The Fiancée Farce: A Novel

by Alexandria Bellefleur

Genres: Holiday Romance; Romantic Comedy; Contemporary Romance; LGBT & Pride

Synopsis

Lambda Literary award winner and national bestselling author Alexandria Bellefleur returns with a steamy sapphic rom-com about a quiet bookseller and a romance novel cover model who agree to a modern-day marriage of convenience...

Tansy Adams’ greatest love is her family’s bookstore, passed down from her late father. But when it comes to actual romance… Tansy can’t get past the first chapter. Tired of her stepfamily’s questions about her love life, Tansy invents Gemma, a fake girlfriend inspired by the stunning cover model on a bestselling book. They’ll never actually meet, so what’s the harm in a little fib? Yet when real-life Gemma crosses Tansy’s path, her white lie nearly implodes.

Gemma van Dalen is a wild child, the outcast of her wealthy family, and now the latest heir to Van Dalen Publishing. But the title comes with one tiny condition: she must be married in order to inherit. When Gemma discovers a beautiful stranger has been pretending to date her for months, she decides to take the charade one step further—and announces their engagement.

Gemma needs a wife to meet the terms of her grandfather’s will and Tansy needs money to save her struggling bookstore. A marriage could be mutually beneficial, if they can fool everyone into thinking it’s a love match. Unexpected sparks fly as Tansy and Gemma play the role of affectionate fiancées, and suddenly the line between convenient arrangement and real feelings begins to blur. But the scheming Van Dalen family won’t give up the company without a fight, and Gemma and Tansy’s newfound happiness might get caught in the fallout…      

 

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Release date: April 18, 2023

Publisher: Avon

Print pages: 412

Sample

Chapter One

A few stray petals fluttered to the floor as Madison van Dalen née James’s bouquet soared through the air. The confection of sherbet-colored orchids and draping Dutch roses tumbled flowers over stems, missing the grabbiest hands, hurtling instead toward the deserted end of the dance floor.

Deserted, save for Tansy.

The wainscoting bit into the small of her back as she hugged the wall, her accelerating pulse pounding out a rhythm of no, no, please no, not her as the bouquet’s distance dwindled, dwindled, disappeared. Tansy flinched, eyes shutting and arms rising reflexively, cushioning the flowers’ fall.

Damn it.

A gasp rose from the crowd. Heat crept up the front of Tansy’s throat, her underarms and the creases of her inner elbows damp with flop sweat. Everyone—all three hundred of Tucker and Madison’s closest friends and family—was going to be staring. Looking at her. What a nightmare.

Tansy cringed and braced herself for the stares, the inevitable glares from those who thought catching a falling floral arrangement meant something. She cracked one eye open and—

Okay, odd. No one was glancing in her direction, not even her stepmother, Katherine, the one responsible for dragging Tansy out onto the dance floor despite her many, many objections that she really, really didn’t see the point because what were the odds of her catching the bouquet, anyway?

Famous last words.

It was like Tansy didn’t exist, like she hadn’t had the misfortune of catching the bouquet, as if the toss had never happened. At least two dozen guests had gathered, gawking not at her—thank God—but instead at the center of the dance floor, where Ashleigh, Tansy’s stepsister, clutched her face, eyes brimming with tears. She looked pissed, jaw set, one hand fisted at her side as if poised to exact retribution from the bridesmaid beside her, who was sheepishly massaging her elbow.

“Ashleigh.” Katherine scuttled across the room and grabbed her daughter’s face, tilting it toward the light with a grimace before whisking her off the dance floor. Katherine craned her head over her shoulder, frazzled eyes locking on Tansy. Her lips moved, mouthing what looked like the word ice followed by a please and then a hurry that jolted Tansy into action.

In the time it took for her to wind her way through the maze of tables, dodging pint-sized ring bearers and drunk groomsmen, flag down a bartender, and retrace her steps all the way across the Grand Ballroom of the Seattle Yacht Club, a deep purple bruise had begun to bloom along the crest of Ashleigh’s cheek. Tansy winced and held out a linen napkin full of ice cubes embossed with Tucker and Madison’s initials. Fancy.

Ashleigh snatched the cold compress, pressing it to the corner of her eye with a sharp hiss. Her one good eye narrowed, gaze dropping to the bouquet clasped lightly in Tansy’s left hand, flowers trailing the floor. Ashleigh’s lips thinned.

