Raul

Earlier in the evening

Dinner with Isabella should have been fun. We had a lone table out on the patio of the restaurant — I'd arranged it for privacy — and she looked lovely under the lights strung up on the trees. She was a bright and interesting conversationalist. And she was interested in me.

For some reason, I couldn't just relax and enjoy myself.

I know the date was not the best idea, considering everything that was going on. I asked her out on impulse, maybe a last-ditch act of defiance in the face of what I had no control over. Still, a beautiful woman was a beautiful woman. I thought I could have set everything aside and just enjoyed the evening. I was wrong.

Not that Isabella noticed anything amiss. Why would she? We didn't know each other that well, after all. Although it was possible she noticed and just hadn't let on.

It was almost a relief when dinner was over and she and I were ensconced in the backseat of my car, on the way to her place.

"That was a beautiful restaurant," she says, resting her hand on my knee. "Do you go there a lot?"

"Occasionally, yes," I reply, instinctively putting my hand over hers. To my surprise, I notice she is trembling slightly. "Are you cold?" I stroke her fingers with my thumb to soothe her nerves. Lots of people get nervous on first dates.

Isabella lets out a low, barely audible whimper and she leans toward me. Breathless, she kisses me with a hunger that catches me off guard. My arm goes around her waist as I return her kiss. She's soft and warm in my arms. My thoughts drift to the night ahead. Perhaps we should be heading toward my place instead. I don't relish the idea of spending the night in a stranger's apartment, especially since I will have to be at the office tomorrow. I think of Kate and her worries about our future in the company. It seems unfair that it's not just my job that hinges on the decision I've made, but her job as well.

"What's wrong?"

I look down at Isabella's puzzled expression. She has pulled away from the kiss and I barely noticed. "Nothing," I say. "Why?"

"You seem distracted."

"I'm sorry."

She puts a hand on my cheek, trying to coax me back to her. I cover her hand with mine and turn to kiss her palm.

"Would you like to come up?"

It's only then that I notice the car has stopped and is parked on the side of the street. "Maybe another time," I say. The regret in my tone is genuine. She really is a lovely girl; unfortunately, I'm not in the right head space right now.

She tries to hide her disappointment with a smile. "Sure. You have my number."

After she'd gone inside her building, I tell my chauffeur Santino to take me to Kate's.

When I get there, my first thought was perhaps I'd gone to the wrong house. Because of my night blindness, it takes me a moment for my eyes to adjust and see who the couple was in the front yard.

Something twists in my gut when I see Kate with Marcus's arms around her. What are they doing? Have they been dating in secret? The words come out as a shout before I could think better about it.

"What's going on?"

The unfamiliar feeling in my gut has given way to an equally unexpected anger in my chest. My voice sounds harsh to my ears and I'm not sure why.

"Raul!" Kate says, her voice a few octaves higher than normal. She turns to me but does not dislodge Marcus's arm that was still around her. "What are you doing here?"

Good question.

What am I doing here? I didn't think about it too much when I instructed Santino to take me to her place. I suppose I just wanted to talk to her. Talking to Kate has always helped me get my head straight, allowed me to see through my anxieties and focus on whatever it was I needed to focus on. It did occur to me that I should have called ahead.

"I needed to talk to you." I turn my gaze to Marcus, who looked back at me with a guarded expression. "Am I interrupting?"

"No," she says. "Marcus just dropped me off." To my extreme irritation, she looks up at him and smiles. "Thanks. This weekend will be fine."

"Saturday?" Marcus says, smiling back.

She nods.

I walk toward them. "How was dinner?"

"It was good," Marcus says. He grins. "How was your date?"

Asshole.

***

Raul

"What do you mean you're sleeping over?" Kate says. Her expression tells me she's wondering if I'm drunk.

We're inside her house. I take off my coat and drape it on the coat rack before I settle on her dark green couch. Sighing, I rest my arms over the back of the couch. "You can put me up for one night, can't you, Kate?" I say.

Seeing her glance toward the hallway where I know the bedrooms are, I add, "Is your sister visiting?"

"No, she left yesterday." She takes off her coat. "Can I get you anything? Coffee?"

"No, I need to sleep soon."

She hesitates, then says, "Ice-cream?"

I smile. "What do you have?"

She smiles back and shrugs. "Let's have a look."

We check the freezer and find two pints of butterscotch and a half-full tub of vanilla.

"Are you sure you want that?" she says when I take the vanilla.

"Why?" I examine the label of the pint. "Is there something wrong with this?"

"No, it's ... never mind."

"Don't look at me like that. Real vanilla is delicious."

***

"You said you wanted to talk to me about something," Kate says after we get back on the couch.

She's still wearing her work clothes. I've taken off my suit jacket and tie and rolled up the sleeves of my dress shirt. It's fall, but you can't tell by the way Kate heats up the inside of her house.

"In a minute," I say around a mouthful of frozen creamy vanilla ice-cream. "I don't know why I've never done this before."

"Eat ice-cream?"

I grin, licking my lower lip. "Hang out here. With you."

She looks at me over the rim of her pint. "Raul, you see me every day."

"But not here. Not with ice-cream."

"Your Tia Carmen filed to have the board meeting this morning."

