Chapter One
“Will you be my pretend girlfriend?” I munched on my energy bar, face blank as he blurted out the question at me. “Please?” Joseph added. I keep munching. “It’s only going to be for a few days.”
And munching.
“Emma, say something.” He pleaded.
“No.” I stand up crumbling the energy bar wrapper on my way to the trash can.
Jo follows me. “Em, please.”
“I said no, Jo.” Ha. That rhymed, I think, and stride to my office after the mini-break that I needed desperately or risked going crazy.
“Emma Duvall, I am asking you this favor for the rest of the duration of our friendship,” Jo said closing the door behind him. “Which won’t be for long because if you don’t do this, I’m as good as dead.” He takes the seat across the table from me. “At least I will be if Sarah doesn’t realize that she’s madly in love with me.”
“Sarah broke up with you for a reason, Jo,” I said and shake my mouse, lighting up the computer screen. I had a ton of emails to go through. Customers enquiring and requesting for quotations for different services that V&V Events offered. Jo and I had found V&V Events after we’d graduated and suffered for a year and a half as unemployed and worthless youths while getting our characters assassinated by our families for being jobless and good for nothing human existence on mother earth. So when Jo offered to loan some financial help from his filthy rich and sexy as hell brother, I grudgingly accepted. Self-respect aside, I had no intention of becoming roadkill or dying of hunger which was a hundred percent possibility after my mother gave me a deadline of contributing to household expenses or she’d disown my sorry ass.
Sure, I get it, having raised my two younger brothers and myself as a single mother had to be tough but there was no need to threaten me with poverty. Where was her maternal love?
Moving on, Jo and I had attended our friend Susan’s wedding the very year we graduated, don’t know what their rush was, but let’s withhold the judgment passing for later. So it was then while drinking our third glass of wine, that Jo & I up and decided to start an event company. Alcohol might have influenced our decision but it was our hard work that we stood or rather sat here today, three years later. After the endless marketing campaigns, earning testimonials from any and every event we did, late nights when I forced Jo to stay and work with me because we were business partners after all. I wasn’t one to do all the work and let him take the credit for it. If I was working my ass off, you bet he was too. I saw to that. Though fortunately and sometimes not, Jo Vandervaal was a good person at heart and not a complete waste of space. He was more likely to let me take the credit for his work rather than the other way around.
We had hired a few people such as the designer and administration staff rather than outsourcing them. Back to the point before I go drifting off, it was after those consecutive years that V&V had received a decent amount of recognition and were now being flooded with enough work to keep us afloat comfortably. Enough to keep us from poverty. Also to keep my mother from disowning me, I might add.
Yes, I’m sensitive about that.
“No, Emma. She didn’t break up with me for a reason. She just did it because she’s mad.” He said resting his elbows on the table.
I looked up from my screen. “Mad as in mentally unstable or as in she’s likely to murder you? Please clarify.” I kid.
Jo sighed and leaned back in the chair. “Mad as in I never want to talk to you or see your stupid face ever again in this lifetime.”
“She’s expecting to be reborn?” I chuckled. Jo gave me a look and I stop, though I continued laughing in my mind. “So she’s angry. What did you do this time?” I clicked open an email from Mrs. Olivia Glines. She had two daughters, Michelle and Rachel. We had arranged Michelle’s wedding not too long ago. Reading the contents of the email while tuning out Jo, Mrs. Glines was thrilled to offer us the contract of Rachel’s’ wedding taking place six months from now. I click reply and started typing out a response along the lines of thanking her and arranging a meeting.
“Are you even listening?” Jo groaned.
“Quit whining and get back to work, Jo.” I glanced at him. “I’m sure your inbox is an email away from exploding.
“Then explode it shall. The emails will have to wait.” He shrugged.
I paused mid response to another email. “Why?”
“Because I’m busy.” He tells me.
“You know that I don’t like you slacking off with work. We’ve worked too hard to take it easy, Jo.” I reminded him.
“Hold up, I’m not slacking off, Em,” Jo said. “I’m busy planning a wedding.”
I rolled my eyes. “Aren’t we both?” I finished the reply and hit send on my draft.
“We can’t take any more new clients at the moment,” Jo said as he saw me typing away.
“Why not?” I was looking forward to Mrs. Glines’s mouthwatering chocolate chip cookies she was sure to bring with her for the meeting. She’d witnessed my obsession while I was devouring them during the period of preparation for Michelle’s wedding. So she promised me those in the email too.
“Jasmin is getting married.” He enlightens me.
I do the staring thing with him to ensure he isn’t kidding before I jumped up. “O. M. G. Are you serious? That’s great news!” Jasmin was Jo’s younger sister. They were three siblings in total with Jasmin at number three, Jo at number two, and the rich and sexy brother at number one. Though Jo had taken after his mother and was nice looking with his head of golden hair and sea blue eyes and an easy smile and Jasmin looking similarly cute, Jake was something else.
Firstly he looked like his father and let me point out that Benjamin Vandervall was something to look at. With tousled dark hair that was thick and lustrous along with striking deep ocean green eyes, Jake Vandervaal was easily the most handsome man I had laid eyes on. Those high cheekbones and straight nose with cherry dark lips, he was beautiful yet formidable at the same time. Jake was a specimen made to test a woman’s control. Sigh. Let’s move on before I lose mine.
“Yep and here’s the catch. She wants to give V&V the contract.” Jo said, taking the wooden Pinocchio doll that sat next to the files on my table and started pulling at his legs that were put together with strings.
“That’s even more amazing!” I said genuinely. I’d met the girl a handful of times since we were kids and she’d always been sweet and kind. “Is it not?” I waver because I don’t see Jo sharing my enthusiasm.
“Of course it is.” He said. “My sister’s getting married, it the best news I’ve heard in a while.”
“Then why the long face.”
“It’s because she wants to do it in a month.” He flips the doll from one hand to another. “I just don’t know how we can pull it off in such a tight time frame.”
It dawned on me the tricky time restrictions we would face arranging it all in a month. “Shit,” I mutter.
“And she’s marrying Aryan Ahuja, her college boyfriend.” I lifted an eyebrow in question. So? “She wants a traditional Indian wedding.”