Page 23 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

“You haven’t even read it?” she says.

“I’ll review it later. It’s not as if somebody’s going to be grilling us.”

“You’llreviewit,” she says. As though there’s something wrong with that.

“I can assimilate large amounts of information quickly,” I say. “It’s kind of my thing.”

“Did you get the questions I sent you?” she asks.

Shesent questions? I look at Clark.

“I forwarded her questions to you,” Clark says.

“Okay, I’ll find them and review them,” I say. “For now I need to get to work.”

“Okay, hold up.” She makes a little motion—two fingers pointed upward. Tabitha’s fingers talk as much as her mouth does. “I’m here to help you pull this off, right? And I need you to know that I’m going to do such an amazing job.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “But I do have a few concerns.”

Clark touches her arm. “The pocket door is soundproof. The crew can’t hear us. You don’t have to whisper.”

“Okay, a few concerns,” she says more loudly.

I roll my eyes. “We heard you the first time. What?”

She swallows. “So I’m all in on following your instructions perfectly, but there are some things fiancés know about each other. Things that will help us pull this off. If the yacht is full of, like, oil sheiks from the Mideast who don’t speak English, I’d say we don’t need to really know that much about each other. And your”—here she makes quote fingers—“questionnairewould be fine in that case.”

Clark frowns. “Are you putting quotation marks around my questionnaire?”

“Kind of. Because here’s the thing—your personal shopper had me picking out cocktail party outfits. What that says to me isinteraction. And if the person you’re trying to fool is a woman? And we’re socializing with her?” She shakes her head. “You guys. Just tell me it won’t be a woman who’s been around the block a few times.”

“I’m a private person,” I say. “I don’t share, and you don’t either. You’re a prop on my arm. And there are a hundred guests on the yacht.”

Tabitha isn’t satisfied. “But who are we trying to fool? Is it a woman? And does she have half a brain? Because when I said that thing about my grandmother in front of Cassie? You were like,oh really? You had anoh reallyface.”

“I did not have anoh reallyface,” I grumble.

Clark clears his throat. “Youdidappear to be a little surprised about the grandmother detail.”

I give him a scowl. The last thing I want to do is to go over his questionnaire, and I definitely don’t want to answer whatever extra questions Tabitha has cooked up.

Tabitha smiles. “My grandmother’s gonna be fine, by the way. She was hit by a car. Crossing a street in her little town up in Maine. She’s very feisty, but she’s in a cast that goes practically over her hip.”

“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“Dude, it’s all made up, but do you see how knowing those details would’ve helped with Cassie? You could’ve chimed in like, ‘She’s a fighter.’ And then you would beam at me and say. ‘Just like this one.’”

“Not a thing I’d say.”

“Well, you could growl about distracted drivers. A few color details will go a long way.”

I have to admit, there’s something to getting our stories straight. I don’t typically know the details of the women I’m with—the fewer details the better. But I’d know more about a fiancée.

“Fine. Ten minutes,” I say. I storm to the front and get my tablet, and then I go back and refresh my drink. There’s nothing I hate more than talking about myself. Unless it’s talking about my past.

Clark smirks and heads to the front. “I’ll be doing some work.”

My mood is dark as he closes the pocket door. This is exactly the opposite of how I envisioned this trip—it was supposed to be me on the quiet side doing work and Clark dealing with all of this. This fiancée thing washisplan, after all.

“What happened to Japan?” I ask.

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