His Fake Fiancee: BBW Romance (Fake it For Me)

Tim has been with me for seven years. After this long I had thought he did not fear me. At this moment, it would appear I am wrong.

“Rebecca was terminated due to voicing racist statements. I was not aware of this. Is there anything I need to know?”

Tim’s clear surprise as he shakes his head gives me a small measure of relief.

“Good. Christina Connolly is coming to Jefferson City to enable me to observe her close up as a stand-in for Connor. Connor may need to take time away due to Sarah being ill. At this point, unless she screws up completely, Christina will be replacing Rebecca until I find a more permanent person. Once I do, she will fill Simon’s now vacated position. If you have a problem with this, I do not care. You will treat her with respect while you work with her.”

His nod of agreement relieves me. I will not need to deal with resentment he felt toward Rebecca when she was hired. “Why not just keep her in Rebecca’s position?” Tim asks in confusion.

Because I do not trust that I can keep my hands off her, even in the office. “I have my reasons. That is all. I want to know how the Cage merger is progressing.”

“Your dinner date called. She needs to push back to eight.” Tim brings up his phone, ready to respond with my message.

For the last week she has been a pleasant if unremarkable presence in my bed. “Cancel, do not reschedule. No more contact with her.”

***

Ivan

I am in the process of judging what acquisitions can wait and what cannot when my phone beeps. I keep an open line so I do not even look up as I answer. “What?”

“I have Diego Valdez on line one,” Tim answers.

“Put him through.” I pick up the phone. “That was fast.”

“Well, when you give me someone as unremarkable as Ms. Christina Connolly, the job isn’t even a challenge. I’m emailing you on your private server now.”

“Nothing interesting at all?”

“Depends on the definition. I look at the security angle. In that way she isn’t interesting in the slightest. For a thirty-year-old woman it’s pretty damn interesting she has zero in the way of an online footprint. She’s on the major social networks but there is not a single post, all she does is follow people. The only thing we found any activity on was the website where you pin stuff. Not surprisingly for an artist, it’s mainly art and other artists.

“She received a scholarship to the School of the Art Institute here in Chicago, where the consensus was she was talented and it was a shame she quit. We had to go offline—two sources, a next-door neighbor who is as nosy as we like them, and the professor of hers where she finished her degree in business. The guy who got her in with your company. It was clear there was more than a casual interest in her on the part of the professor. A once burned, twice shy young woman who doesn’t seem to be aware of her appeal in the slightest. She had a fiancé who broke things off when her grandmother got sick and she left school to take care of her.

“Her mother died giving birth when she was only seventeen. Her father was from Ireland, came here for college. Her grandparents took them in. He died when she was four from a head injury.”

Orphaned at such a young age, interesting. It is now understandable why she made it clear her grandfather was her first priority.

“The grandparents and Christina’s mother came to America in the Mariel Boatlift in 1980. It’s the grandfather who is kind of interesting. He’s the son of a mob guy Santino Conti, Santino Junior is the result of his father hooking up with a performer in the casino he was running in Havana. When Castro kicked them out, Senior left without looking back. The grandfather got on with the local pipefitters union from a visit to his father when he landed but no further contact since. We’ve dug deep though and Santino Conti Junior is cleaner than a whistle.”

Interesting, indeed.

“The grandmother mainly worked in the local Catholic church translating for the charity. Grandmother was first diagnosed with breast cancer when Christina was only sixteen, they thought she beat it but it came back even worse when Christina was twenty-one. She quit school to take care of her grandmother until she died five years ago. Her grandfather was injured on the job, he lost a part of his leg from the knee down less than a year after his wife died.”

As Diego is speaking, I bring up the electronic file he emailed which details everything he is saying. He was not exaggerating, there is not much.

“Now she’s taking care of her grandfather. She eats, sleeps taking care of him. She doesn’t have any extracurriculars, not even the art she loves and from what I have seen is good at. Whatever you want her for, she won’t let you down.”

“Excellent. Thank you. As always I appreciate your quick, thorough work.”

“Anytime.”

Setting down the phone, I go back from the beginning of the file, endeavoring to commit every word to memory. This coupled with her personnel file gives a clear picture of who Christina Connolly is. From the two files she is almost boring; they do not come close to capturing her in person.

Once again, I consider not just her proposal from today but all of them over the years. Her mind is nimble; intelligent is not nearly a strong enough description. When she spoke, she did so with evocative eloquence. Even if I had not already been enamored with her, I would have had a hard time taking my eyes off her.

There is a picture of her engagement announcement in the Tribune. She is smiling, her hand on the chest of a tall, thin man. I check the date of the announcement, she left school four months later. The ring on her hand is tiny. Sonofabitch. I run the guy’s name. I thought he looked familiar. His family has money, a lot of it, yet her ring was barely a chip.

Three seconds after I laid eyes on her, I was checking her ring finger. Relief and satisfaction came quickly. Those who do not appreciate what they have are destined to lose it. He wa