Isn't She Lovely (11 page)

And then I do turn my head, and feel like someone has socked me in the stomach.

The edgy, goth crone is long gone. But Stephanie isn’t pretty.

She’s beautiful.

Which is a good thing for my plan—this girl will absolutely get my mom’s stamp of approval. At least after we get rid of the earrings and the clothes.

But the transformation isn’t so good for
me
. Because there’s absolutely no room in this plan for lust.

And my dick
definitely
is into the new Stephanie.

“So?” she asks, sliding onto the barstool next to me and reaching for my beer. “Do I pass?”

I turn back to the TV, ignoring the fact that my pulse is a little jumpier than it was a minute ago. “You’ll do.”

She snickers. “Please. I
totally
look the part. Did you know this boring beige eye shadow is actually called Gentle?”

“Any chance of that seeping into your personality?” I ask, gesturing for another beer since she’s commandeered mine. We seem to have quickly adopted a habit of helping ourselves to each other’s drinks. It’s oddly comfortable, yet weird because it’s comfortable. I’ve only known the girl for, what, a couple of weeks?

I slide a food menu her way, feeling her eyes on my face.

“What?” I say.

“Are you sure it’s okay? I feel a little …”

She doesn’t finish the sentence, so I turn to glance at her, and … ah, hell, she looks vulnerable. Those wide blue eyes are silently begging me to reassure her that yes, she can pull this off, and yes, she’ll be okay without her black-eyeliner defense against the world.

“You look beautiful,” I say softly.

Despite the fact that she has a shopping bag stuffed full of girly crap, there’s nothing in-your-face about her makeup. I remember once I complained about how long Olivia took to get ready, and she told me that looking natural takes a good deal more skill than looking made up.

If that’s the case, I apparently picked the right salesperson. Stephanie looks glowing, pretty, and fresh, but not obvious. Her eyes are all sparkly but not glittery, and whatever stuff is on her lips is pink and kissable.

“You’re staring, Price,” she says with a little half smile.

“Just trying to make you feel better. You know, you being so scowly and all.”

“At least I’ve still got the boobs,” she says, giving them a little jiggle.

I choke on my beer. “Can you not do that?”

At least not in public. Back at my place, on the other hand …

I push the thought aside, and we order our lunch as she chatters on and on about next
year’s Tribeca Film Festival, and I make a mental note to ask Martin how difficult it is to get tickets. There are definite perks to having a godfather who’s won an Oscar.

“So I’ve packed up my stuff at David’s,” she says, pulling a tomato off her club sandwich and discarding it before taking a huge bite of the sandwich.

I shake some ketchup on my plate and dunk a fry. “How’d he take you moving out?”

“He seemed a little appalled that you were his replacement. Kept calling you a bleached gym rat.”

“As opposed to an unshowered art rat?”

“Something like that. Anyway, he gave me all sorts of warnings about ‘dating out of genre,’ but mostly he was cool with it.”

“So you didn’t tell him it’s fake?”

“Nah. The guy made me live with the girl he cheated on me with. He hasn’t earned my honesty.”

I nod. “What about your family. Did you tell them?”

I feel her stiffen. “No, I haven’t told them.”

Her tone makes it clear it’s the end of the discussion, but I’m curious. The girl never talks about her family.

“But you at least told them that you’re moving, right?”

She snorts. “My dad still thinks I’m subletting my cousin’s place. Since the cousin is on my mom’s side, he’s not likely to find out otherwise.”

“Your parents are separated?” I ask, putting the pieces together.

“Can we not do … this?” she asks, wiggling her finger around, as though to encompass our entire conversation.

“ ’Kay,” I say, keeping my tone casual. “But if you’re posing as my girlfriend, I’ll at least need to know the basics about it.”

She’s silent for a few moments. “I really don’t like to talk about it, Ethan.”

Her voice is dead serious, and I immediately feel like crap for pushing, even though I’m curious why she acts like a cougar in water every time her family comes up in conversation.

“Sure.”

We sit in companionable silence for a little longer as we finish our lunch, me watching the last few minutes of the game while she scrolls through her phone.

