Page 6 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding

“A n arrangement?” Victor asked, reaching for his macchiato. Their hands brushed on the paper cup, making a shiver course down Pandora’s spine. She tried not to squirm in her seat. Or rub her thumb over the back of his hand like some creep.

“You see, those notes you were reading, they weren’t actually for a play,” she said, feeling like her belly was wobbling, knowing how she was opening herself up to ridicule if Victor thought she was peculiar.

“OK,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee.

Pandora absolutely did not watch the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. Because that would have been insane.

“What is it, then?” he said when she didn’t immediately tell him.

“They’re notes my friend Lucy and I are making up for the perfect … OK.” She paused, sucking in a deep breath. She didn’t actually need to breathe, of course, but the more time she spent around humans, the more she picked up on the many ways they used breathing to express themselves.

Sighs, deep exhales, sucking in a deep breath to prepare to do or say something uncomfortable.

Besides, if she was going to be out in public with humans, she needed to act like them. She had long since made herself take occasional breaths in case anyone was watching her too closely.

“I just want to preface this by saying that I’m not, you know, bananas or anything.”

“Always a great opener,” Victor said, deadpan, starting to look like he was regretting agreeing to hear her out.

“It’s going to sound ridiculous,” she told him. “But I’m serious. The situation is serious.”

“OK. What were the notes for, then?”

“We were compiling a list of potential traits for a husband.” Pandora watched as Victor’s brows rose and his eyes widened, clearly thinking she was not only ridiculous, but one of those pathetic, needy women who bordered on stalkers. “Not a real husband,” she added hurriedly. “A fake one.”

“For a book?” he asked, frowning. He clearly wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt here, but she was mucking it up.

“No, for the arrangement I mentioned,” Pandora said. Then, resting her arms on the tabletop, she leaned forward. “I’m looking for someone to act like my fake husband.”

To his credit, he only raised one brow at that.

“What for?”

“Well, see, my birthday is coming up. And, according to my parents, it’s a very important birthday.”

“Which one is it?” he asked.

“My one …” she started automatically, before catching herself. “My twenty-fifth.”

“What’s so special about that one?”

“It’s when I’m supposed to get my inheritance,” she told him, watching as surprise flashed across his gorgeous eyes. It wasn’t every day that you heard someone was from that kind of wealth. Most people were just trying to get by.

“You’re some kind of heiress?” Victor asked, likely trying to figure out why she was working at a coffee shop, then. But also probably assuming that wealthy people could be quirky and expect her to prove she was responsible enough for her wealth by working a normal job for a few years.

Pandora wanted to deny that.

But it was the best way to describe her situation.

“Yes,” she said, nodding.

“I don’t understand how a fake husband factors into any of this.”

“Well, my family just informed me that to inherit my fortune, I need to be … married,” she said, almost choking on the word. “I know.” She shook her head at Victor’s scrunched brows.

“That’s some patriarchal bullshit,” he said.

“That’s what I said!” Pandora said, smiling at him for a second before trying to get serious again. “But my parents are … very traditional. They really dug their heels in about this. They won’t hear of me inheriting if I’m not married.”

“So you are going to fake being married?” Victor asked.

“Well, no. I actually have to be married. But the relationship itself will be, you know, fake. All for show, kind of thing.”

“That’s … a lot to take in,” Victor said, twisting his coffee cup in slow circles on the surface of the table.

“I know. And it has to be convincing, which is why Lucy and I drew up the list.”

“He has to … smolder?” Victor asked, a hint of teasing slipping into his tone.

“We kind of meant that he has to try to look at me like he’s attracted to me,” Pandora said.

“That shouldn’t be hard. And waltzing?”

“Well, you know, like … wedding dances and such?”

“Guess that’s also why there was a note about waistcoats and cravats?”

“Exactly,” she said, nodding.

“And he has to have a tragic backstory?”

“What?” Pandora asked, brows raising. “No. No, that’s not … mandatory. Lucy went a little crazy with her notes. We’d only gone over a few of them.”

