In Name Only

Four

Ten minutes into dinner, Jonas figured out his grandfather’s angle. The wily old man was trying to drive him insane with doubt about pulling off this ruse, especially now that he had impulses of the heart echoing through his head. Jonas was almost dizzy from trying to track all the verbal land mines that might or might not be strewn through random conversational openers.

Even “pass the butter” had implications. Grandfather hated butter.

And if Grandfather failed at putting Jonas in the loony bin, Viv was doing her part to finish the job, sitting next to him looking fresh and beautiful as she reminded him on a second-by-second basis that she was well within touching distance. Not just easily accessible. But available to be touched. It was expected. Would a loving husband sling his arm across the back of her chair? Seemed reasonable.

But the moment he did it as he waited for his mom to serve the kimchi stew she’d made in honor of Grandfather’s visit, Viv settled into the crook of his elbow, which had not been his intent at all. She fit so well, he couldn’t help but let his arm relax so that it fully embraced her and somehow his fingers ended up doing this little dance down her bare arm, testing whether the silkiness felt as good all the way down as it did near her shoulder.

It did.

“...don’t you think, Jonas?”

Blinking, Jonas tore his attention away from his wife’s skin and focused on his dad. “Sure. I definitely think so.”

“That’s great,” Brian said with a nod and a wink. “It wasn’t a stretch to think you’d be on board.”

Fantastic. What in the world had he just agreed to that had his father winking, of all things? Jonas pulled his arm from around Viv’s shoulders. At this point, it seemed like everyone was convinced they were a couple and all the touching had done nothing but distract him.

Viv leaned in, her hand resting on his thigh. It was dangerously close to being in his lap. One small shift would do it, and his muscles strained to repeat the experience. But before he could sort her intention, she murmured in his ear, “We’re playing Uno later. As a team. You’ll have to teach me.”

Card games with a hard-on. That sounded like the opposite of fun. But at least he knew what he’d absently agreed to, and shot Viv a grateful smile. Her return smile did all sorts of things that it shouldn’t have, not the least of which was give him the sense that they were coconspirators. They were in this farce together and he appreciated that more than he could say. At least they could laugh about this later. Or something.

Grandfather was watching him closely as he spooned up a bite of stew, and Jonas braced for the next round of insanity. Sure enough, Grandfather cleared his throat.

“Will you and your bride be starting a family soon?”

Not this again and from his grandfather, too? Obviously Jonas’s mother had a vested interest in the answer strictly because she wanted babies to spoil, but Grandfather wasn’t asking for anything close to that reason. It was all part of the test.

“Not soon,” he hedged because family was important to the Kims. It was a source of frustration for both his parents and his grandparents that they’d only had one child apiece, and Jonas imagined they’d all be thrilled if he said Viv wanted a dozen. “Viv owns a bakery and it’s doing very well. She’d like to focus on her career for a while.”

Yes. That was the reason they weren’t having kids right away. Why had he been racking his brain over that? Except now he was thinking about the conversation where he had to tell everyone that while he cared about Viv, they were better as friends, so the marriage was over. While it soothed his sense of honor that it was the truth, he’d never considered that the annulment would upset his family.

“We’re having her cupcakes for dessert,” his mother threw in with a beaming smile. “They look scrumptious.”

Perfect segue and took some heat off a subject that Jonas suddenly did not want to contemplate. “The lemon are my favorite. One bite and that was when I decided I couldn’t let Viv get away.”

The adoring glance she shot him thumped him in the gut. The little secret smile playing about her lips worked in tandem, spreading tendrils of heat through him in ways that should be uncomfortable at a table full of Kims who were all watching him closely. But the sensation was too enjoyable to squelch.

“Honestly, that was when I knew he was special,” Viv admitted, and Jonas nearly did a double take at the wistful note in her voice. “He appreciates my cupcakes in a way regular customers don’t. A lot goes into the recipes and I don’t just mean my time. It’s a labor of love, born out of a desire to make people happy, and I can see on his face that I’ve done that. Most customers just devour the thing without stopping to breathe, but Jonas always takes one bite and immediately stops to savor it. Then he tells me how great it is before taking another bite.”

Well, yeah, because he could taste the sunshine in it, as if she’d somehow condensed a few rays and woven them through the ingredients. How could he not take his time to fully appreciate the unique experience of a Viviana Dawson cupcake?

Jonas blinked, dragging his lids down over his suddenly dry eyes. He didn’t do that every time, not the way she was describing it, as if a cupcake held all that meaning.

He glanced at his mom, who looked a little misty.

