Page 9 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

Clark shakes his head. “You really have to bring her.”

“Who? She doesn’t exist!” I say. “What have you done?”

“It’s fine,” he says. “We’ll find you a fiancée.”

“Find me a fiancée,” I say, disbelieving.

He winces. “Sorry.”

Anybody else who pulled this kind of thing, I’d fire them so fast. But not Clark. It’s not just that he’s been with me since the beginning. He’s a loyal friend. And brilliant with clients. Usually.

“She won’t figure it out,” he adds. “People bring fake dates to weddings all the time. This is a step up from that. We’ll find you an actress to play the part. Tell her not to bother you while you’re working.”

“And what happens when Gail goes to the next Broadway show or goes on Netflix and sees the fiancée I briefly had and then broke up with starring in something? Gail’s not an idiot.”

“A model, then.”

My mind reels with the insanity of it all. “I thought we were going for a camera-shy fiancée,” I say.

“Right,” he says.

“Okay, we’ll figure it out. We’ll put her in another cabin.”

“She can’t be in a different cabin. She’s your fiancée.”

“I won’t be in the same cabin with a beautiful woman throwing herself at me. I don’t like the odds of me resisting that for two weeks. And then I’m stuck in a tiny space with somebody I’ve slept with and don’t want a relationship with? I’d rather be trapped in aSound of Musicsing-a-long.”

Clark nods. He knows that I don’t do sleepovers, I don’t do the same woman twice, and I would never actually bring a woman home. “Maybe if you request a two-room suite, and one side is the office and you sleep in the office…” he says.

“The small-space problem remains,” I say. “Jesus.”

“How about a woman you find annoying?” he tries. “And she stays locked in the bedroom?”

Something in me perks up at that. “That might work. An annoying nobody with the qualities I hate.”

“Though an annoying nobody with the qualities you hate is ninety-nine percent of the human population. We’d have to narrow it down.”

“A female,” I say. “Reasonably hot, but somebody whose personality irritates me so much, I wouldn’t want to touch her with a ten-foot pole.”

Clark’s smirking. “Hot with the qualities you hate. Maybe more specific?”

“You need a list? Give me your go-folder.”

He holds up the brown leather folder he brings everywhere. I snatch it and take it to my desk, grabbing a sheet of paper. I clip it to the top inside of his folder. At the top I write “REX HATES:” with a bold underline. Then another bold underline for good measure.

I pause.

“You hate perky, bubbly people,” Clark reminds me. “You’re always saying that.”

“True,” I say. “A bubbly attitude annoys me.” I write the numeraloneand “bubbly personality.”

“Maybe we find some low-level model who is perky and bubbly,” Clark says. “And it would have to be somebody into soap operas. You hate when people are into soap operas. And that can be what she watches when she’s shut up in her room.”

“That’s the perfect number two item,” I say. “Because it shows the woman is an imbecile who I have nothing in common with.” I write the numeral two and “thinks soap operas are profound.” I tap the pen on the smooth mahogany surface of my desk, trying to imagine the most annoying fiancée to take on this trip.

It’s almost too bad Tabitha is probably halfway around the world in Japan by now. But then, I want a plausible fake fiancée. Nobody in their right mind would buy me marrying somebody like that.

“Number three,” I say. “Impoverished. Impoverished people are easier to control.”

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