The Pretend Marriage: A Werewolf Romance (3 page)

6

Terry looks at the array of
items laid out painstakingly on the floor. She wonders how much they would fetch at a garage sale. Thank goodness Burt didn’t take any of these, but maybe he didn’t recognize their value.

There is her mother’s
music box – an antique family heirloom passed down the Contralto women for four generations. She supposes it will fetch quite a sum at an antique store. But oh, her heart prickles at the thought of parting with it! She would never hear the end of it from her mother!

But what if Shep loses his
place in college over something as trivial as non-payment of semester fees?

Then there is her
platinum necklace. Burt was obviously more interested in hard cash than to take anything flimsy. Or maybe he didn’t recognize platinum when he saw it. The necklace was given to her by her father on her sixteenth birthday before he was killed in a car crash the very next day, and so it holds a lot of painful memories.

Tears pool in Terry’s eyes
and she blinks them back fiercely.

I won’t, won’t cry!

A knock comes on her door. She lets out a click of exasperation and hastily wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.

She raises her voice as she strides to the door. “I thought I said I’d have the rent for you by tomorrow!”

Hang on. She has learned her lesson. See who it is first, then open – to avoid those awful door shoving encounters.

She peers through the peephole, expecting to see the swaggering specter of
Dwayne outside. To her surprise, Jake Savage stands out there, looking as handsome as ever in the clothes he wore this morning. What is he doing here at this hour? Shouldn’t he be at work?

And what is he doing at her door anyway? He can’t want to borrow a
cup of sugar. She doesn’t even know if he cooks. She doesn’t know anything about him at all, come to think of it, other than he works in a high-profile advertising job which requires him to tap at his keyboard at weird hours in the early morning.

His expression is – for want of a better word – sheepish.
A sheepish wolf? What in the hell is going on?

Ah, maybe he has come to apologize for this morning. That would be a first, not to mention a surprise.

“What do you want?” she finds herself saying a little rudely. Damn. He brings out the worst in her; he absolutely does. Why the hell does her betraying heart always seem to beat a little faster in his proximity?

“Can I please talk to you? You know . . . to apologize for this morning?”
he says.

She can’t let him in. He can’t see her like this – all emo and weepy and with her family heirlooms laid out on the floor for auction.

“Apology accepted. So we’re OK.”

For now.

“Uh, I really need to talk to you about something else,” he says in a rush. “Can you please open the door?”

He really can’t want sugar, she decides. But then, he must
want
something. Probably for her to watch over his apartment when he goes away for a dirty weekend or something in that vein.

I’m going to charge him if he asks me to watch
over his apartment and feed his fish, or whatever animal he has inside,
she thinks. She has never heard a dog bark or a cat meow, so she reckons he may be a fish person. Uck, how cold.

She reluctantly shoots the bolt from its home and opens the door.
Without the goggly lens of the peephole, Jake looks even more sheepish. So she was right. Not only sheepish, but apologetic. Ill at ease. As if he has eaten something bad for lunch and is about to burp.

She wonders if she should stand back.

He twiddles his fingers. His computer bag leans against his leg. So he hasn’t even been in his own apartment yet. It must be important.

“Yes?”
she says primly.

He really has the kind of looks that can make her go weak-kneed. Too bad they got off at such a sour note, and it just went downhill from there.

He blurts out, “I have a business proposition to discuss with you.”

She frowns. “Huh?”

“Not that sort of a proposition,” he hurriedly adds, just in case she misunderstands. “I kind of, like, need you to . . . uh, do something for me. I’ll pay you two thousand dollars if you’ll come away with me for the weekend.”

OK, there seems to be a problem with her ears.

“What?” she splutters.

He takes a deep
breath.

“You see, it’s like this. I went for a job interview. It’s a raise for me . . . and a promotion.
The chairman and president of the company, which is owned by him, of course, prefers to hire guys who are married. Or at least, I’m up against two other people who are married. And I have to make sure, like, I’m, kind of like, married too.”

