CHAPTER ONEAnna
Let’s agree that accepting a marriage proposal is a dangerous thing to do, and accepting one from a stranger is marginally more dangerous.
Okay, fine. The stranger part increases the risk more than marginally. Maybe astronomically. Who’s measuring these things, anyway?
I could’ve ended up being the measurement, the warning, the headline you saw on the local news. “She agreed to marry the man hours after he approached her in the Madison University dining hall.”
It’s never good when you can envision a newscaster announcing the dumb thing you did.
In my defense, I really needed the money, and it wasn’t an actual marriage. It was only an engagement, and a fake one at that. I wouldn’t fake an entire marriage. I’m not an animal. My mom raised me to be a lady, always telling me I needed to settle down and be a good little wife.
Ha! Just kidding.
My mom is actually the Polish immigrant version of George Bailey in the 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Not because she ran a bank, or fell into an icy river, or had an angel intervene to save her life (that we know of – she talks about angels a lot, but we assume that’s the Pope’s influence).
No, my mother is George Bailey in the moment when he comes home on Christmas, broke and hopeless, and yells out “Why did we have to go and have all these kids?”
Like George, my mom had four kids, but unlike George, her neighbors didn’t all pull together to give her a pile of cash when times got tough. She had to go out and make that money by herself.
(Well, not entirely by herself. My dad wasn’t a deadbeat or anything. We all tend to take him and his jovial attitude for granted, though).
In Poland, my mom was nearly finished with medical school when she got the chance to come to America.
America! Leaving communist-controlled Poland for America!
She took the chance, and while it was the right choice, she didn’t get to be a doctor. She ended up being a maid.
That’s life.
“Zuzia,” she’d say, dragging a vacuum and forcing a smile at whatever client was waving us off. “You can’t have it all. That is a trick on women. You can do it all, but you can’t have it all.”
I nodded dutifully, having little idea of the controversy surrounding the phrase “have it all,” while agreeing wholeheartedly with whatever she said.
“Don’t get married,” she told me. “Don’t have kids. You live your own life. You will be a doctor!”
She always whispered the word doctor, as though she were afraid if she said it too loud, someone would snatch it out of my hand and replace it with a
bucket full of rags.
I listened to her, like I (almost) always do. I didn’t get married. I didn’t have kids.
I got a doctorate – in engineering, not medicine. It’s almost as useful, as long as you’re building a plane and not, for example, having a heart attack on one.
Truly, my life was going more or less according to plan. Until he showed up.
“Suzanna Makowski?”
I startled, looking up from my wilted salad. My mind was miles away, in a jail cell, not on the rotting leaves in front of me.
“Yes?”
“Can I sit?”
He stared at me with unlaughing, clear blue eyes and a perfectly straight mouth.
My first thought was that I was in trouble, or that I’d committed some sort of social faux pas. A normal person might rush to correct whatever they’d done, but not me. By this stage of my life, I’d embarrassed myself so many times that it took something truly awful to make me pause.
Are you jealous? Don’t be. I’ll tell you the trick – start embarrassing yourself at a young age, and don’t stop until you are so comfortable being uncomfortable that the only sense of belonging is being outside of it all. Unbelonging.
That’s me. An awkward, clumsy young woman who, in the first grade, showed up to school dressed in a purple velour tracksuit (courtesy of my mom) and a lunch box filled with pickles and foot-long smoked sausages (Polish kabanosy, rush-packed by my dad).
It doesn’t take much to become an “other,” and that was the day the other kids started calling me “weenie face.”
Are you horrified? Do you know what happens to a six-year-old who gets called weenie face
?
I’ll tell you what happens. She becomes a thirty-year-old woman who, when approached by a handsome stranger, tries to send him off with “Why don’t you pick one of the empty tables instead?”
He ignored my suggestion and pulled out a chair. I sighed, sitting back to get a better look at him.
Despite his stern face, he wasn’t dressed like anyone in authority. He wore a blue bomber jacket and a gray t-shirt, tight enough that I could make out his lean muscles beneath.
Not that I was looking at his muscles. They just happened to be there.
His hair was black, so black that it seemed to absorb light, like a raven’s feathers. It was neat at the sides but longer at the top, with a disheveled-but-dashing appearance that suggested he’d spent hours applying product to get it to fall in just the right, vain way.
