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  Eli’s damnable voice kept whispering in my ear, “Who’s the real liar here, Carly?”

  It really put a damper on my Friday, almost as much as both Antoine and Clem asking me what Eli had asked me. “You’re not afraid of falling for him, are you?”

  That suggestion was even more ludicrous than being paid a million dollars to lie. Eli Blake was repugnant, and sure to stay that way so that someone like me wouldn’t fall in love with him. It would only complicate matters for the delicate genius, and God only knew one couldn’t do that.

  “So where’s the harm?” my friends asked, and as God as my witness, I really didn’t have an answer for them.

  “I’d do a whole lot more for a lot less. Just sayin’,” Antoine said, and Clem agreed.

  Saturday turned out even worse than Friday. Not only was FFF about to topple thanks to the neighborhood development, but Ling sprang the news on all his tenants in that early Saturday meeting that we, too, were about to get evicted, uprooted and displaced, thanks to the neighborhood renovation. Of all the tenants on the block, Ling had held out the longest, forcing the developers to up their ante until they finally reached a number he couldn’t turn down. He decided it was time to close up shop and retire to China, to get while the getting was good.

  Honestly, I couldn’t even blame him.

  As of that morning, we had three months to find a new place to live before the whole thing came down. This meant I couldn’t quit my job at Frank’s without having anything to back it up, unless, of course, I wanted to go back to Texas, which I didn’t, or—more to the point—couldn’t..

  Of course, if I took the million dollars, I wouldn’t have to worry about any of that stuff. I could get a new place and help out my new friends. I could start over, really and truly start over, like I had always dreamed of doing.

  And all I had to do, like everyone kept telling me, was just keep doing what I had already done. I had to keep silent.

  One year. One lie. One million dollars.

  I knew within that weekend it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Though we had already made our unofficial debut during his CityWalk concert on January 9th, I held off cashing that check Monday, January 12th. This date officially started the term of my year-long farce of a relationship with Asshole Extraordinaire: Eli Blake. Frank was beside himself. He had just finalized the details for Eli’s performance for one of the bigger awards shows. “Don’t forget to kiss him when he wins,” he smiled at me. “I want that on camera.”

  I made a face just thinking about it. “I thought I was only supposed to keep quiet and show up to a few events,” I shot back.

  “Potato, potahto,” he shrugged without looking me, which told me all I needed to know about the hidden expectations that went along with my million-dollar payday. It indebted me to Eli Blake in ways I had suspected from the start, like going for lunch on January 13th, where he proposed the inevitable.

  “I want you to move in with me,” he said as he sipped the expensive champagne he insisted we order to ‘celebrate.’

  “I’m not moving in with you, Eli,” I said as I grabbed a roll to ease the rising bile in my stomach. “This year is going to be distasteful enough without adding a smug, vain asshole of a roommate on top of it.”

  “You can’t stay in your apartment,” he shrugged. “It’s getting demolished in March.” My gaze slid to his face. He leaned back. “You really don’t think there’s anything about you I don’t know, do you? I had to protect myself, too.”

  “You didn’t even know my name until five days ago.” And I knew damned well he hadn’t gotten any background checks that would have unearthed that information in the short period of time it took him to make his indecent proposal.

  “I’m a quick study,” he assured. “After we dropped you off at the restaurant on Thursday, I went online to see if that was where you lived. I found the information that it had been sold, and what the plans were for the neighborhood.”

  Of course. “So that was why you offered me so much money the next day.”

  “What do you know?” he grinned. “You’re a quick study, too.”

  “Whatever. I’m still not moving in with you.”

  He shrugged. “Up to you. But my place is gated and private. No more PING vultures waiting at your front door, hoping to see me coming or going for the next year.”

  I rolled my eyes. “They’re going to have to use the panoramic setting just to fit your head in the shot.”

  He laughed. “That’s not conceit, baby. Them’s the facts. I’m a somebody, which makes you a somebody by association. Better start living like it or else the whole house of cards comes down.”

  “Ah,” I said, the light bulb coming on at last. “Embarrassed by your new girlfriend’s shithole apartment, are you?”

  He leaned forward. “I can’t be a romantic hero if I let you stay there, now can I?”

  “The millionaire and the ingénue,” I agreed with a nod. “A tale as old as time. Is this where you fit me with a crystal slipper?”

  “We’ll get to that,” he promised without elaborating. “I was thinking about Valentine’s Day. We’ll make the whole thing very public. A true love story. Frank already has me booked on Dixie’s show. We’ll announce it there.”

  I made a face. “I told you I’m not doing any interviews.”

  “No interviews,” he assured. “They’re going to have a surprise proposal and I get to do the song. She’s a big girl, like you,” he added. And I hated him for it.

  “There’s more to me than that,” I informed him.