Victor nodded at that before sitting back.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” he asked, watching her with those verdant eyes of his.

She’d imagined just this moment countless times before, what it might feel like to have his undivided attention, to see his gorgeous eyes looking at her like he was truly seeing her, not just glan-cing at her from the other side of the counter.

It was better than she’d imagined.

She had a sinking feeling, though, that what she was about to say was going to make him roll those eyes, tell her she was absurd, then rush out of the shop.

“Well, after hearing about your … predicament, I was starting to think we might be able to work together toward a common goal.”

“What goal is that?”

“My inheritance.”

Victor shook his head at her, making her stomach bottom out before he spoke. “I think I’m missing something here. Why does your inheritance have anything to do with me?”

“Well, you clearly need some money so you can go back to university. I’m about to come into a lot of money.”

“Wait … You want to pay me to—”

“Marry me, yes.” Pandora watched him, half expecting him to burst into laughter.

“You’re serious,” he said, leaning forward, bringing with him the scent of his cologne that she’d never been close enough to catch before. It was a cozy, warm scent. Leather, vanilla, and a hint of cinnamon. Pandora wanted to press her face into his neck, to breathe him in, to …

No.

Nope.

She couldn’t let her mind go there.

“I am very serious,” she told him. “I need my inher-itance. My parents aren’t budging. And I am single. I really can’t think of any other way to handle this.”

Victor sat with that a second, his gaze moving past her, staring at the back wall, giving Pandora the opportunity to gaze at him without being seen as a complete creep.

She could see the gears turning in his mind, could picture him trying to sift through all of the reasons this was a terrible idea. He didn’t know her. She could be lying to him. He might waste precious time of his life all for nothing.

But she thought she could see the moment when he latched on to the possibility of this arrangement.

Going back to uni. Finishing his PhD. Which, in turn, would likely mean he would be able to work toward his dream job, whatever that was.

Not having to go back and live with his parents. Not being stuck in a dead-end job. Not having all his dreams shatter down at his feet.

His green eyes cut back to hers.

“What is the catch?”

“There is no catch. Well, I mean, obviously, there are, you know, things we would need to iron out.”

“Such as?”

“Getting to know each other. This has to be convincing. My mum is really good at sniffing out lies. We have to have some ‘getting to know each other’ dates, so we can stand up to any sort of questioning.”

“That makes sense,” he said. “What else?”

“We would have to go through all of the wedding planning together. Decor, cakes, engagement parties, the whole thing.”

“OK. What then? We fake a relationship, convince your family, what then?”

“Then we get married,” she said, watching something flash across his eyes, but it was gone too quickly to pin down just what it had been.

“For a set period of time. A year seems … fair. Long enough to convince my family we gave it a real chance. Short enough that it doesn’t feel like we’re losing a chunk of our lives. ”

To her utter amazement, Victor just nodded at that. He wasn’t laughing in her face. Or, worse yet, running out of there while telling her how bizarre she was.

“But how long would the engagement charade go on beforehand?”

“That’s probably the best, or worst – depending on how you look at it – part,” Pandora told him. “My birthday is in three months. I have to be married before then.”

“How are you going to convince your parents that you went from single to ready to be married in such a short period of time, though?”

“Well, they’re sort of … romantics,” she said.

“They got engaged on their first date.” She left out the fact that they’d stayed engaged for fifty years before they’d finally made things official.

And that they’d needed to postpone the wedding because the witch trials had been sweeping through Europe and it had been too risky to have so many vampires and succubi gather in one place at one time.

“My parents are … less so,” Victor said. “They sort of run their marriage like a business,” he added, the distaste clear in his voice.

There she was, asking him to do the same thing.

“I understand if that is not something you want.”

“But it’s not a real marriage. It’s just, like you said, an arrangement.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Though I’ll be honest and say I didn’t consider the fact that you would also need to lie to your family and friends. I can see that being a dealbreaker.”