Thanks for the ice, Tansy.

Not a problem, Ash. Happy to help.

Tansy sighed. In an alternate universe, maybe. In this one? She wouldn’t hold her breath.

Across the table, Madison’s younger sister, Jackie, smiled sweetly and pointed at the flowers. “Look at that! Congrats, Tansy.”

“It was nothing.” Tansy tucked the bouquet beneath her chair, out of sight, out of mind. “I didn’t even mean to catch it.”

Jackie’s smile went sly. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll be next.”

“To what?” Ashleigh asked, lowering the compress.

Jackie nodded to the front of the room, where Tucker held up a butter knife, studying his reflection, and Madison sipped surreptitiously from a flask before tucking it back inside the bodice of her ball gown. Tansy dared anyone to find two people more perfect for each other. “Next to get married.”

An awkward laugh, too loud and too high-pitched, burst from between Tansy’s lips. To be next would require her to be dating someone. “Let’s not get carried away.”

“Speaking of”—Ashleigh cocked her head—“where is your girlfriend? I’m beginning to think she doesn’t exist.”

Tansy swallowed a groan. Actually dating someone.

“Don’t be silly. Of course she exists,” Jackie argued. “Tansy wouldn’t lie.”

“Have you met her?” Ashleigh asked.

Sweet, guileless Jackie looked offended on Tansy’s behalf. “Tansy’s not a liar.”

Tansy averted her gaze, fidgeting with the stem of her champagne flute, trying not to squirm or cringe or do anything that remotely screamed guilty. This entire conversation was treading into dangerous territory she wanted desperately to avoid.

“I meant the girlfriend.” Ashleigh rolled her eyes. “It’s been, what? Six months? And no one’s met her? Does she know you’re dating?”

Katherine’s sigh was full of reprove. “Ashleigh, darling, be nice.”

Ashleigh’s eyes made a slow, pointed sweep across the room, landing and lingering on Tucker. “All I’m saying is, it wouldn’t be the first time Tansy deluded herself.”

Tansy’s back teeth clacked together, her face burning and blood simmering. As tempting as it was to tell Ashleigh exactly where she could shove her barbed comments that weren’t nearly as clever as she thought they were, all Tansy really wanted was to get through tonight unscathed, hopefully without drawing any more attention than she had already. Telling Ashleigh off would only achieve the opposite.

“You want to dial it back, Ash?” Jackie frowned. “You’re being a real bitch tonight.”

“Are you going to ask the earth to stop spinning next?” Tansy muttered under her breath. “You’d probably have better luck.”

Ashleigh’s eyes flared minutely before narrowing. “What was that?”

Whoops. So much for keeping her thoughts to herself. Tansy cringed. Maybe she was a little chagrined that Ashleigh had heard her, but she wasn’t sorry for what she’d said, and now that it was out there, she refused to take it back. “You can think whatever you want, but I’m not delusional.”

Desperate, maybe, and she might be lying to everyone else, but these days, she was nothing if not brutally honest with herself.

A storybook wedding? Someone to sweep her off her feet?

Never going to happen. Tansy knew it; she’d accepted it; but that didn’t mean she relished everyone else knowing it.

It had been bad enough when Tucker and Madison had started dating and he had begun attending most family gatherings. But after he’d proposed? The thought of attending a lifetime of family dinners and parties not unlike this one, trying in vain to ignore Tucker’s leering eyes and his smug little smirk, the smile that once made her stomach flutter and the reason why every butterfly now felt like a red flag was just—it was too much.

Maybe it was latent self-preservation kicking in, too little, too late, but as soon as she’d learned that Tucker had proposed, every last atom in her body had recoiled at the thought of celebrating his and Madison’s engagement. She’d begged off with a bad case of the stomach flu, then skipped out on three consecutive dinners, claiming she was too tired, too busy with the bookstore’s virtual events and supply chain snafus. All tiny, harmless fibs. But then Katherine had called and told Tansy no more excuses—no more behaving like a recluse; if Tansy wanted to be a member of this family, she needed to act like it. It was Tucker’s birthday, the entire Van Dalen family would be there, and Katherine had it in her head that wealth rubbed off. Unless Tansy had a decent reason for missing the party, Katherine wanted her there. Tansy’s father would’ve wanted her there.

