Either the apocalypse was nigh, or my sanity had gone out the window.
Bennett Bradford was on his way over to my place.
I wiped my clammy palms on my black jeans, surveying my apartment. The white quartz countertops were so shiny I could retouch my lipstick in their reflection. All the throw pillows on my couch were perfectly arranged. And a Diptyque Tilleul candle glowed on the glass end table, bathing my apartment in the sweet honey-scent of linden trees and early summer. Not a seasonally appropriate scent for autumn, but it was my favorite—and given the situation, I needed something to soothe my frazzled nerves.
The intercom chimed and I jumped, gaze snapping over to the alarm panel. With knees like jelly, I walked over and buzzed Bennett up, fingers almost trembling too much to do so.
I must have had too much coffee earlier. Surely, that was the problem.
Moments later, there was a tap on the front door. I froze with my feet glued to the spot for a good couple of seconds. Another knock followed, snapping me back to reality. I quickly gathered up the stack of MBA school brochures I’d been poring over earlier and set them off to the side of the coffee table. Then I rushed over to the front door and unlocked the deadbolt, reluctantly swinging it open.
“Hey.” Bennett’s lips tugged into a devastating grin, sending my already speedy pulse into a full-on arrhythmia. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a guy at my place, least of all one that looked like him.
The exterior was so appealing. Too bad the inside didn’t match.
“Hi.” I moved out of the way to let him pass, pointing to the mat in the entry. “Shoes off.”
“Pardon?” He raised his eyebrows, lingering in the doorway.
I sighed. “It’s just my thing, okay? Shoes track in all kinds of dirt and bacteria from outside.”
Yes, I knew people considered it uptight. Some even said it was rude to ask of your guests. But I walked around on these floors barefoot. I could not get past the idea that someone might have stepped in dog excrement, rotten food, or heaven knows what before coming up to my apartment, tracking in E.coli or other toxins. Blame the New York Times for running the article that put those ideas in my head in the first place.
Bennett’s gaze fell to the charcoal mat, lifted back up to me, then dropped back down to the mat. My breath stilled and I braced myself for an argument.
“Okay.” He shrugged, slipping off his brown leather loafers. “When in Rome.”
Maybe he was in an agreeable mood. That could be a good sign as far as negotiating went. Or it could be a trap. He was probably trying to get me to lower my defenses so he could go in for the kill.
I stiffened, locking the door behind him. This was a bad idea. Wasn’t there some rule about not inviting vampires into your home?
Bennett strolled in, scanning my condo appraisingly. “Nice digs.”
“Uh, thanks?” I had no idea what his apartment looked like, so it was difficult to know how much weight to give his opinion. Most men weren’t exactly arbiters of interior design.
His place was probably bachelor central: oversized flatscreen TV, modern finishings, and lots of black leather. Probably lots of chrome, too, so he could admire his reflection at every opportunity.
“Let’s set up over there.” I pointed to the living area where my papers and laptop sat on the wooden coffee table. “Would you like something to drink?” Being polite felt weird but being impolite seemed equally odd.
“What do you have?”
“Herbal tea, La Croix, or water.” I paused. “Or there’s an open bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in the fridge, but I’m guessing you don’t drink white.”
Most men didn’t. Then again, Bennett was a bit of a wildcard in general.
“No scotch?” Bennett trailed behind me.
“Do I look like I drink scotch?”
He shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”
I hurried ahead of him and returned to my spot on the loveseat, where my makeshift office was set up. Bennett sauntered into the living room, weaving past the ottoman over to the two grey couches that formed an L facing the gas fireplace and television. The loveseat sank under his weight as he sat down on the other end, a mere foot away from me. Instead of, you know, sitting on the totally vacant couch beside it like a normal human would.
His presence swallowed up the room, like he was the only thing in it. And his long legs and broad torso took up so much space, mentally and physically, that it was almost impossible for me to focus.
If he tried to manspread, I was going to bash him with my MacBook.
I gestured to the stack of notes beside me, written neatly in blue ink on loose leaf paper. “I had a few thoughts, but I didn’t have time to type them all out yet.”
Because I was speed-cleaning my apartment before his arrival like some kind of idiot. I always tidied before anyone came over, just not quite to the same degree. I didn’t know why it was so important Bennett thought I had the cleanest kitchen sink in the metro area. It’s not like I cared what he thought.
“You wrote all that down?” He craned his neck and looked over at my notes, amusement tinting his tone. “And now you’re typing it up?”
I glanced up from my laptop. “Of course. It serves us both to have the scope of our arrangement clearly delineated. That way everyone knows what to expect.”
“Still a keener, just like back in high school.” Bennett smirked, placing his arm along the back of the couch. His right hand rested in dangerously close proximity to my left shoulder. “Precious.”
