Chapitre 2: Chapter 2
MARI
Pierce held the bakery door open for me, and after we walked in, I looped my arm through his and smiled widely. He didn’t mention why he chose the town’s small bakery as our first public event or why it had to happen so quickly after our agreement, but I didn’t plan to question two million dollars.
My gaze swept the bakery, not stopping on anything in particular but trying to take it all in. The space was bigger than it looked on the outside and warmer—not only in temperature but in atmosphere. People stationed themselves at the various seating options, each of them having their own private conversations over cookies and muffins. The only glaring item in the entire place had to be the bright pink paint on the walls. The jeweled tone chairs and tables were a pleasant touch and softened the place, but someone definitely loved Barbie as a kid.
From what I’d learned about Pierce, which granted wasn’t much, this wasn’t an establishment I saw him frequenting often. In small circles, people called him the reclusive bachelor billionaire. The mouthful told nothing about him, though, and from the way everyone’s eyes met his as we stood by the door of the bakery, he wasn’t reclusive. The town knew Pierce Kensington, so why didn’t New York? What would make a man give up the glitz of the city to settle in Pelican Bay, Maine?
The chatter, which sounded loud as we walked in, lowered as people continued to take in Pierce… or as it dawned on me as we approached the counter, me. They didn’t find Pierce surprising in the bakery, but the new woman on his side. Maybe I played up the looping our arms together bit too much. We hadn’t worked out the details of our supposed engagement. Should I be madly in love or standoffish?
Pierce walked us to the edge of the counter, and while I let my attention get pulled to the delicious items behind glass, he didn’t spare a glance to the treats. Two women stood behind the counter wearing bright pink aprons, which matched the paint color. One of them balanced a tray of cookies on one hand as she watched us.
Everyone watched us. I swallowed and then leaned into Pierce, going so far as to lean my head on his shoulder. So doting new fiancée it would be then.
The woman with the cookies and the name Katy embroidered into her apron glared at Pierce. Her mouth opened at the same time her eyes narrowed as if she planned to chew him out. But why? From what I saw, we’d done nothing but walk into a bakery. Was Pierce not welcome here?
"Katy, can you box up a dozen chocolate chip?" Pierce asked as he stared right back at the obviously pissed-off woman.
"You’ll get fat if you keep eating these, Pierce," she said with a dramatic roll of her eyes.
"It hasn’t affected you," he replied, and I squeezed his arm. I didn’t want my first introductions to end in bloodshed. She looked ready to rip his eyes out. "Besides, they’re not for me."
Obviously, my new fake fiancé had a death wish because the woman openly had to hold herself back from launching across the counter and tackling him. Her outrage was palpable.
Silence punctuated his words, and I shuffled my feet, getting ready to make a run for it. Pierce didn’t warn me the town was hostile. What in the hell did I agree to here?
"Oh," Pierce continued, his stance strong so I couldn’t pull him with me. He squeezed his arm muscles and tightened his hold where I gripped him. "Katy, you haven’t met Mari, my fiancée."
Something sucked the air out of the room as if every person in the bakery took in a collective gasp. I didn’t move, scared that any movement would entice her into action.
It didn’t matter. Katy’s eyes widened in a flash. "Your what?"
I stood frozen, along with everyone else in the bakery. Stares from every direction fell on me and my cheeks heated. It’d been two years since I’d had this much attention placed on me at once.
Her hand wobbled, and the tray tipped. Instinctively, I reached out to grab it, but Pierce took a step back and we were too far to help. The tray tipped further and then fell to the ground, the edge hitting the tile and sending a shock-wave of sound through the bakery.
Pierce’s grin grew at the destruction before us as Katy fumbled to pick up cookies from the bakery floor. "Never mind on those cookies."
The little bell above the doorway rang as he led me away from the bakery, our hands at each of our sides swinging in unison. Now that people weren’t nearby, the need to play up our fake union wasn’t as strong.
"That was weird," I said once we made it to the sidewalk and our steps took us toward the beach.
Pierce shook his head. "Not really. You get used to it in this town. There are a few characters, but overall, they’re good people."
"Yeah, sure." My words lacked conviction, but as we walked together down the street, our slow pace allowed me to take in the small shops of Pelican Bay.
Each storefront was the same with an outer layer of brick, but each store owner personalized their areas with different colored awnings. Different logos for each shop were affixed to their glass doors, but they felt similar. The entire area could be an advertisement for the idealistic Maine vacation. This is exactly what people thought of when they considered visiting the East Coast. The wind whipped around us causing my red hair to flutter against my face and then fall back to my shoulders.
In many ways the touch of the watery wind off the bay reminded me of San Francisco, the town I called home for most of my life. Here it was completely different, as if more salt floated in the breeze. Also, even though it’s the end of summer, the air was cooler than in the perfectly temperate San Francisco.
Together we reached the last piece of sidewalk where Main Street ended into Bayside Drive and the ocean loomed ahead past the public beach. As we stepped off the curb, a special edition black Maybach Exelero stopped in the middle of the road in front of us. I’d lost touch with many things in America over the last few years, but the car model was recognizable anywhere.
Pierce rolled his eyes as if he knew who to expect in the vehicle, and as the car window lowered my eyes widened with the view. The car hinted the man had money, but his face said hotter than hell. Like whoa. Thankfully, no one expected me to speak because only drool would have come out.