All of this comes out in a tumble, like clothes falling out of a front loading dryer.
He trails off, not daring to look into her eyes. He appears very embarrassed.

She is still not sure she is getting all this.

“So you
lied
to your potential employer?” she says, incredulous.

“My marital status
wasn’t in my resume. I didn’t think it mattered,” he says defensively. “And I needed a job. I just quit mine this morning.”

This is decidedly bizarre, she thinks.
“And you want
me
to pretend to be your wife? Don’t you have a girlfriend to ask, or something?”

Come to think of it, she has never seen a woman in his apartment before.

Damn, he is gay!

He is blatantly embarrassed now. “I sort of showed him your photo on my cellphone.”

“You have my photo on your cellphone?” Now she really is amazed. Her heart leaps a smidge.
He has a secret crush on me?

“The one I took this morning,” he explains.

Her cheeks start to heat up.

“The one you took of me bending
over?”

“I’m sorry
! Look, I’m in a bind. And there’s more.”

Briefly, he tells her about the
weekend retreat. With each syllable he utters, her eyes go rounder and rounder. She has to pinch herself to make sure she is not in some surreal para-environment.

When he finishes, she feels faint.
“So you want me to go away with you this weekend on a retreat with your new boss?”

“My potential new boss. If I get the job against the two other married contestants. I mean candidates.” He eyes her helplessly. “Look, I’ll pay you! You don’t have to do anything but show up and pretend we’re married!”

She is too amazed to respond.

“And if you get the job? Then what happens? I have to show up at each company dinner as your
wife
?”

“I haven’t thought that far,” he admits. “Maybe I’ll have to pay you t
o show up each time. Maybe we’d have divorced by then.”

He’s thinking of divorcing her already? So soon? Terry knows it is irrational, but her old insecurities well up again. What’s wrong with
me
? Don’t men want to stay with
me
?

“No,” she says abruptly.

He does not appear surprised, as if he is already expecting her answer.

“Please,” he says
desperately. “Twenty-five hundred dollars.”

She finds herself saying, “Three thousand.”

“Twenty-seven hundred.”

“Three thousand five.”

He is aggrieved. “You’re supposed to bargain down, not up!”

“Try bargaining again and I may raise it further.”

He seems defeated. She has him cornered and she knows it. She can’t help grinning at how ludicrous the situation is. And it is amazing that only ten minutes ago, she was contemplating selling her family heirlooms!

Providence? Kismet?

“OK, three thousand five it is.” His shoulders are slumped and there’s a funny twist on his mouth. She has always noticed how full his lips are – very kissable actually, when she doesn’t want to actually punch them.

“Deal,” she says.

It is now dawning upon her that she has just earned three thousand and five hundred dollars in one weekend! Well, she hasn’t earned it yet . . . but how hard can it be? Harder than her temp job as a secretary to various temp bosses who want to fondle her butt? Worse yet, she is in between jobs right now, and in this economy . . .

The only hurdle now is
getting through two whole days in the company of Jake Savage. That is going to be tough. But she’s a trouper. Shep had always said she would pull through.

“Great,” he says, unsure if he is supposed to smile.

“Great,” she replies.

“Uh.” He holds out his hand. “We’re supposed to shake on the deal.”

She eyes his hand as if it is covered with cooties. Then she takes it. His hand is surprisingly warm, and a jolt of electricity jumps from his flesh to hers. She has to refrain from pulling away. Her pulse rate has just accelerated to double what it was a minute ago.

What the heck?

She wonders if he felt it too, but he shows no signs of distress.

“OK, I’ll see you Friday four p.m. We’re driving up to Brixforth
by the sea. Just pack something casual.”

“
Is where we are going by the beach? Would I have to pack a swimsuit?”

He appears taken aback, as if the idea of swimming in the sea by a beachfront property has never occurred to him.