He ran a hand through his hair and tousled the strands, immediately disproving my vanity theory.
Was he a student? I was supposed to be nice to students.
The dark stubble peppering his pale skin and the fine wrinkles near the corners of his eyes suggested no.
I was familiar with wrinkles. I’d started battling my own that year. Before then, I foolishly thought I wasn’t old enough for wrinkles.
Oh, to be young.
His gaze settled on me, the bright blue of his eyes a stark contrast to his black eyelashes. He had high cheekbones and an expression of cool dismissal.
Maybe he was a vampire?
(I’ll be honest, I read Twilight once, and while I will deny this in any social setting or court of law, I enjoyed it.)
“I’m Leo.” He motioned to the ID hanging from his neck that read STAFF.
Vampires didn’t wear lanyards. So much for that theory.
I set my fork down. It seemed I had no choice but to be nice. “You can call me Anna. Are you new to Madison University?”
He nodded. “I just signed on to teach in the school of fine arts.”
“I’m with engineering.”
“I know.”
I raised an eyebrow and he hesitated, adding, “Someone said you might be able to help me.”
“I’m not very artistic,” I said, resuming my salad foraging, “but what’s up?”
“Do you speak Polish?”
That was a complicated question. “Who’s asking?”
“Well…me.” He stared, eyes fixed, not even the hint of a smile on his face.
Not one to joke around. “My mom will tell you my Polish is beautiful. My uncle says I sound like a baby, and my grandma will tell you it’s best I stick to English.”
He shifted in his seat. “Troszkę?”
A little bit?
I smiled, replying in Polish. “Yes. And you?”
He shook his head. “Barely. My mother is Polish, though.”
“It was my first language, but it’s fallen by the wayside. I can carry a conversation, but I can’t, like, translate a doctor’s visit for you. I don’t know those words, and you should probably keep that information personal, because I am not bound by HIPAA.”
He pulled back. “Are you not good at keeping secrets?”
What a question. “Depends on the secret, I guess? If you wired a bunch of money to a Polish prince, then yes, I’m going to tell everyone, and we’re going to make fun of you.”
“It’s nothing like that.” He leaned in, placing his hands on the table. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Yeah?” I pushed the salad away. It had been a mistake to try to salvage anything from the “best intentions” drawer in my fridge. That lettuce should’ve gone right in the trash. I could feel the food poisoning already, bubbling up and scolding me for being too lazy to go to the store and too cheap to pay for lunch. “Is it an exciting investment opportunity?”
“Sort of.” His eyes flitted down to the salad for a moment, then back to me. “I’d like you to be my fiancée.”
CHAPTER TWOLeo
She erupted into a cackling laugh, tossing her head back and sending her blonde hair bouncing in a jolly sort of way.
I almost hadn’t recognized her at first. Her lab’s website had a picture of her squinting out from behind large black glasses. In it, she looked like a stock image of a female scientist – pretty but serious. Very serious.
She was even prettier today, the sunlight illuminating the blonde and brown tones in her hair, her eyes a clear and deep caramel flecked with bits of gold. She was no less serious, and definitely believable for a fiancée.
A smile lingered at the corners of her eyes before slowly fading. “I’m sorry. What?” she asked. “Is this an art project?”
I shifted in my seat. “No.”
“A social experiment, then?” She turned, looking over her shoulder. “Are there cameras somewhere?”
“You wouldn’t have to actually marry me,” I said, trying to mentally run through the bullet points I’d written out the night before. “And it would only be for a few months.”
If all went well, that is… but now wasn’t the time to talk details.
“Oh, is that all?” She nodded solemnly, lifting a grey lunchbox from the seat beside her. “What an exciting opportunity.”
“I can tell you about – ”
She cut me off. “Unfortunately, I’m already pretending to be another guy’s fiancée. It’s a buyer’s market these days—inflation and all—but thanks so much. Good luck.”
Tucking the glass salad container into her bag, she stood up and turned.
“This isn’t a prank.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out an envelope. “I can pay you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “If you’re looking for the mail order bride department, you’re going to want to take a left at the bathrooms and walk until you see the sign for the time machine.”
I had to bite my lip to hide my smile. Though I expected an awkward conversation, I hadn’t expected open hostility. “I have ten thousand dollars here.”
She stopped, looked down at the envelope, then up at me. “For what?”
“For you to consider my proposal.”
