Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
3
“Thanks for coming,” Christian said to Taylor as he eased back into his chair.
Taylor nodded nervously. Three days had passed since the accident and Christian, as he’d invited her to call him, hadn’t wasted any time in getting the estimates and calling her to meet up with him.She watched him surreptitiously as he gripped the handle of his mug and took a sip of his coffee. Now that the stress of the incident had passed, she saw what she had been too anxious to notice before, that the man was incredible looking. She catalogued each feature with fascination. Dark brown hair tinged with gold, dark eyes that upon closer inspection were a unique shade of blue, a straight, patrician nose, chiselled cheekbones...
As her gaze fell lower, taking in broad shoulders and tanned, muscular arms, she noted that the body didn’t quite match the face. His arms looked like they’d been places that the face would never have gone. One belonged to the aristocracy; the other belonged to the working class.
Taylor looked back up and was startled when she saw that Christian was watching her. “How do I measure up?” he asked sardonically.
She groaned inwardly and considered sinking underneath the table now that she’d been caught staring at him but she forced herself to stay put. Instead, her eyes shifted up to his face, not quite meeting his own eyes, and she cleared her throat. “So, about the estimate…”
Christian noted the deflection but didn’t pursue it; he was thankful for the change of topic actually. He didn’t know why he’d made the comment. He rarely teased people he didn’t know, especially if they were male, but there was something about Taylor that made him want to rag on him a little.
Maybe it was the way those harmless looking, deep brown eyes of his wouldn’t quite meet his own, or the uneasy way he sat huddled in his thick coat, whatever it was, Christian would have to get over it quickly. Taylor might look innocent but he highly doubted that he was as harmless as he appeared.
Wasn’t that lack of innocence the very reason they were there now?
Grabbing the envelope containing the estimate out of his coat pocket, he passed it over to Taylor and waited for his reaction to the amount.
The proposed cost of the damage, repairs, parts and installation, was a little over three thousand dollars, which was affordable to him, but apparently not to Taylor if the way his eyes widened at the amount was any indication.
He picked up his coffee cup and took a large gulp of the hot liquid. “I’ll give you two months to pay it off,” he said, staring at Taylor over the rim of his cup.
Taylor’s eyes widened even further if it was possible and Christian watched him disdainfully, sure that that he was thinking of a way to get out of paying the bill. “Two months might be a little difficult,” Taylor barely managed to choke out.
“Two months is the stipulation. If you can’t pay for it within that timeframe, we’ll go through your insurance company,” he said, his attitude nonchalant as he waited for Taylor’s response.
Taylor lifted his hand and rubbed his bottom lip with it nervously. Christian noticing the action let his eyes drop to his mouth and was surprised to see how feminine it was. Soft, pink, lush… Christian stopped when he realized where his thoughts were heading and with a shake of his head, he brushed the thoughts aside.
It wasn’t a big deal to notice another guy’s mouth – he was secure enough in himself not let the observation bother him – besides he had to expect that every now and then the painter in him would make an appearance; he was bound to notice interesting features regardless who they belonged to.
“There’s got to be some other way,” he heard Taylor mutter and he took the opening. “There is another possibility,” he offered offhandedly and Taylor looked up at him curiously and hopefully.
“In the next few months,” he continued, “I’ll be setting up and running a café. I have workers there right now but I’ll still need some extra help – general labour, café set up, etc. I also just moved back to town recently and I’ll need someone to help me with my errands. So, you become my goto person ... my, uh, assistant, for the next three months and you’re off the hook on the car repairs.”
Taylor knew exactly where Christian was going with this and her eyes narrowed at his words. It was bad enough that the damage was a lot more than she’d banked on but now it seemed that the only way to get out of it was to become this guy’s personal servant.
Disgusted by the very idea of it, she opened her mouth to tell him where he could take his offer but then, some part of her brain stopped her. Yes, the option was insulting, possibly even demeaning, but pride wasn’t going to pay for the car damages. This was a way out, a crappy way out, but there was that saying ... beggars can’t be choosers.
Taylor took a deep breath, swallowed her pride and met his eyes. “Three months and then I’m no longer beholden to you?” she asked, not noticing the way Christian was watching her sharply.
“As long as you do what I ask, after three months we’ll be completely square,” he said with a nod.
Her heart began to beat frantically at the statement. What exactly did “do what I ask” entail? If he thought he could take advantage of her because of the situation, he had another thing coming. “I can’t just agree to do everything you say. There’ll have to be conditions – a contract of some sort. I need to have some idea of what you’ll expect.”
Christian shrugged. “We’ll write a contract then. If you have a paper and pen, we can do it right now.”
Taylor reached for her backpack and took out her notebook. As long as she was allowed to put in her own stipulations she wouldn’t have to do anything she was uncomfortable with.
They were almost done writing the contract when Christian’s phone started to vibrate. He looked down at the number and sighed before pushing the contract towards her. “Look it over,” he mumbled before he flipped open his phone.
She glanced down at the contract and started to read everything they’d hashed out in the last half an hour, unintentionally keeping an ear on the conversation happening across from her.
“Hello,” she heard Christian say.
There was a long pause before his next response, “Mom, I already told you, I have no intention of taking her out.”
Hearing the irritation in his voice, she glanced up to look at him. He was playing with the handle of his coffee cup and his brow was furrowed as if he was frustrated by the conversation he was having and she briefly wondered who the “her” was he wasn’t interested in taking out.
He glanced up and their eyes met briefly before she quickly looked back down at the paper, embarrassed at being caught staring at him again.
“Taylor.” She darted her eyes up at him awkwardly when he called her name.
“Yes?” she responded.
“Are you busy tonight?” he asked, putting his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone.
She cautiously shook her head in response, wondering why he wanted to know.
