My Fake Boyfriend Is a Global Superstar novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Plus-One
At Lila Ardmore's engagement party Maeve learns the groom is her own boyfriend, grabs the man in the cap at the bar and calls him hers; when his cap comes off, the singer whispers his name and every phone rises.
My boss gave me her ticket to Lila Ardmore's rescue-dog benefit because her knee hurt.
I wore the green dress I'd bought for my own anniversary and never worn.
Corbin had said he was in Phoenix until Sunday, setting up a "logistics job."
I texted him a photo of the string lights over the lawn anyway.
The message said Delivered and nothing else.
I was holding a glass of sparkling water at the bar when the music stopped.
Lila Ardmore walked onto the little garden stage in a white silk slip dress, and two hundred people went quiet.
She was the biggest pop star in the country, and her smile looked like it came with a lighting rig.
"Thank you all for coming," she said into the microphone.
"I have one more rescue to announce tonight."
She held out her hand toward the side of the stage.
A man in a navy suit walked up the steps and took it.
It was Corbin.
It was my Corbin, with the haircut I'd paid for and the cufflinks I'd given him for our fourth anniversary.
He kissed her cheek, and the lawn cheered.
"Corbin and I got engaged on Tuesday," Lila said, and she held up her left hand.
The diamond was the size of a grape.
My ears started to ring.
Tuesday was the day he'd borrowed my grandmother's money.
All fifty-two thousand dollars of it, the whole account, for a truck business he said would get us a house.
I looked at that ring, and I knew exactly what it had cost.
Nobody on that lawn knew who I was.
That lasted until Corbin lifted his head and found me across the crowd.
His smile died, and I watched him think about how to lie.
Lila followed his eyes.
She looked at me.
Then she smiled, wider, and said, "Oh, and thank you to everyone who works at the clinic that helps our dogs."
Two hundred heads turned to see who she meant.
I could have gone out the side gate.
That was the plan my legs had, and my legs were shaking.
But I had spent five years being the girl who waited at home, and I was not going to wait at home one more minute.
I put my glass down on the bar.
The man beside me had been there the whole time, one elbow on the wood, a plain gray henley and a baseball cap pulled low.
He was the only person on the lawn not holding a phone.
"Sorry," I said, "I need to borrow you."
His eyebrows went up under the brim.
"Borrow me for what?"
"Be my boyfriend for two minutes."
I grabbed his hand before he could answer.
It was warm and rough and had calluses on the fingertips.
"That's an unusual opening," he said.
"Please," I said.
He looked at my face, then at the stage, and something in his shoulders settled.
"Lead the way," he said.
I walked him straight through the crowd, and the crowd opened.
Corbin had stopped breathing by the time we reached the stage steps.
"Maeve," he said, away from the microphone, "what are you doing?"
"Congratulations," I said loudly.
Every head near us turned.
"Congratulations on the engagement, Corbin."
"I'm so happy for you both."
"I just wanted to say it to your face before I introduced you to mine."
I swung our joined hands up between us.
"This is my boyfriend."
Lila's smile held for one second longer than it should have.
"Your boyfriend," she said.
"My boyfriend," I said, "for the last three weeks, while Corbin told me he was in Phoenix."
A noise went through the crowd, the soft delighted gasp of people who love a scene.
Corbin's face went red.
"Maeve, you can't be serious."
"Ask him," I said, and I tipped my chin at the man beside me.
"Ask him his name."
The man in the cap breathed out through his nose, and I swear he was trying not to laugh.
"I don't think she wants me to say it," he said.
"I do," I said.
He reached up with his free hand and took off the cap.
Sandy hair fell across his forehead.
A chipped front tooth showed when he smiled.
On his left forearm, a tattoo of song titles ran from wrist to elbow.
I had seen that arm on the side of a building on Sunset.
I had seen that arm on a billboard over my own clinic.
The lawn was silent.
Lila's hand dropped, and the microphone caught her whisper, small and furious and live to everyone.
"Ash?"
Then two hundred phones came up at once, and I realized I was holding hands with the most famous man in the world.
He looked down at me with a face the whole planet knows.
"Hi, baby," said Ashton Reeve.
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