“I don’t know. What would be the point of waiting?”
“To run it by us,” Nora said. “We could have talked some sense into you.”
“It won’t be that bad.”
Hazel adjusted her glasses. “Actually, the potential for this to go wrong is exceedingly high.”
My shoulders slumped. “You think?”
“Everly, sweetie, you just agreed to be your boss’s fake girlfriend for the next few months,” Nora said. “And you’re going to move in with him. You already say he’s difficult to work for. What’s it going to be like living with him? You’ll be together twenty-four seven.”
“Yeah, I know, I thought of that.” I ran my finger along the rim of my glass. “And I don’t know how it’s all going to work.”
“Is sex included?” Hazel asked.
“No.” I sat up, almost knocking over my drink. “No, it is not. He’s not asking me to be a prostitute. The girlfriend part is fake.”
“Richard Gere was sleeping with Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman,” Nora said.
“Yeah, but he picked her up on a street corner,” I said. “She was an actual prostitute.”
Nora shrugged. “If he wanted to go down on me on a piano, I’d do it.”
“For money?” Hazel asked. “That’s illegal.”
“No, I just mean in general,” Nora said. “Have you seen Everly’s boss? God, he’s exquisite. I’d let him do whatever he wanted to me.”
Hazel’s brow creased. “I thought you were talking about Richard Gere.”
Nora shrugged. “Either way, but Shepherd Calloway is hotter.”
“So why do you think I’ve lost my mind? If you’d do it…”
“Honey, I’d do it in a heartbeat, and I’d let him have his way with me during the off hours,” Nora said. “But you, my love, are not me. And I can already see where this is going.”
“Where?”
“You’re going to catch feelings,” Nora said.
Hazel nodded as she took another bite of salad.
“Catch feelings?” I asked. “What does that even mean? Feelings aren’t an illness.”
“In a situation like this, they are,” she said. “You’re going to spend all this extra time with him, get to know him better. His dad will tell you embarrassing stories from his childhood. He’ll stop being Mr. Calloway and he’ll start being a man. A man who is rich, gorgeous, and sexy as fuck. A man who is sleeping right next to you.”
“What do you mean, sleeping right next to me?”
Nora rolled her eyes as she took a sip of her martini. “You have to fool his dad, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And his dad is living there?”
“Yes.”
She sighed, like she couldn’t believe she was having to explain this to me. “Then where do you think he’ll have you sleep? In a guest room? His live-in girlfriend would sleep in his bed, so that’s where you’ll be. Unless he decides to pull some move in the middle of the night thing. Or maybe he’s one of those people who doesn’t sleep, and he’ll pretend to go to bed and then leave you there alone while he works all night or goes out and fights crime.”
Hazel opened her mouth but paused before she spoke. “You didn’t mean that last part literally.”
“No, but I’m right about the rest of it,” Nora said. “Everly is going to wind up getting hurt.”
I bristled at that. I wasn’t such a delicate flower that I couldn’t handle this. I was Shepherd’s longest-running assistant in company history. I was the woman who could handle him, when so many others had failed. My friends just didn’t know how good I was at my job; what it meant that I could work for him and not let him get to me. And they didn’t know what it could mean for my sister.
“There’s one more aspect to this I haven’t mentioned.”
They raised their eyebrows.
“Annie and Miranda want me to ask him to donate his sperm so they can have a baby.”
Hazel blinked at me, like she was processing what I’d said. Nora picked up her glass and gulped down the last of her drink.
“Oh, Everly,” Nora said, putting her glass down.
“What?”
“Hazel, we need to start planning for the crash now,” she said. “This is going to be national-disaster level, unlike anything we’ve been through before. Worse than the Christian Monroe incident.”
“Worse than Christian Monroe?” Hazel asked, her voice awed.
“Christian Monroe?” He’d been my college boyfriend, and the man I’d expected would propose. Instead, he’d gotten another girl pregnant. The baby-mama was nice, though. I still sent little Amy a birthday card every year. “This will not be like what happened with Christian. I dated him for three years and thought we’d get married. This will be a few months living in a huge multi-million-dollar condo with a view. The worst that will happen is I’ll accidentally see his dad naked and have to live with the nightmares for a while.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Nora said. “But sweetie, just remember. Even though I’m going to say I told you so, we’ll be there to peel you off the floor when this crashes and burns.”
“Of course we will,” Hazel said.
I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t going to be necessary. I had this handled. A few months pretending to be my boss’s girlfriend and I’d have good news for my sister. I could do this for her.
And now I wanted to do it, to prove to my friends that I could.
10
Shepherd
The movers would be upstairs any minute. Thankfully, Dad wasn’t home. He was out to dinner with Svetlana—which made my skin crawl, but I was glad he was occupied with something else. I didn’t want an audience when Everly arrived.
I’d told Dad that I’d already asked Everly to move in. He’d been predictably thrilled. Ethan and Grant didn’t appear to be interested in becoming parents, and Dad had his heart set on being a grandfather. Sadly for him, he’d pinned all his hopes on me, and I’d failed to deliver. The news that I was taking this step, as he put it, had made him practically giddy.
That had given me a twinge of guilt. He was going to be disappointed when I ended yet another relationship without giving him a daughter-in-law. Or grandchildren.
I strummed the strings of my guitar with my calloused fingers, playing a few random chords. The one-room condo where I kept my guitar collection was three floors down from my residence. No one, save the condominium association, knew I owned this unit. Even Ethan, who knew more about me than anyone, didn’t know I had this space. It was private. Intensely personal. None of it looked like the man I showed the world. The slick businessman with all the answers.
This room was dim, the only light coming from a small lamp on the counter. It wasn’t a stereotypical man cave. No giant TV or well-stocked bar. No sports posters or beer signs on the walls. I kept a bottle of twenty-one-year-old Glenlivit in the kitchen, replacing as needed. Had a leather couch along one wall. Some framed posters for ambiance—Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Rush, Queen.