AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He chewed for a second and swallowed before answering, “In a manner of speaking.”
“I’m not a matchmaker.” I laughed. “If you think I know anybody who wants to date you, you’re crazy.” That was a lie. Plenty of girls lusted after rich guys like him, regardless of the consequences. To them it was a matter of using their bodies to play the bedroom lottery. They only had to get lucky once to have a fairytale life, and if one guy didn’t work out, there would be another rich guy to seduce at the next party.
As he looked up, his eyes were now warm as a tropical ocean. “I’m not that bad.”
I shivered under that gaze of his. “Do you seriously expect me to find you a girlfriend? You can’t put conditions like that on a charitable contribution.”
He shrugged. “You have that wrong actually.” He stopped again when our desserts arrived and waited until Jerome departed. “Conditions are often attached to large gifts. The Zuckerbergs donated seventy-five million to the construction of a new building at San Francisco General Hospital, and the hospital is now named after them. And all I want is a fake girlfriend for a while.”
“Fake?” This was getting weirder by the minute.
“We wouldn’t need to be in an actual relationship. I just need to be seen around town with a respectable girlfriend for a respectable amount of time in order to change my reputation from playboy dilettante to respectable bachelor.”
He sounded like he thought giving his reputation a makeover was possible. “And you want a woman who can put up with you for more than a week or two. You know that’s a tall order?” Another lie on my part. Dozens of women would love to spend a longer time with a rich guy like him. Privileges of wealth and status, after all. But I wanted him to feel bad about how he treated women. I shook my head again. “I’m not a matchmaker.”
He put his utensils down and fixed me with a glare that froze me in place. “I don’t want a matchmaker. I want you.”
CHAPTER8
Alexa
My mouth dropped open.“Are you insane?”
“It’ll just be for a few months.”
“No way in hell,” I hissed. “You can’t buy me.”
He sighed. “Settle down. It’s not like that.”
I slammed my spoon on the table. “You’re damned right it’s not. I’m not a prostitute.” I waved my hand over my body. “This is not for sale. You hear me?”
His jaw set, and his eyes narrowed. “Is Jennifer Lawrence, or any other actress you can name, a prostitute because she gets paid to make a movie and in it has to pretend to love a man who’s not her husband, even kiss him? Hell no. This is going to be acting.”
His mention of kissing made my lips tingle. There was a time when I’d thought Evan might be in my future. Maybe acting wasn’t so terrible.
“Well are they?” he demanded.
I focused on the wordgirlfriend. “That’s different.”
“How?”
“For starters, everybody knows they’re playing a character.”
“And I’m asking you to play a character. It’s absolutely the same.”
“And this is all so you can fool the public into thinking you’ve changed and aren’t still a douchebag.”What the hell? Am I actually considering this?
“I wouldn’t put it that way.” He blew out a breath. “But yes. I want them to see me differently.”
I rolled my eyes. It was a milder gesture than I felt like. “What a noble goal.” He deserved to be told I thought it was a hopeless task.
“My job is as important to me as yours is to you,” he continued before I could speak. “To get my position back, I have torehabilitatemy image.” He said this like was some sort of dental procedure he’d have to endure, and once complete his reputation would be sparkly clean.Fat chance.
“Why me?” I’d drifted across the line fromhell noto pastmaybe.
“Because I need somebody I can trust, and that’s you. Just now you had the strength of character to say no. Every other woman I meet in this city wants something from me. To most I’m a walking ATM machine. I know you’re not like that.”
I also knew I wasn’t like those other girls, but his backhanded compliment made my chest swell with pride. “And if I say no?”
