My Fake Forbidden Boyfriend (Heartbreakers Book 1) Read online

  “You need to get back at him,” Aria declares. “One up him. Cut his dick off, metaphorically speaking.”

  “I don’t want to think about Brad’s dick in any way now, thank you. And uh- it’s kind of hard to up the humiliation he dealt me. She’s prettier. Way prettier. Frick, she’s hot. She’s seven years younger. She’s…she’s like eight sizes smaller.”

  “No way,” Aria snorts. “She just probably puts out strange positions with him and sucks a mean-”

  “Stop!” I plead. “Please, god, just stop. It’s not helping!” I slap both hands over my face and rub them down like I can scrub away those images.

  “This is the big league,” Aria goes on. Her tone changes, shifting from less evil to full-on evil mode. “Dickless Brad thinks he can play in our arena? Dude. We’re the ones who have money. You need to think bigger here. You have resources. You have power. You’re the freaking owner of an entire empire.”

  “Technically, my mother handed that over to me. I never actually wanted it.”

  “Whatever.” Aria looks so much prettier when she rolls her eyes than I know I do. “That’s beside the point. Do you think I wanted to spend my life being involved with hotels? No freaking thanks. It doesn’t matter that you wanted to be a writer and wanted to make a difference in the world. You were also really good at art and drawing, and you tried to gain your mother’s love by designing shit like she did in a desperate bid for affection, and yeah. She might have critiqued you and been a total bitch and told you that you’d never be skinny enough to be a wicked witch like her and retire to the Cayman’s with her twenty-year-old boyfriend and her yacht, but fuck it. You’re here now. You’re at the top. You’re talented. Smart. Amazing. You took the reins she handed you, and you freaking ran with it. You’ve been doing this for five years! Five! Years! You have a multi-billion-dollar company at your disposal. It doesn’t matter that your mom still owns shares and even your dad too. You’re calling the shots. You need to use that power to your advantage.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I groan.

  I know for a fact that I’m not going to like where this is going. Having money is nice even though I did really want to be a journalist at one point. And even though Aria is right about my mom, including the witchy stuff, and unfortunately, the twenty-year-old boyfriend stuff as well, I would never act like an entitled brat and throw my money or my position around. I know I’m fortunate. I do what I can to try and better the world. I believe in charity for real. In trying to make a difference. My mom once said I couldn’t save them all, so why even try, but I always thought that was stupid. Over the years, I’ve invested in start-up businesses and designers in other countries that have no resources at their disposal. I’ve taken chances on people with no name for themselves, and all the raw talent in the world. I’ve hired models that never would have made it anywhere else. I have scholarships set up for people who want to get into fashion and unrelated art scholarships.

  That aside, I’m a big believer in trying to make my own city a better place. Miami is big, and I’m fully aware that a lot of people fall through the cracks. Homelessness, overcrowded animal shelters, hungry kids. Yeah. I try and make a difference where I can. I know Sabrina, my mother, would scoff at how much money I’ve given away over the years, but my mom can just shove her complaints up the tight ass she always bragged about. She hasn’t bothered calling me in just over a year, and I can honestly say I’m okay with that at the moment.

  “You need to beat him at his own game!” Aria continues. Her eyes light up a little more, clueing me in that she’s about to reveal her evil plot in all its glory. “Find someone. Think big, but not too big. You have good contacts. Think…models.”

  “Oh my god.” I barely resist the urge to facepalm myself. “Right. One up him by doing the same shit. You’re missing one major point here that’s pretty glaringly obvious. I can’t do the same thing he did. Besides, who would believe that? That someone like me who—well—most guys in the industry are—well—I’m—they don’t date women like me.”

  “Women like you?” Cassie growls.

  “Women like you?” Aria shrieks right after. “What the hell does that mean? You’re gorgeous. Smart! The best artist that I know! You handle a multi-billion-dollar empire, day in and day out. You’re a successful woman! You’re generous beyond generous. You actually care about the people you work with. You care about people you don’t even know! You never used to say things about yourself like that before Dickless Brad.”