Tansy had swallowed the retort that Katherine had no idea what Tansy’s father would’ve wanted for her. That knowing him for two years in no way trumped the fifteen Tansy had had with him. But that would’ve been unnecessarily harsh, and Tansy was a lot of things, but intentionally cruel wasn’t one of them.

She’d racked her brain for any excuse that might’ve qualified as a decent reason in Katherine’s eyes, because Tansy would’ve rather spent an entire backbreaking evening single-handedly unpacking the store’s newest shipment of paperbacks—inevitable pesky paper cuts included—than celebrate the day Tucker van Dalen was born.

I have a date, actually.

She’d held her breath until, to her relief, Katherine had cooed. A date? You could’ve just said. Don’t be stingy with the details, Tansy. Tell me more.

Tansy’s eyes had landed and lingered on an open box of romance novels waiting to be shelved, had taken one look at the cover within, and blurted—

Gemma. Her name’s Gemma.

No sooner had the name popped out of Tansy’s mouth than had she full-body cringed. She couldn’t have made something up on the fly, a passable blend of two objects in her bookstore’s back.

room, like . . . like April Calendar. Heck, the author’s name was right there, low-hanging fruit if there ever was some. But no. Leave it to Tansy to complicate something that should’ve been straightforward, blurting out the name of the stunning cover model whose Instagram she’d spent an embarrassing two hours scrolling the night before, all thanks to Under the Covers, an IGTV series wherein cover models took readers behind the scenes of romance cover shoots.

Six months ago, a fake date had seemed like the Swiss Army knife of fibs. Only, one lie had led to another, and suddenly it wasn’t just a date; she and this Gemma were dating. Tansy knew none of it was real; she hadn’t fallen prey to some particularly pathetic parasocial relationship, the way some people believed they were kindred spirits or, heaven forbid, soulmates with some celebrity all because of a polite, impersonal interaction on a public forum that the star probably promptly forgot about.

Tansy didn’t know the real Gemma West, and Gemma West sure as hell didn’t know of Tansy, let alone know-know her. She definitely wasn’t under the delusion that she and Gemma would ever meet, let alone date.

No, the idea of actually dating Gemma West was painfully laughable. Not that she’d told anyone she was dating Gemma West, specifically, keeping the details of her lie scant to be safe. Not that anyone would have believed her if she had. Breathtaking didn’t begin to do Gemma West justice. With her striking green eyes, long blond hair, and sensual mouth, Gemma was the sort of pretty that if their paths were ever to cross—in some strange twist of fate—it would tie Tansy’s tongue.

What was meant to be a short-term solution to an enduring problem had snowballed out of her control, taking on a life of its own. And it needed to stop. She needed to stop it. Not only was the guilt giving her a near-constant case of indigestion, but she was in over her head. By some stroke of luck, she had managed to fool everyone for six months, but secrets rarely stayed secret for long. It was a miracle she hadn’t yet slipped, only a matter of time before she put her foot in her mouth, before someone went digging. Truth will out, and all that came with the inevitable, humiliating fallout.

After tonight, she was going to do the right thing and end this, once and for all. Fake a breakup before the whole thing blew up . . .  or she developed an ulcer.

“Then where is she?” Ashleigh pressed.

The double doors to the ballroom burst inward with a bang, saving Tansy from fumbling through another lie. The last note the harpist plucked reverberated discordantly as a hush fell over the room, all eyes turning to—

Tansy choked, champagne dribbling down her chin.

The woman standing confidently in the doorway, an impish smile flirting at the corners of her full lips and a wicked gleam in her green eyes, looked as if she’d stepped out of one of Tansy’s

wildest daydreams. As if she’d stepped straight off the cover of one of Tansy’s favorite romance novels.

Because she had.

Gemma West swept inside the room as if she owned it, the black satin of her slip dress clinging to her curves, the side slit revealing miles of smooth-looking skin all the way to—Tansy gulped—the crease of her thigh. Without breaking stride, Gemma plucked a glass of champagne off a table as she passed, knocked it back, and, upon reaching the center of the room, greeted Madison and Tucker each with an air-kiss. Tucker looked as dumbstruck as Tansy felt.

This was no daydream.

This was a nightmare.

Whispers traveled from the fringes of the room.

Is that who I think it is?

The prodigal daughter returns, someone sniffed.