“That sounds like a magical courtship,” she said.

“Oh, it was,” Viv agreed enthusiastically. “It was like one of those movies where the hero pretends he only wants the cupcakes when he comes into the shop, but it’s really to see the baker. But I always knew from the first that the way to his heart was through my frosting.”

His mother laughed and Jonas checked his eye roll because the whole point was to sell this nonsense. Everyone was eating it up, no pun intended, so why mess with the ridiculous story Viv was spinning?

Except the whole thing made him uncomfortable.

Surely his grandfather wouldn’t appreciate hearing his successor described with such romanticism. If anything, Viv could help Jonas’s case by telling everyone how hard he worked and how difficult it was to pry him away from his cell phone when they went to lunch.

He sighed. She couldn’t say that. It would be a big, fat lie. When he did anything with Viv, he always switched his phone to do not disturb. He loved listening to stories about her sisters, or a new recipe she was working through. But it didn’t mean he was gaga over her like a besotted fool.

Yet...that’s what he needed his grandfather to buy, as difficult as it was to envision. Grandfather hadn’t accepted Jonas’s marriage to Viv because she’d helped him increase profits or created an advantageous business alliance. Viv was an impulse of the heart.

How had he gotten caught in the middle of trying to prove to his grandfather that Jonas was a committed, solid CEO candidate, while also attempting to convince him that he and Viv had fallen in love? And Jonas had no illusions about the necessity of maintaining the current vibe, not after his grandfather smiled over Viv’s enthusiastic retelling of what would probably forever be called the Cupcake Courtship. It was madness.

“Will you bring your wife to Seoul to visit the Kim ancestral home?” Grandfather asked in the lull. “It’s yours now. Perhaps you’ll want to redecorate?”

Jonas nearly groaned. He hadn’t had four seconds to mention the gift to Viv. Her eyebrows lifted in silent question and he blessed her discretion.

“We’re actually looking for a house together in Raleigh,” Jonas improvised much more smoothly than he would have guessed he could. Viv’s eyebrows did another reach-for-the-sky move as he rushed on. “So probably we won’t make it to Korea anytime soon. But we do both appreciate the gift.”

Nothing like a good reminder that Jonas’s home was in America. The future of the company lay here, not in Seoul. The more he could root himself in North Carolina, the better. Of course the answer was to buy a property here. With Viv. A new ancestral home in North Carolina. Then his statement to his grandfather wouldn’t be a lie.

“Yes, thank you so much, Mr. Kim,” Viv said sweetly. “We’ll discuss our work schedules and find a mutual time we can travel. I would be honored to see your ancestral home. Mrs. Kim, perhaps you’d advise me on whether the decor needs refurbishing?”

Jonas’s mom smiled so widely that it was a wonder she didn’t crack her face. “That’s a lovely idea. I would be thrilled to go to lunch and discuss the house, as I’ve always loved the locale.”

Speechless, Jonas watched the exchange with a very real sense of his life sliding out of control and no way to put on the brakes. In the last two minutes, he’d managed to rope himself into shopping for a house in Raleigh, then traveling to Korea so Viv could visit Seoul with the express intent of redecorating a house neither of them wanted...with his mom. What next?

“While you’re in Korea,” Grandfather said, and his tone was so leading that everyone’s head turned toward him, “we should discuss taking next steps toward increasing your responsibilities at Kim Electronics. The board will look very favorably on how you’ve matured, Jonas. Your accomplishments with the American market are impressive. I would be happy to recommend you as the next CEO when I retire.”

The crazy train screeched to a halt in the dead center of Are You Kidding Me Station. Say something. Tell him you’re honored.

But Jonas’s throat froze as his brain tried to sort through his grandfather’s loaded statements.

Everything he’d worked for had just been handed to him on a silver platter—that Viv was holding in her delicate fingers. The implications were staggering. Grandfather liked that Jonas was married. It was a huge wrinkle he had never seen coming.

Now he couldn’t annul the marriage or he’d risk losing Grandfather’s approval with the board. How was he supposed to tell Viv that the favor he’d asked of her had just been extended by about a year?

And what did it mean that his insides were doing a secret dance of happiness at getting to keep Viv longer than planned?

* * *

The spare bedroom lay at the end of a quiet hall and had its own en suite bathroom. Nice. Viv wasn’t too keen on the idea of wandering around in her bathrobe. At least not outside the bedroom. Inside was another story.

Because Jonas was on this side of the closed door. Time to ramp it up.

