Page 6 of Falling for your Fake Boyfriend

ChapterFour

Luke

“Luuke, my man.” My friend, Derek, always managed to make my name sound like a wolf call. “A few of us are going out for beers. Care to join us?”

I pulled my gaze away from my latest distraction, the cleaning woman. She was struggling to vacuum our over-crowded main office. She’d already crashed into the wooden planter box and, adorably, tried to put the pieces back. I still had a dozen windows open on my computer, all tasks I needed to finish. “Still got too much to do. Next time.”

“Just hurry up and get the stuff done. Come on. Just a beer or two. You’ll be gone all weekend at the big wedding.”

A crashing sound pulled my focus back to the window looking out over the main floor. The woman had gotten her vacuum cord tangled around a rolling chair, and she’d dragged it along with her as she moved to the next set of desks. The chair got free of the cord and flew into a set of file drawers. “Next time. Drink one for me. Later.”

As I hung up, my phone rang. It was Mom. I could ignore it but then she’d leave a fifty-minute voicemail about how a son should always answer a mom’s call because it might be something very important like she’s on her deathbed or someone is holding her hostage for ransom. That wasn’t an exaggeration. She’d used both of those examples before. Another classic was “What if I was on a sinking yacht out in the Atlantic and you were my one phone call?” Only my mother knew how to come up with uniquely posh distress calls.

“Hey, Mom, I’m still working. Is it important?”

She cleared her throat. “Any call from your mom should be considered important.”

“Right. Forgot that rule.”

“You’re going to be here Thursday, right?”

“Planning on it. I’ll leave here early in the morning, so I should be there around five or six.”

“That’s good. We’re having dinner at eight.” I could hear the matchmaker gears spinning through the phone. “There’s someone I want you to meet. The Carltons recently moved here from Manhattan, and Alexandria’s mom has already become a good friend of mine. Alexandria was away in Europe for three years, and she needs to meet people. Naturally, I thought of you. You’ll be the perfect chaperone for the weekend.”

“Actually, Mom, I’ve met someone. I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure it was going to work out. Things are going really well. I think she might be the one.” The buzz of the vacuum got closer. It seemed the woman had managed to tame her vacuum in our jungle of plants. It was sort of nuts to have my mind wander off the conversation considering the major lie bomb I’d just dropped, but I couldn’t help but watch the antics outside my office window.

“What do you mean you’ve met someone, Lucas?”

“Well, there was this woman, and we said hello and from there I asked her to dinner?—”

“Oh, stop. You know I hate it when you’re facetious. I need to know who she is. Her name, her family, their connections.”

“See, and I hate it when you act like a snobby Victorian matriarch. You’ll meet her this weekend.”

“We can’t allow just anyone to spend the weekend at the house with us.” Sometimes my mom had snobbery down to an artform. And I always found it hard to talk to her when she was like this.

“Mom, I’ve got work to do. I’ll see you on Thursday.”

“Fine. We’ll be very interested to meet this young woman.”

“She’s anxious to meet you, too. Bye.”

I dialed Derek back. “Ha, you changed your mind,” he said.

“Nope, still a raincheck on the beer. I need a date for Rachel’s wedding. I need someone who will pretend to be my very serious girlfriend for the weekend.”

Derek laughed hard enough to end up in a short coughing fit. “Sure, I’ll just call up some of the women I know, and say, hey, you know my friend, Luke Greyson, the country’s most sought-after and eligible bachelor? Well, he needs you topretendto be his girlfriend. After that, you may carry on with the rest of your life and forget you ever met him. Yep, that’ll go over well.”

“Sorry I asked,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s rich. It really is. What’s up? Your mom playing the wicked matchmaker of the west again?”

“Something like that.” My gaze drifted back to the window. The cleaning woman had stopped her vacuum. She was dusting the shelves behind Rosalie’s desk. She stopped, glanced around, including my direction, and I sat up straight. “It can’t be,” I muttered.

“Why the hell not? Your mom has been trying to find you a bride since before you bought your first razor.”

I’d forgotten the phone call. “I’ll talk to you later, Derek.” I hung up and sat back in my chair.

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