Pretend You're Mine Page 7

  After we were served, and we ate. The founder of the shelter got a microphone and gave a short speech. It was about the importance of the work they were doing, she shared some success stories, and asked for everyone to be generous when they bid on the blind auction happening tonight to support the center. There was a round of applause and the music started again in earnest. Couples started moving to the center to dance while others went to bid.

  “Are you going to bid?” I asked Taylor, guilt still boiling inside of me.

  “I was planning on donating without the fuss. I don’t want anything.” He explained. “But if you want me to bid on something for you I will.”

  “Taylor.” I leaned in and whispered.

  “I’m serious.” He said back quietly. “It’s for a good cause.”

  Since he wasn’t actually my husband, I didn’t want him spending more money on me that he had to. But he was right, and he obviously liked supporting the cause. I smiled, but still felt uneasy. “Let’s go look at what they have.”

  Taylor agreed. Probably also eager to stop fielding question after question from his grandfather about our future children.

  I settled on donating for a very nice set of ruby earrings. I didn’t see how much Taylor put down, but I had a feeling it was plenty enough to win them.

  We started to head back to our table, but Taylor stopped in front of the circle where people were dancing, somewhat drunkenly, to whatever song was playing. I always thought rich parties like this had people professional ballroom dancing, but this seemed like the kind you’d find at any wedding or even club in some cases.

  “We should dance,” Taylor said without looking at me.

  “Do you want to?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “I think your grandfather is convinced.” I tried to gather up courage. “I don’t think he cares as long as you have children.”

  I looked up to see his face. His mouth was set in a slight frown, his gaze far away. He nodded. “I know.”

  “We don’t have to dance if you don’t want to. I don’t think we need to act anymore.”

  “If I wanted to dance, would you like to?” He asked, tapping my wrist.

  “Yes.” I said, a small smile spreading across my face. Taking my hand, he guided me into a proper position. He had his hands on my waist and I had one on his arm and one around his back. We didn’t really do any moves. We just swayed to the song.

  I picked out his grandfather from his seat, still sipping on the wine. I knew he could see us. I wanted him to realize someone could love his son for more than just his money. Taylor was caring under the walls he’d built for some reason I might never know. Someone could easily fall for the man he could be once he let down those walls.

  I looked up at Taylor. I tapped his wrist twice. He looked surprised but leaned down. I tilted my head up. Then we kissed in the middle of the dance floor, in full view of everyone. It was different than all the other times we kissed. I fell deeper into him. His lips felt hungry, they nipped at mine as we went even deeper. I could feel the energy of it flow through me to my toes, they wanted to push me even closer. I could tell he wanted this. I realized I wanted this too. He teased his tongue out and I let it inside. It was so much more intense that when we finally broke apart, I was dazed.

  “Lydia.” He said, sounding almost breathless. I thought I saw stars burst in his eyes.

  Someone could easily fall in love with him.

  Chapter 9: Lydia

  Things were different between Taylor and I since the gala. It was still hard to see him very often since we both worked so much, but I found myself seeking him out in the house. When he went down to the gym, I would sit near him as he lifted weights and chatted about my day. He still wasn’t very talkative, that just wasn’t like him. But he always listened and asked me questions. He seemed to actually want to know about my work. I spent a lot of evenings relaxing in the entertainment room, with a screen that big how could I not? But sometimes, as I was setting up a movie, Taylor would enter, almost soundlessly, and sit on the other end of the couch. We were having weekly movie nights without either of us mentioning it outside of those special moments. Things were changing slowly. I wasn’t sure I knew where it was leading us.

  The biggest change happened about four weeks after the gala. I had been in the room I’d turned into an office for myself. I was getting everything ready for photoshoots happening later that month when I heard Taylor’s voice echo around the house. “Lydia?” The way he said it meant he had a question for me. I got to a stopping point and followed where I thought I heard movement. I found him in the kitchen, grocery bags piled up on the counter.

  He’d asked me if I had wanted anything from the store earlier, but I couldn’t think of anything. “Yeah?”

  “I don’t have a chef or anything who works here.” That was true. I thought it was odd for someone so wealthy, but I guessed he probably liked cooking. “I know what’s in my fridge. I was wondering if you have eaten today?”

  I thought back on my day so far. By thinking about it my stomach finally made its aching aware to me. “Oh. No.”

  “It’s almost six P.M.”

  “It’s a bad habit of mine,” I confessed. “When I’m working, I get so focused I kind of lose awareness of stuff like that. When I lived with Michael, he used to make sure to remind me to eat. I thought I got into the habit, but I must be slipping again.”

  “You need to eat.”

  “I’ll make some eggs, don’t worry about it.” I waved my hand.

  He frowned slightly. “I’m making some shrimp scampi. It’ll be enough for two.”

  He was going to make me dinner. The only times we had eaten together were in public or that chicken noodle soup I made for him. “You don’t have to.”

  “What if I said I would like to?” He asked. It reminded me of the way he had asked me to dance. He didn’t often talk about what he liked. I wondered why.

  “Then, I would love some shrimp scampi, it sounds great.” It really did.

