Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. - Hebrews 13:4

PRESENT DAY NEW YORK (after The CEO & The Christian Girl)

I CALLED A FAMILIAR number. The only problem was, I had no idea who would pick up.

The receiver of the call in my mother's apartment landline should've been a no-brainer: my mother. Yet as of late, it had received another guest.

George Devereaux.

He needed a place to stay. My mother didn't like all my late nights, constant jetsetting, and the fact that her nearby apartments had experienced a string of break-ins. When I suggested moving, hiring security, or something else, she had shaken her head and simply told me to come home more often. I refused and found her a guard dog.

Well, a guard man. George slept in the spare guest bedroom.

The fact that the aforementioned guard was about to be evicted from the country for an expired visa weighed heavily on my mind as I waited for him or my mom to pick up.

"Georgia," said George's voice. A voice I'd come to know far too well recently. "What is it?"

"What is it?" I repeated. "You're being deported–"

"I'm not being deported," he said calmly. "I mean, maybe a little."

"How can you be a little deported? Are they deporting your ears but not the rest of you? Must be, since you never listen."

"That was a good one," he said drily. "You stay up all night thinking of that?"

My insomniac tendencies were none of his business, but I didn't say that. "I have the solution to all your problems."

"All of them? What about that weird shooting chest pain I sometimes get? Can you solve that, Doctor?" he asked.

"You know what I mean."

"Fine. I'll meet you at Kismet at four," he said.

He'd already known my usual favourite meeting spot, which I was halfway to already. Though the hot chocolate place was usually packed with tourists, I enjoyed people-watching there. George had joined me there a time or two.

"Fine," I  said back, just to get in the last word.

He hung up and I walked faster, grateful that I'd worn motorcycling clothes–thick leggings, a leather jacket, and ankle boots–instead of fancier clothes with heels today.            

When I reached the frozen hot chocolate shop, the immediate recognition I received from the hostess, whom I'd once helped land a modelling gig, allowed me to immediately bypass the line of tourists (who groaned, cursed, and hurled invective at me) and be seated at a table for two in the corner.

I checked my Apple watch and saw I was five minutes early, which, in George Devereaux's world, meant I was actually fifteen minutes early.

Yet to my surprise, he showed up promptly at four o'clock. He slid into the seat opposite me and began perusing the menu, though we both knew exactly what he would order.

"Do you remember when we first met?" George asked me.

"You mean when you got in the way of me admiring Michelangelo's Pieta? As much as that was a pivotal moment in my life, I haven't really considered it lately. I've been thinking more about how you're about to be deported or your visa expiring."

"I don't think they deport Canadians from America," he said. "You're more stressed about this than I am, Georgia. Don't tell me you actually want me to stay."

I didn't tell him I did. Didn't tell him I was using him. Didn't say anything at all. "My mother likes you, for some reason still unknown to mankind and all of the scientific community."

"Must be my dashing good looks," he said. "Are you still lying to your mother?"

"Aren't we all lying to our mothers about one thing or another?" I said, trying to sound casual even as my pulse kicked up a notch. My mother thought that I was in some sort of romantic entanglement with George, or that at the very least such a thing was possible. I didn't have the heart to tell her it would never happen.

"Not me."

I narrowed my eyes. "Your mother is dead. If she were alive, I bet you would be lying to her about something."

"How little you think of me." He scowled and I couldn't tell if it was fake. "Well, lay it on me."

"What?" I blinked, looking up from the menu I had briefly dropped my glance to. "Lay what on you?"

"Your fabulous idea for revolutionizing my life and keeping me from leaving the country," he said, waving a hand and accidentally summoning a waitress, who scurried over to take our orders.

We both asked for the frozen hot chocolate.

As the waitress left, I took a deep breath. "You could marry me."

George Devereaux looked at me like I had suggested we change our identities, move to Siberia, and take up goat herding. "You're not serious. Why would you want to marry me?"

"If it's not you, it wouldn't be anyone." As I scrambled for words, my usual snappy comebacks fail me. "I mean, I didn't mean it like that. I just don't think I would want to get married ever. So I might as well marry you."

His expression of blank confusion showed a frisson of hurt before resuming its impassive state.

"You really know how to romance a man," he said softly. "Prepare to be disappointed every day of your life."

I didn't know how to tell him that I already do. "It's on, then."

+

MY FAKE HUSBAND WASN'T that bad, as far as fake husbands went.

I mean, technically, George Devereaux was my fake fiance.

Though I had little experience with men of any kind, be they fake, real, or affianced to me, I felt that he was good at whatever strange limbo the two of us were hovering in. For one thing, he didn't smoke, and for another, he didn't leave the toilet seat up. I'd never had a brother or a father with which I could compare him, but I felt that these two items were essentials when it came to men and not always easy to expect.

The only problem with having a fake fiance, was, of course, that my mother thought it was a real relationship.

She knew George was Canadian, of course, but neither one of us had told her about his visa troubles, or the fact that his job-hopping from being a dog walker to a nightclub bouncer was due to a desperate need to get a working visa rather than any affinity for any of the odd jobs he'd found. Nor did she know that our relationship was fake.

For some strange reason, my mother actually liked George. She found him charming, in his gruff, artistic way. She liked his paintings, the few that she'd seen from when he'd still been in a painting mood he'd never told any of us why he had quit, but I had a suspicion that it had to do with the same reason that he'd never called me after the photoshoot. She thought he was funny and polite and she liked that he spoke French.

As for me?

Well, my feelings for George Devereaux, even after all these years, were still firmly undecided.

It was too easy to pledge yourself in false marriage–in a lie–to a man when you knew that you simply weren't the kind of woman who would ever fall in love. After all, most men were soundly disappointing, and most who weren't were married or otherwise taken. I had no delusions about the female species, either, so it wasn't that I was a misandrist. More of a misanthropist. Which led me ironically to my chosen field of study: Anthropology.

It was when I was leaving one of these classes that I ran into Abigail on the NYU campus. It shouldn't have surprised me to see her there, since she was an engineering student, in her final year. But what did surprise me was, of course, still the lack of a ring on her finger. I was getting into a fake marriage. She had turned down what might've been the most real proposal, from the most genuine (and royal) man I had ever encountered. Were we opposite faces of an insane coin?

"Abby!" I threw my arms around her petite frame.

She hugged me back before pulling away with a frown. "You feel skinnier."

"I'm not anorexic," I blurted out.

Her brows pinched together under her blue knit beanie. "I didn't say you were. But, if you were, that would be an awful way of denying it."

I waved an impatient hand, wishing I was holding an iced coffee. My problems of choice were far less common than anorexia, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy after I'd seen what it had done to countless model friends–broken bones, feeding tubes, brittle hair, to name the least of them. "I assure you, this is called lack of sleep and proper nutrition, not the Kate Moss heroin chic look."

"You do have a coffee addiction," Abigail acknowledged. "Speaking of which, shall I help enable you? I saw a great caramel macchiato at Starbucks that's calling my name."

I sighed. My cousin and coffee were two things I simply couldn't resist. "Let's go."