The Pretend Fiancé (12 page)

"Gladly," Aiden said. His face was tight, his lips bloodless. And Barb kept clinging to his arm. Gwen followed them out to the car, glad to be out of sight of all those judging eyes.

Round one to Judith
, she thought as the driver closed the door.

G
wen did not envy the bell hops who so quickly agreed to take her parents back up to the respective rooms. David and Barb took separate elevators, and Gwen and Aiden loitered in the marble-clad lobby to wait their turn.

Gwen couldn't sit. She wanted to, but she couldn't. Her anxiety and her anger kept coursing through her, giving her little jolts of adrenaline every time she started to slow. But the weight of everything exhausted her. It was a constant battle.

One she fought by pacing back and forth behind the overstuffed leather couch on which Aiden sat.

Neither of them appeared ready to speak yet, both lost in their own worries and worlds.

With no one there talking her worries down, Gwen could feel herself spiraling out of control.

What if Judith uses this as an excuse to end the whole thing right now? What if she takes Aiden away from me? What am I supposed to do? If this was the first, and presumably easiest, test, what's coming next? Can I take it?

The image of the old woman's wicked face kept appearing in her mind's eye, grinning at her.

"I think they've left," Aiden said, peering over towards the elevators. "Let's get upstairs."

A quick burst of panic shot through her when she realized that they'd be up there all alone in a few minutes. All alone with each other, no protective cocoon of bystanders around them to prevent the fight she could sense coming.

Aiden pushed himself off the couch and started over, pausing when he noticed that she didn't follow. "Coming?"

Stop being such a baby
, Gwen thought.
Sure, you can sit down here a little longer. But that's just procrastinating. In the end, you still have to go through with whatever it was you didn't want to do.

She so badly wanted to just plunk down on the couch and see how long she could put things off. But it wasn't the right thing, the mature, adult thing, to do.

"Coming," she replied.

The elevator came right away, for once. It turned out to be the fastest the two of them got where they were going, much to her chagrin.

Aiden popped the keycard into the lock and then put his shoulder to the door. Inside, he immediately tugged at one end of his bow tie and then pulled the length of silk out of his collar.

Shrugging off of his jacket and an unbuttoning of the top two buttons of his shirt followed quickly, and he finished the whole sequence by lowering himself onto the couch and blowing out his cheeks.

Gwen couldn't take it any longer. She tapped her foot, her arms squeezed tightly around her ribs. "Are you going to tell me I told you so? Because if you could, I'd like it sooner rather than later."

Aiden leaned back while also rubbing at the corners of his eyes. "Do I need to?"

"I don't know, do you?"

He sighed again and shrugged. "Fine. I did tell you that even with the contract, we're still playing by Judith's rules. She gets to decide all the games that we play for her. She is the referee or the judge in every case, and she ultimately decides who wins. Which will always be her, by the way."

"Sound a little more fatalistic about it, please. I don't quite feel like our fates are sealed yet."

"What were you expecting?" Aiden said testily.

Part of Gwen knew that bickering about this was just what Judith wanted, but she couldn't stop herself. All that frustration and anger had to come out somewhere. And Aiden was the only target available.

"I'm not sure. I can tell you what I wasn't expecting, though. I wasn't expecting your grandmother to set us all up on a dinner date and then do her best to try and get my parents sent to whatever the Swiss equivalent of a drunk tank is."

"Which is an oversight you won't be making again."

"Thanks, tips," Gwen said, turning away, not wanting to look at him anymore.

"Wait," Aiden said. She heard the rustle of cushions as he stood up, "There's more to this. I can tell. You're upset with me. Why are you upset with me? I did my best out there..." his footsteps drew closer and she knew he wanted to enfold her in one of those comforting back hugs of his in order to disarm her fuse.

Well, she wasn't going to let him. She turned around and pointed an accusatory finger at him. "You! Doing your best to what? Make my parents look like giant babies? You scolded them like children, taking their wine glasses away like they were toys or something! Didn't you notice the way everyone stared at us when you did that?"