Gemma van Dalen? I thought she was still living in New York.

I didn’t know she was going to be here.

Look at Madison’s face. It doesn’t look like she knew, either.

I heard Gemma was in town, but I figured it was for the funeral.

No, she’s been back since March. My sister’s best friend’s cousin’s girlfriend saw her eating on the patio at Carmine’s.

A real shame, someone said with a sigh. All that wasted potential. Poor Victor must be so disappointed.

Van Dalen? Van Dalen? No, no. Tansy’s stomach sank like an anchor dropped off the side of one of the yachts tethered right outside in the harbor. She needed to sit down. It didn’t matter that she was already sitting down; she needed to do it again. Better yet, she needed to lie down. Under the table, maybe. Preferably somewhere far, far away, where she could pretend this wasn’t really happening.

Maybe it wasn’t really happening. Maybe she’d heard incorrectly? Van Dalen could’ve been Van Something or Other. Or perhaps none of this was really happening. What if she hadn’t so much caught Madison’s bouquet as gotten knocked out by it and this was all some elaborate nightmare, her subconscious playing on her guilt at having lied about dating someone in the first place?

Gemma West couldn’t possibly be an alias of Gemma van Dalen, Tucker’s estranged cousin. The idea was preposterous.

Tucker had mentioned his cousin in passing—never often, but enough for Tansy to have picked up the basics: that she was older by two years and had attended some boarding school on the East Coast, followed by a stint at Columbia, and that there was no love lost between the two of them. But she couldn’t—the woman standing in the ballroom . . . her name was Gemma West. She wasn’t—she couldn’t.

Tansy sank down in her seat, the space under the table still calling her name. As long as no one else put two and two together, she—

“Hey, Tansy.” Jackie nudged her with a knee. “Isn’t that your girlfriend?”

Tansy smothered a whimper. Damn it, Jackie.

“Tansy dating Tucker’s cousin?” Ashleigh slumped back in her chair with a snort. “You’re hilarious.”

With her eyes, Tansy begged Jackie to drop it.

Jackie blinked back at her and frowned. “I don’t . . . you showed me her picture.”

No, she hadn’t. Jackie simply had no understanding of boundaries and believed it was perfectly acceptable to swipe to the next picture in someone’s gallery without permission. Tansy’s only mistake—fine, one of several—was being stupid enough to have saved a picture of Gemma West, er, van Dalen to her camera roll. Stupid enough to have said yes when Jackie had asked if it was a picture of her girlfriend.

Katherine couldn’t have looked more delighted. “A Van Dalen?” She clasped her hands together below her chin. “Tansy, that’s wonderful.”

A sound that was half laugh, half sob, one hundred percent a cry for help slipped past Tansy’s lips. Wonderful, her ass.

“Well, isn’t this perfect?” Ashleigh dropped her cold compress and stood, chair legs squealing against the ballroom’s two-tone herringbone wood floor. “I, for one, am dying for you to introduce us.”

Dread darkened the edges of Tansy’s vision, her knees going weak when she tried to stand, her feet losing feeling. She fell back in her chair and tugged on the skirt of Ashleigh’s dress in a dire last-ditch effort. “Ash, don’t, come on—”

“Gemma!”

Tansy sank farther in her seat, praying for the floor to swallow her whole.

Gemma’s head swiveled in their direction, a tiny furrow forming between her brows as she squinted curiously before setting off across the ballroom, Tucker and Madison hot on her heels. Tansy’s stomach wobbled like not-yet-set Jell-O.

“How do you know my cousin?” Tucker demanded, barely reaching the table first, and only because he’d added a burst of speed there at the end.

“I’m sure my reputation precedes me.” Gemma’s left cheek rose, the corner of her mouth with it, her lashes fluttering shut in an effortless, cheeky wink.

Ashleigh blinked dumbly, red rising up her jaw. “I—I don’t.” She sniffed hard and lifted her chin. “But apparently Tansy does.”

Gemma pivoted, body turning slightly. She blinked twice at Tansy, her head tilting to match the curious quirk of her lips. Her hair spilled over her left shoulder like champagne, and her eyes, even greener up close, dragged slowly down Tansy’s body in a leisurely appraisal, lingering in ways that left Tansy light-headed.

