Accidental Fiancé (Unintentionally Yours #5)

17. Maggie

Chapter 17

Maggie

T he next time Julian decided to come home early he texted first to make sure I was there. Oh, goody. Just what I needed. More of him.

Piper was in the back with her swim coach so at least she wouldn’t hear us fighting. If it even came to that. I didn't know what he was coming home for. Another arrangement? Another fuck? His emotions felt like a moving target. It wasn't fair.

None of this was fair.

Things with Jules had somehow become complicated. I never knew where I stood with him. We talked my first day but since then, there hasn't really been much of a connection. With Piper around, it seems like we can't talk to each other in the way we want to.

I imagined that was how most parents normally felt. Happy to have their kids but also stifled when it came to interacting with their partner. I felt like I owed my parents an apology for existing.

I didn't want to talk to him. Not after he made me an employee. No, wait, not an employee. That's a different tax form . God, I couldn’t believe he said that. I swore sometimes I did not understand what was going through a man's head.

While waiting for Julian to show up, I texted Nora. “Drinks?”

“When and where?”

I suggested a bar to meet at so I could give her the full dish, and she promised she’d show up, but I had my doubts. With her schedule being what it was, I didn't know whether or not I could count on her. All I knew was that I would be there. I needed a freaking drink. And since I still had Julian's credit card, it would be on him.

A fleeting thought hit me. What if she never showed but I met a guy there? I'd be well within my rights to hook up with someone. Not that I had ever done that kind of thing. My first one-night stand was with Julian and look how that turned out.

Maybe I just wasn't cut out for a one-night stand. Whenever I hooked up with somebody, we'd seen each other at least a couple of times. Sex was always something that I considered personal and private. I was careful about my heart. I never wanted to get too attached too soon. Attachment was supposed to grow over time, not in minutes or days.

I wondered if I should bail on the situation entirely. Maybe all of it was just too complicated for me.

But then Julian walked in, and my stupid hormones kicked up, nearly choking the words out of my brain. I blurted, “Glad you're home. Are you staying this time? Because I'm going to go get drinks with Nora.”

“Piper in the pool?”

“Yep.”

“Good. I was hoping to talk to you.”

“Two talks in one day? I'm a lucky girl.”

He sighed loudly. “Maggie. We knew from the start what this was. The moment you told Chloe that we were engaged, you knew what this was. The moment you agreed to be my date for the party and stay here you knew what it was. You made the rules. I wanted to come up with a way to pay you for your time. A new wardrobe is not enough for what you're dealing with.”

I laughed bitterly. “No shit, Sherlock.”

“So this is better, right? Drawing clear lines and solid boundaries? I can't help but think that this is the way to go about all of this. It keeps us on a level playing ground.”

“I didn't realize we were playing a game.”

“I'm not. Bad metaphor. If you could just hear me out and see things from my perspective maybe we could?—"

“No need.” I grabbed my keys and headed for the door. “Jules, I'm a big girl. I can handle the truth. I don't need you to make this into anything more than it is. You want things to be cut and dry? Fine. That's what they’ll be.”

“Maggie, don't leave angry.”

“Like you said, I'm your fiancée when we're around your family. Until then, I'm on my own. Like I've always been. So I get to decide how I feel about things, not you. And if I want to leave angry, then I will fucking leave angry.” I slammed the door behind me and ran to my car.

I couldn't handle the thought of Piper seeing me like that. I had to get out as fast as I could.

I drove so fast that I passed the bar before I realized it and had to do several illegal turns to get into their parking lot. But once I parked, I didn't want to go inside. The rental car was a safe place. No one was there to tell me what to do or how to feel. No one telling me that they'd pay me to be their girlfriend.

What the hell did he think I was?

I smacked my hands on the steering wheel a few times in an attempt to get the anger out. But it only made it worse. I reached absentmindedly into the glove box for the package of Altoids I always kept in my car. They weren't there. I shouted obscenities as I remembered that I was not in my car. I was in a car that Julian had provided to me. My rental. His rental, really.

I got out and slammed the door. Being in the rental felt like being surrounded by him. And I just couldn't take that right now.

The distance from the rental to the door was short. The place looked like a thousand other dive bars I'd been to in and around LA. Sticky floors, black painted walls, neon lighting, and a fully stocked bar with a grungy-looking bartender behind it waiting to serve me. Exactly what I needed at a time like this.

