The Boss's Fake Fiancee by Inara Scott Page A

One.”
    “And?”
    “And then he cheated on me with one of the lab assistants. Everyone in our circle knew about it. And I, um, had a hard time for a while.”
    That is, if refusing to leave her apartment for weeks, losing fifteen pounds, and generally falling apart for nine months constituted a hard time.
    “Tori mentioned that.”
    Melissa burrowed deeper into her seat, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. “Really? She told you I was depressed?”
    His voice was surprisingly gentle. “No, of course not. All she said was that you’d had a hard go of it.”
    “Things got a little rough,” she admitted. “My family was pretty worried about me. Looking back, I think it was about more than just Mark. I was trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted out of life, and everything just seemed so hopeless. But all Brit and the others could see was that I was depressed because the guy they’d all warned me about had made a fool out of me.”
    “No one made a fool out of you,” Garth said, his lip curling with disgust. “The guy’s a predator. I hate to say it, but he’s got a terrible reputation. Even I’ve heard the rumors, and that’s saying a lot.”
    Melissa gave him a small, sad smile. “You aren’t the first person to tell me that. I probably knew, deep down, that there was something wrong with him, but honestly, it didn’t matter. I wanted to get away, and he gave me the perfect excuse.” She pictured Brit’s disapproving look when she told him about Mark. “One of my brothers is a little, shall we say, overprotective . The fact that he didn’t like Mark just made it all the better.”
    “You’re talking about the guy Tori ended up with? What’s his name—Brit?”
    She smiled. She was so used to people knowing her brother first, it was downright delightful to have someone say his name with that sound of confusion. “Yep, that’s the one. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think moving to California was my own form of an adolescent rebellion. A misguided attempt to gain some independence. It’s just too bad I let myself get used by a guy like Mark to get there.”
    “Better than dropping out of school and getting pregnant, I suppose.”
    Melissa laughed. “I never thought of it that way, but I suppose you’re right.” Talking about Mark and Brit was giving her the strangest feeling—like she was shedding the burdens of months of self-doubt and pity. A light, relieved sensation bubbled up through her.
    “What about you?” she asked. “Did you go through any rebellion? It’s hard to picture rebelling against Nan.”
    Garth relaxed against the seat, one hand pressing lightly against the steering wheel. “She wasn’t much of an authoritarian, that’s for sure. If anything, it was the pressure of her thinking everything was perfect that got to me the most.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “She just assumed I’d be class president, captain of the football team, and a Rhodes scholar. All at the same time.”
    “A little bit of pressure?”
    “I suppose. It made her so happy to see me succeed, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t have any friends, or that the kids at school thought I was odd because I’d rather read a book about computers than go out to parties.” He shrugged self-consciously. “What an absurd thing to complain about.”
    “Make perfect sense to me,” Melissa said. She stared out at the road and tried to imagine Garth in high school. Vaguely, she could imagine him as a tall, skinny adolescent. The smartest kid at the school and probably not the most popular. A far cry from the intense, perfectly controlled persona he now projected.
    Silence stretched between them, and Melissa wondered if he regretted the admission. “This area is so beautiful,” she said, hoping to guide the conversation to more neutral ground. An explosion of colors flanked the road, topped by the deep blue sky of a cloudless New England fall day. “Did you spend a lot