy overlayed with the handsome man he had become. It was dizzying.

“Oh, hey.”

“Been on the third floor, I see,” he said, jutting his chin at the yearbook.

“Yeah. You’re home early. Is everything alright?”

He nodded, looking tense. “I wanted to talk to you without Piper around.”

“That sounds serious.”

“Not really,” he replied, sitting at the kitchen island. “I’d like to pay you as a consultant for your time, Maggie. That being said, we keep things strictly professional between us moving forward. No more lines crossed. What do you think?”

Something fractured in my chest, and for a moment, I couldn’t speak.