“Okay, mom,” he said, his attention back to the phone. “I’ll take her out but only If you promise to lay off on the setting me up stuff for a while. I’ll meet her at the Emerald at eight.”
He hung up the phone and turned back to look at her. “Done looking it over?” he asked, gesturing towards the contract.
“Pretty much,” she said with a nod. She wasn’t really done but having just gone over it with him she had a good idea what she was in for – complete servitude.
“Good,” he said taking the sheet and signing it with a hard, masculine scrawl. He turned it back over to her along with the pen. “Go ahead and sign it,” he motioned.
She picked up the pen and gripped it tightly, knowing that she was about to give up three months of herself. That time would belong to him now and while they’d made up the contract so that he wouldn’t take complete advantage of her, she knew that pretty much whatever he asked, she’d have to do.
After she’d signed the contract, Christian took the paper and put it away. “I’ll get you a copy of this for your own records. Now that that’s over with,” there was a brief pause before he continued, “I’ll need you to start tonight.”
Taylor sighed. She supposed one final day of freedom was too much to ask. “What is it?”
“I need to get rid of a girl and I need you to help me do it.”
Taylor’s eyes narrowed, remembering too late that she didn’t know anything about this guy at all. What if he was involved in some really shady business and he wanted her to be his accomplice?
“What do you want me to do?” she asked suspiciously.
“I need you to be my lover,” he said matter of factly.
Taylor’s mouth dropped open in shock. She couldn’t believe his nerve. While it might seem like she was a pushover because of the situation, she most definitely wasn’t one and if he even tried to touch her, she’d make sure that he’d never be able to have sex again. “Absolutely not,” she said angrily.
“First day of work and you’re already complaining? Look, there’s no stipulation against this in the contract so you’re going to do it or we’re going to have a problem,” he said with an obnoxious arrogance that made her want to punch him in the face.
“I’m not going to have sex with you! And I’ll have you arrested for sexual harassment if you even try anything, bud,” she declared indignantly.
She watched his eyes widen and his mouth go slack at her words and then, after a few seconds of dead silence had passed, he threw back his head and guffawed.
“What the hell is so funny?” she demanded, annoyed that he was treating it all as a joke.
He leaned in over the table, still chuckling and looked straight into her eyes. “Dude. I don’t want your penis. I’m not gay. I only need you to pretend to be my lover for tonight. That’s it.”
Taylor looked at him with a mixture of relief and confusion. While she was relieved that he wasn’t trying to bed her, nothing else he'd said made any sense. Why would he think that she thought he was gay? And was the penis remark some kind of thinly veiled jab? She knew she wasn’t dressed in the most womanly manner but did he really have to go there?
“When did I say you were gay?” she asked, choosing to tackle the most confusing part of his speech first.
He raised a brow at her. “Why would I want to have sex with another guy unless I was gay or bisexual?” he asked, looking at her as if she was particularly slow.
And she was beginning to feel pretty slow actually. Either she was missing something or he was because the conversation wasn’t making any sense at all. Maybe if she got back to the original statement before the conversation had gotten completely derailed they could make some kind of headway.
“Go back to the thing about you wanting me to be your lover and explain,” she said.
Christian leaned back into his chair and shrugged. “Like I was saying earlier, there’s a girl, Emily, who I want to get rid of. Her family and my family run in the same circles and we’ve known each other for years. My family wants me to get married and Emily is the frontrunner. The problem is, I’m not interested in marriage and even if I was, she would be the last woman I’d choose. Unfortunately,” he ran a hand through his hair, “I’m at the head of her list and while I’ve been trying to get her off my back for years now, I’m not making much progress. She just doesn’t believe I’m unavailable to her. At this point, I’ll try anything to get her off my back and I’m thinking that pretending to come out of the closet might just be the thing.”
“But, if you’re going to pretend to be gay, why do you need me?” she asked still confused.
“Clearly, if I bring a guy with me to meet her and give a convincing enough performance that I only like men, that should be enough to turn her off.”
Bring a guy? What did he mean by—Wait.
He didn’t actually think she was a… Taylor’s eyes widened as it suddenly dawned on her. He’d met her twice and spoken to her for quite a bit, so how could it be that he thought she was a man? Could one haircut really cause this much confusion? She had to make sure she was clear.
“So, you,” she paused with emphasis. “Want me,” she pointed to herself, “to pretend to be your gay lover. Is that right?”
Christian looked at her as if he was talking to a four year old. “That’s right. We go in, we pretend to be together, she hopefully falls for it and we’re done.” Suddenly he looked at her, his eyes surveying her from head to toe. “Do you have any nice clothes?” he asked, completely changing the subject.
Of course, she had some nice dresses and a few pretty skirts but menswear was a completely different story. Not that it made sense even worrying about it. She wasn’t a man and he needed to know that he’d made a mistake—
Or did he?
Everything was set. He’d gone along with it all thinking she was a man. If she told him the truth now, would he still want to go along with it or would he want to go back to the original stipulation of making her pay for the damages? As much as she didn’t like being his underling, it was cheaper than having to shell out money that she didn’t actually have. It seemed foolish to mess with everything now.
As insulting and mortifying as it was that he thought she was a he, there was no reason not to just go along with it. It wasn’t like they were friends or anything. After the contract was up, they’d probably never see each other again. Wouldn’t it be better to just go with the flow and let it be? Besides, although he obviously wasn’t interested in her, it was probably still safer all around if he thought that she was a man.
“Nice clothes? Not really,” she said finally, her decision made.
“Okay,” he said with a nod. “We’ll have to go shopping.”
He stood up and grabbed his coat, slipping his arms into the sleeves. “You are going to do this right?” he asked, his eyes watching her steadily.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m going to do it.”
And she hoped she was doing the right thing.