Duping Cupid (A Valentine's Day Short Story) (5 page)

Adorable?
What am I? Ava’s latest puppy?

Yeah, he answered his own question. He was just another fashion accessory, as dressed up and trained as the
Poms. Time to earn his pat on the head. Maybe a treat for his rumbling stomach.

“I pursued her relentlessly,” he told Gwendolyn, though his adoring gaze remained pinned to Ava.
“Sent her flowers from Pierre’s, ordered jeweled collars from Harry Winston for Debussy and Ravel. She sent everything back without any reply.”

“What changed your mind, Ava?”

“Sebastian, of course,” she said with a sly smile. “He really was relentless. Once I got to know him, I realized he was so charming and generous. How could I possibly resist?”

And he can fetch, his sarcastic nature added.
Silently.

“And
passionate
.” She weighted that last description with heavy innuendo.

Like he’d romp between the sheets with this walking toothpick.
Still, the game must go on. “Only for what strikes my heart...” He lifted her hand and kissed her fingertips. “...like you.”

“Oh, I can definitely see his appeal,” Gwendolyn gushed.

Game, set, match.

For the next three hours, Bass fawned and scraped and
charmed, a dancing bear for Ava and her friends. The only way he managed to suffer through was by imagining Vivi’s laughter when he shared his experiences with her later.

Sometime after midnight, he
sank onto his couch and kicked off his Italian loafers. His feet breathed a sigh of relief. Five hundred dollar shoes shouldn’t pinch his toes. For five hundred bucks, they should be able to beam him up from Ava’s igloo parties and zap him home the minute the wish popped into his head.

Comfortable at last, he picked up the phone and dialed
Vivi’s number. Once he heard her sleepy hello, all his frustrations drained away. “I wound up choking down a burger at some Irish pub tonight. Just me and a bunch of drunken guys who had nowhere else to go for Thanksgiving. How’d you do, food-wise?”

“I planned ahead.” He could hear her smile in her voice, and warmth embraced him.
“Bought a turkey sandwich from 33 Gourmet for the ride home.”

“Ouch.
” He sucked in a sharp breath. “That hurts, Vivi. I can’t believe you went to my favorite deli without me.”

She laughed. God, how he’d missed her laugh!
Vivi laughed with her whole heart, unlike the women he’d been spending time with, who tittered and snickered but never dared to risk lines on their plastic faces.

“Seriously,” she said
. “How are you?”

“Humbled,” he admitted. “How was the
fam?”

“Russ got engaged.”

“Yikes.” He understood what she didn’t say. Every year, her mother ran roughshod over, what she considered, Vivi’s failings. If Russ brought a fiancée with him this time around, Vivi had no backup from her mom’s stinging barbs. A flush of guilt warmed his cheeks. He should have been there with her.

“Her name is
Scah-let
,” she said with a thick southern accent. “Can you believe it? Like the character in
Gone With the Wind
, and just as prissy.”

He winced.
“What’d your mother say?”

“Oh, she ate up
the old antebellum charm with a sterling punch bowl.”

Her heavy sigh pierced his eardrum and his heart. Part of him wanted to tell her all she had to do was say the word and he’d slide the biggest diamond in Tiffany’s on her finger. Not for her mother’s benefit, but for his. So that even in Penn Station at rush hour, every other man would know this extraordinary woman was taken. The saner part of him realized he had to wait. If he told her how he felt right now, she’d either laugh at him or freak out. He didn’t want either of those reactions.
Ava had better ideas—at least, she claimed to have better ideas. Who knew if the subterfuge would work?

“Anyway,”
Vivi said, “I don’t want to talk about my family. Tell me about your Thanksgiving with the hoi-polloi. What happened? Didn’t you like the food? Too frou-frou for you?”

“What food? My ‘girlfriend’ neglected to inform me this was cocktails only. So while the rest of the hoi-polloi had their personal chefs prepare a feast before the soiree, dumb old me showed up on an empty stomach.
”

“O
ops.”

