The Pretend Fiancé (15 page)

This morning, however, the only feeling the sight aroused in Gwen was guilt.

"Are you sure? You seem a little bit off, somehow," Aiden said as he launched himself to his feet. His naked torso flushed with the results of his recent physical exertions.

"Fine, just fine," Gwen said.

"If you say so. Would you like to order room service? I'm thinking maybe a day in, just the two of us. We don't even have to get dressed if you don't like."

"That does sound nice..."

"But? I can feel a but here," he rubbed at his eyes and then grimaced, "I really just said that, didn't I? I blame it on not being totally conscious yet. My point still stands, though!"

A sort of melancholy amusement worked its way up through Gwen's stomach, resulting in a wan smile. "You are adorable. It's just that I'm not really feeling the staying in thing right now."

"That's fine. I understand," Aiden said. He pulled on a white undershirt. Gwen experienced a twinge of regret at letting him cover up that amazing body of his. The feeling lasted only a few heartbeats.

She sat down on the bed again, experiencing the urge to set her head down on the pillow and do her best feline impression to pass the day away by sleeping through most of it.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Aiden said, coming over to stand next to her. A tuft of bed head hair sticking out from the side of his head ruined the effect of the concern on his face.

Gwen sighed and her shoulders sagged.
I woke up so nicely and yet I still managed to ruin the day before it even started. Yeah, go me.

Two conflicting urges lay at the heart of her mood. The first implored her to get it over with and tell him what happened. The second suggested putting it off as long as possible until she found a way to not have to tell him in the first place.

"It's nothing," she said.

Aiden didn't give up though. He picked something up from her mood, her expression. "Is this about Catherine, still? Because I thought I did a pretty good job of convincing you that there's nothing between us last night."

"It's not about her."

"Because if it is, I'll go fire her right now. Just say the word. I don't think the board will take kindly to that, but they'll just have to deal with it." He said it in a joking tone, but by the cast of his face, she knew that he was also dead serious about it.

And for just one awful second, Gwen actually considered it. It might distract her from thinking about certain other things, you see. At least for a time.

However, she knew she wasn't the kind of person to cost someone their job just to try and temporarily elevate her own mood.

"That's really sweet... in a twisted sort of way. But no. I get the feeling that Catherine's as good at her job as she is hot."

"She is..." Aiden said.

"Hah! I knew it! You think she's hot," Gwen jumped in.

Even with the bedroom still shaded by the curtains, she still so how Aiden's face went white. He began stammering something, trying to rush to his own defense.

She laughed. It felt good to laugh. The feeling didn't last nearly as long as she wanted it to, though. "Oh, stop that. I believe you. I walked you right into that. Sorry, I couldn't resist."

The color returned to Aiden's face, and he rubbed at the stubble on his cheeks, making a sandpaper noise. "This is what happens when I delay my morning dose of caffeine... So, let's start again. If you don't want to stay in, that's okay, fine. We'll go out. Just let me know where you want to go. What you want to do. We can go yodeling on the mountainside, if that's your thing."

"It isn't. And I'm not sure I want to go out, either."

Aiden threw his hands up into the air and paced away from the bed. "Contradiction, thy name is woman!"

"You really didn't just say that, did you?"

"Blame it on the lack of caffeine again. Really though, if you don't want to go out and you don't want to stay in, I'm not certain what's left. Let me know when you do think of something. I'm going to start the coffee before I say anything else that I shouldn't," Aiden said, disappearing down the stairs.

The rattles and clinks that drifted up to her shortly thereafter confirmed that coffee was his objective.

Gwen pulled her feet up onto the mattress and then drew her knees tightly against her chest. This at once comforted her and pressed dangerously against her bladder.
Contradictory woman indeed
, Gwen thought.

She thought again about the misadventures of the previous day. About Judith's diabolical scheme to get her parents smashed at a five star restaurant. About how said parents fell right into said trap.

That led to her realizing that if they hadn't gotten drunk, she wouldn't have been mad at Aiden. She wouldn't have stormed from the suite in a huff, wouldn't have ended up at the bar, and finally, Ben wouldn't have kissed her.

Well, she hoped they were both good and hung over. It was the least they deserved.

And then she knew what she could do today. She went from the bed to the bathroom, where she showered and got ready for the day. By the time she went downstairs, she was dressed and ready to go.

Aiden looked up at her from his seat at the little dinette table, a cup of coffee sending curling streamers of steam into the air beside him. He took in her shirt, her jeans, her hair.

He still wore his briefs and undershirt. And that tuft of hair still stuck out from the side of his head. "Was I supposed to be dressed?" he said, standing up.

"No. I know what I want to do today."

"Well just give me fifteen minutes and I'll come with you," Aiden said, picking up the steaming mug and downing a final mouthful in preparation to go get ready as well. "What is it, anyway?"

"I've decided to go scold my parents for their parts in yesterday's various debacles."

"Excellent plan. Sort of. Do you really think you should?" Aiden said, pausing at the bottom of the staircase.

"If they keep screwing up like that, then Judith wins. They need to know that this is not okay at all. Hey... What's that thing kids do sometimes to get away from their parents? Like a divorce?"

Aiden frowned for a moment. "Emancipated. They get emancipated. You're going to threaten to legally disown them? Doesn't that only work if they're still your legal guardians?"

"They don't know that," Gwen said, hoping the smile she pulled her lips into looked wicked enough.

"Good plan. Like I said, give me fifteen minutes and I'll be ready to join you..."

"No!" she said with far more vigor than she intended. That frown returned to his face, and she raced to contain the damage. "I mean, no, you shouldn't. They're my parents, right? My responsibility. I can take care of this myself."
It has nothing at all to do with the terrible guilt twisting in my stomach every time I look at you. Nothing at all.

