Page 4

Wherein a Deal Is Arranged

Declan

I cannot believe I’m doing this.

I sat in my car—my parents were clearing their stuff out of my place so I’d been relegated to my vehicle for privacy—and pulled her up in my contact list.

Abi Mariano.

After utilizing Google to (a) make sure she wasn’t an actual criminal (I believed her about the infestation), (b) ascertain whether or not she was a functioning member of society (she’d graduated with honors from UNO and had a LinkedIn profile), and (c) determine her sketchiness factor, I consulted with my buddy Roman, who convinced me to take a huge-ass gamble.

I hit the FaceTime button and waited while it rang.

And then she answered. “Hello?”

Her face popped up, her eyebrows all scrunched together like she was confused by the call. Which, I supposed, was fair since she didn’t know my number and we weren’t friends.

“Mariano.”

“Yes?” She sighed and gave me an impatient glare before glancing at something beyond the phone and muttering an “excuse me” to someone.

“Can I have your attention for a moment?”

Her eyes shot back to me and she looked pissed, even as she said, “It is yours.”

I could tell by the narrowed brown eyes that she wasn’t in the mood to be messed with, which irked me because who did she think she was, using my house as her personal Airbnb and then acting like I was an ass for being unhappy about it?

She was a five-foot-nothing bundle of red hair and attitude who’d be cute if she wasn’t the cause of my current headache, but alas, Abi Mariano had seemed incapable of not causing me difficulty. I said, “I have a proposition for you.”

“Oh, joy.” She was walking beside a congested street, but I couldn’t tell where she was in the city. She looked at me through the camera and said, “Listen, let me stop you right there because I’m not interested in anything sexual or illegal.”

“As if I am.” For someone who’d squatted in my residence last night without permission, she sure had a big chip on her shoulder.

I would’ve called her boss immediately if I wasn’t so desperate to keep my career on its current upward trajectory.

“Do you want to hear my offer, or should I call Ken Adams?”

That made her mouth close. Yes, I know your boss’s name, honey.

“Please continue,” she said, and I was pretty sure she was gritting her teeth.

“If you pretend to be my girlfriend at the party tonight—and do a good job without making things worse—then we’re square.”

“Wait, what?” She stopped walking and looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “You want me to pretend to be your girlfriend at some cocktail party?”

This was such a bad idea. “Yes.”

“But I don’t even know you.”

“I’ll give you notes so it’ll be easy to fake it.”

“How do I know you’re not going to get me fired after I do this?”

“I won’t.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m not going to trust you on that. See previous ‘I don’t even know you’ comment.”

“I’ll put it in writing.”

“That means nothing. Like I’m going to hire a lawyer to sue a billionaire for going against his word to not fire me for trespassing? Nope.”

“What do you want from me here?” I snapped, irritated that she was making this absurd situation even more difficult.

“Hmm.” She sat down on a bench— is that Elmwood Park?

—and was silent for a solid five seconds before snapping her fingers and saying, “I’ve got it.

You can email Ken and tell him that you’re paying me to house-sit for a week.

It’s electronic evidence of permission, and also an FYI so the amazing Abi doesn’t get in trouble if someone saw me slipping out in the morning. ”

Okay, so the girl was quick on her feet; I’d give her that. “Fine, but why would I say a week? I’ll just say, FYI I paid Abi to house-sit last night.”

“Because you’re going to let me stay at your apartment for a week, just until my situation has resolved itself.”

“That is not happening,” I replied, shaking my head. “I’m not letting a stranger stay—”

“First of all, we aren’t strangers—I’m your girlfriend,” she interrupted in a tone that made me sound like the ridiculous one. “And you will be staying at a hotel. It wouldn’t make sense for me to house-sit if you’re there.”

“You want me to move into a hotel and let you—a stranger—stay at my house.”

This girl was clearly out of her mind.

Ironically, I was already planning on staying in a hotel for the weekend. My dad had a bad back and couldn’t handle shitty beds, so since I was leaving again on Monday, it’d just made sense to let my parents stay at my place.

Until Abi showed up, that is.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “And technically you let strangers come into your house all the time when you’re out of town, so it won’t be my first unsupervised-in-your-place rodeo. I’m there all the time.”

“Absolutely not,” I said.

She shrugged. “Then I’m not doing it. Count me out.”

“I might consider putting you up in a hotel for a week,” I said, not wanting to but also ready to be finished with this bullshit.

She scrunched up her nose. “Nah.”

“ Nah ?” I was going to fucking lose it. “Why nah ? I just said I’ll pay for you to stay in a hotel for a week.”

“Yeah, but I really want to use your kitchen.”

“This is madness.” I took a deep breath and tried for calm when I had mere hours until the party. I needed to focus on that, not this ridiculous person who’d suddenly inserted herself in my life. “It was nice meeting you. Have a wonderful life—I’ll tell Ken you say hi.”

“And I’ll tell your parents you say hi and also that you made up a fake girlfriend.”

My mouth snapped closed, and I literally had no idea what to say as she watched me with her eyebrows raised. There was nothing on her face but attitude, like she was daring me to test her, and I wanted to bang my head against a wall.

“I will not be blackmailed by a maid,” I said through gritted teeth, wondering how things could’ve gone off the rails so quickly. “Take the original offer or I’m hanging up and calling Ken.”

She bit down on her lower lip, blinking fast like she was trying hard to figure the best angle. Do the smart thing, Abi, come on . I kept my mouth shut, waiting for her to make the right decision.

“Why, though?” She didn’t look opposed to the idea, but blinked like she was trying to figure out a puzzle. “It’s only solving your problem for one night and will probably make things worse in the long run.”

“Look, I just need to get through this very important evening without a million questions, okay?”

She pursed her lips. “What is the dress code at this very important evening?”

Thank God—she’s going to do it. I let out a breath of relief. “Do you have a cocktail dress?”

She snorted. The girl literally snorted, so I shut that down with, “Listen, I’ll send everything you need—dress, shoes, the works—to the apartment, and I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“Wait. Your apartment or my apartment?”

“I thought yours had an infestation.”

“It does.”

“So wouldn’t mine obviously be better?”

“Of course it would, but you threatened to have me fired after the last time I was there.”

“You weren’t invited the last time.”

“So I can stay there?” she said in disbelief. I didn’t want to give in to this person’s demands, but I was also very aware we were short on time and I needed to get things moving. “Wait—your parents aren’t still there, are they?”

“They’re going to a hotel as we speak.”

“Why?”

“Does it matter?”

“Are you going to tell me why or not?”

“They are moving to a hotel because they are paranoid their unannounced arrival is cramping your style.”

“Mine?”

“Yours.”

“Interesting.” She sat there for another minute, eyes narrowed but staring at something off-camera, before saying, “Well, you still haven’t given me a yes on the weeklong apartment stay.”

“Abi—”

“But even if it’s a yes, I’m going to need some time to think about this.”

“How much time?” I could feel my pulse beating in my temple as this impossible girl behaved as if she had the upper hand. I trusted Roman’s advice on most things, but I realized as I looked at her stubborn chin and ridiculous shirt that he was absolutely wrong in this instance.

This was a terrible idea.

“Actually, Abi—”

“I’ll do it.”

Is she serious? “So when you said you ‘needed some time,’ you were talking about ten seconds?”

“Clearly.”

I rubbed my forehead and knew I needed to bail. I needed to get as far away from Abi the Maid and the ridiculous situation my lying had somehow created before it blew up in my face.

So it didn’t make a damn bit of sense when I said, “Okay—here’s the plan.”