“Yeah.”

A thick-as-a-brick pause walled up the air between them until, at last, Vivi asked, “How’s Ava treating you? She’s not too horrific, is she?”

“Actually, she’s a doll,” he replied.
Yeah, right. If that doll was Chucky
. He’d never lied to Vivi before, but Ava had insisted the best way to get her to face her true feelings was through jealousy.  So he’d play up his mock romance with Ava, not just for the masses, but to win Vivi over, as well. “We’re having a blast together.”

“Well, great. That’s...great.” Her flat tone
spoke volumes to him, and clearly communicated “great” was light years from her true opinion. “Oh, by the way. I need a copy of her contract.”

Straight back to business.
Because she couldn’t bear to think of him with another woman and didn’t want to pursue that topic in depth? He hoped Ava was right. “Sarah has it. I faxed a copy over to her the other day.” And she ought to be thrilled with what he’d managed to negotiate out of the tight-fisted wretch. God knew, he was earning every penny.

“Okay, great. I’ll check it out when I get back to the office. What’s on schedule for you for the rest of the week?”

“A bunch of parties with Ava. Should be a lot of fun.” As fun as a root canal, but he kept that idea to himself. The point was to get Vivi to realize they belonged together—even if he had to pretend to be happy with someone else to achieve his goal. But jeez, he was spreading the lies on thick. “How about you?”

“The usual.
I’ll spend the rest of tonight eating my spleen over my mother’s commentary, and the rest of the weekend drowning my sorrows in chocolate and spending too much money on Christmas gifts to make myself feel better.”

His fault.
Without him to shield her from the pain of her family’s disappointment, she planned to self-destruct with excess. Not a damn thing he could do to stop her, either. Even if he wanted to go to her place and console her, his contract with Ava forbade it. Now that the press had picked up on the new “romance” between him and Ava, he couldn’t be seen with Vivi or any other woman until March when Ava would set him free to pursue his real love.

Vivi’s
loud yawn shook him out of his thoughts. “I should get some sleep,” she murmured.

“Uh-huh.” What else could he say? This whole situation sucked rocks
, and he couldn’t change it for four more months. If Vivi could wait that long.

“Keep me posted on what’s going on with you two, okay?
” she said, her depression evident in her low monotone. “Not that I don’t trust you, but...”

He knew. She didn’t trust Ava. Neither did
he.

****

The photos hit the Wharton Gossipmonger, an online news site, on Black Friday. Early that morning, Vivi, still in her flannel pajamas, sat at her kitchen table, laptop in front of her and a cup of black coffee to perk her up after a sleepless night. Between her mother’s admonitions and her late-night conversation with Bass, she had plenty on her mind to fend off pleasant dreams. Nightmares about attending Bass’s wedding to Ava with her mother as her date reigned supreme. She shuddered and sipped the coffee to ward off another round of chills.

In the left margin
of the Gossipmonger’s website, a headline caught her eye:
Ava Featherstone Declares Her Independence
. She clicked on the link, telling herself she only did so because her business was on the line. Above a slideshow of photographs, a blurb about the Thanksgiving fundraiser claimed Ava had looked “stunning” in a floral sheath dress, but attributed her very special glow to the man on her arm.

It looks like the honeymoon is over between
former model Ava Featherstone and financier hubby, Cecil Bannerman. While Cecil has been spotted stepping out with a young blonde rumored to be his former executive assistant, Ava clearly has her hands full with the still-dishy Sebastian Lawrence of
Our Small Town
fame. Take a look at what our photographer witnessed at last night’s fundraiser for Feed the Hungry at the Van Orton Art Gallery
.

