Love Arranged (Lakefront Billionaires, #3)(15)

I follow her into the small kitchen, where her laptop was left open beside a half-empty bottle of wine.

“Got started without me?” I joke.

She laughs while pouring me a glass. “I only needed a minute to recover from the new poll numbers I got.”

“Not what you wanted to see?”

“Nope.” She tops off her glass and uncorks a new bottle. “Just in case,” she says when I look at my full glass.

“I’m sorry about the polls.”

She shuts her eyes. “Me too. Ten points… Ugh. Lorenzo’s going to be so pissed.”

“Ten points? That doesn’t seem too bad, right?”

“It might not sound like a lot, but it might as well be thirty when we have less than five months left until election day.”

I wince. “Oh. In that case…” I hold my glass up, and she clinks hers against mine.

“I’ve been trying to help us get ahead. With single-issue voters, Lorenzo’s gained good ground, but now he’s fallen behind with more complicated swing voters.” Her computer makes a noise, and she quickly becomes distracted with something on the screen.

“Shit,” she mutters under her breath, completely forgetting about me altogether as she scrolls through some PDF with charts and graphs. “He’s going to go ballistic when he sees this.”

I’m about to say something when her phone starts ringing.

“Called it.” She grimaces. “Do you mind if I take this?”

“No. Not at all.”

She leaves the kitchen, but her house is less than a thousand square feet, so despite her disappearing into one of the rooms, I can still hear her side of the conversation.

“You saw for yourself how people want someone with connections to the town, and your charity events aren’t enough.”

Safe to assume she’s speaking to Lorenzo, then. I sip my wine and try not to eavesdrop, but that becomes impossible when I hear her say, “You’re the one who refuses to find yourself a wife.”

I choke on my wine.

A wife?!

Willow groans. “Fine. I meant a fiancée. Are you happy now?” There is a pause before she says, “I can only do so much. A ten-point lead is going to be difficult to overcome.”

Silence follows, although my rising heart rate fills the quiet while I wait for whatever Willow says next.

“I didn’t say impossible, just difficult. Whether we agree with them or not, people associate stability and values with family, so either you pick one of the women I vetted for the job or you can say goodbye to ever winning this election.”

I stare at a wall and process what I overheard. I’m so stuck in my own head, I don’t notice Willow walking back into the kitchen until she speaks.

“How much did you hear?”

I flinch.

“Shit. Can we…pretend you don’t know anything?”

“Um…” I’m so stunned by the entire conversation that I can’t even begin to formulate a response, and thankfully her phone vibrating saves me from doing so.

“Dammit,” she says when she checks to see who’s calling. “It’s him again.”

“Maybe you should let it go to voicemail?”

“Yes! Love that.” She takes a few gulps of her wine.

I take another small sip before saying, “So…fake fiancée?”

She squeezes the bridge of her freckled nose. “I had hoped you didn’t hear that part.”

“I assumed as much, but your walls are kind of thin.”

She rubs her forehead. “He’s going to kill me.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know, but…” She takes a deep breath. “Since you already overheard the conversation, will you let me vent for two minutes? I swear to shut up afterward so we can focus on whatever it is you came here to talk about, but I need to speak with someone. Ellie’s out of town, and I don’t want to burden her—”

I stop her from worrying any further. “Sure. What’s up?” I play it cool in front of her, but I’m spiraling on the inside because what the hell does she mean by fake fiancée? Is that something people do in real life?

She takes another sip of her wine before beginning. “You’d be shocked to know how difficult it is to set two people up.”

“Coming from someone who has spent years of her life navigating different dating apps, I believe you.”

“At least you want a relationship. Lorenzo is the complete opposite, even if it’s all fake.”

“Hm.” I can’t say much more with the way my throat tightens.

“I’ve vetted a ton of options and interviewed a few candidates who I thought were real contenders, yet Lorenzo rejected them all.”

“How long has he been looking?”

“It’s been a more recent thing,” she answers vaguely. “Although about a year back, he used a dating app to try to find a fake fiancée on his own—”

No. I don’t realize I said the word aloud until Willow looks at me for clarification.

“He used an app?” The question comes out as a half squeak, half wheeze.

She nods.

Hell no, I say stronger this time, but the sharp pain lacing through my chest doesn’t pay it any attention.