I ordered a whiskey and coke and found a booth in the back to wait for Nora. If she ever showed up though I wasn't sure how much it mattered. Not until I was flooded with relief when she walked in. She ordered her drink and joined me at the table.

Sometimes I hated that she had a big fancy lawyer job because it meant she was always well-dressed when I looked like crap. “What's the emergency, doll?”

That was all it took before I became a blubbering mess. I told her the whole story, including what had happened on the third floor and the memory that the yearbook had conjured along with how I felt when I saw Julian after that.

I also told her about the consultant title.

She drummed her perfectly polished nails on the gross table. “Get it in writing.”

“What?”

“The consultant title and everything that goes along with it. Not just the money but any perks he's offering as well. Get it all in writing.”

I braced my forehead on my fingertips, trying not to scream. “Nora, that's not the problem here.”

“Oh, I'm well aware of what the problem is. The problem is that you’ve found yourself falling for your crush again. But what I'm telling you is to focus on the things you can control. Your tender little heart is gonna do stupid things. You can't control that. But you can get this newfound bullshit in writing. At least walk out of the situation with some serious money in your pocket.”

“Take off the big lawyer hat and put on the best friend hat because that's the kind of advice I need right now.”

She yanked a napkin out of the dispenser and passed it to me. “Clean yourself up, doll. And for the record, that was the best friend advice. The lawyer in me is screaming right now because there is so much legally wrong here, not the least of which is the fact that you could get one of the most powerful men on the planet brought up on charges for being a john.”

That made me laugh. “Sure, that's exactly what I want.”

Her lips turned upward at the corners. “Got you to laugh, didn't I?”

In spite of myself, I laughed again. Then I kicked her shin. “I owed you, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah. Seriously, are you going to go through with this?”

“Honestly, I don't know. I don’t know what the right call is anymore. I was just starting to realize my feelings for Julian when he came at me with this and now I don't know what to think. Was all of this just some kind of conquest because he wanted me back then?”

She smiled at me with nothing but kindness in her eyes, and I knew something bad was coming. “Remember how we talked about the two of you hanging out a lot, especially when I wasn’t around?”

“Yeah.”

“I know you said it was platonic. Maybe you thought it was but I don't think it was that way for him. And I really wonder how much it was for you too.”

“I told you I didn't have feelings for him back then.”

She held up her hands like she was about to give up. But I knew Nora. That was never going to happen. “Maybe you didn't have conscious feelings for him, but can you leave room for the possibility that you had unconscious feelings for him?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You didn't date back in high school.”

“So?”

“Why do you suppose that was? Why do you think you didn't start dating until you were in culinary school? That you never had any interest in any of the boys at our school?”

I shrugged, not sure if I liked where she was headed with this. “I don't know.”

“Maggie, he was your boyfriend in everything but the term and the physicality. There may not have been kissing or handholding or any of that kind of intimacy, but you two were tight as hell. You didn't need a boyfriend. You had him. He was your fake boyfriend years before you were ever his fake fiancée.”

Her words knocked the wind from me. “Oh. Shit.”

She sipped her drink and looked at me with those knowing eyes. “Sorry to be the one to break the news to you. I kind of thought you already knew.”

“I never thought of it that way. I just thought that we were friends.”

“And I'm pretty sure that he thought that building on that friendship would guarantee a good romantic relationship.”

It made sense when she said it but it still hurt. “So you think he was faking a friendship with me that whole time?”

She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “You know that I am not a fan of the lesser sex, but I will say this for him—he has been a truer friend to you than most people ever have. He has always been there for you in your hour of need. I think you owe it to yourself and to him to work this out. And I cannot believe that I am saying that in favor of a male.”

I snort-laughed. “Me either. It's so unlike you.”

She shrugged. “It's this new therapist. She's got me thinking that men are humans too. Gross, I know.”

“Nora, they're not all bad.”

“After everything you've been through you can actually say that with a straight face?”

“Well, I mean, Mr. Rogers was a man.”

“How do you know that for sure?”

I opened my mouth to speak but found myself frowning instead. She had a point. “Okay, I don't know that for sure, but probably.”