Aiden's eyes iced over. Gwen almost flinched. Almost. She met his coldness with a fiery glare of her own. They stared so long that her eyes began itching and burning, but she refused to blink.

"Actually, I was less concerned with what other people think and more interested in addressing the problem at hand. Maybe you should try it sometime."

Gwen's mouth dropped open. "I can't believe you just said that!"

"Then maybe you should stop believing in stupid things and start seeing what's right in front of your face," Aiden snarled, tensing up. "Maybe I did treat your parents like children. But only because they were acting like them. Just like you're acting like one now. Things didn't go your way so you're throwing a tantrum."

The iciness of his eyes and the naked anger in his words smashed into her. Pressure built up behind her eyes as she tried to think of some retort and found nothing.

Seeing this, Aiden's eyes softened. His shoulders relaxed, and he took a deep breath. "Good, now that that's over, can we just forget about tonight and maybe get to bed? I know it's still really early, but I feel wrung out..."

"How can you say something like that?" Gwen said, unwilling and unable to just let go of it like that. She felt hurt and defenseless and cornered, and Aiden wanted to forget about it.

"Please don't start again," he said, still trying to defuse her.

"I'm not starting it because it hasn't ended yet. I know you didn't believe in this right from the start. Tell me, are you trying to help Judith win? Because it sure seems like it!"

Aiden shook his head like he couldn't believe the words coming out of her mouth. "Why would you even say that? Of course I'm on your side. I've always been on your side."

"Then stop acting like you aren't."

Aiden ran his fingers through his hair, ruining the careful combing he'd done to go out to dinner. Even angry at him like she was, Gwen couldn't help admitting how sexy it made him look. But it wasn't the time to think about that, so she struck it from her thoughts.

"No, Gwen. You're the one who has to stop acting. You have to stop acting like an entitled, selfish little girl. Now, I'm going to bed. Are you joining me?"

"No. You can sleep by yourself tonight. And every other night after that, for all I care. In fact, you can have your... stupid..." Gwen said, gritting her teeth while she tried pulling the engagement ring off, intent on throwing it in his face and storming out.

However, the ring refused to budge. She spun it around and pried at it, but it couldn't slide over her knuckle.

She hated the way it reduced her to sputtering and clawing, trying to get it off. It went on so long she might have laughed had it not been happening to her.

Aiden's anger broke, then, and he smiled at her. "It's not supposed to come off, you know. Not now or ever. Save your strength."

Gwen ignored him and pushed harder, the metal band biting into her skin. It still didn't come off.

"Screw it!" she said. His smile renewed her anger. "Yeah, laugh it up. We'll see who's laughing tonight."

She went to the door and wrenched it open, storming out into the hall. She didn't look back to see if Aiden followed her. Reaching the elevator, she jabbed the down button a half dozen times. When it didn't come promptly, she found the stairs and took them down to the lobby.

From there, she went outside, her shoes clicking against the concrete. The blanket of night had fallen on Switzerland since they had returned from their restaurant misadventure.

It was quite the fetching view, with the stars sparkling over the shadowy mountains. It didn't fetch Gwen, though. She didn't care about the stupid, beautiful vista.

She didn't care how all the heat seemed to have left with the sun. And she definitely didn't care about how cold it had gotten. Or that, in her anger, she had neglected to grab so much as a windbreaker from the suite before her glorious and enraged exit.

"And I'm definitely not going back to get one," she muttered, clutching herself for warmth.

The few pedestrians she passed on the street, all clad for the weather, gave her funny looks.

She walked several blocks away from the hotel, trying to keep the heat of her anger up by thinking about what she wanted to do to Aiden's stupid, handsome face. The cold air won out over the hot anger, but not over her mulish stubbornness.

"I'm not going back," she muttered. He won't get that satisfaction.

Still, she also knew that she couldn't stay outside.

Then she heard the sound of salvation. Some sort of Euro (German, by the sound of it) rock music blasting from somewhere close by. And where there was rock playing loudly on the street, there was a bar.

