style="font-size:15px;"> She needed him to fall in love with her. Not just to care for her, but really fall head over heels in love. She turned to walk down the hall and saw the gilt-framed mirror and the reflection of the woman there.
She was going to have to make some serious changes if she was going to win Tristan’s love.
Two weeks later, Sheri wasn’t sure who she was anymore. Despite the fact that Tristan wanted their lives to remain the same, they had been changed by the “engagement.” Blanche had even taken her shopping before allowing her to leave Paris. And Sheri had enjoyed her time with Blanche.
She found herself interested in clothing for the very first time. Standing in front of her closet in the brownstone in Brooklyn, she realized that it might be a bit small. It never had been before.
But then, she’d never had a closet full of outfits for every type of event known to man. She’d turned into a socialite without even trying. She was exhausted, because Tristan had been extremely serious when he said that he still wanted her to work for him.
Her phone rang while she was in the middle of getting dressed in a Chanel linen-and-cashmere strip tunic that ended well above her knees, showing off her trim calves and ankles. She’d never really thought about her body, but Tristan’s lovemaking and comments left no doubt that he liked hers. Her legs were slim because she’d always lived in the city and walked everywhere.
“Hello?”
She was getting better at accessorizing, but had been keeping the outfits put together the way Blanche had arranged them for her. Trying to make Tristan fall in love with her, trying to remember how to be fashionable and avoiding the paparazzi were a lot to add to her life. Most of the time she felt as if she was juggling and dropping most of the balls.
“Bonjour, ma petite. I’m downstairs in the car waiting for you.”
“Good morning, Tristan. I’m almost ready.”
Propping the phone between her ear and shoulder, she paired the tunic dress with a pair of lizard-and-lambskin sandals and a calf-skin belt in white with a distinctive Chanel belt buckle. She had a chunky bracelet that she put on her right arm and then she carefully opened the box with the diamond watch that Tristan’s parents had given her as an engagement present. They’d had her initials and the date of their engagement—the date she and Tristan had made up—engraved on the back.
“This would be a lot easier if you’d just move in with me.”
“No, it wouldn’t.”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Because then I’d have to move out again when the engagement was over. This way, I’ll never have lived in your house.”
“Or slept in my bed for an entire night,” he said.
She always came back home after they made love at his apartment. And he never stayed the night at her place. She was doing everything she could to insulate herself against the pain of heartbreak, but she had the feeling that no matter what she did, it was still going to hurt her if he left.
“Well…”
“Well, what? Why are you so stubborn about this one thing?”
“Because I’m your pretend fiancée, Tristan. If I were really your woman and you were going to claim me in front of the world, then I’d be living with you in a heartbeat.”
He said nothing, as she’d suspected he would. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
She hung up the phone and turned back to the mirror. Her dark brown hair now had highlights and she knew how to put on makeup so that she looked like all the other women who had always surrounded Tristan. A part of her was amazed at how she looked, another part disgusted. She was changing every part of herself for a man who was her pretend fiancé, and she was no closer to figuring out how to make him fall in love with her.
She stared down at the engagement ring on her left hand. Tristan had wanted something big and flashy but she’d stubbornly refused. If he really loved her and was buying her a ring that symbolized his love, she would have bowed to his wishes, but he’d been buying the ring for others to see and she had dug in her heels.
She liked the understated platinum ring she had on. It fit her hand and her finger. And unlike a more costly ring, it didn’t make her feel as if she’d sold herself to Tristan.
The clothes she knew she’d donate to Dress for Success when she was done pretending to be his fiancée—if she didn’t turn the pretend part into reality.
“Why did you hang up on me?”
She yelped and spun around. Tristan stood there, gorgeous as always. “Why are you in my house?”
“You gave me a key, remember? I am your fiancé.”
She made a face at him in the mirror. “Just for pretend.”
“Sheri.”
He said her name in a stern tone that told her she was pushing too hard. But she didn’t want to back down. She was tired of pretending, and the only way for that to stop was for Tristan to see her as more than a lover and an assistant. She was pretty sure that’s all he saw when he looked at her.
“What?”
“What is the matter with you this morning?”
She shrugged. If he’d demanded an answer or kept pushing her, she could have gotten angry and then used her anger to keep the truth at bay.
“Answer me. Please.”
“No.”
She reached for a pair of platinum bangle earrings and slipped them into her ears. Tristan came up behind her, rested his hands on her shoulders and leaned in low so that his gaze met hers in the mirror.
“What is wrong?”
She bit her lower lip, afraid of saying too much. But suddenly she realized that the changes she made were all superficial and deep inside she was the woman she’d always been. And that woman wanted more.
“I don’t want to be your fake fiancée. And frankly, I can’t understand why this isn’t real.”
Tristan would be damned if he was going to have this conversation with her. He’d been dodging the same questions from Gui, who had warned him that toying with a woman’s emotions was only going to lead to trouble. And Christos, who didn’t know the engagement wasn’t real and thought that he had made a great decision. Since Christos’s marriage to Ava, the man thought all anyone needed to be happy was a wife.
But Tristan knew better. He wasn’t toying with Sheri’s emotions, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to really marry her. He knew himself well enough to know that there were only certain things he could control. And surprisingly Sheri was one of them.
He bent his head to nibble on her neck in the spot he knew was sensitive. She undulated under his hands and reached back to put her arms