No one looked at Tansy like that, not with—with genuine appreciation. And w

hy would they? She glanced down, following the path of Gemma’s gaze, trying to see what she saw, what could’ve inspired a look like that. Her dress was nothing special, a sleeveless A-line she’d had for years. If she were being generous, the soft shade of violet made the blue of her eyes a bit brighter than their everyday Seattle sky shade. Not that anyone could tell. Her gray cardigan covered her to the neck, because the yacht club ballroom was freezing.

She wasn’t exactly a bombshell. At first glance, Tansy honestly probably came across as a little boring. And that was okay. Boring was fine. Boring was safe, because if no one noticed you, they couldn’t break your heart.

Gemma’s perfect white teeth sank into the plush swell of her bottom lip, her eyes flitting upward, crinkling softly at the corners. “Well, hello.”

Gemma was anything but boring. She was bold and brazen, the embodiment of everything Tansy wasn’t. There was no reason for Gemma to pay Tansy a passing glance, let alone look at her twice.

Tansy fingered the topmost button of her cardigan and tried not to squirm under Gemma’s hot, heavy-lidded stare, confusion gnawing at her insides, panic ratcheting her pulse.

“What?” Madison’s gaze volleyed between Tansy and Gemma. “How?”

One of Gemma’s impeccably arched brows rose, the corner of her mouth rising, too, as if asking How, indeed?

“Well,” Tansy started, not having a single clue what to say, knowing only that she needed to say something before someone else—

“She says you’re dating,” Ashleigh relayed with an inordinate amount of glee. “That you’ve been dating for the last six months.”

—said something for her.

Gemma’s other brow rose.

Madison’s jaw dropped. “Dating?”

Somehow Tansy’s stomach managed to sink farther, plummeting all the way to the sandy, seaweed-strewn bottom of the lake beneath the yacht club.

This was bad, yes, but there was a chance it was about to get a whole lot worse. What if Gemma wasn’t even interested in women? Sure, her stare had seemed appreciative, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

“You and Tansy?” Tucker smoothed one hand down the buttoned front of his black-on-black jacquard suit jacket and shook his head, snorting dismissively.

Gemma’s eyes narrowed, gaze ping-ponging between Tansy and Tucker, her curious stare growing calculated.

A hot rush of blood raced to fill Tansy’s face, leaving her dizzy. This was it. The moment she’d been dreading; six months of lies were about to come crashing down around her.

“Six months, huh?” Gemma’s lips quirked. “I guess time really flies when you

’re having fun.”

Tansy’s jaw dropped, her thoughts screeching to a violent standstill. “Um.”

Ashleigh’s smile wavered. “What the hell?”

Far be it for her to agree with Ashleigh, but she’d taken the words right out of Tansy’s mouth.

“Nice joke, Gemma.” Tucker’s eyes narrowed. “Real funny.”

Only, Gemma wasn’t laughing.

“No way,” Tucker muttered, suddenly looking a little less sure.

“Way.” Clearly, Gemma was deriving perverse pleasure in Tucker’s growing discomfort, in getting under his skin, and that sort of button-pushing shouldn’t have done it for Tansy, but it did. It really did.

The queasy unease roiling in her gut relented, replaced with a—a fluttering, the kind she hadn’t felt in years. Butterflies.

Oh, no. No, no. This . . . this was bad.

Gemma circled the table, hips swaying softly, satin skimming the skin of her thigh with each languid step in Tansy’s direction. Gemma stopped beside her, and the baby-fine hairs at the nape of Tansy’s neck stood on end. Her breath hitched when Gemma reached out and tucked an errant lock of hair behind Tansy’s ear. Gemma’s fingers lingered, her rings cool against Tansy’s overheated skin, her thumb sweeping maddeningly against the sensitive spot beneath Tansy’s jaw. A spot Tansy hadn’t known was sensitive until Gemma touched it. Touched her.

“Tansy, sweetheart, do you want to tell them?”

Goose bumps broke out along her skin. Tansy and sweetheart didn’t belong in the same sentence. Tansy was nobody’s sweetheart. Until five minutes ago, as far as Gemma van Dalen was concerned, Tansy was nobody.

“Um.” She didn’t have a clue what was happening. She didn’t understand the question, let alone why Gemma was playing along with her lie, with her hair. Why she hadn’t taken one look at Tansy, wrinkled her nose, and told everyone the truth: that she didn’t know her.