  “He threw that box of chocolates that the lady from Paris gave you… those ones—he threw them in the trash,” Cassie points out gently. “You should have dumped him on the spot. Those were a gift.”

  “You should have swapped his toothpaste out for hemorrhoid cream. Put hair remover in his shampoo, since he was so vain about his stupid blonde hair. Like just because he had blonde hair and blue eyes and a square jaw, he thought he was hot shit. I never liked him. I always thought he was a class A asshole.”

  “We were together for three years,” I point out in a flat, dead voice.

  “I’m just saying that you had all the confidence in the world before you met him, and now look at what you’re sitting here saying. If I had known that you were thinking this shit all along, I would have staged an intervention by now.” Aria thumped her hand on the table again for emphasis. “You’re perfect!”

  “Clearly not, or I wouldn’t have been dumped for a nineteen-year-old model.”

  “No, no, no, no,” Cassie moans. “Don’t say things like that! If you say shit like that, people like Dickless Brad and your mom win.”

  Great. Now she’s getting on board with Aria. I know I should thank them for being amazing friends, but it’s hard when I feel like I’ve been kicked in the lady bits. Which I assume would hurt just as much as taking a kick to the nuts.

  “I’m taking you to that waxing appointment, and we are going out!” Aria announces.

  “That is not going to help.”

  “Think Aiden Builder. That might help.”

  “What?” I shriek and jump out of my chair so fast that another one of the damn invisible porcupines pierces my butt cheek all the way up.

  “I know you’ve been trying to entice him over to your side for a while. Make him an offer he can’t refuse. Make yourself part of the deal.”

  “That’s crazy!” Cassie doesn’t jump up, but at least she’s on my side.

  “Bribe him. Make him fake date you. Give him a contract that will blow his mind. Then, freaking get on the runway, your own runway, and beat that skinny little gold digger, and I mean Brad, not the nineteen-year-old hussy, at his own game.”

  “She’s really not that bad,” I mutter. “I swear. She’s actually kind of nice. If anything, I feel sorry for her. I’d warn her off if I didn’t come across like a crazy ex.”

  “See!” Aria insists. “You’re way too nice! Only the nicest person on earth would say something like that!”

  Cassie clears her throat when I look to her for help. “Maybe you do need to show them who’s boss.” Great. Now she’s back on Aria’s side.

  “Model?” I scoff. “You’ve lost your freaking mind. Do I need to remind you that my own mother bemoaned the fact that I would never be a size four, let alone a two or a zero for my entire life? She tried to make me eat salad for breakfast when I was four. When I was six, she literally gave me a membership to one of those diet clubs that send pre-packaged meals in the mail. When I was eight, she told me to juice everything. When I was ten, she told me never to drink juice.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Double bitch,” Aria mutters. “She was wrong about everything; especially the whole nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Revenge. Revenge tastes better. And chocolate.”

  “Please just kill me now,” I mutter. Since it’s just us, I’ve opted for canvas flats, jeans, and a light long-sleeved shirt. An outfit my mother wouldn’t be caught dead in. She thought jeans were the gr
eatest crime against humanity, which is part of the reason I wear them whenever I can. “If I walked the runway, I’d probably trip and fall flat on my own face. I don’t even wear heels. And, oh, right. I can’t walk the runway, because I’m a size ten, and my own label doesn’t even make that size.”

  Cassie blinks at me.

  Aria stares at me, open-mouthed. “That’s it!”

  “What’s it?” I’m almost afraid to ask.

  “What tastes better than normal revenge? Extra double, spicy revenge! You can stick it to your mom and Brad at the same time!” She goes on, picking up steam, getting more animated. Her hands start flying all over the place, emphasizing her words. “You can start a new line. Make clothes for real women. Make affordable, ethical stuff. Take things in a new direction. Just because your mom had this vision of what fashion is doesn’t mean you have to. Your mom didn’t even design you one single dress. Ever.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  I was pretty much forced, and by forced, I mean guilted into taking over my mom’s company. I did the best I could, but I did that best with my mom’s idea of how clothes should look and feel and be worn. The one thing that never occurred to me, not in five years, was to change things up.

