Pretend To Love Me, Mr. Sinclair

Chapter 1: One Little Lie. I walked into my ex-boyfriend's engagement party alone, in a borrowed dress, with a plan. Smile. Say congratulations. Leave in fifteen minutes. The plan lasted ninety seconds. The ballroom of the Aurelia Hotel glittered like it had something to prove. Crystal chandeliers. A string quartet. A champagne tower taller than me. I stood at the entrance, crushing my clutch in both hands, and my phone buzzed with a text from my mother: *Hold your head high, baby.* I wanted to. I just didn't know how. I should have thrown the invitation away. Instead, I had carried it in my bag for four days like a stone I couldn't put down. *You're fine,* I told myself. *You practiced this smile for an hour.* "Tessa Monroe! You actually came." Brandon's voice sliced across the room. He strode toward me in a black tuxedo, golden and handsome, exactly like a man who had never been told no. A woman held his arm, wearing emerald silk. My stomach dropped through the floor. *Chloe.* My best friend. The girl who held my hair back in college, who brought me soup when I had the flu, who hugged me the weekend Brandon left and whispered, "He doesn't deserve you." A diamond glittered on her left hand. "Surprise," Brandon said, grinning. "We wanted you to hear it from us." I couldn't speak. Chloe stared at the floor. "You told me you were sick this weekend," I finally managed. My voice came out thin. "You said you couldn't come over." "Tess, I..." She swallowed. "I was going to tell you." "When? Before or after the ring?" "Don't be dramatic," Brandon said lightly. "These things happen. Nobody planned it." *Nobody planned it.* The two people I trusted most had laughed behind my back, and nobody planned it. Conversations around us dimmed. I felt the eyes, the whispers curling through the room like smoke. *That's the ex. She came. Alone.* "I'm happy for you both," I said. The lie tasted like metal. Brandon tilted his head. "Are you? You look pale. It's okay, you know. Not everyone finds someone. Some people just marry their careers." His gaze slid down my dress. "Is that rented?" His friends laughed. Quietly. But I heard every single one. My eyes burned. I had spent three years being invisible in a grey office and one year being pitied by everyone who knew. I would not be laughed at, too. "I'm not alone," I said. The words were out before I could stop them. Brandon's smile flickered. "Sorry?" "I didn't come alone. I'm engaged." The quartet stumbled over a note. Every head in earshot turned. "Engaged," Brandon repeated. "To who?" My mind went white. A name. Any name. A coworker, a stranger, a waiter... "Let me guess." He smirked. "He's shy." "He's..." "To me." The voice came from behind me, low and calm. I knew it so well I felt it in my spine. *No. It can't be.* I turned slowly. Gabriel Sinclair stood three feet away in a black suit, one hand in his pocket, grey eyes fixed on Brandon with the stillness that silenced boardrooms. My boss. The Iceman. A man who hadn't attended a single party in the three years I'd worked for him. *What is he doing here?* In three years, he had said exactly four things to me that weren't instructions. I had counted. "That's Gabriel Sinclair," someone whispered. "The CEO." He crossed to me without hurrying. The crowd actually parted. When he reached my side, he took my hand and laced his fingers through mine. His palm was warm. That shocked me more than anything. "Gabriel Sinclair," he told Brandon, polite as a blade. "Tessa's fiancé." Brandon's face cycled through three expressions. "Sinclair. As in Sinclair Group." "As in her fiancé. We've kept it private." "She never mentioned..." "She wouldn't." Gabriel looked down at me, and something in his eyes made my heart stumble. "My fiancée is the most remarkable woman I've ever met." "Remarkable at what?" Brandon laughed. "Fetching coffee?" "At everything she does," Gabriel said evenly. "Including telling the truth, which is more than I can say for most people here." Chloe flinched. Brandon's laugh died. Gasps rolled across the room. Phones lifted. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but Gabriel turned and cupped my jaw with his free hand. "Don't look surprised," he murmured, so low only I could hear. "Trust me." Then he kissed me. It was not a polite kiss. It was slow, certain, deliberate, a kiss that told the entire ballroom *mine*. The chandeliers, the whispers, Brandon's stunned face all dissolved. My fingers curled into his lapel because my knees had quit. It was an act. I knew it was an act. So why couldn't I breathe? When he lifted his head, the room erupted in murmurs. His thumb brushed across my lower lip. "Smile, Miss Monroe," he whispered. I smiled. It was the most real smile I'd made all night, and it terrified me. His other hand rested at my back, and that was when I felt it. His fingers were trembling. The Iceman. *Trembling.* Before I could process it, I saw Chloe. She had gone white. Brandon's jaw flexed, and for one second the polish slipped and I saw something ugly underneath. Not heartbreak. Calculation. He recovered fast. He always did. "Quite the story," he said, laughing too loudly. "Engaged, and nobody knew? Funny. You'd think a billionaire would put a ring on his fiancée's finger." My left hand was bare. He had noticed. Everyone had. My stomach clenched. *Here it comes.* The lie would collapse, and I would die of shame in a borrowed dress, in front of two hundred phones. Gabriel didn't flinch. He slid a hand into his jacket, unhurried, and drew out a small velvet box. "I was saving it," he said, "for the right moment." He opened it. A pear-cut diamond glittered on black velvet, set in platinum, flawless. I stared at the ring. Then at him. Why does he already have a ring?.