“OK. Good idea. I’ll bring one too.” A thought occurs to him. “Unless they are all shifters and they intend to go naked.”

Naked? The thought of Jake seeing her naked and vice versa
sends butterflies through her stomach. Maybe this is not such a good idea after all.

But there’s no way she can back out of this. She needs the money too much.
It isn’t as if you’re going to get involved with him.
This is a business proposition, as he rightly mentioned, nothing more.

He seems to be in a hurry to get away all of a sudden. He grabs his computer bag.

“So I’ll see you.”

“OK, I’ll see you.”

With that, he scrambles away to his apartment. Just as quickly, she shuts the door and leans with her back against it.

W
hat has she gotten herself into?

7

“I’m telling you it’s faulty.”

“It’s not faulty.”

“Your Garmin needs a shake.
When was the last time you updated the map?”

Jake is nonplussed. “You’
re supposed to update the map?”

Terry rolls her eyes. Th
is trip is not starting out well. Jake insisted on taking a ‘short cut’, navigated by his unerring werewolf instincts, which are just as faulty as his Garmin. Now they are in unfamiliar territory, surrounded by the beach on one side and cliffs on the other. Ten miles back, they passed a sign which said: ‘CHATOONGA BAY’. Which is nowhere near Brixforth, according to the Google Map on her phone.

“When was the last time you shifted?” she demands.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Exactly everything. The more you refrain from shifting, the more you lose your
wolf honing instincts.”

It’s like playing the piano. If you don’t play for a long time, you lose touch.  Not that she has ever played the piano.
But she always tries to shift on weekends when she can get away to the forest so as not to lose her heritage.

The trouble with
shifters who move to the city is they try too hard to blend in with the humans until they become almost human, with human habits and human traits. The treaty of 1906 was tenuous, as best, but over the century, humans have tried to live together with shifters as best as they can – especially since the shifters formed a very important part of the French Resistance in World War 2.

Acceptance was gradual, but with laws governing
species tolerance, the human generations which took over soon learned to accept the shifter mutation as part of their culture – in the way they accepted other races, the LGBT marriage and legislation, and the fact the Chinese were taking over the world.

But still, city shifters are careful not to let their differences
become too apparent. To keep the peace, they do not hunt anywhere in the city environs. Special shifter parks are set up just for that purpose. They are only allowed to hunt small animals which can procreate plentifully, like rabbits and rodents. Certainly not pet dogs and pet cats.

It’s no different from being gay, she supposes. Or Black. Or
Arab. You integrate, and hope everyone looks past your genetics and sexual preferences and religion to your own merits.  

Jake
darts a glance at her. The tips of his long hair brush his shoulders. He is looking particularly handsome today in a light blue tee and jeans.

“Are you always this naggy?”
he shoots.

Naggy? Why, of all the nerve! That’s the last thing she is!

She opens her mouth to retort, but he quickly cuts in and says, “There.” He points to an upcoming sign. “Brixforth, 10 miles. I knew I wasn’t far off.”

She almost lets out a sigh of relief.

“Is there an appointed time we should be there?” she asks.

“If we can make it for dinner, it would be nice.”

She knows he will be trying very hard to impress his would-be boss.

He says, “
Now remember everything I told you.”

She rolls her eyes again.

“I know, I know, I know. We met at the library.” She has never been to the library more than ten times in her entire adult life after high school. Not that she ever went to college. But Jake wants to impress Peter Skaarsgard with his literary eruditeness.

“Yes,” he says.
“Remember, they don’t want details. Just brief facts. You fell in love with me – ”

“
I
fell in love with you?
You
fell in love with me at first sight!”

“What does it matter who fell
in love with who first?” he says, exasperated.

“It matters to me,
’ she fumes.

“OK, OK, you win. I fell in love with you at first sight. And then two months later, we got married.”

“Great.”

“Great.”

