The Wedding Crasher by Mia Sosa

Dean gestures to his mug. “Still working on this one, thanks. Solange?”
“Nope, still good sipping on my coffee with twenty pumps of nothing.”
After the barista leaves, Dean rolls his eyes at me.
“Do you do that often?”
“Do what?” he asks, tilting his head.
“Roll your eyes. It’s charming.”
“My coffee order really upset you, didn’t it?”
“It did,” I say, unable to keep the grin off my face.
“Can we get back to the matter at hand?” he asks.
“Your ridiculous idea to pretend we’re a couple? Sure.” I set aside my mug
and lean forward. “Why does it have to be me? You could ask anyone to play
the person who interrupted your wedding for a very good reason and saved
you from a lifetime of pain and disappointment.”
He draws back and frowns. “You’re overstating what you did.”
He’s wrong. My mother is proof of that. She poured her heart and soul into
her marriage and got almost nothing in return. Someday Dean will recognize
the world of hurt he avoided by not marrying Ella. In the meantime, I’m not
here to convince him of my virtue. “Okay, that’s fair. Marrying a person
who’s in love with someone else is a minor inconvenience in the scheme of
things. But my question still stands: Why me?”
“Two reasons,” he says as he adjusts his tie.
I’d love to see that tie wrapped around his head as he wades in a public
fountain after a few too many drinks. I snort at the thought.
“What’s funny?” Dean asks.
“Nothing. You were saying?”
“The two reasons it has to be you. One, Olney & Henderson is a gossip
mill, and my assistant attended the wedding. I can’t risk getting too far afield
of the actual truth without potentially compromising this whole operation.”
“It’s an operation now? Good grief. What’s the other reason?”
“I identified you by name.”
Shit on top of shit with a dollop of shit on the side.
He reaches over and places his hand over mine. Damn, it’s silky soft. In
embarrassing contrast, my hands are still sporting scratches from this
weekend’s community gardening project.
“I’m not asking you to sign over your life,” he says, his eyes pleading with
me not to reject him outright. “I just need three nights; depending on your
schedule, maybe time for one daytime get-together too. And we’re only