Page 4 of Pretend

“There’s nothing on the books for the next month. Besides, we could both use a vacation,” Eric said, grabbing her passport and headed back to his bedroom.

“Now’s not a good time for me,” Morgan said, reaching up to rub her temples when she felt a headache starting at the back of her head and-

She just needed a break.

She wanted to start over somewhere new where no one knew her and didn’t send her pitying looks every time Eric’s name was mentioned. She wanted a chance to have a real life and she would never get that if she stayed here. At least if she left, she’d finally have a chance to get over him. She should have left a long time ago, but every time Morgan tried, she always found a reason to stay, but that all changed when he decided to ask Amber to marry him.

When he broke the news to her, she’d forced a smile on her face and pretended that her heart wasn’t breaking. She’d struggled to keep it together, forced herself to sit there and pretend that she was happy for him. When he was done, she’d somehow managed one more “Congratulations” and a smile before she walked into her apartment and headed for her bathroom, feeling numb as she closed the door behind her and finally lost it.

She’d spent the entire night sitting on the bathroom floor, realizing just how pathetic she was and when she was done, Morgan washed her face and decided that she’d finally had enough. She’d decided that it was finally time to put this behind her and move on. So, while Eric had been focused on getting married and starting Baker House, she’d focused on starting over.

She’d put in more hours, taken on more jobs, took several side jobs, making sure to put every penny that she could get her hands on away so that she could leave before it was too late. Two months ago, she’d used a meeting that she had with a client in New York as an excuse to take a side trip down to Florida, where she’d interviewed with a company that had plenty of work to keep her busy.

They dealt with old houses on Florida’s west coast, mostly old turn-of-the-century-Spanish-style mansions that they modernized, but it wasn’t anything that Morgan couldn’t handle. For the past two months, she’d been contacting contractors down in Florida, studying old building trends and styles and getting set up so that she could get right to work as soon as she arrived, and hopefully, that would be enough to distract her from what she was leaving behind.

“We’re going,” Eric said firmly, reminding her that she had something very important to do.

Distract Eric long enough so that she could make a run for it.

“I told you that I can’t go right now, Eric. Why don’t you ask Tom to go with you or, better yet, ask one of your cousins?” Morgan suggested with a hopeful smile that slowly died away when he leveled a glare on her.

“You mean the cousin that made the bet or the one that fucked my fiancée?” Eric drawled, making her wince as she watched him grab the suitcase he’d packed a few days ago and set it on his bed.

“And Tom?” Morgan asked, telling herself that there was still hope.

“Has apparently been fucking Amber for the past year,” Eric said dryly, making Morgan frown because that actually explained a lot.

“You could always take Theo and use this time to get to know your brother better,” Morgan suggested, once again sending him a hopeful smile.

“I would rather hear why you’re trying to get out of this,” Eric said, throwing her a questioning look as he made his way to the bathroom.

“Because I have too much to do right now,” Morgan said, hoping that would be enough to get him to drop this.

It wasn’t.

“Well, unless you took on a new project that I don’t know about or suddenly developed a life, I would say that you were full of shit,” Eric drawled from the bathroom, reminding her why she couldn’t stay.

It was time to move on.

It was time to-

“I can’t do this without you, Morgan.”

-resign herself to being there for him one last time.

CHAPTER3

Logan Airport

Boston, MA

“I’m not sure that this is a good idea,” Morgan mumbled weakly as she pressed her forehead against the window as the taxi pulled to a stop.

“It’s a great idea,” Eric said, although, to be fair, this probably wasn’t going to end well, mostly because of the woman who hadn’t stopped blowing up his phone since she realized that he’d changed the password on the account so that she couldn’t get her hands on the airline tickets he’d paid for.

“Make. It. Stop,” Morgan mumbled against the window, making his lips twitch as he turned off his phone and noted that they’d finally reached the whinny stage, which, if he was going to be honest, was his favorite stage.

There was the happy stage, the sad stage, the vomiting stage, which was normally followed by the begging for a quick death stage that he really wasn’t a big fan of, followed by the regret stage, the acceptance stage where she realized that she couldn’t hold her alcohol, the remorse stage where she promised never to touch another drop of alcohol again, and then finally, the whinny stage where she got adorably pouty, mumbled and grumbled.