“On second thought, let me.” Gemma stole Tansy’s champagne and tipped it toward Tucker, smile broadening, as breathtaking as it was bewildering.

Tansy held her breath, chest burning.

“I can’t think of a more timely, auspicious moment to share our good news than your wedding, Tucker.”

The color leached from Tucker’s face, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the back of the empty chair in front of him. Madison shot him a frantic look.

“After six magical months together, I asked Tansy a very important question.” Gemma reached for Tansy’s hand. She turned it over and brushed a featherlight kiss against the fragile skin of Tansy’s wrist. “Tansy, here, has agreed to marry me.”

Chapter Two

Just like that, all hell broke loose.

“Married?” Madison’s friend—the one sporting a god-awful shiner, whose name Gemma couldn’t remember, and didn’t care to—screeched.

If the guests weren’t already staring, they certainly were now.

“You’re fucking kidding me.” Tucker’s obnoxiously square jaw clenched. His eyes, the same flinty blue as his father’s, were already scanning the crowd, no doubt searching for daddy to come fix this, the way Sterling fixed everything for Tucker. Brat. “I don’t know what you think you’re playing at—”

“Ow.” She lifted a hand to her chest, feigning injury. “That hurts, Tucker. I hoped you’d be happy for me.”

Gemma smothered a laugh, barely able to keep her composure as the vein at Tucker’s temple pulsed, his face purpling. He was always so easily riled, always rising to the bait. Good to know that some things in this world never changed, that at least the ease with which she could provoke her cousin could be counted on, ever constant.

Though, come to think of it, Tucker was looking exceedingly apoplectic. More furious than she’d anticipated at the news of her impending nuptials. Or maybe, given his initial reaction to learning she was supposedly embroiled in a six-month relationship, it was news of Gemma’s impending nuptials to Tansy. Interesting. Very interesting. Gemma would file that observation away for later.

Save for fanning her face obnoxiously with both hands, Madison kept her cool surprisingly—ah, spoke too soon. Like something out of a poorly staged junior high play, Madison swooned, swaying and sagging as if her strings had been cut. Utterly self-absorbed, Tucker very nearly let his new bride hit the floor, catching her at the last second with a pained grunt and muttered swear.

“Madison!” Whatsherface stood with a shout.

“Oh dear.” Madison’s aunt fluttered about anxiously. “Someone do something.”

Reaching across the table, Jackie grabbed a glass of champagne and threw it at Madison.

“What the fuck, Jackie?” Madison shrieked, remarkably coherent for having just fainted.

Voices rose, everyone speaking at once, no one bothering to listen, as the reception devolved into complete and total chaos.

Amidst the pandemonium, forgotten in the center of it all, Tansy sat silently, pink lips parted, big blue eyes round and unblinking. Shell-shocked.

Gemma tilted her head, stealing a second to study her brand-spankin’-new fiancée.

The long, dark hair she’d swept up in a bun was coming undone, too thick even for the combination of claw-clip and bobby pins she’d used in an unsuccessful attempt to tame it into submission. Tendrils floated freely around her ears and the sides of her heart-shaped face, flirting idly with the edge of her jaw and the neckline of her truly odious cardigan.

To be perfectly frank, Tansy wasn’t the sort of someone Gemma would’ve glanced at twice under any other circumstances. But these particular circumstances being what they were, unusual, Gemma was looking. Inspecting. Because she must. And, hmm. Well, well, well. Appreciating. Because she could. It was easy to see the harried updo and fugly cardigan for what they were—camouflage. As if Tansy wanted to disappear into mediocrity. As if she believed an old sweater could do the trick.

Despite the grandma cardigan buttoned to practically her chin, it was plain to see Tansy was pretty. A touch timid, not exactly Gemma’s type

, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Gemma’s type was there for a good time, not a long time. Just how Gemma preferred it.

Until now.

Now her proclivity for temporary was a problem. Now, preferences be damned, her only type needed to be marriageable. Moreover, be willing to marry her, willing to stay married to her for two years, capable of keeping a secret, and accepting that the only happily-ever-after Gemma was interested in entailed inheriting what was rightfully hers.

With such simple requirements, Gemma had figured the list of candidates would be lengthy, her choice of spouse just that—a choice. And yet here she was, ring finger worrisomely bare, a deadline to wed breathing down her neck, pickings slim, prospects grim.