“It’s really just my mum and dad,” he told her. “We don’t have much family. And my best friend. That’s it. It wouldn’t be that bad.”

He seemed to genuinely be considering it.

Pandora felt hope surge but tried to tell herself not to let it run away with her.

Of course she would prefer to be fake-dating Victor. If he decided this wasn’t for him, though, she was going to have to be OK with it being someone else.

“I … er … I have a lot of family,” Pandora said. “Just wanted to give you all of the facts. Half a dozen aunts and uncles. Even more cousins and distant relations. And most of them will likely be attending wedding festivities.”

“Consider me forewarned,” Victor said, though Pandora thought he seemed visibly less comfortable compared to a few moments ago.

He didn’t exactly strike her as a people person. Which was fine. She was usually talkative enough for two. Besides, it wasn’t like he would be around her family constantly. In fact, it was in everyone’s best interest if they interacted as little as possible.

She would just have to claim that Victor was very busy with his studies, if her family kept wanting to have him over.

“If I agree, how would we go about this?” Victor asked. “I feel like things need to be as official as possible, when we are both going to be spending a year faking this.”

“I think it’s probably smart if we draft up a document and sign it.

I don’t know if that is legally binding or anything if we don’t go to a lawyer, but it’s better than nothing.

I mean, we could totally go to a lawyer, I guess.

I was just kind of worried about this, you know, getting out, and my parents maybe hearing—”

“An informal contract will be fine,” Victor cut her off. “What would that document entail?”

“The exact parameters of the engagement. One-year commitment from the day we are married. What is expected: wedding festivities, living together after the wedding to really sell it, then the dissolution of the marriage and my giving you half of my inheritance.”

“I wouldn’t be chuffed taking half of it,” Victor said. If possible, she just fell a teensy bit harder for him. He didn’t even know how much she would be getting and, therefore, how much he was forfeiting. He didn’t care. He just wanted things to be fair.

“OK. Well, we can work out exactly how much. How much you will need to finish your PhD, for example. Plus a food, living, and clothing stipend.”

“I thought you said I would be living with you.”

Pandora felt a warm sensation in her chest at all the images that thought conjured up. The two of them standing side by side in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee to brew. Sitting with each other on the couch, each lost in their respective books. Heading down the hallway toward the bedroom …

But just as many negative thoughts flooded her mind. Where would she hide her blood, for example, while she was living with Victor? How much human food that she didn’t need, or particularly enjoyed, would she have to choke down? What if he caught her drinking blood?

“Pandora?” Victor called out, snapping her out of the tsunami of bad thoughts. That warm feeling crept across her chest again at the sound of her name on his lips. She hadn’t realized he knew her name.

“Yeah?” she asked, suddenly aware she’d been staring at him. Likely with hearts in her eyes.

“Living expenses.”

“Oh, right. So, like, retroactive ones. For this time period between now and when we actually get married. Since, normally, you would be going back home.”

“I have some savings,” Victor said. “I was going to use them to buy a car to maybe travel back and forth from my parents’ place and London. I’ve really become attached to the area. But I can use it to live on for a few months.”

“What about UCL?”

“I’m paid up until the end of the autumn term,” he said. “I was just going to leave early, since there seemed to be no use finishing it up if I was out of money anyway.”

“That works out perfectly, then. You can keep going to uni. I will keep working here. And then we can move in together once we’re married.”

“In three months,” he said.

“Yes.”

“This is mad,” he said, watching Pandora with a mix of amusement and disbelief.

“It really is. But?” she prompted him.

“But it seems like it’s the answer to both our problems. One year,” he said, holding out his hand to shake.

Pandora felt a fluttering sensation move through her belly as she pressed her hand into his. “One year.”

“I guess there is only one more thing to say,” Victor declared as Pandora saw Lucy walking past the windows.

Her friend froze, turned, and stared at the two of them, with their hands still clasped, her mouth falling open in a comical O.

“What’s that?” Pandora asked.

“Will you marry me?”