Bargaining with the Bride Read online

  He pushed the childish thought away and tossed his phone in the air. Deanna was gone and the best thing to do was to focus on the present. He had to do something about Rachael. Had to make a decision about how to proceed. Had to look into this, study it…fix it. Fix the way his heart practically beat out of his chest when he thought about that kiss.

  One thing is for certain. I’m not going to get anywhere just laying here.

  He shoved up from his bed and paced the house, careful not to wake his sleeping pug, and collected every employee manual from his file cabinets and every ounce of research he had on his project. There had to be some guidance in there. Some small nugget of how to proceed with Rachael.

  But there was exactly nothing. Nothing at all. He had never been one for deterring office romance so long as both parties behaved responsibly, and while there were some bylaws for office involvement, they only pertained to break-ups.

  Knowing himself, he never thought there would be a need for rules involving entanglements with upper management. Maybe his brother, Brooks, might have needed them, but he was hardly ever in a relationship long enough to bother with bylaws. He would already have been broken up by the time he finished reading the paragraph.

  Brooks...

  He had to talk to someone about his predicament, and sadly he could only think of one option. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket before thumbing through the numbers. The co-owner of his company might have a few things to add, and though he wasn't keen on telling his brother the situation on the whole, he might have a few words of wisdom.

  Gritting his teeth, he pressed the little "talk" button and held the phone to his ear.

  The line clicked to life after the second ring, but rather than his brother's gruff tone, a breathy female voice greeted him. "Mr. Adams' phone."

  "Could I speak with Brooks, please?"

  "May I ask whose calling?" She replied in a practiced voice, though she was clearly restraining a serious case of the giggles. And that's when he recognized the voice. Of course. Brooks’ secretary.

  He heard the rumble of his brother's voice from the background and this time the woman did laugh. Well, at least that told him as much as he needed to know about the intra-company dating policy.

  "Garret," Brooks answered, a trill of female laughter still sounding softly behind him. “How are you?” There was a click and then whooshing of wind and cars passing on the street.

  "Am I catching you at a bad time?"

  Brooks sighed. "No, this is perfect. She's been here all week and I can't figure out a way to ask her to leave. She rearranged my furniture, man."

  "Too bad." Normally he might have laughed at his brother’s complete indignation, but he was too caught up. If they could just get to the point—

  "Hey, I've seen you freak out about much worse. Remember the girl? Carla or something? Who flipped at the company party?” Brooks said.

  "Cindy. And she was only mad because it was her birthday," he winced. That was bad, but not the worst. The worst was when she'd left after shredding all of his lab reports, screaming about his work habits at the top of her lungs. "But, as much as I love dredging up my romantic failures, that's not why I called."

  At least not entirely...

  "Oh? Shoot." Brooks said.

  How to go about asking the question? Brooks couldn't say a word about intra-office dating, but it definitely wasn't something he felt like discussing with his sibling. Hell, he still hadn’t told him that Deanna had left. So he stuck to the semi-almost-kind-of version of the truth.

  "I'm having trouble with an experiment and I need a secondary opinion," he said.

  There was momentary silence, and then Brooks said, "I'm flattered you'd ask, but I think you and I both know you're barking up the wrong tree there. I'm just the pretty face to put on your ingenious science."

  "Just hear me out, okay? Say, hypothetically, you had a result that you didn't expect. As if you'd accounted for all possible results, and then there was a new complication. What would you do?"

  "Aren't you supposed to, I don't know, revise your hypothesis or something?" He could hear the confusion in Brooks’ voice, but Garret nodded all the same.

  "Or terminate the experiment," Garret said.

  “I thought that was only if it became self-aware.”

  “You watch too many movies,” Garret said.

  "Okay, well,” the whooshing of cars filled the line again, and then Brooks asked, “How important are the results to you? Can you get them another way?"

  Garret thought on that for a long moment. The "results" were important to him. More important than he'd realized before. And if it was a choice between revising his hypothesis and getting rid of the project all together...

  "Thanks for your help, man. I owe you," Garret said, his mind whirring at a million miles an hour.

  "That doesn't really—" Brooks started, but Garret cut him off.

  "Hey, I have to go. I really appreciate the advice."

  "Yes, as always, I'm sure I've been a fountain of wisdom," Brooks said goodbye, confusion still coating every word, but Garret didn't have time to explain himself. He could only act. After all, there was so much to do and so little time...

  It was all so clear to him now. He was going about everything so incorrectly, focusing on his feelings rather than the final result. Rachael was his friend and she needed him, but he needed her too. This was an experiment, an effort to gain results and improve the company.

  With anything else, this was the stage where he would completely immerse himself in his work. He’d set limitations for his involvement, but in order for the business to succeed, he couldn’t give up now. On the contrary, now was the time to press the boards.

  Fully embrace the biosphere.

  He just had to do it before Rachael had the chance to refuse.

  He stalked into his living room and roused his snoring pug.

  "Tesla," He said, and the dog stared up at him lazily. "Get your ball. We're going on an adventure."

  * * *

  Barking.