  “So move in with me,” he countered. “Let me see. Unless you just want to date,” he offered. “If we date, that means we go everywhere together. That’s how it’s done, you know. Two lovers in love, can’t keep their hands off each other,” he added as he reached for my hand on the table with his pinky finger. I jerked away. “We’ll be in the press constantly and the buzz will never die down. If you move in, we jump up a few steps in Relationship-ville, which means we’ll be old news by Memorial Day. Pretty soon you’ll be forgotten and you can go your own way and do your own thing. The quicker that happens, the easier it will be to just quietly end things later on.”

  “I thought you wanted epic and splashy,” I retorted. He merely shrugged.

  “Whatever floats your boat, sweetheart. As long as they buy what we sell.”

  I studied him for a moment. He looked particularly smug. “You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?”

  “I’m just a pragmatist.”

  “You’re an opportunist,” I corrected.

  “And a damned good one,” he agreed without one iota of shame. “This is why I never let any opportunity pass me by if I can help it.” He looked me over. “So when should I put you down to move in?”

  “Tuesday,” I said. “The day after never.”

  He chuckled. “I like you, Carly. You’re fun.”

  Our waitress arrived with the food. “The lover’s special,” she announced happily as she put the plates on the table, prime rib for him and a dainty little filet mignon for me. “More wine?”

  “Bring the bottle,” he told her with his most charming smile. Ever ‘on,’ Eli took my hand in his; bringing it to his lips to kiss it so our cute little server could see. “Enough to convince this lovely lady to move in with me,” he added as he sent me a moony-eyed gaze that nearly made me wretch all over my perfectly charred steak. To make matters worse, he pulled my hand into his lap, resting it on his upper thigh, within touching distance of ‘little Eli.’

  The look in his eyes dared me to pull away. Instead I just dug my fingernails into his thigh, which made him chuckle, like we were sharing a delicious little secret. This was, of course, how the server took it.

  “On it,” the waitress chirped happily, easily living up to her cheerful moniker, DeeDee.

  He kept my hand in his even after she flitted away. I tried to pull back, but he just held o
n even stronger. “I need you to clear Friday for me. We’ve got a lot to do.”

  “Such as?”

  He glanced me over, taking in my simple top, slacks and cardigan. “We need to style you.”

  I glared at him. “And here I thought you loved me just the way I was.”

  He swirled his forefinger around the top of my hand. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about the kind of person you could be if you had the chance?”

  I tilted my head to the side with a coy smile. “What’s that? Another person entirely?”

  He leaned forward. “If you’re lucky.”

  I snatched my hand back, which only amused him further. I slid the napkin across my lap and dove into my tiny steak with relish. And of course he had a comment about that, too.

  “It’s refreshing to be on a date with a woman who enjoys food.”

  I spared him another side-eye glare. “It helps when you date actual women, not stick figures.”

  He laughed. “You’re so angry with me for being a sizeist pig, yet it never occurred to you that you might have your own biases.”

  I sat back up and gaped at him. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  He shrugged. “You tell me. You say the songs I sing are lies just because I don’t date fat chicks, right? Aren’t you being a little hypocritical to assume just because the girls I date are thin that I’m only dating them for that reason? You don’t know who they are. And really, you don’t know who I am, either.”

  I blew up my cheeks and mooed at him for effect, reminding him of that hateful video that Rhonda posted.

  “Bad example,” he conceded with a nod.

  “Face it, Eli,” I said. “You could never fall for someone like… well, like Jordi for instance.”

  “True,” he agreed. “But maybe that has nothing to do really with her size. Maybe I just feel we wouldn’t have anything in common. I like to be active. She’s clearly an indoor kind of girl.”

  “So you’re saying a fat chick can’t be active,” I surmised.

  “No one who has ever been able to keep up with me has been fat. I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” he concluded.

  My pot was boiling by the second, and the lid was about to come off. “Fine. I’ll go shopping with you on Friday. But clear Saturday for me.”

  He leaned across the table with that provocative smirk of his. “You gonna teach me some things, Carly?”

  I speared a piece of red meat with my fork, popped it in my mouth and chewed, making him wait for my response until I was done. “One year with me, honey, and you’ll learn more about fat chicks than you ever thought possible.”

  His blue eyes sparkled, endlessly entertained. “It’s a date, then.”

  The days alternately sped up to and stalled leading up to our double dates at the end of the week. Of course I was nervous about what kind of blow-up doll he had in his twisted little mind to make me up to be. I was likewise nervous to introduce him to my friends, nay my California family, for Saturday’s festivities. It didn’t help that all his lovey dovey tweets were all dedicated to the girl who wouldn’t unlock her social media accounts. I had disabled Facebook entirely, making Twitter and Instagram private. He, on the other hand, was milking this new “relationship” for all it was worth. He had even managed to sneak in a selfie in the car, where he introduced me. “This is Carly. She hid her face. She’s shy.”

  Of all the things I had ever been called in my life, shy had never been one of them.

  But the marketing ploy was working so far. He had crafted this asinine story that I was intimidated by all the attention from dating a superstar, since I was the “girl next door,” which is why it took him seven long months to get me to go out with him. This also explained my dour demeanor whenever PING got anywhere close to me. At this point, I was pretty sure they were having me tailed like the CIA. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without some paparazzo there to snap a photo.

