Fake Married to My Best Friend’s Daddy by Sofia T Summers

Prologue: Jason

“It’s lucky how nice the weather turned out to be,” Nicole remarked calmly.

Looking out across the lawn, cloth-covered tables were scattered with plastic plates and half-eaten appetizers. The March afternoon felt unseasonably warm. When some of our college friends wanted to have a reception in Charlotte Davis’s memory, they all looked to me. I was the guy with a big house and nobody in it, but I’d been reluctant about it from the beginning.

I didn’t know who they were doing it for. Adrian Davis, now a widower, was shell-shocked and not processing anything. It left all the smiling and gracious words to their daughter.

Only twenty-three years old, she smiled at people’s stories and thanked them for their kind words. After ten days of schooling her features had her face looking battle-worn, but she didn’t let up. Even sitting on the steps of my back deck with a beer in hand, I’d never seen anyone wear their grief so well.

Her eyes, green as the grass under her bare feet, were electrified with resolve. Her black lace dress remained spotless and unwrinkled. Everything about Nicole Davis looked beyond anything I’d ever known. She was… something else entirely. I didn’t know how to describe it.

“Thank you for hosting, Jason,” she offered between sips from her amber glass bottle. “I’m sure it would’ve been simpler to rent some restaurant room.”

Sitting down beside Nicole, I shrugged. “It wasn’t much trouble. I had the folding tables in the garage, and your mom’s old sorority sisters took care of the rest.”

Those women were the ones who thought it would be a good idea to host a weekend reception for those who couldn’t make it for the afternoon burial in Richmond, Virginia the Friday before. On that two-hour drive from Virginia Beach, I talked with Nicole for the first time in my life. I’d known her for years, but I had never been alone with her in a car. I hadn’t listened to the music she liked or asked her questions about school.

She was a graduate student in Chapel Hill, getting her degree in journalism and media. She had dreams of working in New York for some magazine she’d grown up reading. Listening to her folk music and her aspirations, I wondered why I’d never really talked to her before.

I guess I was always gone. There had never been a good time to know Nicole better.

“Have you decided when you’re going back to school?” I asked to be polite.

“Tomorrow,” she answered quietly.

“Tomorrow?” I echoed. “Isn’t that a little… soon?”

It was only fourteen days since her father called her home, telling Nicole her mother’s time had come. It had been eleven afternoons since she kissed her mother goodbye. Nicole’s heart had been shattered into a million different pieces. Ten days didn’t seem like enough time to find them all again… if she ever could.

“It’s spring break right now,” she explained. “I missed a midterm last week, and classes will start again Monday. Mom would become my personal poltergeist if I messed up my education over her.”

A wistful smile toying at the corners of her rose-colored lips, Nicole’s eyes drifted to some brief memory in the corner of her mind.

“I think your professors would understand,” I mused.

She nodded. “They do, but you know my mom. She was such a big champion of education. Wasting the chance to learn was blasphemous to her.”

I chuckled, “Yeah, that’s Charlotte alright.”

“I like talking about her,” Nicole said abruptly. “I just don’t like the pitiful looks people give me.”

“Am I doing that?” I asked, my dark eyes meeting hers.

Smiling softly, she shook her head. “No, Jason, you aren’t, and I appreciate it.”

“We can keep talking over dinner, if you like,” I offered in return. “I don’t know about you, but those little cucumber sandwiches weren’t filling at all.”

Nicole’s face brightened more. “Okay, what have you got?”

Following me in through the screen porch and mudroom, Nicole watched me from the large kitchen island, while I realized my fridge didn’t have much beyond leftover trays of fruit and cookies from the reception. I was supposed to be leaving in a few weeks for another deployment, two days after my forty-first birthday. Between Charlotte’s passing and prepping for another nine months abroad, I hadn’t worried about grocery shopping.

“Um,” I mumbled. “How do you feel about oysters?”

“Will they be raw?” She asked, her nose scrunching up.

Gesturing out to the backyard, I assured her, “I’ve got a grate we can roast them on outside. We just need to get the fire pit going first.”

“Sure then,” she agreed, quickly more amenable to the idea.