She rounded the street corner and saw it. It was a pub, with a hanging sign of a foamy beer swaying in the wind. A man stumbled from the door, spilling light out onto the street and letting the sounds of merriment drift out. She watched him make his way around the empty tables and chairs of the patio and then bumble away down the street.

Warmth
, Gwen thought, drawn to the pub.
And alcohol. Lots of alcohol.

She went inside, the warm air prickling her cold skin, and sat on a stool by the bar. It wasn't the largest bar she'd seen. Pretty small, actually. Maybe a half dozen round tables with chairs scattered around them. Men and women laughed and drank, yelling at each other in German over the racket of the music.

It wasn't a place for tourists, either, it seemed.

The bartender approached her and asked her a question in German. Gwen shrugged, her stomach sinking. He blinked, then tried again in French. Gwen replied with another universal shrug.

She was beginning to get why so many people, especially Euros, looked down on Americans. "English?" Gwen tried.

The bartender knitted his thick eyebrows together. "No, no English," he said in a heavy accent.

Gwen looked for some way to breach the language barrier, her eyes settling on the beer taps. She didn't recognize the brand logos, but that didn't matter to her much at that moment. She reached down to grab her purse, ready to order a drink. Except her hands didn't find her purse.

Her stomach dropped through the floor.
I forgot to grab it before I stormed out
. She'd been so mad at Aiden, so embarrassed and frustrated with not getting the ring off her finger, that she'd just wanted to leave and hadn't really thought about anything beyond that.

The bartender took note of her lack of funds. Somehow, his frown deepened. He spoke in German and waved at the door.

She didn't need to know the language to know that he wanted her out.

Maybe I'll just sit in the hotel lobby all night
, Gwen thought as she began sliding off the stool,
some of those couches looked pretty comfy
.

Someone tall sidled up to the bar next to her. He spoke in German to the bartender, who harrumphed and stalked down to the beer taps. Then the newcomer turned to Gwen.

"It's such a shame how everyone always wants money before they'll give you what you want."

Gwen looked up into his face. The blond hair, the accent, the smile. "Ben!" she said.

Ben Somersby sat on the stool next to hers. "You know, I've never been overly fond of my name. Always thought it sounded so ordinary and boring. But when you say it, it doesn't sound too bad."

The bartender slid two foaming mugs of beer over in front of them. "
Danke
," Ben said, nudging one in Gwen's direction. Some of the foam sloshed over the side.

Gwen shook her head. "Does everyone except for me speak ten languages?"

Ben raised his mug, "Cheers," he said, gulping some of the frothy liquid down and making a satisfied noise when he finished. "I don't know about ten. Only know three myself. Hey, drink up. We're not all marrying a billionaire, and, as I'm sure you just discovered, the beer isn't free."

"Thanks," Gwen said, sliding her hand into the handle of the heavy mug and then taking a sip. It was cold, and she shivered. "And I think you can count yourself lucky on the not marrying a billionaire bit. It's not as fun as it looks."

"Oh?" Ben replied.

"No. And you seem different somehow. Cheekier."

Ben pinched his cheeks. "These old things? I'm not always a journalist you know, always on the job. Sometimes I'm just a Brit at a bar enjoying a beer. And alliteration... Maybe I am always on the job." He took another swallow from his mug.

Gwen smiled at his joke and then shivered again. Why did it have to be so cold?

"Now you are the one who seems different. Also, underdressed," Ben said, "Don't you know it gets rather chilly at night? Here, I insist." Ben stripped off his jacket and hung it over Gwen's shoulders. He wore a charcoal button-down underneath it that really set off the grey in his eyes.

She protested until she felt the warmth. It seeped in through her skin and she sighed at the sensation.
I'll give it back as soon as I get rid of this chill
, she told herself.

"Better, see?" Ben said, taking a quick look over his shoulders at the rest of the patrons, "So I don't see our Harvard man around. Can I presume some trouble in paradise? A lover's quarrel, perhaps?"

She gave him a sidelong look. "I thought you didn't work for the tabloids?"

"I don't. Like I said, I'm not on the job here now. I'm not Ben Somersby, hard-hitting investigative reporter. Here I'm Ben Somersby, beer lover and good listener."