Page 58 of Falling for your Fake Boyfriend

“Oh, what’s the matter, Dad? Are you worried his feelings were hurt when I told him to drop dead?”

I hurried down. Rachel needed an ally.

“Luke, this doesn’t involve you,” Mom said.

“Rachel is my sister, so yes, it involves me.” I smiled at her. “Did you finally dump the jerk?”

“Sure did.” She took another bite of cake and then held the rest out to me. “Cake?”

“Think I’ll skip it.”

“Rachel, you’re acting like a child,” Mom said. “Put the cake down.”

Rachel smashed the last piece into her mouth, leaving crumbs and icing all over her face and shirt. She held out her empty hand like a child to show that she’d finished the whole piece.

I looked at Dad. He was fidgeting with the ends of his vest and looking everywhere but at his daughter. He’d been behind this match. Usually, it was Mom, but this time it was all on Dad. It was a marriage that was advantageous to the company, and that was his sole motive.

“Well, Dad,” I said. “What do you think now? That boring-as-a-rock man has just cheated on your daughter. Do you really want her in a marriage where people gossip and giggle behind her back as her husband goes through a parade of mistresses? Are company profits more important than Rachel’s happiness?”

“I told you this is none of your business, Luke,” Mom said. I ignored her.

Dad still had his face and eyes down, avoiding eye contact.

“Let’s call David down from his room, and we’ll all have a nice talk over a cup of coffee,” Mom suggested cheerily as if the whole drama was merely about what colors to paint the new house. “We need to hear David’s side of the story.”

Rachel pulled out her phone, licked her cakey finger and ran it over the screen. She pushed it abruptly in Mom’s face. “Here’s the picture I took before David knew I was in the room. That’s his side of the story—his backside.”

Mom’s face paled. “Please get that phone out of my face.”

“Well, Dad?” Rachel held the phone up to him. He lifted his face to look at it.

“Amy!” he shouted suddenly, startling us. “I know you’re lurking around the corner listening to this. Please, join us.”

It took her a few seconds to come out of hiding. Her cheeks were red. “Yes, sir?”

“Please go upstairs and tell David to pack his things and be off my property in the next fifteen minutes or I will call the police.”

Amy was my mom’s personal assistant. The two rarely made a move without checking with the other first. She looked at my mom. “Do as he says,” Mom muttered.

Rachel walked over to me and dropped into my arms, smearing my shirt with cake crumbs and a smudge of frosting. Dad walked back to the solitude of his office. “I’m sorry Isla left,” Rachel mumbled against my chest. “I liked her. She was the one who let me know that David was in the pool house. I guess I have her to thank for saving my future.”

“Of course, she had her hand in all this,” Mom said snidely. “And with this catastrophic end to the weekend, the Carltons will probably want nothing more to do with us.”

Rachel peered up at me with red swollen eyes. “Sounds like this worked well in more ways than one, because if you ever decided to marry, or even date, that horrid Alexandria, you and I would become estranged siblings.”

“And now that you’re not marrying David, we can still hang out. In fact, I think you should get a place near me. It’ll do you good to get out of here.” Then something hit me. “Wait, did you say Isla left?”

“She certainly did,” Mom said. “I immediately went up to her room to make sure she didn’t take the jewels with her. Surprisingly, she left them behind.”

“That’s because not everyone thinks like you, Margaret.” Hazel was making her way down the staircase. I hurried up the stairs to help her the rest of the way down. “I assume you took my necklace and earrings.”

“I put them somewhere safe where they can’t be lent out to just any stranger who walks through the door,” Mom explained.

“So, you stole them?” Hazel asked.

Rachel snickered behind her hand.

“You really are getting old and batty, Hazel. Perhaps we need to start looking for a nice, quiet home for you.”

---