“So when can we go get my stuff from David’s?” she asks as I pay the bill. She insists on stuffing a twenty into my wallet to pay for hers, and I let her. I’ll just drop it back in her purse later.

“Only a few more stops,” I say, signing the bill. She wrinkles her nose suspiciously. “What kind of stops?”

“We need to get you new clothes,” I blurt out.

Stephanie scowls. “I already said no to that. I tolerated the bubble-gum lipstick, the snobby perfume, and the overpriced haircut, but I want to stay in my own clothes.”

As much as I love those tiny tank tops and her endless supply of tight T-shirts, her current wardrobe isn’t going to cut it.

“Picture our situation as a movie,” I say. “You
really
think a half-assed makeover is going to cut it? We need the full deal.”

She chews her lip, and I know she knows I’m right. “Okay. A
few
things, but I’ll only wear them when we’re around your people. At home I get to wear whatever I want.”

Home
. Which we’d be sharing. I tear my eyes away from her mouth.

“That sounds fair,” I say.

“And no pink.”

I hesitate, picturing Olivia and the rest of my upper-crust female friends. “There might have to be a little pink.”

“Ethan …”

“It’ll look pretty on you.”

Wrong thing to say. She looks pissy.

“Do I
look
like the type that cares about being pretty?”

Actually, yeah. She does. I think she cares a hell of a lot more than she lets on.

“How about we leave it up to the salespeople?” I say, hoping for a truce. “If they suggest pink, you’ll consider it. If they don’t, I won’t push it.”

“No pink,” she mutters again, scooting off her barstool and grabbing her shopping bag and purse. But she waits patiently for me to finish signing the bill, and lets me lead her in the direction of Bloomingdale’s.

“I bet you’re regretting not finding a more biddable ivory statue to participate in your charade,” she says as we weave through the usual midtown crush.

I glance down at her shiny brown hair and newly fresh face.

Oddly, I don’t have any regrets at all.

Chapter Nine

Stephanie

“Stephanie, you in there?”

I sink deeper into the tub, loving the way the bubbles threaten to overflow but don’t.

“No,” I call through the bathroom door. “I went out to run some errands.”

“Can I come in?”

Can he come
in?
“Seriously, Price?”

“Are you taking a dump or something?”

“No! But normal people don’t ask to come into an occupied bathroom.”

He’s silent for a few seconds. “I want to talk about this weekend.”

I sigh. I’ve been doing a good job so far not thinking about this weekend. I’ve been living in Ethan’s second bedroom for eight days now—eight
glorious
days in which I haven’t had to worry about hot water, rat traps, or keeping an eye out for roaches—and I’ve conveniently let myself ignore the fact that while I’m not paying with money to stay in paradise, I’ll be paying with something else entirely: my dignity.

“We can talk when I get out of the bath,” I call.

“Yeah, right. You’ll just pretend to go to bed early like you have the past three nights.”

Damn. He’s definitely on to me.

“I’m coming in.”

The doorknob rattles, and I squeal, “No!”

Why
did I not lock the door? Oh, right. Because I didn’t think being barged in on was even an option.

But he’s already poked his head through the door, his hand covering his eyes. “Are you decent?”

“Ethan, I said I was in the bath.”

“But with bubbles, right? If you’re like most girls, you used half the bottle and the suds will cover up the interesting bits.”

It’s true. I
did
use half the bottle. And the only visible part of my body is my head.

“Fine,” I mutter. Not like there’s any stopping him anyway. He seems to think that our little partnership has made us BFFs.
Platonic
BFFs—he’s made that part very clear.

“This is all very
Pretty Woman
,” he says, sitting on the edge of the tub like it’s totally
normal to have a conversation with a naked girl who isn’t his girlfriend. Or at least not his real girlfriend.

“Beginning to regret showing you that movie,” I grumble.

“You’re not wearing any makeup,” he says, his eyes scanning my face.

“Weird, right? Because I usually get all dolled up before climbing into the tub.”

He sighs. “Think you could tone down the sarcasm before you meet my parents?”

I give him a look. “Do
you
tone down
your
sarcasm around your parents?”

