Page 37 of Reunited Soulmates
CHAPTER NINE
OLIVER
Ilooked at the woman seated across me in the small diner and smiled grimly to myself. Now that I was a little more sober, I realized that she looked absolutelynothinglike Amanda. Her hair wasn’t the same rich golden hue as Amanda’s was—it was a dark brown. And her eyes weren’t green or evenhazelat all—they were a pleasant enough brown but nothing at all like Amanda’s sea goddess eyes. Her smile…it was all wrong.
She was pretty enough and quite nice. She was also quite sympathetic, in spite of oursituation…but she just wasn’tAmanda.
But no matter how different she was, I had promised Nathalie that I would help her out of the shithole we landed ourselves in.
“So, let me get this straight,” I clarified. “Your parents are devout Christians and they have very strong views about premarital sex?”
She nodded.
“And they think you should never have sex unless you’re married or planning to get married?”
Nod, nod.
“Then, seeing as we’re not really getting married, am I not waiting to be ripped apart into shreds over dinner?”
“They won’t,” she promised. “Not if they think we’re serious.”
“The problem is we’re not,” I pointed out to her. “And we won’t ever be.”
She nodded. “Yes, I know that. I know next to nothing about you and I have no plans of being exclusive at the moment.”
I leaned back in my seat and relaxed. At least we were in agreement about that.
“So what is your plan beyond dinner?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Maybe a couple of weeks later, we can tell them we broke up or something.”
“Yes, but they’ll probably be wanting me over for dinner in the weekends and seeing as we have to act lovey-dovey at all times, it would be rather hard to just ‘break up’,” I grimaced, making quotation marks in the air. “Plus, I’m not here for the long haul. I’m just here for a brief holiday and then I’ll be going back to London.”
She slumped in her chair. “Then do you have any other ideas? I really can’t show up to dinner without you or they’ll probably kill me and disown me. In that order.”
I paused for a while to think. Nathalie’s parents were the kind who meant well for their children but ended up squeezing the life out of them. They were bound to have very strong opinions about who she was supposed to date and marry.
Heck, they might even have chosen some poor bloke off their church already to foist him on their daughter.
I had had patients like those, and these setups rarely ended well.
Then, a brilliant idea struck me.What if…
Nathalie looked at me suspiciously. “You look like you have a plan. Let’s hear it then.”
I grinned at her. “I do and it’s bloodybrilliant. It will also clear this whole mess up.”
She threw her hands up in the air. “Please, anything that will get me out of this problem—that will totally make my day so don’t hold back if you’ve got any brilliant suggestions...”
“Well, how about we do it this way?” I told her my plan and then glanced at her worriedly. “What do you think?”
Her eyes widened for a moment and then she grinned.
“Oh, that is fucking brilliant!” she beamed.
I nodded and smiled beatifically at her. “I do come up with these awesome things every once in a while. Now, all we need to do is show up like we are totally serious about this…whatever it is we have. Your parents will have no idea what hit them!”
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