"Oh..." Aiden said, his shoulders sagging. That increased the twistiness of the guilt in her innards, which in turn cranked up her desire to get out of there. She rushed over to the table on which her purse sat, snatched it up, and headed for the door.

"I'll be back soon, and then we can do something. I promise!" She pulled the door open, her freedom mere inches, a footstep even, away.

"Gwen, wait!" Aiden said. His voice froze her into place. Gluing another smile to her lips, she peered back at him.

"Yes?" she said, her heart pounding, every nerve screaming at her to get out of there right that second.

"I love you. Hurry back," Aiden replied.

The twisting in her gut turned into tearing. Tearing and rending and gnashing of teeth and all that bad stuff. "Love you, too." She slipped through the door. She was already part way to the elevators when it swung shut behind her.

***

A
iden went back to his prematurely abandoned cup of coffee. He took another mouthful, not really paying attention to the bitterness or heat. For hotel coffee, it was pretty good (which it had better be, for the nightly rate he paid).

He stared at the door through which Gwen had just disappeared beyond.
More like rushed through like an escaped prisoner running for their one shot at freedom
, he thought.

Something was up. Something big. He'd tried sussing it out, but so far with no success. It wasn't about Catherine, he was fairly certain of that. Not with the way Gwen joked about it despite her apparent low mood.

No, she'd been acting strangely ever since the engagement.

The engagement
, Aiden realized, setting the coffee down hard enough that some of the dark liquid splashed out over the side to form irregular puddles on the table.

Was Gwen having second thoughts about marrying him? It sort of made sense, but it also didn't. If she was, then why go through all those lengths with Judith to keep the engagement together?

Then again, there was a correlation between the engagement and the commencement of her weirdness.

Oh God
, Aiden thought,
Did I ask her too soon? Did I rush her into this?

If that was the case, then he knew he couldn't waste any more time just thinking about it. He had to go do something, to fix this before it spiraled into something even worse. He couldn't lose Gwen. Especially because of something he did. He refused to even entertain the thought.

Prickling, cold panic spread out through his body starting in the center of his chest. Downing the rest of his coffee, he sprinted up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time, hauling himself up by the handrail.

She's going to speak with her parents
, he thought,
I can find her there with them. We can talk and get this all sorted out before it gets any worse.

E
very step Gwen took down the hall towards her father's hotel room strengthened her resolve, weakening the guilt as anger and indignation took its place.

Yes, this is the right thing to do. I need to do this
, Gwen thought. It felt right, and productive, and it kept her from thinking about Ben.

She rapped her knuckles against David's door. When he didn't answer in the first couple seconds, she knocked again. She kept knocking until David hauled the door open.

"Gwen! What are you doing?"

"We need to talk about what you did," Gwen said, pushing past him into the room. She'd spent far too much time having awkward conversations in doorways lately, and she intended to break that particular habit.

"Oh, that, yeah..." David said, looking down at the floor. He let the door swing shut. Thankfully, he wore his normal clothes rather than a hotel housecoat.

Good
, Gwen thought,
feel ashamed. You should be, after what you did
.

"Gwen, sweetie, let me start by saying that I really did not intend to let any of that happen..."

"Well it did, whether you intended it to or not."

"Right. Still, you have to know how difficult it is for your mother and me to be around each other when the divorce comes up. It doesn't excuse our behavior, but I feel that you need to remember to take that into account with how you must be judging us right now."

Gwen paced around his room, walking up to the window and checking out the street view he had. She crossed her arms and glared at his reflection in the window.

"I'll give you that one. But then you have to remember that you both agreed to help me out despite your differences. I mean, do you even remember what you said and did?"

"Yes..." David said.

"Really? What about... Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. You see how angry I am? I want mom here, too! Come on, we're going to get her and then we're going to have this out."

She started for the door, but David caught her arm. "Please, Gwen, just wait a second. We do love you and we'd do anything for you, but you need to cut us some slack, too."

"You signed the contract. You knew what you were doing!" Gwen said, pulling her arm from his grasp.

"Yes, we did. But you signed it, too. And I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the pretend girlfriend thing back in New York. I think you need to step back and consider things before coming to tear our heads off."

Gwen felt shocked. She couldn't believe that her father would choose to throw that in her face. Well, she had some ammunition of her own.

"Fine, I should have told you about that sooner. But we're getting off topic here. You know what's on topic, though? You. You and a certain accented waitress you couldn't stop flirting with after getting a couple glasses of wine into you. Did you ever stop to think about how mom might feel about that? About doing that right in front of her?"

Mention of her mother brought some now familiar wrinkles to her father's forehead. However, he also had the nerve to smile. "You do know that we are getting divorced, don't you? We're not getting back together, so I hope you're not going to try any of that
Parent Trap
stuff on us. We just don't feel that way about each other anymore."

"I know," Gwen said, feeling a pout coming on and doing her best to stop it. She didn't want to regress to a little tantrum throwing girl. Well, no more than she already had, anyway.

The epic verbal beat down that had been playing out in her head until she knocked on David's door didn't at all match the reality of the situation.

"Do you?" he fixed her with a look she remembered well from childhood. The look that made her unable to keep any wrongdoings from him.

"Yes."

"Fine. I am sorry about the way I behaved, and I'm sure your mother is, too. But we are getting divorced. A couple more signatures and we will be, legally. And we might as well be, since to me that's just a formality at this point. We have our own lives, and you have to remember that," David continued, his dad voice growing in strength with each lecturing sentence.

No, this definitely was not going the way she wanted it to. So, in an effort to force some fantasy back into reality, she made another bid for control.

"Yes, yes. Just remember that you did agree to help me. Now, let's go get mom."