“Not really,” she admitted. “You’d think guys would pay a lot to see me show off my body but the reality is, a good percentage goes to the bar. I’m buried in debts and I don’t know what to do. I’ve seen ads for porn stars and to be honest I’m on the verge of walking into one of those.”
For a moment, I felt really bad, but then she cut my train of thought and suddenly asked, “I thought you were getting married? What was your girl’s name? Janine? Jenna? The one from our school.”
“Jenna,” I answered and gave her a sad look. “We broke up a few weeks ago. It’s my fault, to be honest. I was screwing around with some other girls at Mercury Wild and she caught on.”
Noelle looked at me with a frown, “Well, that is your fault. I just don’t see you sticking to one girl, much less getting married to one.”
Hearing those words made a light bulb flash in my head, “I have a crazy idea. It’ll help me convince my parents I deserve the inheritance and it’ll help you with all your financial problems. You have to hear me out on this.”
“Wait a minute,” she cut in. “Why aren’t your parents being more considerate with you? They just lost their eldest son, their daughter rejected their money and now they want to pry it away from the last son they have left?”
I rolled my eyes and nodded, “My dad’s really old fashioned. He doesn’t want to give the money away if he thinks I’ll just waste it all on fast cars, girls and alcohol.”
“So how’s your genius idea going to help us both simultaneously?”
I rubbed my hands together and just blurted it out, “Okay, before I say it, let me explain a little bit on how this will work. What I’m planning will impress my parents and it is guaranteed to get you out of the financial hole you’re in now. I swear this is going to work out.”
“What is it then?” she asked.
I winked and answered, “Let’s get married.”
5
Noelle
Was he joking? He had to be joking. I nearly choked on my donut when I heard him say we should get married. We just met again like five minutes ago and he was already proposing? How in the world did he get laid with so many girls if his pickup lines were this freaking stupid?
Granted, any girl would love to be in my shoes right now. I mean, come on, this is Daxter! He’s the hottest guy on the planet! If my mind wasn’t so preoccupied with his proposal I’d be thinking of how he could lay me down on hot sand and lick my skin from my belly to my lips… but no, I was too busy wondering if he had completely lost all common sense.
I took another look at him. He was indeed a hot looking man. Daxter always had chestnut hair but he let it grow long and neatly brushed it back, letting it flow with elegance and style. It paired neatly with the bright blue ocean of his eyes. However, while his style was soft and endearing his body was built like a machine; lean for efficiency but ripped with muscles. I could only guess at how often he must have spent working out at the gym.
“Hold on a minute, you were being serious?” I just had to ask to make sure.
Daxter nodded and his hands started waving around as he tried to explain, “Look, it’s not going to be real. I mean, in their eyes and the public’s eye it’ll be real. We’ll do the whole wedding thing and all the papers. However, that doesn’t mean you have to love me or treat me as your husband. We could never speak to each other and it’ll be fine.”
“So kind of like a fake marriage but it’s not?” I asked him. “It’s all for show? I still don’t see how this benefits either of us.”
He took a donut, dipped it in coffee, took a bite and then drank a bit before he continued on. “Well, one of the reasons why my family doesn’t trust me is because they think I’ll spend all the money on girls. That would have been true before. If I marry you then they’ll see I’m trying to be serious for once.”
“I get it,” I finally saw what he was getting at. “Once they see you’re being a bit serious about your personal life they’ll start to trust you with their business too. What’s in it for me?”
This is where Daxter really dropped the bomb on me. “If you marry me, I get to keep my family’s wealth. That means you have unlimited access to all that money too.”
Woah.
For a moment I had to breathe in everything he was telling me. It was like I suddenly got run over by a bus, except I somehow survived and won the lottery too. There was a lot to soak in with his offer but there was also one little monkey wrench in there: getting married.
“How do I know you’re telling me the truth?” I asked him. I learned in the strip club that a girl should never offer her goods without a down payment. He may not be asking for me to strip and fuck him but he was asking to use me, and in my book that was just about the same thing.
“Here,” he said as he flipped out his wallet. He wrote a check signed for three thousand dollars. “Take this. Use it for whatever bills you still have. If it’s not enough then come back to me but I’ll only give more if you agree to my plan. It’s a fake wedding anyway, what do you have to lose?”
I chuckled, almost to a sarcastic point, and told him, “A whole lot. Just think what people would say about me if we suddenly hooked up and got married on a whim. They’d call me a gold digger.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be too far from the truth,” he told me and I smacked him on the head with my spoon.
“Shut up,” I joked but at the same time, I was trying to be a little more serious. “Look, I appreciate the offer and the money but you can’t possibly be serious, right?”
Daxter looked at me with such big sad, puppy eyes it was like I stepped on his favorite toy or something. “I’m dead serious. Let’s do it. If it doesn’t work out we can get divorced and I’ll give you a million dollars for the trouble. Come on, it’s a win-win situation for both of