"Hmmm."

"Are you rethinking your brilliant plan?"

"I don't have a plan."

"That's what I mean."

"Maybe." I study my ice-cream. "You work all your life for a company—"

"You've been in EM five years," she interrupted.

"Fine. If you give five years of your life to a company and make a success of it, you'd think they'd throw you a party, not fire you."

"I'm sorry. Is that what's troubling you?"

"It's stupid, I know." I grin wryly. "One shouldn't bring emotions into business." It's why I lived my life the way I do. The corporate life has a way of stunting your emotions and I had to find a way to escape that. Sometimes I suspect Kate knows this, but I can't be sure.

"Why don't you just get married, Raul?"

"I'm still thinking about it."

"The board will be meeting in less than two days."

I'm silent, my thoughts wandering as I take another bite of ice-cream. I liked Isabella. Her background check came up clean and she fulfilled all the requirements for what I needed in a wife. Or rather, what Kate and I decided I needed for this fake marriage.

"I need to sleep on it."

Kate sighs impatiently. "If you're really considering it, maybe you shouldn't be going on dates. It will look very suspicious if you're out with a woman one night and then married to another in the next."

I frown at her. "Wouldn't it also look suspicious if I were married the day after I spent the night with you?"

"That's different. I'm ..." She pauses. "I'm just your assistant. And we're not spending the night together, you're staying in my guest room."

"They don't know that."

"Well, men have affairs with their assistants all the time. They still go off and marry other women. Trust me, no one will find it weird. Some people will find it distasteful, sure, but not strange."

"Relax. I was only with Isabella tonight." At Kate's raised eyebrow, I add, "If I decide to go through with this sham marriage, I'll be marrying her anyway. In which case, it's fine if someone saw us."

"Then why are you here?"

She knows me too well. It's very rarely that I take a woman out to dinner and not have her in my bed afterwards. "I'm saving myself for marriage," I reply with my best deadpan expression.

"You're ridiculous."

___________________________________

Katelin

My heart is racing as I stand in front of the guest bedroom door. What I'm about to do is probably going to go down in history as the worst decision of my life. But everyone makes stupid decisions, right? All my life I've tried to do everything right and while my life is comfortable, it doesn't keep the loneliness at bay.

It's time to make things interesting.

I knock softly.

"Come in."

Raul's voice is husky with sleep. I bite my lower lip in dismay. Shit, did I wake him? Well, I can't do anything about that now. I take a deep, fortifying breath and twist the doorknob and push the door in.

I take a step back.

Raul is sitting up in bed, the sheets pooled at his waist and his hair wild from sleep. I can't tell what he's wearing under the sheets. The overnight bag he keeps in the boot of his car has a pair of pajamas but as far as I know he never wears them. The thought of him naked under the sheets nearly makes me lose my nerve, but I tighten my grip on the doorknob.

"Did I wake you?" I say.

"It's fine," he says, giving me a faint smile. "I needed to get up anyway." He reaches toward the nightstand to turn on the lamp and grab his wristwatch. "It's five thirty."

"Yeah, sorry." I walk to the side of the bed. "This is urgent. Coffee?" I set down the hot mug of brew on the nightstand. It has sugar and a lot of milk, the only way he takes it before noon.

"Yes, thank you." He rubs his face. "Did you hear from my tias?"

"No."

He leans forward to rest his long lean arms over his knees. "Do you want to sit?"

"Uh, sure."

"No, sit here," he says, just as I'm about to take the chair from the small writing desk. He pats the edge of the bed beside him.

"Okay."

I walk to the bed and sit on its edge. He's a little too close for comfort, but I don't want to sit closer. In fact, I should move a little away but I can't bring myself to do it. I usually don't like sitting on the bed in my work clothes but the pale gray suit I have on just came from the cleaners.

"What is it?" he says.

"Have you decided what to do?"

He winces. "About my aunts' ultimatum, you mean?"

"Yes."

He's quiet as he reaches for the mug of coffee. I'm trying not to stare at his bare, lean torso with the dark hairs trailing from his chest down to his abs, so I focus on his arm as he lifts the mug to take a sip. Like the rest of his body, his arm is well-toned and looks like it had been sculpted by the gods. I bite my lip to keep from whimpering from the heat that surges low in my belly.

"I emailed Tia Carmen, asked to meet her for lunch."

I press my lips together. "You'll plead your case."

"I'll try to be subtle about it." He takes another sip of coffee as though to fortify himself.

"You know you can't do subtle, right."

He sighs and lifts his coffee. Looking at me over the rim of his mug, he says, "Come with me."

I drop my gaze to the small space on the bed between us. "I've been thinking." I hesitate, thinking about how best to put what I want to say in words.

"Oh, Kate. You're not going to quit on me before I'm even halfway through my coffee, are you?"

"No. It's uh..." I swallow hard, then force myself to raise my chin to look him in the eye. "I'll marry you."

______________

I hope you enjoyed this excerpt! If you'd like to read the full story, it's available for my subscribers on Patreon (https://patreon.com/ansela) and Ream (https://anselacorsino.com/sub-fmmbb), and as a premium story on Radish (https://anselacorsino.com/fmmbb-radish).