  “Shit’s about to get real!” Aria leaps up and actually fist pumps the air, which looks hilarious, given that she’s wearing a tight pink mini dress. Aria is Aria, and she makes no apology for what she likes. On her, a pink mini dress is like a power suit on a businesswoman.

  “Can you please just get a personal trainer and not go out jogging alone?” Cassie pleads, bringing us right back around to the start of the conversation when I announced my intentions to take up jogging because I thought I needed to make some changes.

  “You could always come with me.”

  “And risk getting knifed? I love you, but not that much,” Cassie laughs, and it dispels some of the tension from Aria’s crazy plotting.

  “I’d get knifed for you,” Aria admits.

  “I actually would too,” Cassie agrees.

  Aria digs her phone out of some hidden crevice. I have no idea where she keeps a phone that size in a dress that small. I’m almost scared to ask. “I’m going to send you the number for the waxing place again. Please. Use it. Then, we’re taking a little trip to LA, and we’re not coming up empty-handed.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say with a shudder.

  I thought I’d deterred Aria from her wild schemes. Apparently not. LA is where Aiden Builder is currently based. He’s made no secret about wanting to change it up and make the transition to Miami. We’ve been trying to get him on board with our company for a long time. He’s only the hottest male model in the freaking industry at the moment. I don’t know why he keeps refusing. He always had a reason not to want to work with us, and I wasn’t the one doing the negotiating. There are other models out there who want less money, and I was always more about launching people’s careers than I was about furthering an already successful, likely egotistical one anyway, so I’d continuously let it go until the matter was inevitably brought up again in some meeting or other before the whole process of failed negotiations started and ended again.

  “Why am I supposed to wax if it’s supposed to be fake?” I can’t believe I just asked that. Was it seriously me who put that question out there?

  Aria winks at me. A scary wink. She’s somehow mastered the art of making a wink look evil. “Because, honey, you never know.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Aiden

  Let’s get one thing straight. I come from nothing. I was raised by a single mom who gave up the world for me and worked her ass off to do it, so I have my head on straight. I was raised with some pretty tight principles, and I haven’t managed to let that shit go, even when working in an industry where that kind of shit, even thinking about it, isn’t exactly high up on the list. I’m not paid to think. Obviously. I’m paid to work my ass off in the gym and look good when it counts. I know I have a pretty limited window to do that, and so, I worked doubly hard, and still not half as hard as my mom ever did for me.

  I made it. I made enough money to buy my mom that house and car she never cared about having. I made it, and I insisted that she enjoy it. I made it so she could retire from the jobs she hated and the ones she didn’t hate half as much. I made it so she could finally take a fucking break.

  I was pretty damn fortunate along the way. I guess if I believed in fate, I’d say it smiled on me. The rest was just hard ass work. Henry Frankworth, one of those hard-asses who takes no prisoners and no nonsense, and a tough son of a bitch who I respect the hell out of, got me where I am today. I’ve stuck with him, and he’s been a better agent than I ever deserved. I’ve made him a boatload of money along the way, but F it. He made me even more.

  So even though I had no intention of going to work for a company whose sole goal in life is to put out things that look like Halloween costumes, when Henry told me I needed to sit in on a meeting with the lady who owned the whole thing, I didn’t refuse. I respected the guy too much for that.

  I rolled into the meeting room, a tasteful boardroom at Henry’s agency, expecting to find a pinched-up hag. I fully expected her to be adorned in pearls, diamonds, and five grand worth of threads. Maybe an extra couple grand for the shoes. I thought she’d be wearing a wristwatch. Also diamonds. Also a couple of grand. F that, more like twenty. Maybe a set of glasses that probably set her back more than most people make in a year. Immaculate white teeth. Enough plastic surgery that she looked more than borderline frightening.

