Read Duping Cupid (A Valentine's Day Short Story) for Free Online

guilt warmed his cheeks. He should have been there with her.
    “Her name is Scah-let ,” she said with a thick southern accent. “Can you believe it? Like the character in Gone With the Wind , and just as prissy.”
    He winced. “What’d your mother say?”
    “Oh, she ate up the old antebellum charm with a sterling punch bowl.”
    Her heavy sigh pierced his eardrum and his heart. Part of him wanted to tell her all she had to do was say the word and he’d slide the biggest diamond in Tiffany’s on her finger. Not for her mother’s benefit, but for his. So that even in Penn Station at rush hour, every other man would know this extraordinary woman was taken. The saner part of him realized he had to wait. If he told her how he felt right now, she’d either laugh at him or freak out. He didn’t want either of those reactions. Ava had better ideas—at least, she claimed to have better ideas. Who knew if the subterfuge would work?
    “Anyway,” Vivi said, “I don’t want to talk about my family. Tell me about your Thanksgiving with the hoi-polloi. What happened? Didn’t you like the food? Too frou-frou for you?”
    “What food? My ‘girlfriend’ neglected to inform me this was cocktails only. So while the rest of the hoi-polloi had their personal chefs prepare a feast before the soiree, dumb old me showed up on an empty stomach. ”
    “O ops.”
    “Yeah.”
    A thick-as-a-brick pause walled up the air between them until, at last, Vivi asked, “How’s Ava treating you? She’s not too horrific, is she?”
    “Actually, she’s a doll,” he replied. Yeah, right. If that doll was Chucky . He’d never lied to Vivi before, but Ava had insisted the best way to get her to face her true feelings was through jealousy.  So he’d play up his mock romance with Ava, not just for the masses, but to win Vivi over, as well. “We’re having a blast together.”
    “Well, great. That’s...great.” Her flat tone spoke volumes to him, and clearly communicated “great” was light years from her true opinion. “Oh, by the way. I need a copy of her contract.”
    Straight back to business. Because she couldn’t bear to think of him with another woman and didn’t want to pursue that topic in depth? He hoped Ava was right. “Sarah has it. I faxed a copy over to her the other day.” And she ought to be thrilled with what he’d managed to negotiate out of the tight-fisted wretch. God knew, he was earning every penny.
    “Okay, great. I’ll check it out when I get back to the office. What’s on schedule for you for the rest of the week?”
    “A bunch of parties with Ava. Should be a lot of fun.” As fun as a root canal, but he kept that idea to himself. The point was to get Vivi to realize they belonged together—even if he had to pretend to be happy with someone else to achieve his goal. But jeez, he was spreading the lies on thick. “How about you?”
    “The usual. I’ll spend the rest of tonight eating my spleen over my mother’s commentary, and the rest of the weekend drowning my sorrows in chocolate and spending too much money on Christmas gifts to make myself feel better.”
    His fault. Without him to shield her from the pain of her family’s disappointment, she planned to self-destruct with excess. Not a damn thing he could do to stop her, either. Even if he wanted to go to her place and console her, his contract with Ava forbade it. Now that the press had picked up on the new “romance” between him and Ava, he couldn’t be seen with Vivi or any other woman until March when Ava would set him free to pursue his real love.
    Vivi’s loud yawn shook him out of his thoughts. “I should get some sleep,” she murmured.
    “Uh-huh.” What else could he say? This whole situation sucked rocks , and he couldn’t change it for four more months. If Vivi could wait that long.
    “Keep me posted on what’s going on with you two, okay? ” she said, her depression evident in her low monotone. “Not that I don’t