They drive for a little while in silence. She runs over his brief notes in her mind again. No details, just quick sketches, he told her. She feels as though she is memorizing stuff for a Green Card interview – as though he is French or something and they are trying hard to mount a show for the immigration officials to keep him in the country.

More important is his resume, which she was forced to memorize last night. But she has to admit he has an impressive resume for someone so young.
Has he really put together twenty-eight commercials? If so, he must be a working machine, and if those keyboard-tapping nights are anything to go by, she can well believe it. And she loved that last Revlon ad with the foxy shifter theme. Was that really him who came up with the idea?

After a while, they come up to a sign saying: BRIXFORTH.

“Thank God.” He is visibly relieved.

She supposes
he is holding back more than she imagined. He can’t want to be late when first appearances are everything. As someone who has absolutely no corporate or social ladder to climb, she can’t identify with what he is going through. But she can certainly admire it. She has always admired men who single-mindedly go after what they want.

Jake doesn’t get lost this time
because Brixforth consists of a main street and little else. It is an upscale beach community, pretty much like the Hamptons. The stores sell gourmet meats and gourmet breads. There are cafes and wine stores and designer beachwear. Brixforth mostly hosts real estate. Painfully expensive real estate.

On one side is the beach, stretching as far as the eye can see. The Atlantic Ocean laps against the coarse sand in surprisingly gentle waves, because Brixforth is protected from the trade winds by some climactic quirk of fate.
On the other side is green forest.

Terry can understand why Jake’s potential new boss chose this place as a summer retreat. It is ideal for shifters, especially
with the expanse of forest as a cover. Very rich shifters, that is.

“Do you know where the house is?
” she says.

“Yeah, I’ve only been t
here, like, six times. Chill, will you? I can find it,” he says irritably, tapping the screen of his mounted Garmin.

She backs off, wondering if he is just going to be as irritable all weekend.

To Jake’s (and the Garmin’s) credit, he does find the house. Only it is not just a house. It is a veritable mansion. It is a beachfront property, but its grounds are considerable, with a nice thicket of forest surrounding it. The ‘mansion’ is a haphazard, modern day structure with lots of outcroppings and wings – very much like a fairytale chocolate house. There are no gates or fences. Brixforth is as safe a community as safe can be, and anyway, no one would want to tangle with a shifter millionaire.

Jake steers his Ford down a drive, which leads to a circular
parking lot. Plenty of cars are already parked there. In a special shaded parking bay probably reserved for the family, Terry notices a Porsche, two Ferraris, a BMW X5 and a McLaren.

They park
. Since no one is around in the parking lot, Jake hauls both their weekend bags out of his booth.

“I can carry my own bag,” she says, making a grab for it, but he dances it out of reach.

“You’re my wife,” he retorts. “No wife of mine is going to carry anything heavier than her purse when I’m around.”

He marches to the front door with both their bags, leaving her in chagrin.
Jake is still very much a shifter male at heart, she reckons.

He looks back at her.

“You coming, sweetie?” he says loudly. “Or do you want me to carry you across the threshold?”

She is not sure he is entirely kidding or if he is doing this for the benefit of anyone within earshot.

The door opens before either of them has a chance to ring the bell, which is in the shape of a wolf’s head with its jaws gaping open. A redheaded woman, slightly on the plump side, stands there, smiling from ear to ear.

“Welcome, welcome!” she cries, holding out her arms.
“You must be the Savages. I like the sound of that!”

Terry quails.

“We’re just about to sit for dinner when we heard your car roll in. I’m Martha Skaarsgard, by the way.”

She envelops Terry in a bear hug.
Terry is a little surprised. She isn’t used to such open display of emotion from strangers, but she goes along with it anyway.
Keep smiling
. Martha smells of cinnamon and freshly baked pie.

“Do I get one too?” Jake says.

