Page 24 of Faking It With My New Boss

“I'm sorry,” he said. “It just kind of came out. I didn't even realize I was going to say it until I heard it come out of my mouth. I panicked. But listen,” he turned to me, stopping in the middle of the path to face me. “This could be perfect.”

“What do you mean it could be perfect?” I asked.

“We keep it going. We just keep acting exactly like we did in there. It will keep Grandfather off me for a while and everybody will see me in a better light. I'll secure my position in the company and gain more power and control. Eventually, Grandfather will give his stock to me and I'll be able to do things my way. Which means I'll need someone to help me with a lot of projects.”

“You want to keep pretending we are engaged? Don't you think people will notice when nothing happens?” I asked.

“Really long engagements are popular these days. No one will question it,” he said.

I nodded. “Alright. I can't believe I'm actually doing this, but alright. I'll go along with it. But only as long as I can keep my job. That's my one condition.”

I hadn't explained to him why I needed the money, but he didn't seem to care. He nodded.

“Absolutely. Thank you, Courtney.”

Chapter Sixteen

Bryan

The next morning, Courtney had an intense look on her face when she stalked across the lobby toward the elevator. She got there first and waited for me to step inside.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Where did we meet?” she asked, looking over at me with a serious expression.

I was both confused and concerned. Either she was having an alarming lapse of memory or she had just decided to pretend we didn't know each other and start rebuilding.

“I don't know if you count me taking the pastry from you in the coffee shop as us meeting. Or maybe we met when you shut the elevator doors in my face. But if you want to be really specific with it, I guess we met in my office when I thought I knew who you were but apparently didn't,” I said.

She shook her head. “No, I mean, where did we meet in the world where we are madly in love and engaged?”

“I didn't mention us being madly in love. Are we madly in love?” I asked.

“We better be. I don't want to fake dedicate my life to a man who would pretend to be engaged to someone he wasn't falsely madly in love with. That would just be a waste of both of our hypothetical time. I deserve to be artificially wooed by a man who pretends to not be able to imagine a single moment of his fake life without me,” she said.

I was stunned she managed to get through all of that with a straight face. I gave a single firm nod of agreement.

“Alright. Then, yes, we are madly in love.”

“Good. So, where did we meet?”

The doors of the elevator opened and we walked out onto the office floor. She immediately headed for her office. We were right in the middle of a conversation. At least, I thought we were. Maybe I'd managed to imagine all of that, too.

I went into my office, halfway expecting to find my grandfather sitting there waiting for me. It was fortunately empty and I took a longer than usual shower to give myself a chance to think. When I stepped out a while later, seeing Courtney sitting in the sitting area of my office made me jump.

“You are far too quiet,” I said.

“Alright, there we go. You have a complaint about me. That's good. It adds authenticity to the relationship. But we need more. We have to figure out our whole relationship story.”

“Relationship story?” I asked.

“Yes. If we are going to pretend to be engaged with any chance of it actually being believable, we have to make sure it looks real. That means we have to know each other. There has to be a story for us to go on. Think about what your grandfather did yesterday. As soon as he heard that we were getting married, he wanted to know everything. That's the way everybody is going to be.

They are going to want the details. Where we met, how we fell in love, the types of things we've done together, how you proposed. All of it. We have to have a story we can share with people that sounds authentic, not just like a script. And we have to have all the little relationship nitty-gritties.”

“What is that?” I asked, sitting down on the couch beside her.

“All the things that make a relationship about two people sharing their lives. We have to have memories we can talk about, stories about each other we can tell people. We need jokes. A song. Food we like to eat together. Plans for the future. We need all those things. It has to feel real if we're going to pull this off,” she said.

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