Borrowed Fiancé

My fiancé dumped me the night before our engagement party.

He married someone else four months later and mailed me a save-the-date.

I needed a date.

He had to be hot enough to make Jamie question his own gene pool. Expensive enough to make the room recalculate.

My best friend Tess Vance laughed like a woman about to sell me a war.

"My uncle Ash needs a fake fiancée. His mother's been throwing Sutton girls at him for a year."

We shook on it before the espresso went cold.

At the wedding, he slid the Vance emerald onto my finger and tore Jamie's whole performance to ribbons in two sentences.

I told myself it was a transaction.

No feelings. No entanglement. No fallout.

Two months later I was staring at two pink lines on a First Response stick at six in the morning, and Tess was already pulling on her coat.

She dragged me into Ash's concierge clinic on East 70th and slammed the test stick on the desk.

"Uncle Ash. Help. Some loser knocked her up."

Christian Vance reached past her and turned the deadbolt.

He pulled off his glasses and looked at me like a man closing a deal.

"That loser…"

"is me."