  Intrigued, I watched him cook instead of going back to my office. Michael and I were passable cooks, but we ordered out plenty, and were often so tired we didn’t make anything more complicated than spaghetti and meatballs. Taylor seemed to know the kinds of techniques I’d seen on cooking shows. He wielded the knife and finely diced some shallots quickly and carefully like a pro.

  “Where did you learn to cook? You didn’t go to cooking school, did you?”

  He shook his head and I saw one of his genuine smiles in the slight upturn of his mouth. “No, but thanks. I’ve been cooking for myself since I was eighteen. When I wasn’t working, I used a lot of my free time to learn and experiment.” He moved to start mincing some garlic but paused and looked more thoughtful. “Something about, following a recipe but having some freedom to change it if you want. It’s a balance.” He didn’t keep explaining but I got the sense that he was saying it gave him balance. I could see it in the way he moved around the kitchen, moving and measuring and sometimes putting things in without checking first. He was totally different than how he was at work. It was a Taylor that looked like he was enjoying what he was doing. It also looked like he was doing a little extra since I was watching him. He didn’t have to flick ingredients off his knife or make his gas stove flare a bit. He was enjoying sharing this with me. I was glad I said yes.

  The meal was of course delicious. I ate it too quickly to really enjoy it since I had been so hungry from not eating all day.

  “I make dinner’s most nights,” He said, and I self-consciously wiped at my mouth worried I’d gotten a lot of it all over me with how quickly I scarfed it down.

  “You do?” I really hadn’t been paying very close attention to Taylor and I’d lived with him for almost three months if I hadn’t noticed that.

  “It’s easier to cook for two than one. More recipes are formatted that way.”

  “You can just ask me,” I said gently.

  “Would you lik
e to eat dinner with me, when you are available?” He asked.

  “I would enjoy that. At least then you can be confident I’ve eaten at least once per day.”

  “You need to eat more.” He obviously didn’t find my joke funny.

  “I will.”

  And that’s how our nightly ritual began. We would come home from work at slightly different times and he would work out and take a shower and I would get a little more work done or find some way to relax if nothing was pressing. Then I would smell something delicious and I would make my way down to the kitchen to watch him cook. I asked him about certain ingredients I didn’t recognize and techniques he used, and he answered me with an enthusiasm I couldn’t get out of him anywhere else. Then, after an amazing dinner, we would go our separate ways. Except for the nights where we both ended up watching a movie together. Ever since the dinners started, he began speaking to me more and more during these movies.

  I had always been the annoying one in the movie theater, always wanting to talk about what was going on. When Taylor started to criticize characters’ decisions out loud, I felt comfortable to speak up too. As it grew colder, as Chicago always did, we began sitting closer to share blankets. I had insisted.

  The dinners and the movies felt suspiciously like dates. The moment I had that thought, I was about to fall asleep after one of these nights. I sat up in bed at the realization. They were a lot like dates. At some point Taylor and I had become friends. I think it started right after we were sick, and it clicked during the gala. But I was friends with both Virgo and Michael, and I didn’t feel the urge to walk up to them and kiss them whenever they chopped vegetables.

  “Do I like Taylor Hirano?” I said out loud to my dark empty room. I knew I wasn’t going to be getting much sleep with how fast my heart was beating. After some more thought I decided that yes, I did like Taylor Hirano. I liked him a lot. I wanted a soft guy with killer looks, how was I supposed to know from one meeting that Taylor was going to be exactly what I wanted?

  I took a deep breath. Even knowing this, I still didn’t think I could act on these feelings. I still didn’t know a whole lot about him. I had gotten him to talk about college and his work, but anything before that he was quick to change the subject or outright ignore my questions. And Taylor had been more open with me of course, but just because we were friends now didn’t mean he suddenly saw our relationship as more than just business. If I made a move and he wasn’t comfortable with it, what would that do to our arrangement?

  I briefly considered ignoring the way I felt. I could swallow my feelings down and forget about them. But I knew that the next time I saw him, thoughts of our gala kiss and that feeling of hot warmth sliding through me would bring them all back to the forefront.

  My only option then was to keep my feelings a secret and suffer silently.

  If I thought things were changing back then, I would have been blown away by what the next weekend had in store for me.

  It all started Friday night. He had made some burgers, but not just any kind. It had something he called onion jam on it and the buns he got were way nicer than anything I’d had before.

  We had been chatting about our weekend, when he asked, out of nowhere, “Do you want to do something with me tomorrow morning?”

  I blinked. Usually he spent a while circling around what he wanted to ask me. “What were you thinking?”

  “The leaves have been changing, and soon all the trees will be bare. I wanted to go see some before that happened.”

  “You want to go to a park tomorrow?” He went on runs sometimes, so maybe he was inviting me on one?

  “Not quite.” He worried his lower lip nervously. “I was thinking of going to the Chicago Botanical Garden.”

  My heart flip-flopped. I tried containing my excitement.

  “They have a wide variety of trees. It’s too late to see some flowers, but they have greenhouses.” He knew.