Until now. Until Tansy.

Fate was funny that way. There Gemma was, minding her own business, crashing Tucker’s wedding, her greatest aspiration for the evening to cause a little ruckus, and bam! Tansy had practically landed in her lap, a perfect solution to an utterly fucked up—not to mention antiquated—problem. Gemma might not have asked for any of this, but as far as spouses went, she supposed she could’ve done worse.

Madison snatched a napkin from the table, cursing Jackie for her carelessness as she mopped Dom Pérignon from her décolletage.

Much worse.

Granted, there was the tiny detail of Tansy telling tall tales, but lucky for her, that wasn’t a deal breaker. If anything, a knack for subterfuge was a point in her favor. Given the circumstances.

Most likely to distract from the scene unfolding, the DJ chose that moment to start up the music. Good timing.

She ran her fingers down the back of Tansy’s arm to her wrist. “If you’ll excuse us, I’d love a dance with my fiancée.”

Fiancée. That rolled off the tongue surprisingly well.

Tuning out the clash of voices, Gemma wrapped her fingers around Tansy’s wrist and tugged her out onto the empty dance floor. She stopped dead center and turned, dragging Tansy closer, hands gripping her by the shapely hips hidden beneath the sack Tansy apparently considered a dress.

Tansy’s hands hovered awkwardly in the air, uncertainty swimming in her eyes before she played along, resting her hands delicately on Gemma’s shoulders. Eye contact remained fleeting, Tansy’s gaze flitting between Gemma’s face and the space over her right shoulder. Skittish. Endearing as that was, if they were going to pull this off, they had a lot of ground to cover, and fast.

“Six months, huh? Where was I?”

Tansy blinked twice

. “I—I’m sorry?”

“Don’t be.” Gemma laughed at the flush creeping up Tansy’s throat. The girl was honest to god blushing. How fucking adorable. “I’m certainly not.”

Sorry was the last thing Gemma was tonight.

“What a nightmare,” Tansy muttered, blush deepening, inching its way up the sides of her face, the tips of her pert little ears turning fire-engine red.

“A nightmare?” Gemma quirked a brow. She’d been called worse, and by her family, no less. “Some might take offense to that.”

Lucky for Tansy, Gemma was practically impossible to offend.

Tansy’s eyes widened, her fingers tensing on Gemma’s bare shoulders before relaxing. “No. Not you. I meant—”

“I’m teasing you, Tansy. Now, enlighten me . . . how exactly did we meet?” She paused, frowning as a thought suddenly occurred to her. “We haven’t actually met, have we?”

It was possible they had, that Gemma hadn’t paid attention. Because if she had, she’d have certainly remembered meeting Tansy. A face like hers wasn’t one Gemma was likely to forget. Striking brows, dark and thick, framed eyes the color of the sky right before a storm. Maybe the color of the sea, placid water belying hidden depths.

Gemma snorted. She seriously needed to ease off the champagne if she was on the precipice of composing sonnets about a pretty stranger’s eyes. No amount of inebriation excused shitty clichés, even if she kept them to herself.

Tansy’s feet faltered, her steps out of sync with the music. “We haven’t.”

Just as Gemma had thought. “And yet Madison’s cousin believes we’re dating. Because that’s what you told her?”

“I didn’t.” Tansy cringed. “I mean, it’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Do you think you could uncomplicate it for me? In, say, I don’t know . . . the next six minutes?”

A wrinkle that had no business being as charming as it was marred the bridge of Tansy’s nose. “That’s an oddly specific time frame.”

Gemma laughed. “I figure we have this and, if we’re lucky, one more dance before someone attempts to drag us off the dance floor.”

“Makes sense.” Tansy bobbed her head.

Gemma arched a brow, waiting.

Tansy jerked. “Right! I—I owe you an explanation. I do. It’s just—it’s a mess. And I never meant for any of this to happen, let alone to rope you in, but—God, I didn’t even know you existed. I mean, I knew you existed, obviously, but I never thought we’d—” Tansy cut herself off and took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s just rewind.”

Gemma smothered a smile. Tansy’s babbling was delightful. “Let’s.”

Tansy cleared her throat. “Six months ago, I told my stepmother I was seeing someone. It was supposed to be a stupid excuse to get out of family dinners for a while, ...