If she hoped to build her confidence with a man, there was no better scenario to play that out than this one, especially since she already knew they were attracted to each other And headed for a divorce. None of this was real, so she could practice without fear.

She shivered as her gorgeous husband loosened his tie and threw himself onto the bed with a groan. Shivered. What was that but a commentary on this whole situation?

“Bad day, sweetie?” she deadpanned, carefully keeping her voice light. But holy cow, Jonas was so sexy with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his bare feet crossed at the ankle as he tossed an elbow over his eyes.

“That was one of the most difficult dinners I’ve ever endured,” he confessed, as if there was nothing odd about being in a bedroom together with the door closed, while he lounged on the bed looking like a commercial for something sensual and expensive.

“Your family is great.” She eased onto the bed because she wanted to and she could. It wasn’t like there were a ton of other seats in the cute little bedroom. Well, except for the matching chairs near the bay window that flanked an inlaid end table. But she didn’t want to sit way over there when the centerpiece of the room lay on the bed.

As the mattress shifted under her weight, he peeked out from beneath his elbow, his dark eyes seeking hers. “You’re only saying that to be nice. You should stage a fight and go home. It would serve me right to have to stay here and field questions about the stability of our marriage.”

As if she’d ever do that when the best part of this fake marriage had just started. She was sharing a bedroom with Jonas Kim and he was her husband and the night was rife with possibilities.

There came the shiver again and it was delicious.

Careful.

This was the part where she always messed up with men by seeming too eager. Messing up with Jonas was not happening. There was no do-over.

Of course, scoring with Jonas had its issues, too. Like the fact that she couldn’t keep him. This was just practice, she reminded herself. That was the only way she could get it together.

“I’m not staging a fight.” She shook her head and risked reaching out to stroke Jonas’s hair in a totally casual gesture meant to soothe him, because after all, he did seem pretty stressed. “What would we fight about? Money?”

“I don’t know. No.” The elbow came off his face and he let his eyes drift closed as she ran her fingers over his temples. “That feels nice. You don’t have to do that.”

Oh, yes. She did. This was her chance to touch Jonas in a totally innocuous way and study her husband’s body while he wasn’t aware.

“It’s possible for me to do something because I want to instead of out of a sense of obligation, you know.”

He chuckled. “Point taken. I’m entirely too sensitive to how big a favor this is and how difficult navigating my family can be.”

Stroking his hair might go down as one of the greatest pleasures of her life. It was soft and silky and thick. The inky strands slid across her fingertips as she buried them deep and rubbed lightly against his scalp, which earned her a groan that was amazingly sexy.

“Relax,” she murmured, and was only half talking to herself as her insides contracted. “I don’t find your family difficult. Your mom is great and I don’t know if you know this or not, but your grandfather does not in fact breathe fire.”

“He gave us a house.” His eyes popped open and he glanced over at her, shrinking the slight distance between them. “There are all sorts of underlying expectations associated with that, not the least of which is how upset he’s going to be when I have to give it back.”

She shrugged, pretending like it wasn’t difficult to get air into her lungs when he focused on her so intently. “Don’t give it back. Keep it and we’ll go visit, like we promised.”

“Viv.” He sat up, taking his beautiful body out of reach, which was a shame. “You’re being entirely too accommodating. Were you not listening to the conversation at dinner? This is only going to get more complicated the longer we drag it out. And we are going to be dragging it out apparently.”

Normally, this would be where she threw herself prostrate at a man’s feet and wept with joy over the fact that he wasn’t calling things off. But she wasn’t clingy anymore. Newly Minted Independent Viv needed to play this a whole different way if she wanted to get to a place where she had a man slavishly devoted to her. And she would not apologize for wishing for a man who loved her so much that he would never dream of calling the duration of their marriage “dragging it out.”

“You say that like being married to me is a chore,” she scolded lightly. “I was listening at dinner. I heard the words CEO and Jonas in the same sentence. Did you? Because that sounded good to me.”

“It is good. For me. Not you. I’m now essentially in the position of using you to further my career goals for an extended period of time. Not just until the merger happens. But until my grandfather retires and fully transitions the role of CEO to me. That could take months. A year.”

Oh, God. A whole year of living with Jonas in his amazing loft and being his wife? That was a lot of practicing for something that would never be real. How could she possibly hide her feelings for Jonas that long? Worse, they’d probably grow stronger the longer she stayed in his orbit. How fair was it to keep torturing herself like this?

On the flip side, she’d promised to do this for Jonas as a favor. As a friend. He wasn’t interested in more or he’d have told her. Practice was all she could reasonably expect from this experience. It had to be enough.