  I did not expect to walk into a bad joke, but there they were. A blonde, a brunette, and a red—okay, the other girl has jet black hair, but there are three of them. And they’re looking at me like they’re starved for their next meal, and I’m the special cheat meal. A rich, juicy hamburger they can sink their teeth into. With extra mayo, pickles, cheese, and god, even the onions.

  I did not dress to impress. I strolled into the room, head high, wearing a pair of stained, worn jeans that I bought at a thrift store just for this occasion. I paired it with a threadbare black T-shirt, one that I’ve owned for years. It fits tight and might just define the fact that I spend a couple of hours in the gym every single morning. My shoes have seen better days and then some. My right big toe actually sticks through the black canvas. In short, I’m a fraction off from a hot mess. Minus the hot. Just an extra mess.

  None of the women stand when I enter the room. The blonde eyes me up with keen interest. She’s a true beauty. One of those rare genetic anomalies. I think she knows it too. She doesn’t have the arrogance that some good-looking women get. Just a lot of confidence. The raven-haired lady is also pretty. Pretty in a different way. She’s more exotic looking. Sharp cheekbones and full lips galore, but the kind that has never seen a needle or scalpel.

  Henry pushes back his chair and stands. He nods at the chair that he’s placed directly in line with the three women’s stares. I wonder, briefly, if they’re going to pierce me with their laser beam eyes before I can even refuse. As I slide out the leather-backed office chair along the expensive tiled floor to plop down and rest my elbows on a solid wood table that probably took a hundred men around six years to assemble, I weigh the odds that I’ve walked into the wrong meeting.

  But no, Henry is here. From the way his left brow is slightly inclined as he looks at me, I know I didn’t get the place or time wrong and walk into someone else’s shit.

  Nope. This one is all mine.

  “I’m Rin Allen.” The woman on the far right of the group of three inclines her head. She doesn’t offer her hand. I like that about her. For some reason, I freaking detest shaking people’s hands. It might have something to do with how insincere the entire world is.

  “Yeah.” I nod at her like she was the one I was expecting. In truth, I forgot that the woman who owns the one company on earth I’d never work for shipped out years ago, leaving her daughter at the helm. How could I have
let that small detail slip from my mind? More importantly, how could I not have known that said daughter was drop dead effing gorgeous? “I figured that.”

  Henry makes a noise low in his throat that tells me he’s not exactly displeased, but he’s getting there. I decide it’s best just to cut the bullshit and get right down to it.

  “Look. I know you want me to come work for you. I think it’s admirable that you came to this meeting yourself instead of sending someone to negotiate with my agent, who then gets a refusal from me. It was nice to be included this time, face to face. I know you have important things to be doing, so I’m not going to waste your time. I’m not interested in working for you. I’m sorry that you flew all the way down here.”

  Rin Allen clears her throat. She looks uncomfortable, and a bright pink stain blooms on her cheekbones. She’s beautiful in a way that very few women in this industry are. She’s real. By my estimate, she’s around five-seven. She looks healthy. She’s got an athletic build, also on the curvy side. She has breasts and hips, and if she wasn’t sitting on it, probably a nice ass too. She’s the kind of woman who probably wears flats, never heels. The kind who wears sensible clothes when she’s not at work. She probably owns at least three pairs of jeans and wears them regularly because she likes how they fit, and because they’re that unthinkable magic C-word. Comfortable. She’s gorgeous, but also probably older than twenty-five and younger than thirty, which means she’s seen enough bullshit that she’s starting to take less from everyone.

  I’m honestly impressed. I find her shoulder-length dark hair, neatly straightened though not anything fancy, and near lack of makeup, flawless complexion, full lips, and large, dark eyes intriguing. I find it nothing short of amazing that she doesn’t look anything like how I expected she would. I’m also having a hard time not letting my eyes wander down her scarlet red blouse to the swell of her breasts—which, by the way, are not at all on display and just happen to be there underneath a shirt she has buttoned up all the way. My cock is suddenly twitching in my jeans below the table, and my pulse spikes. Which leaves me with just one question.