“Good point. But we do need to talk a little bit about our game plan for dinner this weekend.”

I close my eyes and lean my head back, trying to act like I couldn’t be more relaxed if I tried. But, honestly, I’m dreading this. Sure, I have my new Pollyanna outfit, and my bouncy new haircut, and I’m pretty sure he stole my favorite steel-colored eye shadow, because I can’t find it. Still, it’s been a long time since I’ve had to play nice. And I quit that gig for a reason.

“Why aren’t you with your girlfriend anymore?” I ask, wanting to get under his skin the way he gets under mine. “If we’re going to do this, really do this, I need all the facts.”

His eyes darken for a second, but then he just shrugs and makes himself more comfortable on the side of the tub. “All the facts, huh? Just like you’re giving me all the facts about your home situation?”

My stomach knots at the reference, but I get his point, because I’m the one who made the rules: no details, nothing personal.

“Fine,” I say more quietly. “But at least help me understand why your mom is so involved in your love life.”

He sighs, tilting his head back against the wall. His Adam’s apple bounces when he swallows, and I have a little hankering to nibble on it, just to see what he’d do. But considering the fact that Ethan barely seems to register that I’m naked here, I’m guessing he wouldn’t be all that keen on my licking his neck. For the hundredth time, I wonder why he didn’t pick a girl he was actually attracted to for his little charade.

But that’s the point, I guess. The fact that we’re 200 percent wrong for each other makes this whole thing fairly risk free.

At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

“So you know my family’s wealthy,” he says quietly.

I glance around in surprise at the ridiculously lavish bathroom. “
Whaaaaat
?”

He gives me a half smile. “Well, let’s just say rich people like other rich people, and their rich kids are expected to hang out with fellow rich kids. Really rich,” he specifies.

I want to say something sarcastic, but I let him finish.

“But when you’re a kid,” he continues, “you’re not really thinking about that. All you
care about is that your friend’s parents are friends with
your
parents so that you can all hang out. Not unlike the average American family, except with a lot more caviar and a lot less barbecue sauce.”

“Sounds
awful
.” I extend a foot out of the tub, tracing the faucet with my newly painted coral toe. “So these fellow snobs, one of them’s your ex?”

He nods once. “My mom and Olivia’s mom were sorority sisters, and our dads are business associates. We grew up together, along with our friend Michael. His dad was a fraternity brother of my dad’s, and his mom was our moms’ tennis partner.”

“My God, that’s practically incestuous.”

“You have no idea,” he mutters.

I frown a little, trying to understand. “Okay, so your parents are bummed that you guys broke up. Boo-hoo, it happens. They can’t seriously expect that it would work out just because you guys swapped silver spoons.”

“You don’t get it,” he said. “The Prices and St. Claires and Middletons—we’re like the contemporary Vanderbilts, Carnegies, and Rockefellers. It’s not personal. It’s business.”

Honestly, the whole thing sounds completely ridiculous to me, but Ethan looks all torn up about it, and since I’m lounging here naked in his tub, sleeping in his guest bed, and sharing his kitchen, I don’t particularly feel like I can tell him to get over it and grow a pair. But I want to.

“Okay, well, this is all very sad and dramatic,” I say, carefully smoothing a thinning section of bubbles so I don’t give Ethan a crotch shot. “And if you insist that creating a fake girlfriend is the best way to avoid your ex-girlfriend, that’s your deal. But are you sure your parents are going to buy this? Didn’t you say you and Olivia were together since the womb?”

“Since we were fifteen.”

I frown. There’s sadness in his voice, and for the first time I suspect that maybe this plan has less to do with his mom than with
Ethan
.

“You’re not over her.” I said the same thing when he first pitched the idea, and he ignored me then. Just like he’s ignoring me tonight.

“And you’re not a therapist,” he says, pinching my toe.

I note that he doesn’t deny it, but something’s not adding up. When he first hatched this plan, he claimed that his mom kept parading Olivia around in hopes that they’d get back together. If he wasn’t over her, wouldn’t he
want
that?

But his expression is closed off, and if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s understanding that sometimes you
just don’t wanna talk about it
.