“That’s a significant development, no doubt. But I don’t feel used. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Jonas scowled instead of overflowing with gratitude. “I can’t figure out what you’re getting out of this. It was already a huge sacrifice, even when it was only for a few weeks until my grandfather got his deal going with Park. Now this. Are you dying of cancer or something?”

She forced a laugh but there was nothing funny about his assumptions. Or the fact that she didn’t have a good answer for why she didn’t hate the idea of sticking around as long as Jonas would have her. Maybe there was something wrong with that, but it was her business, not his. “What, like I’m trying to check off everything on my bucket list before I die and being married to Jonas Kim was in the top three? That’s a little arrogant, don’t you think?”

When he flinched, she almost took it back, but that’s how Newly Minted Viv rolled. The last thing he needed to hear was that being married to him occupied the top spot on all her lists. And on that note, it was definitely time to put a few more logs on the pile before she set it on fire.

“Running a cupcake business is hard,” she told him firmly. “You’ve built Kim Electronics from the ground up. You should know how it is. You work seventy hours a week and barely make a dent. Who has time for a relationship? But I get lonely, same as anyone. This deal is perfect for me because we can hang out with no pressure. I like you. Is that so hard to believe?”

Good. Deflect. Give him just enough truth to make it plausible.

His face relaxed into an easy grin. “Only a little. I owe you so much. Not sure my scintillating personality makes up for being stuck sharing a bedroom with me.”

“Yeah, that part sucks, all right,” she murmured, and let her gaze trail down his body. What better way to “practice” being less clingy than to get good and needy and then force herself to walk away? “We should use this opportunity to get a little more comfortable with each other.”

The atmosphere got intense as his expression darkened, and she could tell the idea intrigued him.

“What? Why? We’ve already sold the coupledom story to my family. It’s a done deal and went way better than I was expecting. We don’t have to do the thing where we touch each other anymore.”

Well, that stung. She’d had the distinct impression he liked touching her.

“Oh, I wish that was true.” She stuck an extra tinge of dismay into her tone, just to be sure it was really clear that she wasn’t panting after him. Even though she was lying through her teeth. “But we still have all of tomorrow with your family. And you’re planning to meet mine, right? We have to sell that we’re hopelessly in love all over again. I’m really concerned about tongues wagging. After all, Joy’s husband knows everyone who’s anyone. The business world is small.”

Jonas’s eyes went a little wide. “We just have to sell being married. No one said anything about love.”

“But that’s why people get married, Jonas.” Something flickered through his expression that looked a lot like panic. And it set a bunch of gears in motion in her head. Maybe they should be using this time to get matters straight instead of doing a lot of touching. Because all at once, she was really curious about an important aspect of this deal that she’d thus far failed to question. “Don’t you think so?”

“That people should only get married if they’re in love? I don’t know.” But he shifted his gaze away so quickly that it was obvious he had something going on inside. “I’ve never been married before.”

That was a careful way to answer the question. Did that mean he had been in love but not enough to marry the girl? Or he’d never been in love? Maybe he was nursing a serious broken heart and it was too painful to discuss. “Your parents are married. Aren’t they in love?”

“Sure. It’s just not something I’ve given a lot of thought to.”

“So think about it.” She was pushing him, plain and simple, but this was important compatibility stuff that she’d never questioned. Everyone believed in love. Right? “I’m just wondering now why you needed a fake wife. Maybe you should have been looking for someone to fall in love with this whole time instead of taking me to lunch for a year.”

He hadn’t been dating anyone, this she knew for a fact because she’d asked. Multiple times. Her curiosity on the matter might even be described as morbid.

“Viv.” His voice had gone quiet and she liked the way he said her name with so much texture. “If I’d wanted to spend time with someone other than you over the last year, I would have. I like you. Is that so hard to believe?”

Her mouth curved up before she could catch it. But why should she? Jonas made her smile, even when he was deflecting her question. Probably because he didn’t think about her “that way” no matter how hot the kiss outside her bedroom had been. One-sided then. They were friends. Period. And she should definitely not be sad about that. He was a wonderful, kind man who made not thinking wicked thoughts impossible the longer they sat on a bed together behind closed doors.

Yeah, she could pretend she was practicing for a relationship with some other man all she wanted. Didn’t change the fact that deep in her heart Viv wished she could be the person Jonas would fall madly in love with.

But she knew she couldn’t keep Jonas. At least she was in the right place to fix her relationship pitfalls.

Now, how did one go about seducing a man while giving him the distinct impression she could take him or leave him?