Page 6 of The Temptation (Executive Suite Secrets #4)

PIERCE SUTTON

As soon as I got my parents to their hotel, I rushed to Rome’s downtown penthouse just a few blocks over from where they were staying. I needed help. ASAFP.

Yet I nearly jumped out of my skin when Liam answered the door. They hadn’t been dating that long, and I was still acclimating to the idea of Rome and Liam being attached at the hip.

“Oh. Shit. Guess I should have called first. Sorry, I—” I stammered, already backpedaling while scrambling for an alternate plan.

Liam snorted. “Get your ass in here. It might be hard to believe, but we don’t fuck constantly.”

Well, that stopped all thought in my brain. I had nothing to say. My feet obeyed his command, and I walked through the door. It was only as I was handing my coat to Liam that my mind started working.

“ Um …sorry for intruding. I got myself in a bit of trouble with my parents, and I thought Rome could help me out of my mess.”

“Aren’t you getting a little old for that?” he quipped.

“Have you told your mom that you’re bi and dating a man?”

Liam narrowed his eyes at me. “ Touché .”

A grin played on my lips. “I’m joking.”

“Me too.”

Liam was still a hard read for me, but his cold look cracked into an affable smile, and it was difficult to deny that Rome had found a good match.

“Hey, Pierce!” Rome shouted as he strolled down the hall with two beers in hand. “I didn’t know you were stopping by. How was dinner with the folks?”

“Bad.”

Rome stopped, his happy-go-lucky expression falling away. “How bad? Like, work bad? Or?—”

“Like ‘it’s time you came home and got married’ bad.”

“Ooooh, shiiiit,” Rome groaned. “We’re gonna need help. Living room. We’ll call for backup.”

Liam and I followed Rome into the living room like a pair of lemmings.

At that moment, I was willing to try anything, even jumping off a cliff, if it meant I didn’t have to return to Boston and the family fold.

Liam was kind enough to grab me a beer while Rome called Sebastian and Declan, conferencing everyone in.

It took a couple of minutes for me to explain what had been discussed at dinner and why.

“No,” Sebastian snapped. “You can’t move to Boston. Not happening.”

“Honey, I don’t think Pierce’s parents are going to agree with you just because you don’t want him to go,” Byron chimed in.

“Are we understanding correctly that you don’t want to move?” Declan confirmed.

“Yes, I want to stay, which is why I might have told my parents that I’m seeing someone.” There was a long silence, and I tacked on before Declan could ask, “No, I’m not seeing anyone right now. I’m not even slightly talking to anyone. The dating cupboard is bare.”

Parker snickered. “Wow, you’ve stepped in it now. I can’t remember the last time I even fibbed to my parents about my dating life.”

Declan cleared his throat. “No, you just lied by omission.”

There was a pained moan and lots of movement like Parker was throwing himself onto his fiancé. “No, it wasn’t an omission. I hadn’t given them an update about us because my life was so crazy. Totally not the same thing.”

“Anyway,” I said loudly, shoving the conversation onto the right track.

“This whole boyfriend thing was to buy myself some time. My parents are in town for a couple of weeks, and I need a stand-in to go through the motions of being my boyfriend for at least one dinner. Maybe two. Nothing too hectic. After they leave town convinced that I am at least attempting to date, I can actually…you know…”

“Make yourself emotionally available to another human being?” Byron supplied in a voice that was decisively sharp. Fuck, Byron is way too good at reading Sebastian and his friends.

“Ouch,” I muttered.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Byron shot back.

Yeah, I couldn’t do that.

There was a clap across the line and the sound of someone rubbing their hands together. “Yes, the fake-boyfriend storyline. It is one of my all-time favorites for romantic comedies,” Parker announced.

“Excuse me?” My life was not a romantic comedy. At that moment, it was looking more like a tragedy.

“Yeah, the rich guy or the prince needs a fake boyfriend so he can inherit the kingdom or the family fortune because the dotty old grandpa wants him to be happily settled before he kicks the bucket. Only the more time the prince and the fake boyfriend spend together, the more they fall?—”

“What Pierce needs is someone who’s in on the con.

” Liam cut in, ending Parker’s explanation.

Part of me felt it necessary to hear the rest from Parker, but what Liam had summarized was true—not that I was a big fan of calling this a con.

“Someone who would be comfortable and convincing acting all lovey-dovey but wouldn’t expect more after your parents left town. ”

“Yes. That. Exactly.” I paused, my brow furrowing. “Unless you’ve got a better solution to dealing with my parents.”