“Of course!” Martha tears herself away from Terry to size him up. “Wow, Peter didn’t tell me you were such a stunner. You’ve got yourself a heartbreaker of a young man now. You better hold on to him.”

Jake
drops his bags, grinning, and lets Martha sweep him up.

“I’ll show you
up to your room later. But you must be hungry and tired after your long journey. Was it easy to find our place?”

“Sorry we’re late,” Jake says.
“I took a wrong turn somewhere.”

“
Come on then, the two of you. Dining room’s this way.”

Martha breez
es them both into a lounge done in homely, comforting colors. Terry looks around in delight, noting the haphazardly strewn cushions on comfortable sofas and the pastel curtains, all designed to give everything a warm, welcoming glow. This is what a family home should look like, she thinks. And this isn’t even Martha’s regular home. Her maiden name doesn’t happen to be Stewart, does it?

The dining room is a huge chamber – very wood-beamed and cherry oak.
Conversation immediately ceases as the two dozen people seated at the immense table look up. The blue-eyed man at the head of the table gets up and holds out his hand to the newcomers.

“Jake! So glad you can make it. We were
just about to send a hunting party after you, ha ha. This must be Terry. I’m Peter, by the way, your host for the weekend. And you’ve met Martha, my lovely wife of thirty-five years.”

Terry takes his outstretched hand. Peter has a surprisingly good grip.

“Sorry we’re late, but I took a wrong turn,” Jake says.

“Please, sit.” Peter waves his hand at two empty seats in the middle of the table.
“Don’t mind everyone. This is my family – my son, Karl, and his wife, Paula. Their teenage daughter, Mika.”

A surly teenager with large hoop earrings doesn’t
look up from texting on her cellphone. Her parents wave cheerily.

“My oldest daughter, Karina, and her husband, Thom. Their twin sons, Halder and Jerome
, who are about to enter college next semester. My younger daughter, Ethel. She isn’t married . . . yet.”

“I’m a lesbian, Dad.”

“Ha ha, don’t mind her. You just haven’t found the right wolf yet, honey.”

Ethel crosses her eyes
at her father. She is a striking, very platinum blond woman with the same facial features as her mother and sister, only she is much, much prettier. Her hair is cropped short and her cleavage very pronounced. Terry supposes she must be the family rebel, though Mika would be challenging her for the honor in a few years.

“And these are our other guests.
Jeff Hirsch and his lovely wife, Cassie.”

From the way Jake’s shoulders
suddenly straighten, Terry knows this must be one of the other two candidates for the job. Jeff Hirsch is a tall, ginger-haired man with very sharp hazel eyes. Terry immediately recognizes an alpha wolf, or a former one, when she sees him. Jeff could well be the alpha of his clan before he took a mate and retired from the role to go into corporate trappings.

As for Cassie Hirsch, she must be eight months pregnant, at least. Her rotund abdomen is obvious even from above the table. She darts a nervous look at her husband.
Terry can tell that she is a mousey woman – the kind who would be completely obedient and subservient to her alpha mate.

Good for him
.
Her . . . not so much
.

As for Jake,
his natural competitiveness is now kicking in. So he was late to the party. Score One for Jeff Hirsch. But Jake will not take this lying down, Terry knows. He is going to match Jeff Hirsch claw for claw all weekend, whatever the weekend has in store for them.

“And this is
Mariko Ruchi and her husband, Hiro.”

The other couple is
Asian, and they both get up and bow. Mariko is a beautiful woman with flawless skin, and Terry wonders if she uses the cosmetics she probably markets. Fire lights up the Japanese woman’s eyes and Terry can tell that this is no stereotypical, diminutive Japanese wife. It is clear who wears the pants in their family.

Peter claps his hands. “Now that we are all introduced, let’s eat! I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m starving.”

Jake and Terry take their seats. They are hemmed in by Mika, who still hasn’t looked up from her cellphone, and Ethel. Directly across the table are Jeff and Cassie and Mariko and Hiro.