His hair was the same dirty brown color as Pierce’s, but his smile was full so it lit up his eyes until I swore I could see right through them. His presence said easygoing, but I still didn’t think he’d enjoy it if I walked over and ran my fingers through his hair. A male had never caused such a reaction from me before, and I didn’t know how to handle it. Outwardly my expression never changed, but internally I screamed like a little girl who unwrapped a pony on Christmas morning.
"This the girl?" Mr. Hotter-Than-Hell asked as his gaze swept over me.
Pierce smiled, following the conversation. "Yes, meet my new fiancée, Mari Chambers. Mari, this is my cousin, Oliver."
"It’s nice to meet you," I said although it sounded more like a question than a statement. My brain hadn’t gotten all the cylinders working yet.
I was tall by nature, and while Pierce still had at least two inches on me height-wise, from the way this man’s head skirted the roof of his vehicle, I easily imagined him standing six inches taller.
"You two want a ride?" Oliver asked, his smile fully directed at me so strongly I almost took a step back from the blast.
I wanted to reach out and touch the sleek vehicle. I had everything in my San Francisco life and mostly I made the right decision by leaving. My days were brighter and my life happier, but at times I missed the perks of having money. Things like expensive clothes and the nice cars.
Pierce answered before me. "No."
Oliver’s lips slipped into a line and he shrugged before hitting the gas and zooming away from us to the parking lot across the road where he dramatically whipped into a space and parked.
A total show off, he was clearly one of those men with old-school money who didn’t understand how the other half lived. Three years ago, he would’ve sent my heart into a flutter, but living on the other side of the railroad tracks, I now considered such blatant arrogance unattractive. Mostly.
He pushed open the car door as if he was a force of nature and as it closed behind him, he hit the locking mechanism on his key fob and lowered a pair of sunglasses on his head, concealing his gorgeous eyes—the same ones which drew me in from the window of his car. Okay, any girl could admit how hot that move was. Again, old Mari would have been fanning herself. Now, I found it slightly amusing.
"Don’t let Oliver rattle you. He’s aware of our agreement."
Oh, so I didn’t need to lie to at least one person in town for the next six months. "Anyone else in town you told?" I should have an idea of what we were going up against. Pierce had me at a disadvantage, and I wanted to even the playing field.
"No," Pierce responded, waiting for his cousin to catch us. "But I’m sure I’ll eventually tell my parents. I don’t want them getting too excited."
"Right. Good thinking," I said, shaking my head. If I’d talked to my parents in the last two years, I would call them and give them a warning as well, but it seemed pointless considering they hadn’t cared what happened to me once I left San Francisco in shame.
"What rules did you come up with regarding this fake relationship?" Oliver asked as he fell in line with Pierce and me, putting me in the middle of the two men as we walked in the direction of the Kensington family home.
"Rules?" I didn’t remember agreeing to any rules other than pretending to be Pierce’s fiancée and then collecting two million dollars. If Pierce wanted to put more regulations on it now, we would need to renegotiate.
Oliver smiled, and I found myself matching his expression as I stared at his too-perfect face. He definitely would have turned old Mari on in a heartbeat. "You know, for the pretend engagement. What will you do or won’t you? What are the hard limits?"
"Um…" I hadn’t thought about rules and limits. It would’ve been smart to outline them before we started. What exactly did Pierce expect of me during our six-month fake engagement?
And why did I slowly lean to my right to get a better whiff of Oliver’s cologne? It was hard to decipher because in some ways it mixed in with the smell of the sea in the wind, but I definitely caught a hint of musk, which had to belong to him. I didn’t notice it on Pierce earlier.
"Well, you better set a few now before you get too far into this thing," Oliver said with a quick laugh. "How do you feel about handholding?"
It didn’t take me long to agree. "Yes." I’d hold Pierce’s hand to get my point across that he wasn’t such a bad guy. It wasn’t like he planned to bulldoze the bed-and-breakfast. He told me the renovations would be updates rather than anything drastic.
"Kissing?"
Kissing… That was different. Anyone would agree Pierce was a nice-looking guy. It wouldn’t be a horrible to kiss him, but I wanted to end our time together not feeling like a paid prostitute. We needed the money for the village, but I also needed to keep my morals at the end of this. I’d never kissed someone I didn’t want to before. Could I start now? For money?
Yes.
The decision took seconds. It would only be a kiss. Not like we were jumping in the sack together. Surely people had done worse for less.
"Um, sure."
Pierce cleared his throat. "In public, only when required."
Weird. It sounded as if the man who propositioned me to be a fake fiancée had more of an issue kissing me than I did him. Did I have bad breath?
"Agreed." It felt like one of us should have whipped out a pen and written our agreements down, but so far the stipulations were easy enough to remember.
There was only a big one left. "Sex?" I asked when it sounded like nobody else would.
"No sex," Oliver said the next second.
"Agreed," Pierce and I both replied at the same time.
Oliver swooshed his hands together as if he was wiping them off after a dirty job well done. "That was easy. Now you two need to get your story straight."
"Already done," Pierce said, smiling with satisfaction. "We’re old family friends who reconnected."
"And how, pray tell, did you reconnect?" Pierce’s cousin asked.
I laughed. There was only one way anyone reconnected with an old high school heartthrob. "Facebook."
Pierce and Oliver both nodded in quick approval. That final agreement sealed my fate. I couldn’t believe I’d agreed to be Pierce Kensington’s fake fiancée to secure safe drinking water, but I’d do it. I’d always been determined in life, and when I wanted something, I went for it. This wouldn’t be any different. I only needed to keep my wits about me and it would be fine.
Besides, how hard would it be not to fall in love while in Pelican Bay?
Cadeaux
-- Cadeau
reçu État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone