Living with Her Fake Fiancé (The Loft Book 3) Read online

  Living with Her Fake Fiancé

  The Loft, Book Three

  Noelle Adams

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Noelle Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About Living with Her Fake Fiancé

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from In Want of a Wife

  About Noelle Adams

  About Living with Her Fake Fiancé

  CHLOE NEEDS A MAN TO pose as her fiancé for a few weeks, so she asks her roommate, Brent, to take on the role. He might be shy, but he's a good guy, and he'll do anything to help her out.

  Because she's grateful, she wants to do something for Brent in return, and there's only one thing he needs from her. He has no experience with women. None. At all. So Chloe decides to give him lessons.

  It's supposed to be a friendly, casual thing, but Brent makes her feel better about herself than any man ever has. So Chloe wonders if their fake relationship can be real.

  One

  CHLOE HURRIED OUT OF her bedroom, carrying her scarf and earrings and trying to button her top as she walked.

  She was running late, and she’d promised herself she would never arrive late to her new job.

  Four months in, and she was already a flop.

  She ran down the hall toward the kitchen, her heels clicking on the old hardwood floor of the spacious loft apartment. She’d bought herself the shoes to celebrate having work again after almost a year of unemployment. She’d gotten a good job in the marketing department of the local university, doing graphic design. It paid decently and left her enough time in the evenings to finish the coursework for her MFA degree in creative technologies.

  The best thing about getting the job, however, was being able to move out of her parents’ house, where she’d been living since she lost her previous job, and move back into this downtown apartment with her friends.

  Her roommates were all up when she hurried into the kitchen. Michelle and Brent were sitting on stools at the granite-topped island, and Steve was lounging on the couch, reading a newspaper.

  He still read paper newspapers even though no one else their age did. He said he liked the smell of the ink.

  Steve and Michelle were a couple, and Brent had moved in a few months ago. Chloe felt like she knew him pretty well now, but she was still trying to get him to like her and not having a lot of luck with it.

  She was an outgoing person who made friends easily and took pleasure in her relationships. Ever since he’d moved in, Brent had been a challenge to her. One she hadn’t yet conquered.

  She would though.

  She didn’t have time to socialize this morning. She mumbled out a greeting and ran to the refrigerator to grab a few things to pack for lunch. It was too expensive to buy lunch on campus every day. Her job paid well, but she had credit card debt from her year of unemployment.

  Not to mention her student loans.

  “You’re not eating breakfast?” Michelle asked, looking up from her laptop. She had brown hair and a quiet, unassuming prettiness. She was one of Chloe’s two best friends.

  “I don’t have time.” Chloe haphazardly stuffed an apple, a yogurt, and a granola bar into her insulated lunch pouch. “I’m late. I can’t be late!”

  “You’re not that late. Doesn’t work start at eight? It’s just seven forty.”

  “I know, but I need to catch the 7:42 bus if I’m going to make it to my building on time.”

  “You’re never going to get to the bus stop in two minutes,” Steve said from his position sprawled out on the couch. He was fully dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt (half-untucked), and he looked relaxed and unhurried.

  Chloe scowled at him since little was more annoying than seeing someone all ready to go and taking it easy when you were in a rush. “I know that!” She was trying to tie her scarf around her neck with one hand and dig a spoon out of a drawer with the other. “Why do you think I’m all hassled? I’ll have to take the 7:55 bus, which means I’ll be late for work.”

  “Did you oversleep?” Michelle asked, sounding more sympathetic than her boyfriend.

  “Yes. I slept right through my alarm. I was having the best dream, and I didn’t wake up.”

  “What was the dream about?”

  Chloe didn’t really have time for this conversation, but she liked to chat more than she liked rushing to work, and Michelle sounded genuinely interested. She did make some progress putting on her jewelry as she said, “It was a really good one.”

  She gave her friend a significant look that made Michelle giggle.

  The dream had been hot. Hot. The man had been faceless—just a big, firm body in bed with her. The images had been nothing but scattered fragments. A large hand. A strong thigh. A delicious hardness moving inside her. She’d been aroused and excited when she’d woken up and wanted to indulge the feeling with a little private time, but she’d glanced at the clock and panicked when she’d seen how late it was.

  “Who was the guy?” Steve asked from the couch. Even without seeing her look to Michelle, he’d known exactly what she’d been talking about. They’d known each other a long time.

  Brent hadn’t said a word yet. He sat eating cereal at the counter. He wasn’t much of a talker. He looked like a lumberjack, but he was thoughtful and generous and incredibly smart. He was a really good guy, and she wished he liked her more. She’d been making an effort to smile at him a lot and go out of her way to talk to him, but she didn’t have time this morning.

  “No idea. Just a faceless body. Maybe that was why it was so good. None of the pressure of an actual personality.” Chloe wasn’t embarrassed to be talking about her sex dream. She wasn’t self-conscious about sex, and she was always open with her friends. Plus sharing an apartment like this with other single adults meant there were certain limits on privacy.

  She remembered her hair, which she’d barely even brushed this morning, so she knotted it up quickly with the clip she’d left on the island last night. Her dark hair was long but not all that thick so it stayed in place when she clipped it up. “There,” she said. “Am I dressed?”

  She glanced over at Michelle for affirmation.

  “Yes, you look good. Just fix the cuff of your pants.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Thanks.” Chloe crouched down to refold one of the cuffs on her man-style gray trousers. They were made of a thick, stretchy material that was almost as comfortable as sweatpants, and she thought they looked stylish and professional. When paired with her high heels, they also made her look taller than her five four.

  She was still crouched on the floor when she became aware of someone standing right beside her. She saw a pair of bare male feet. Then the flannel of orange-and-maroon pajama pants. Her line of sight ascended as she stood up. A flat, firm belly. A strong, well-defined man chest with a scattering of brown hair on it. A very impressive pair of shoulders. A thick, squared-off beard. Sober brown eyes.

  Brent.

  She shouldn’t be surprised by him. She’d seen him just a minute ago, dressed in nothing but his pajama pants, and all he was doing now was returning the
milk to the refrigerator.

  But for some reason seeing his body piece by piece as she stood made her acutely aware of him as a man.

  A big man with a great body and an intelligent, attractive face.

  She’d never really thought about him as good-looking before, but he was.

  He really was.

  She remembered her sexy dream. Maybe the faceless guy in her dream had had a beard.

  She gulped.

  Brent frowned slightly, probably confused at the way she was staring at him.

  She didn’t have time for this right now even if it was something she might want to mull over later.

  “I’m late!” she said again. “I wasn’t supposed to ever be late for this job.”

  “I’ll drop you,” Brent said in his soft, low voice. “I can get you there by eight.”

  “But you’re not even dressed yet.”

  “Give me three minutes.”

  Chloe was so surprised she just stared as he turned around and disappeared down the hall toward his room.

  “He’ll get you to campus faster in his car than waiting for the next bus,” Michelle said.

  “But he doesn’t have to be on campus until nine today.” Chloe knew Brent’s schedule, just like she knew Steve’s and Michelle’s schedules.

  “He obviously doesn’t care about that,” Michelle said. “So let him help.”

  Chloe shrugged and didn’t argue. She wasn’t sure why she was flustered by Brent’s unexpected offer. He was a nice guy. She’d known that from the beginning. He might be silent most of the time around her, but before she even knew him, he’d come over to help her with a crisis at her parents’ house just because Michelle had run into him in the hall and asked.

  Maybe this would be a good opportunity to get him to like her more.

  She was a nice person too. She wasn’t used to people not liking her. She was artistically oriented and sometimes kind of frazzled because she wasn’t the most organized of individuals. But there was no reason why that would bother Brent. He was friendlier with other people than he was with her, and she didn’t understand it.

  As good as his word, Brent returned in exactly three minutes, now wearing jeans and a long-sleeve crewneck. He looked perfectly normal, so Chloe had no idea why she was still thinking he was so hot right now.

  Big and sexy and man.

  She even liked his beard.

  He blinked at her. “Ready?”

  She grabbed her lunch pouch. “I’m ready. Thanks.”

  BY CAR, EVEN IN MORNING traffic, it took only six minutes to get from their loft apartment in downtown Blacksburg to the building on the Virginia Tech campus where Chloe worked. As Brent drove, Chloe tried to get him to talk.

  She didn’t have much success.

  “Thanks for driving me,” she said with a big smile. She had a good smile. At least she’d always thought so. Her mouth was a little too big for her face, just like her very dark eyes, but her teeth were white and even, and everyone said her smile was a good one.

  Brent appeared unmoved by her smile. His eyes were still sober as he glanced over. “No problem.”

  “I’m sorry you had to skip your shower.”

  “Took one last night.”

  “Oh.” She waited, but he didn’t volunteer any further information. “I guess now you’re going to have to hang around and kill time before class starts.”

  Brent was getting a PhD in some kind of agricultural science. Something about crops and soil. She knew he did his research in a section of turfgrass on campus. He’d talked about it before, and she’d thought she understood it when he was explaining, but she could never remember the details afterward. It had to do with soil erosion and crop production. He was done with his coursework and was writing his dissertation now, but he had a TA position in his department, so he attended lectures, led discussion sections, and helped with labs.

  He’d also gotten a prestigious fellowship that funded his degree. He was one of the smartest people Chloe knew.

  He was twenty-five years old. Just like her. But he seemed to have done a lot more with his life than she had.

  He grunted wordlessly at her comment.