  Even Ling, my sweet, grandfatherly Ling, had been snapped waving his broom at the moochers who dared loiter near the entrance to his restaurant.

  It was clear I was going to have to move sooner than later, but I sure as hell didn’t want to move in with Eli. I hunted for houses in my spare time, thinking that I could use my unexpected windfall to secure a permanent residence in Los Angeles. I made the disheartening discovery that a million dollars just didn’t go as far as it used to. Factoring in the cost of a car and what funds I wanted to invest in FFF into the budget, not to mention what Uncle Sam might end up taking out of the pie, since technically the money had come from the agency and not Eli (because, you know, paper trail,) and I barely had enough left to pay for a condo.

  Of course, I probably would have had a lot more if Clem had her way. I went to FFF that Thursday afternoon, to propose my beyond brilliant idea. Antoine had already directed me to their “first choice” of a new club in Hollywood, right off the Sunset Strip. This would give FFF visibility in ways we could have only dreamed of before.

  But Clem shook her head and shoved my check back at me. “Antoine never should have told you,” she dismissed at once.

  Antoine, who stood nearby, wasn’t the least bit apologetic. “We needed the money, Clem.”

  She glared at him. “I already told you. We do it on our own or not at all.”

  “Exactly,” I inserted gently. “We do it. Us. The three of us.”

  Again she shook her head. “This is your money, Carly. I can’t take this from you. You should get a house. A car. A yacht. Whatever it takes to make it tolerable to date someone like Eli Blake for a year.”

  “Don’t you see?” I implored. “That’s what this is. You need the money. And I need to spend it doing something that clears my conscience. Win/win.”

  She sighed. She knew she was in no position to refuse, but she still felt like she had to. The stakes were just too great. “If I don’t do it all on my own, then that means someone else can take it away. On a whim. Just because. I need to earn it. Myself. I’m no charity case, Carly.”

  “This isn’t charity,” I promised, crossing my heart. “It’s an investment. I put a down payment on the new club and I get… I don’t know… 15 percent of the revenue once we start making money. And we will start making money,” I assured. “It’s the right location. We’ve already got the clientele. And not for nothing, but you would be partnering with someone who knows a little bit about marketing and PR. There’s no downside.”

  “Except that you want to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars to me with no guarantee you’ll see any of it back. You know how hard this kind of money is to come by?”

  I made a face. It had been easy to come by so far, but hard was coming and I knew it. I still had eleven months, twenty-eight days and twelve hours to go, pretending to be gaga over someone I couldn’t stand. “It’s an opportunity,” I found myself saying. “We can’t let it pass us by.”

  “She’s right,” Antoine agreed again. “We already split FFF two ways. Let’s split it three. Before long I’ll graduate medical school and work my ass to the grave as an intern anyway. We could use the help.”

  She glanced back at me. “Fine. But if it’s a three-way partnership, then it’s a three-way partnership. You get one-third of the revenue.”

  I held out my hand. “Deal.”

  In the space of a handshake, I became a businesswoman. I didn’t have a place to stay yet, but I did have a place to call home. That Friday morning we made our down payment on the new club. Our club. Antoine popped a bottle of bubbly to toast our success, but I could only indulge one glass before I headed downtown to a department store where Eli waited for me.

  Cabot’s Department Store had been a L.A. staple of fashion since the 1940s, and in the past couple of years they had started up a new plus-line of clothing called Youniquely Cabot, which, for the beginning of their run anyway, was modeled by heiress C.C. Cabot herself, who, like me, had an ample figure.

  Her sister-in-law, Darcy Masters, was the mastermin
d behind all the amazing creations, and it was her genius that guided our personal shopping experience when we got there for our eleven o’clock appointment.

  Eli had beaten me to the store, where he turned on the charm for our personal shopping assistant, Ashley. Since she was thin and pretty, he got her name right the first time, and used it often with that blinding white smile of his.

  That wasn’t what bothered me. I was used to that. What I wasn’t used to was the way he hung on me like a cheap coat, trying to sell this new romance to the 20-something salesgirl.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” he greeted with that same smile as he walked right up to me, put his arms around me and reached for a kiss.

  Though I was no prude, and PDAs never really bothered me, having that mouth open over mine—again—made my skin crawl. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a good kisser, of course he was. It was that he was Eli Blake and the kiss was for show and I was a big fat phony faking liar, just like he was.

  Needless to say, my response was lukewarm, which earned his cheerfully delivered reproach. “Come on, baby. No one cares,” he murmured as he cuddled me close, his hands sliding down my back to rest on either hip. I used my eyes alone to warn him of the boundaries he was crossing. It only made him smile wider as he turned back to Ashley. “You’ll have to forgive her. She’s shy.”

  She giggled. “Not a problem. I’m the same way. My boyfriend always wants to get cozy in public. Drives me crazy. Of course I don’t have the whole world watching,” she added empathetically as she glanced my way.