  Unmistakably, it was the sound of barking. She sat bolt upright in her bed, breath coming in shallow bursts. How the hell had a dog gotten into her house? How big could it be? How ferocious?

  Why couldn’t it have been a robber or some sort of crazed salesperson? Anything, anything other than a dog. She slowed her breathing and tried to find her phone. The barking was distant, at least. That would give her some time, even if she felt like she was in the part of the horror movie where everyone in the audience is screaming for the hero not to walk through that door.

  Grappling through the sheets, she felt for the cool, glass square that was her smartphone. With a sigh of relief, she pressed the power button, only to be greeted by…nothing. At all. A black screen stared back at her as she pressed the button over and over again, hoping for a miraculously different result.

  Nothing.

  She couldn't call animal control, or any of her neighbors. Her charger was in the living room, but who knew if she'd be alive by the time she got there if Cujo was on the prowl.

  Then again, what choice did she have? She eased into the hall, looking before she went as though she were crossing the street. All clear.

  The stairs creaked as she tip toed down them, but the barking didn't get closer or louder. A tiny triumph. That was something.

  Reaching the bottom of the steps, she took a quick survey of her surroundings. The barking was coming from the far room, the room where Lance used to pretend to be dying. Now that she was in the living room, there was a good bit of space to work with.

  The phone cord was so close, glowing on her bay window sill like the golden monkey in the temple of doom. She darted for it, her salvation.

  When it was finally in her hands, she could have cried from relief.

  That was, until she saw that she was only holding half the cord. The other half was still connected to the wall, frayed where the wire had been chewed through.

  Th
en she felt like crying for an entirely different reason.

  Well, at least it had been a good life. There was nothing left to do but take a deep breath and meet the reaper now. So long, farewell, alvederzane, good-bye.

  She inhaled once, then again, trying her hardest not to hyperventilate, and with a resignation only akin to the end of epic movies, she started striding cautiously toward her kitchen, marching into the forbidden forest to face Voldemort.

  A rush of air swept past her bare leg as her foot crossed the threshold, and she stepped back, but it was too late. A booming male voice shouted, "Tesla, no!"

  Tiny talons clawed at her legs, hopping up and landing on her calves. She inched away, but the pug chased her, apparently thinking she was luring him into a game. Her voice caught in her throat and she looked around for the male voice, only to find Garret standing in front of her stove, pan in hand, watching as the pug chased her.

  She edged into the kitchen and leapt onto a kitchen chair to avoid the scratching. She batted the beast away with her foot, but it continued to pursue her, shrieking its barks between ragged, congested-sounding breaths.

  "Sorry, I've got him," Garret slid open the glass doors leading to her meager back yard and the little wrinkly-faced, snub-nosed monster trotted out to loose his havoc upon nature. It was only when she heard the light thud of the door sliding closed that she finally released a measured breath.

  She glanced from Garret to her stool and then back again. What was the best way to rectify the sheer humiliation of this? Try to get him to play “the floor is lava?” That would probably be easier than try to explain why she was a grown woman with a mortal fear of a pint-sized pug.

  Then again, maybe she wasn’t the one with the explaining to do. Why the hell was Garret here? With his dog? On a Saturday morning, no less. In her house. With no warning.

  She crossed one leg over the other, all too aware of how scant her pajamas were. In a few minutes, she’d make an excuse to go upstairs and change out of her boy shorts and tank top, but for right now she had a few mysteries to unravel.

  For example, her stuff seemed to have gained new friends overnight. Foreign spatulas and knife sets rested on her counter tops. There was an apron slung over the pantry door. Like more than one person lived there. Come to think of it, hadn't she spied a TV in her living room?

  The whole set-up was so foreign, she had trouble trying to decide what to ask first, but then something on the stove began to sizzle and the question was out of her mouth before she’d thought it through. "So, uh, what are you making?" It was far from the first thing on her mind, but the briny smell floating all around her would not be ignored.

  Garret’s brow crinkled for a minute, but then his features quickly returned to normal before he answered her—thin, straight line of a mouth, thoughtful stare and all.

  "Bacon's in the oven. Scrambled eggs on the stove. Biscuits are in a basket near the sink. Oh, and I made a pot of coffee."

  "I only have a single cup—"

  "But I have a pot. It's under the plate cabinet."

  She glanced toward the counter nearest the door, and there it was. A full pot of fresh coffee.

  Things were just getting weirder and weirder by the second.

  She crossed the room and pinched Garret hard on the bicep, shocked both by the lack of anything that seemed pinchable atop the hard stone of his arm, and also by the little surge of energy that rushed through her as she touched him.

  "Ouch," he rubbed his arm for a minute, "what was that for?"

  “I had to know if this was a dream."

  "Don't people normally pinch themselves in that case?"

  "What do I know? It's only..." She glanced toward the clock and took in a sharp breath. "What the hell are you doing at my house at seven in the morning on a Saturday?"

  "Normally you're at work by eight thirty on Saturday so I thought I'd treat you to a little breakfast first. We need to spend the day bonding if we're going to convince your family that this is real." He pushed the eggs around with his spatula.