  “That sounds.” I swallowed, struggling to keep my excitement in check. “That sounds fun.”

  The next morning, I got dressed in skinny jeans, a nice cream sweater, and one of my blue wool coats. It was cold, but not uncomfortably so. He was wearing something similar to what he usually did when he was at home, but with a thick jean jacket that looked older in style but amazing on him.

  While we drove, there was a stunning reversal. I was quiet, while he occasionally mentioned the different gardens they had there and what we should see.

  “We should go back in the spring,” he murmured as we pulled into the parking lot. “They have an orchid garden.”

  I nodded. Every part of that idea made me want to lean over in the car and shake him, kiss him, or yell at him.

  I didn’t do any of these and instead followed him to the counter to get tickets absently grabbing a map while he paid. We walked out into the main area where all the paths led to different gardens.

  “Where should we go first?” He asked me.

  I was crumpling the map in my hand. I smoothed it out and glanced through and picked one at random. “The native plant gardens.”

  “Sounds good.”

  We walked over there and seemed to be some of the only people around. There were a few older people sitting on benches admiring the scenery and some parents with young children who were talking animatedly in the distance. From where we ended up sitting, we had a good view of plenty of trees, but we were pretty much alone. The orange, red, yellow, and some dark purple leaves were good to look at. They reminded me why I wanted to be a designer, to make something as beautiful as this. But even with how breathtaking it was, I kept glancing over at Taylor. I knew he was looking at me too, even though I couldn’t catch his eyes. I just felt him looking at me as I admired the bramble around us.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up from the bench and moved in front of Taylor. I instinctively started playing with the wedding ring on my finger to stop me from pulling at my hair. “What is this all about?”

  A saw a slight blush rise to the tip of his nose. I didn’t think I would ever see anything like that from Taylor. But he still wasn’t telling me.

  “You knew what this place meant.” I gestured to the trees and the leaves floating to the ground in the wind.

  “Is this still business to you, Lydia?” He said my name like it was a prayer I’d say what he wanted.

  “God Taylor.” I was still standing over him, so I leaned forward until I was against him and reached for his wrist, tapped it twice, and moved closer to him. I pushed him back to the bench and kissed him like I needed to. He had his hands on my hips and I had one on his chest and the other on his cheek, cradling it as our lips explored like they hadn’t before. This was the first time we kissed without it being a show. This was a kiss for us. My heart soared. I felt empowered to bite gently at his bottom fuller lip. He seemed to respond well to that: arching his neck back for me. I gently moved to kiss down his neck. Slowly, knowing I was teasing him. I heard a low growl in the back of his throat making me smile against his Adam’s apple. I kissed my way back up, teasing more with the scape of my teeth against his sensitive skin. When our lips met again, I think he wanted to take back some control and pushed his tongue against my lips until I let it inside. I let out a small whimper. Not to be out done, I moved my hands to his hair and started running them through it. Every part of me touching him seemed to burn sweetly at the contact.

  “Lydia.” He gasped out my name as we broke for air. I collapsed further onto him. He whispered near my ear, “How long?”

  “Since the gala. Maybe even before then.” I wasn’t sure when I had fallen in love with him. Maybe it was right now. Maybe taking me to the botanical garden to show me what he had trouble saying was when I fell in love with him. “How long?” I wanted to know too.

  “The soup.” He said and I saw his blush spread even further.

  “The chicken noodles?” I giggled a little and he smiled crookedly.

  “No one’s ever,” he paused like he wa
s having trouble saying the words, “cared for me like that.” He admitted, suddenly serious.

  “Oh Taylor. You deserve to be cared for,” I said softly as I gently played with his hair.

  “Excuse me?” We both startled at the voice.

  I untangled myself from Taylor and stood back up to see a person in a uniform and name tag looking very uncomfortable. My face grew hot.

  “Could you, uh, take this somewhere else?” They asked politely, avoiding eye contact with us.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, we’ll leave.” I took Taylor’s hand and helped him up, he looked the most embarrassed I’d ever seen. He wouldn’t make eye contact either.

  We hurried out, almost jogging, to our car. Once we were in, we caught our breath. Then, I couldn’t help it, I laughed. I laughed so hard I snorted.

  He chuckled a little too, but soon began to full out laugh. It was a beautiful sound.

  When we finally got it under control, we looked at each other. His gaze was soft. “I’ll take you back in the Spring. Show you every flower.”

  “I think I’d like that. But now, I want to get home as soon as possible to finish what we started.”

  ***

  When we got home, I immediately wanted to get back to what we were doing. Once we stepped through the door, I took off my shoes and when we got to the kitchen, I tossed my coat over one of the bar stools.

  He got his jean jacket off and I leaned in, ready for round two. But, with our luck, we were interrupted again by a knock on the door.

  “Who would that even be? No one ever comes here,” I remarked, a little put off by the interruption.

  “I have to check,” he said and walked back to the hallway to see who it was through his cameras. I waited in the kitchen, still buzzing, still needing Taylor’s touch. Surprisingly, I heard the door crack open and footsteps approach.