  “I guess maybe you can get some work done?”

  He grunted again.

  She sighed. She’d heard him have long conversations with Steve and Michelle. Even with Jill and Lucas, who used to live in the apartment and still hung out with them a lot. She didn’t understand why he wouldn’t talk to her in the same way. He would converse in her presence if there were other people around, but he didn’t want to have private conversations with her.

  “Do you have anything going on this week?” she asked, hoping an open-ended question would require a polysyllabic response.

  He slanted a quick look over at her. “Nothing unusual.”

  “Oh.” She searched her mind for something else to say but came up with nothing. What was wrong with her? She usually found it easy to talk to anyone.

  Why the hell was Brent always so closemouthed with her?

  She glanced at her watch. “Four minutes until eight.”

  “I’ll get you there on time.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled at him again, this time just because she was grateful.

  To her surprise, his mouth tilted up beneath his beard. It wasn’t a full smile, but it was something.

  “Why does it matter so much?” he asked after a stretch of silence.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Being late. Why are you so uptight about it?”

  Her shoulders slumped slightly. “I promised myself I wasn’t going to be late for my job this time around.”

  “You were late before?”

  “For my old job? Yeah. Sometimes. Not all the time, but occasionally. I’m not a schedule kind of person.”

  “Did you get fired because you were late?”

  “No. They were just downsizing, and they didn’t need a second graphic artist.”

  “So what’s the big deal then? If you’re late just one time?” He wasn’t smiling and wasn’t even looking at her, but he rarely asked her questions at all, so she took it seriously.

  “I just... don’t want to be a flop. At this job. It took me so long to find it.”

  “Why would you be a flop?”

  “I don’t know.” She fiddled with the clip in her hair.

  Brent looked at her again.

  She sighed. “I don’t know. Really. It’s just my mom is always nagging at me to get myself together, and I guess it gets to me sometimes.”

  “What does she mean by get yourself together?”

  “I don’t even know. Be more organized. Save more money. Get serious about a man. Start a family. That kind of thing.”

  He didn’t say anything, but she could tell he was listening, and it made her want to continue.

  “My grandmother, my mom’s mom, has cancer.”

  She could tell that surprised him. His body stiffened slightly. “Can they do anything?”

  “No. It’s bad. Stage four. She’s got a few months at most. I only mention it because I think it’s making my mom worse than normal. I mean, her nagging and critiquing is worse than normal because she’s so upset about her mom.”

  “I can see why that would be. Stress can make us more like ourselves, usually in the worst ways.”

  She smiled at him, oddly gratified by the insight. “Yeah. I think so. Anyway, she’s been nagging at me more than normal, and it’s making me... more me. In my worst ways.”

  “You must be upset about your grandma too.”

  “I am. I love her. She lives in Texas, so I’ve never seen her more than a couple of times a year, but she’s important to me. She’s in her eighties now, so I know it’s... but it’s always sad.”

  “Always.”

  They were silent for a few moments as Chloe worked on clearing the lump in her throat.

  Brent said without transition, “You’ve got yourself together.”

  “No, I d
on’t. I’m twenty-five and just moved out of my parents’ house. I can’t afford a car, and I’ve got too much on my credit cards, and I can’t even get myself up on time, so I have to bum a ride from my roommate. This is not what I call having myself together.”

  “You’ve got a good job. The work you do is really good. You’ve got tons of friends. Guys are always asking you out. You’re always volunteering at the food bank and the animal shelter. You’re nice to everyone, even people others ignore. You’re doing better than most people I know.”

  Chloe stared at him, strangely moved by his gruff pronouncement. It was more than he’d ever spoken to her before.

  He shot her a couple of quick looks as he pulled up in front of her building. “What?”

  “Nothing. Just... thank you. I don’t really feel like I have myself together most of the time, but that was really nice of you to say.”

  He wasn’t meeting her eyes now. “I meant it.”

  “Thank you.” He wouldn’t look at her again, and she had only one minute to get to her office, so she couldn’t linger. She reached out to touch his forearm. “Thank you for talking to me. And thanks for the ride.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  It didn’t feel like nothing to her. It felt like he’d really seen her, appreciated her, helped her.

  But he was refusing to look at her, so she couldn’t even smile at him again. She told him goodbye, climbed out of his old Jeep, and hurried into the building and up to her office.

  She only tripped on her high heels once.

  THAT EVENING, CHLOE’S mother wanted her to come over for dinner, so she went to her parents’ house right after work.

  Her parents lived in an established neighborhood not far from downtown. They always ate early, and there was no reason to stop by her apartment before she went over to their house. Her father had been a professor at Tech for thirty years, and her mother had always been a stay-at-home mom for her four daughters.

  Chloe was the youngest. The only one still unmarried and childless.

  She heard about this failure on her part every time she talked to her mother.