  "You're going to lose a whole business day over this?" She shut off her mind and bit a chunk out of a nearby biscuit. In a minute, he'd probably explain that he was the king of Spain anyway, so he needed to keep a low profile at her house for a while, or something equally wacky.

  The past two days had been so crazy that it was nearly impossible to believe anything anymore. No, the best thing was just to let the good times roll, and if there wasn't some horrible catastrophe at the end, then so much the better.

  "This is an investment in my business. It's like any other business project. Complete and total dedication until the mission is successful." His tone was matter-of-fact, but she noticed the pointed way that he avoided her gaze as he spoke. Like he was hiding something.

  "All right then, awesome. Thanks for breakfast, but, uh, where did you happen upon my hidden key?"

  "You know, most people keep it under their door mats? It's not really a safe hiding place."

  "I figured it would be so easy to find, burglars wouldn't bother to look there."

  "Sound logic," his voice dripped with sarcasm as he slid the eggs onto a plate and moved to set them on the table.

  “Listen, I’m going to ignore the blaring sound of your judgment if you’ll explain why all of your stuff is here and also,” she pointed out the window. “What teen wolf out there is doing here.”

  “That’s my pug, Tesla, and all my stuff is here. Well, really, it’s only some of my stuff, but it’s all here because I’m going to live here until the wedding.”

  Her mouth went dry, “You’re what now?”

  6

  “I did a lot of thinking, and the best option at hand is to immerse ourselves in the culture of the other person. You know, like Jane Goodall,” he said.

  “Are you calling me a monkey?”

  “She studied gorillas, but that aside, I’m not saying it’s the perfect metaphor. It’s simply a science project.”

  Spluttering sounds gurgled from her mouth, but she had no words. Instead, she plopped into the kitchen chair directly behind her and waited for Garret to set a plate in front of her. There were no other options than to quietly accept that this chaos was her life now, even if it felt like there had to be some kind of reality TV crew hiding in her bathroom. Like she was the pilot episode for Punk’d: Nobodies Addition.

  “It’s really the only way to account for mannerisms and intimacies that we otherwise wouldn’t know about each other. Things you wouldn’t think to mention to the other person that could conceivably be mentioned at such an intimate affair. Don’t you think?” He slid the bacon out of the oven, his tone too rational to acknowledge the lunacy of his words.

  “Um, I guess,” she stuffed a biscuit into her mouth. So now he wanted unlimited opportunities to catch her sneaking ice cream at two AM in nothing but her unmentionables? She wasn’t trying to send out invites to that nightly shame party. No thanks.

  And even if he was to live with her, just for the next month, did she need to face her fears on a daily basis just to get someone to pretend to be her husband?

  Probably, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.

  “And, um, what about Tesla? He needs to be a part of this? My family knows how I feel about dogs, they won’t buy it.”

  “That is a hitch I hadn’t expected. Why didn’t you mention this fear on the questionnaire I emailed you?”

  “Questionnaire?” She raised her eyebrows and he promptly averted his gaze.

  “It doesn’t matter. The point is, it’s an unavoidable complication. I can’t leave him alone at my house, and I’m not really comfortable with strangers in my home.”

  “You’re uncomfortable with strangers in your home?”

  Apparently the humor of the situation was lost on him. He just nodded and slid into the seat next to her, shoveling eggs, bacon, and biscuits onto his plate and looking contemplative. It was almost unnerving, how easy all of this seemed to him. Like he thought this wa
s an in and out kind of thing.

  "Seriously?" She tried to bate him again, but his only response was to crunch into a crisp slice of bacon and nod again, saying between chews.

  "It's creepy."

  "Like, almost as creepy as finding your boss in your kitchen while you’re, um, indecent?" She pulled her tank top and his gaze followed her, searing through the thin fabric until she felt distinctly naked. After the way he’d kissed her last night, though, he might have made her feel naked with all of her winter sweaters piled on top of her.

  And what was with the kiss? That was the real question, wasn’t it? More so than all this talk of moving in or studying her. She had to know how her felt. Or if being around her made him feel even half as exposed as she felt.

  She cleared her throat, trying her best to sort through the mountains of questions he’d unleashed. "Thanks and everything. For the breakfast. But this is still pretty bizarre. Imagine if I showed up at your house in the wee hours of the morning and set up shop."

  "Would you have brought bacon?" He raised his eyebrows before shoveling a helping of eggs into his mouth.

  She sighed and munched on another buttery, flaky biscuit. She may as well give up. This was a moot point. Checkmate. Spock would be her constant companion until her fake wedding and then she'd head back home to take care of another person who needed her. Such was life. A series of complete and utter catastrophes.

  At least she had food to ease the weirdness.

  "Probably not. I don't like bacon. Or eggs. I guess you should know—"

  "You what?"

  “I don't like breakfast food. Maybe half a bagel, but bacon and eggs are gross."

  "What about sausage?"

  "Groady."

  "There is no logic in this place."

  She shrugged and swallowed the last of the warm dough, "That's not really the point right now. Even if I don't like bacon—"