Vivi
couldn’t stop herself. She clicked the right arrow, and the first photo came into focus, a beaming couple on the steps of some artsy-fartsy place in midtown. Bass looked amazing in a dark blue pinstriped suit, shoulders broad and waist narrow. His crisp white dress shirt, opened at the collar, lent the formal attire a carefree attitude, so indicative of the Bass she knew. His expression, on the other hand, threw her. His chin nuzzled Ava’s neck, one hand wrapping her waist so that she snuggled into his side, and his face wore a look of smug bliss—as if he’d discovered heaven.

An act?
Or was she staring at a man falling in love? She couldn’t tell. Bass was a helluva an actor and could flip on the stage mask with the speed of an eye blink. What else did the photogs capture? When she clicked the arrow again, the next photo showed Bass and Ava in a passionate lip lock. Ugh. Squeezing her eyes shut against the image, she pushed away from the table in disgust.

How could he kiss that skeleton in designer couture? What could he possibly see in her to love?

Vivi wanted to slap herself. Bass was her best friend. If he’d found love, she should be happy for him. She knew his secrets, knew about his disastrous marriage, his ugly childhood.

Did Ava?
Did Ava realize how lucky she was to win Bass’s heart? A heart full of humor and generosity and loyalty? Somehow, she doubted a woman like Ava appreciated those qualities. She’d probably care more about his bank account and how he looked standing next to her in photos. In fact, Vivi would bet every dollar she owned that the minute Bass got a little paunch, the former model would kick him to the curb.

Dammit, he deserved better! He deserved someone who’d love him always: in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, and all the extremes in between.

Tunneling her fingers through her hair, Vivi paced from her kitchen to living room and back again. She had to stop obsessing over Bass and Ava. She had to get out of this apartment, find a way to get the images of them as a couple out of her head.

Only one thing to do.
She’d head to the gym, do some cardio, sweat out the bad humor.

Then, maybe she’d
battle the crowds at Macy’s for Christmas gifts. Her shopping list had just expanded by one, thanks to Russ’s surprise yesterday, so she might as well get a jumpstart on the special sales. Would she have to add another female to the list before the holiday arrived?

No. Don’t go there
.
Forget about Ava and Bass for now
.

Focus on family.
What to get the southern belle? She snorted. Like it mattered. Scarlet already got the diamond, and Russ won their parents’ approval. Any additional gift was superfluous.

Screw it. She’d come up with something.
For everyone. Mind made up, she shed the pajamas for jeans and a sweater, packed her gym bag, and headed out the door.

Four hours later,
cleansed in mind and body, she decided to stop by the office and get hold of Ava’s contract. She was obsessing, and she knew it. She just couldn’t help herself.

Rifling through the file cabinet, she found the one marked
Bannerman
in Sarah’s precise print and pulled out the manila folder. She took her seat behind the desk and flipped to the faxed copy of the contract.

Ohmigod
. The number leaped out at her as if underscored in neon. How on earth had he managed to get her to agree to pay that much? And what exactly had he promised in return?

Chapter 4

As November faded into December,
Vivi strived to keep busy without Bass’s usual presence in her life. The new lovebirds, nicknamed
SebAva
by the local gossip columnists, splashed headlines in The
New York Post
’s Page Six, and of course, the Wharton Gossipmonger. To the rest of the world, they probably registered a moment’s curiosity and faded into oblivion again. Not so for Vivi, who set up a Google Alert on her phone and still typed Bass’s name in her search engine a dozen times a day to see the latest photos and read about the most recent sightings of
SebAva
. Obsessive, yes, but stalking seemed to be the only way she could discover details about
SebAva
’s budding romance. After Thanksgiving, phone calls between her and Bass went from once every few days to once every full moon.

With the weather growing
colder, Vivi found it harder and harder to leave her warm apartment for anything besides work. Two weeks before Christmas, she bought herself a gift to help ease her loneliness: a Maltese puppy she named Beowulf. He turned out to be the perfect companion. Daily walk requirements made her get out of her apartment several times a day, no matter how low the temperature or how much precipitation fell. At night, she and Beowulf would snuggle on the couch and watch television together, with the pup never complaining about her choice of show or movie. A first for any male she’d known.