“I prefer to think of it as thorough.”
“But you’re creating a paper trail,” he pointed out, expression sobering. “What if someone else finds it?”
“I’ll destroy it later.” I was meticulous about records management—notes would go in the cross-cut paper shredder and the electronic file would be wiped clean. “This is to keep us honest. To keep you honest, specifically.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re implying.”
“I’m not implying anything,” I said, selecting 12pt Times New Roman and formatting the line and paragraph spacing. “I’m straight-up saying it.”
Bennett made a face at me, and I made one back, like the two mature adults that we were. Then I rolled my eyes, returning my attention to the blank word processing screen. The cursor blinked against the stark white page like a silent alarm bell. A dull throb of low-level irritation replaced my nervousness from earlier. Was this how it would be for the next couple of months? The two of us bickering all the time? I was exhausted just thinking about it.
Maybe I would be better off feeding my reputation to the wolves.
Sifting through my notes, I found the list of questions and outstanding items that I’d compiled over the past few days. “There are a few details we haven’t settled on yet.”
“Like what?” Bennett shrugged. “Not much to it. We’ll tell everyone we’re dating, accompany each other to social events, and act the part in public for a while.”
“For starters, we need to decide how long we’ve supposedly been dating. We need to make sure we get our story straight.” If someone else cornered me verbally like he did—which was inevitable—I couldn’t afford to come up empty-handed.
He furrowed his brow, falling silent. “Let’s say dating for a month and we recently got more serious.”
Nodding, I made a note under the ‘relationship background’ header. I hoped a month was enough of a buffer between me and any other women, so that nothing would come back to haunt us, but part of me was afraid to ask.
I, on the other hand, had a buffer the size of the Atlantic Ocean. It had been well over a year since my last relationship and even that hadn’t been exclusive.
“And how long do you intend to hold me captive?” I looked up from the laptop screen, expression rapt.
Bennett shot me a look. “We’ll help each other for four months. That’s long enough for me to close this deal and be well into the construction stage. Then we can tell everyone we parted ways mutually. My reputation will be repaired, yours will be preserved, win-win all around.”
“Four months?” I recoiled. That was longer than a season. It was two entire haircut cycles. “Not a chance.”
“Going to interfere with your packed dating calendar?”
I scowled at him, sorely tempted to use my pen as a dart. “Three months, until after Quinn’s wedding, and I get to dump you. Preferably in a public and humiliating manner.”
“Humiliating like, say, faking a boyfriend?” He raised his eyebrows and my level of irritation ratcheted up a notch. “Four months and we say it was amicable.”
It wasn’t lost on me that Bennett’s idea of negotiating meant going straight back to his initial ask; he hadn’t budged at all on the duration issue. Four months was too long, though. That would bleed into the following year. It was one thing to put up with Bennett until the wedding; it was another to ring in the new year still chained to his side.
I picked up my mug of lukewarm peppermint tea, fighting the urge to throw it at him. “Three months. I get to say I ended it, but you can tell people it was already circling the drain. Final offer.”
Ninety days. I could last ninety days without strangling him with his silk tie. Right?
“Sold.” He leaned back, reclining against the grey fabric and propping his sock-clad feet on the ottoman. His navy dress socks had tiny, colorful cartoon robots all over, and I couldn’t decide if it was endearing or annoying. Grabbing the remote, he switched on the TV and began shuffling through the cable guide while I returned to the computer.
“You don’t need to draw up a literal contract. You know I’m not going to renege on our deal,” Bennett said, idly channel surfing. He seemed way too comfortable for a first-time guest. “I always keep my word.”
“You have a tendency of twisting words to suit your agenda. This contract is black and white.” I mistyped as I spoke, resulting in ‘Badford’ instead of ‘Bradford.’ While amusing in a Freudian slip sort of way, I was trying to replicate a real, legally binding agreement as much as possible. Frowning, I backspaced and re-typed it correctly.
While I continued to draw up a rough draft, Bennett turned the TV to a baseball game and leisurely scrolled his phone. I sincerely hoped he was checking his texts and not Tinder.
As I finalized the last item, my stomach growled insistently, so loud that I thought Bennett might have heard it. But if he did, he was polite enough not to comment.
The first thing I was going to do after he left was stress-eat a massive plate of nachos and scream into a pillow. And polish off that half-bottle of Sav Blanc. Straight from the bottle.
He leaned closer, trying to see the screen. His cologne drifted over to me, and I did my best to ignore the cartwheel in my stomach. Ironic that someone so evil could smell so heavenly. “Are you done yet?”
“Just about.” I turned the laptop to face him. “What do you think?”