“Usually men present the initial gift in the form of a ring.”
“You can buy whatever you want.” I thrust the envelope toward her. “A ring, ten rings. Whatever.”
She eyed the envelope for a moment. “Ten thousand dollars?”
“Ten thousand dollars.”
I watched as she reached forward and delicately splayed the envelope open, peering inside
. It didn’t look like much, I’ll admit, but that’s what ten grand in hundreds was.
I’d gotten her attention, at least, and it seemed my calculations were correct. Ten thousand was a lot to a post doc. Especially one whose brother had recently catapulted himself to the forefront of the entire institution’s gossip train, and whose bail was set at ten thousand exactly.
I cleared my throat. “I know this is strange, but I don’t want anything weird from you.”
“Is this like a Water for Elephants deal?”
I frowned. “What’s a Water for Elephants deal?”
“You need me to speak Polish to the elephant so it’ll perform for your circus?”
I couldn’t stop myself this time. I let out a laugh. “What?”
“It’s a movie. Actually, it was a book first, but the movie is really good too. You should watch it.”
“Okay.” I shrugged. “I will.”
Anna fidgeted, scratching her nose, then tapped the envelope on the table. “I don’t understand why you need someone to do this.”
“It’s complicated. You wouldn’t be talking to an elephant, but you’d need to talk to someone.”
“In Polish?”
“Yeah.” We were finally getting somewhere. “We can discuss it, get a coffee maybe?”
“I have my lab meeting.” She thrust the envelope into my chest. “Sorry, this is – yeah, not for me.”
I kept my hands in my coat pockets. “It’s ten thousand to start, and a hundred thousand total.
”
She took a breath, her hand still pressing the envelope to my chest. “A hundred thousand dollars?”
I nodded. “My contact information is in there. Just think about it and get back to me.”
Before she had a chance to say anything else, I turned and walked away.
CHAPTER THREEAnna
Did that really happen? I felt strange, like I was the fourth-grade version of myself leaning closer to the boy I liked, but instead of telling me the secret he’d promised, he spit gum into my hair.
It was the lunchbox. It made me feel like an awkward child, once again a weenie face. I tucked it under my arm and peeked into the envelope.
Still full of cash. I sucked in a breath.
On the left side, a business card. I took it out, studying the background with the sweeping farm landscape before flipping it over: Leo Mayakovsky.
There was a website and email listed beneath his name. Though I obviously wasn’t going to consider his proposition, it wouldn’t hurt to get to know a bit more about him…
A voice called out behind me. “Afternoon, Anna!”
I spun, clutching the envelope to my chest. “Ernie, hey.”
“I haven’t been seeing you here late anymore.” He smiled, pulling a trash cart behind him. “Out having fun, I hope?”
“Ha, yeah, maybe.” For the past two years, it had been a nightly ritual for Ernie to stop by my desk as he emptied the trash cans, have a chat, and give me a piece of candy. For a while it was Werther’s, then Bazooka gum for a dark period, and most recently, Smarties.
“Got yourself a boyfriend?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye.
I shoved the envelope into my lunchbox and replied, “Oh, yeah. I’m practically married!”
He laughed, and I laughed, and while I told myself I would only see Leo again to return the money, I also knew I was absolutely going to keep it.
Like all irrational decisions, it would just take a while to accept.
Back in lab, I managed to get to my desk without having to talk to anyone. It wasn’t located in the most private spot – some might call it a desk in a hallway – but I could normally work undisturbed.
Still, where was I going to stash all this money? Anyone walking by could rummage through my desk and find it. I didn’t have a key to lock it inside one of the drawers. Any meaningful accessories went missing years ago, way back when the desk was dragged into this lab during the height of disco.
One of the grad students walked past and I nodded a hello, hunching over my lunchbox like I was harboring nuclear secrets. Sweat gathered on my forehead. I wiped it away.
This was worse than the last time I had gone to Poland and my aunt had insisted on stuffing my suitcase with smoked meats and dried mushrooms.
Did you know you’re not supposed to smuggle meat and fungi into the country, no matter how much your aunt insists your dad needs to try them? And do you know how hard it is not to attract the drug-sniffing airport dogs when you’ve got a suitcase full of sausages?
This envelope was worse than the sausages. Definitely worse.
After much debate, I pulled my purse out of the desk drawer where it lived, ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