“You could tell them the truth. That you don’t have any intention of moving to Boston and that you’ll find someone to marry in your own time. There’s no rushing these things,” Parker suggested.

Both Rome and Sebastian made noises. Of course, they knew my parents far better than Parker.

“Yeah, Rebecca Sutton isn’t the type to take no for an answer when it comes to her kids,” Rome countered.

“And it doesn’t help that his younger brother has been married for years and has two kids,” Sebastian added.

Parker snorted. “Then you’re fucked. Just good old-fashioned fucked.”

“If we stick with the fake-boyfriend angle, I think there is only one choice for Pierce,” Liam stated. He paused, a smug smile lifting the corners of his lips. “Simon.”

“No!” I barked, leaping to my feet as if my body were ready to flee the penthouse before Liam could say another word. Rome and Liam gaped wide-eyed at me, and there was silence from Rome’s phone, leaving me with the feeling that everyone on there was staring as well.

“It’s…only…that…I’m not sure…that’s a good idea.” I hemmed and hawed, not having a good excuse without stating the long and uncomfortable history that existed between Simon and me.

Rome turned to gaze at his boyfriend, his eyebrows beetling over his nose. “Really? Simon?”

“Think about it. You’ve told me that Simon is an old friend of your group.

I’m sure he wouldn’t mind helping Pierce out and wouldn’t expect anything other than the friendship they already have.

Not to mention, Simon has known Pierce for years.

Other than coming up with a story about how they started dating, he knows all the basics of Pierce’s life and personality.

If you brought in someone who’s a friend of a friend, they’d have to take a Pierce crash course.

This saves time, and it’s the smarter choice. ”

Fuck. Me.

Leave it to the scientist to posit a hypothesis and then come up with a cogent argument for why it made the most sense. I didn’t get the chance to untangle my tongue and argue.

“You know, that’s a pretty good idea,” Rome murmured. Sebastian and Declan chimed in with the same comments.

I dropped into the leather chair I’d been sitting in and rested my elbows on my knees.

My tie felt as if it were choking me. I tugged it loose and opened the top button of my shirt.

“Look,” I said as they agreed that Liam’s insane idea was brilliant, “we need to come up with a backup plan. I doubt Simon would even be willing to go along with this. He hasn’t been playing with the symphony for long, and he might not want the distraction from his work.

We also don’t know if he’s seeing someone else. ”

“It’s like you said; it’s only going to mean a date or two,” Liam coaxed.

Rome nodded, tossing his arm around Liam’s shoulders to pull his boyfriend closer on the sofa. “Yeah, it’s not like your parents are going to be in town for months. It’s a couple of weeks at most.”

“Does anyone have any other friends who might help me out?” I’d considered hitting the dating apps, or even—God help me—Grindr with the thought that I could hire someone to pose as my boyfriend, but that was almost guaranteed to blow up in my face.

After some murmurs and verbal shuffling, no one seemed to have any better suggestions than Simon.

I could see Liam’s logic. Simon was the best choice. If we didn’t have all this extra baggage—some of which he didn’t know about—he could slide into this role of fake boyfriend without even blinking an eye. But the fact was, there were these lingering issues I didn’t want to deal with.

And then toss in that stupid kiss from two weeks ago…

What the fuck was I supposed to do?

“Pierce.” Rome leaned forward, staring into my eyes. “Call Simon. Talk to him. We all know you’ve got some problems with him. Or maybe it’s a problem with Sawyer. We don’t know. You won’t talk about it. But don’t you think it’s time? You’re both adults. Fucking act like it.”

His delivery would have been perfect if not for Parker snickering across the conference call.

“You’re telling him to act like an adult while plotting to acquire a fake boyfriend so he doesn’t have to tell his parents the truth,” Parker said, giggling.

Yeah, I got the irony.

“I’ve tried telling my parents the truth,” I growled at Rome’s phone on the coffee table between us. “They’re not listening. This is to buy me some time until I can find an actual boyfriend like you disgusting assholes.”

“But imagine, Pierce,” Byron began, “if you find yourself a real boyfriend, you can be a disgusting asshole just like us.”

“I hate you all,” I muttered under my breath, but it must have been loud enough because several of them laughed.

Rome and Liam were right. Simon was my best bet. And it was time to act like an adult, at least where Simon was concerned. We needed to talk about how I would never date him and how the kiss was a mistake that could never be repeated.

Then, I would ask him to be my fake boyfriend.

Fuck, why is this my life?