Page 22 of Fake It For Him

The room went so quiet, I’d have been able to hear a pin drop. Ella tightened her grip on my hand, though, which I appreciated. Not because I needed her support but because as she did it, her body leaned a little further into mine and I was sure my parents would notice.

Ella shifted her weight beside me, holding her ground just as surely as she held my hand. So far, she was really impressing me with this gig.

My father took us both in, then cleared his throat. “Fine. This is good news. I’m glad you’re not running away from commitment anymore, son.” He gave me a tight smile. “I’m sure this will go a long way toward easing Finn’s mind, too. He’s seeing someone now. Norah. It’s going well. He’s very protective of her.”

So many smart-ass comments sprang to mind, but I held my tongue for Freya’s sake. This was important to her and I’d already committed half a million dollars and change to the cause. The least I could do at this point was to shut my damn mouth.

My mother stepped forward. “Finn, Freya, and her fiancé, Jim, are all coming over for dinner tonight. You two should join us.”

“Thanks, but it’s a long drive back to the city,” I said immediately. “Enjoy it, though. We just came by for you to meet Ella.”

“Nonsense,” Mom said, smiling, as she looked back at my supposed girlfriend. “Stay. You can have one of the guest houses so you don’t have to drive back too late and you can always get an early start in the morning.”

“We’ve both got work tomorrow, Mom. Besides that, we didn’t bring anything with us for an overnight stay.”

She waved her hand with an elegant flick of her wrist. “We’ve got plenty of spare toiletries for guests and I’ll have some of Freya’s clothes delivered to the guest house for Ella. I’m sure you’d fit into something of Dad’s. It’s just for the drive.”

Clearly, she wasn’t going to let this go. She seemed pretty insistent about it as she turned a beautiful, kind smile on Ella. “Please stay? We’ve never met a girlfriend of Calan’s and we haven’t had the whole family around our table since Christmas. It would mean the world to me if you’d join us.”

Ella didn’t so much as glance up at me before she grinned back at my mother. “Of course, we’ll stay. We’d love to join you.”

My jaw would’ve hit the floor if it could have. I managed to keep it from dropping at all, but shit. An overnight stay and dinner with my parents tonight had not been part of our agreement. If for no other reason than we were not prepared for it.

It was one thing to tell them that we’d been together for a couple of months, but now that we were staying, we were going to have to be able to give them a hell of a lot more information than that, and we just didn’t have it.

Fuck. What the hell do we do now?

12

ELLA

“What were you thinking?” Calan hissed as the door to the guest house we’d been allocated closed behind us. Those deep brown eyes of his were flashing and the mask he’d kept on in front of his parents vanished. “You do realize they’re going to grill us, right? Interrogate us about every aspect of our relationship, and if we slip up once, that’s it. There’s no going back.”

I looked right into those pissed off eyes, not flinching or backing away. “You’re paying me for being your girlfriend. A good girlfriend would want to get to know your parents and stay for dinner, don’t you think?”

“You have no idea,” he grumbled, shaking his head at me. His hands dropped away from his hips.

Clearly, this was getting him all prickly and I loved to see him get heated. It served him right for dropping this on me without a moment’s notice.

“Your parents seem nice and your mother is gorgeous. How can a dinner be that bad?” I asked as I spun away from him to take in the quarters we’d be staying in tonight.

“Again, you have no idea,” he muttered, but I was vaguely aware of the words.

As I looked around, I even forgot that he’d been answering a question I’d asked. The guest house was bigger than the house I’d grown up in. My feet carried me forward before I’d even completed the thought, and I went from one room to the next, flabbergasted by how this place could just be standing here, empty and ready to receive guests that would only be staying for one night.

The entrance hall was grand and spacious, with a crystal chandelier hanging overhead, a side table, high, fancy ceilings, and even a mudroom. It opened up to what turned out to be one of two well-appointed living rooms and a full-sized, family-style kitchen.

A center island dominated that space, sharing it with a dining table for eight and every appliance known to man. Each of the living rooms had a large fireplace, comfortable sofas, art against the walls, and plush, patterned rugs on the hardwood floors.

I kept going, ignoring Calan and his continued grumbling as I walked into the hallway leading off the main living space. There were three bedrooms, a private garden complete with a hot tub outside, and an outdoor kitchen on the deck that was the most gorgeous indoor/outdoor setup I’d ever seen.

I was stunned.

Heading into one of the bedrooms that featured a four-post bed, another sitting area, and a sliding door to the lush green garden, I found an adjoining bathroom and pulled my lip gloss out of my purse. If I was going to be having dinner with people who had a guest house like this, I had a feeling I’d be expected to at least touch up my makeup if I couldn’t change.

“Stop being a grumpy jerk and lighten up,” I said when he appeared in the reflection of the mirror I was using to dab on some lip gloss. “I’ll be on my best behavior tonight, playing my part and making sure that your family thinks we’re head over heels for each other.”

His long fingers were wrapped tight around his hips again, his knuckles white and his chin tucked down low. He narrowed his eyes at my reflection. “That’s the ideal scenario, but the alternative is that they’ll figure us out, in which case, they’ll never believe it if I bring another girl around and introduce her as my girlfriend, which means I’ll be fucked.”