The sun set over the lawn as Nicole started a fire in her cocktail dress. The flames caught the gold of her long, blonde, and beachy waves. As I came out with a tray of oysters and condiments, her billowing hair was honeyed like her faint southern accent. It was a habit she picked up from her mother, and I only began to notice it when her first beer bottle became a third.

“Do you want one?” She offered it to me.

“They’re the ones you hid before the party,” I reminded her. “I’ve got my own cans of cheap swill in the house.”

She laughed, “Call it an early birthday present then. You deserve a pale ale that actually tastes like something.”

Popping off the top, Nicole offered me one of her dozen ales sitting on the stones beside her. I’d built the fire pit when I first bought the house, thinking somebody would want to share it with me. I spent good money on a large rounded sofa that wrapped around the large stone fire pit. I found a specialty grill grate, thinking my future family would host backyard barbecues and oyster roast. However, the woman I’d thought I loved didn’t stick around to see the finished product. The girl before her didn’t either.

It was the first night I’d ever had company on that tan outdoor sofa.

We talked there for a while, feeding the fire and eating the peck of Chesapeake Bay oysters I had by chance. Nicole asked me about my upcoming deployment. There wasn’t much I could say, but I offered the few details I could.

“We’re heading out to the Middle East,” I explained carefully. “My platoon and I will be working on some tactical missions and reconnaissance.”

“How much hazard pay will you be getting?” Nicole mused.

With her father a submarine officer when she was little, Nicole knew the lingo. She could ask about the danger of my deployment without really saying it outright. Hazard pay was offered to entice men into working the more treacherous missions, but I didn’t do it for the money. If something happened to me, I had no widow to leave behind or children to mourn me. My older sister out in San Francisco would inherit my money and whatever she got for my house.

It was better for me to be lost in battle than a younger man with a reason to come home.

“A fair amount,” I admitted.

Nicole nodded before going a little quiet. Her vibrant green eyes were growing distant again.

“I remember when you became Captain Miller,” she recalled fondly. “I’d just finished my freshman year at William and Mary.”

“Has it really been that long?” I realized with a lone laugh of surprise.

“Yes, but you haven’t changed much,” she mused. “You’re still just as handsome as you were that day in your dress uniform.”

“Handsome?” I echoed dumbly.

I didn’t know if it was fatigue or alcohol, but Nicole was glowing more than the firelight. With her honey-blonde hair and feminine curves, she looked like the embodiment of summertime. Her eyes were green as a meadow as they looked my way. I imagined roaming in them all night long. They were dreams I shouldn’t have dared to consider, but I couldn’t stop them from coming.

“I thought the world of you back then,” she laughed tipsily in her honeyed voice. “I remember seeing the senior officer pinning on your new little rank insignia, and you just looked like a hero any girl would be lucky to have.”

Shifting in my seat, I sipped the bottle of beer in my hand. There wasn’t enough left to cool the heat growing in my chest. The feel of the brown glass wasn’t the sensation my lips wanted. They were suddenly growing desperate to discover what Nicole’s lips tasted like. My hands itched to know how they would feel caught up in her waves of hair.

“You don’t need to humor me, Nicole,” I assured her, unable to say anything else. “My ego is already big enough as it is.”

Nicole grinned and swore to me, “I’m not just saying something you might like to hear. I really mean it. You know, I’m glad we’ve had these days together. I’m sorry to think they’re over.”

“Me too.”

The words escaped my lips before I could think them over. The fire crackled as we both grew quiet. I couldn’t look away from her again. I was a prisoner of her evergreen gaze.

“It doesn’t have to be over,” she whispered. “Not just yet.”

“No,” I agreed softly. “It doesn’t.”

A force of nature, Nicole had a gravitational pull compelling me closer. I breathed in the honeysuckle and citrus perfume lingering on her skin. I just had to move a fraction of an inch, and I’d know what it meant to kiss a creature like Nicole Davis.

“Are you just humoring me now?” She murmured against my lips, her eyelashes fluttering shut.

Slowly, I shook my head. “I… I don’t think so.”

My hand wrapped around the back of her neck, hiding under the curtain of blonde hair. It was surreal to feel the warmth of her skin. Everything about her felt so soft and ethereal. The fire had a halo of light surrounding her angelic face, and it was the last thing I saw before I damned myself with her kiss.

Tucked away under the cover of the old trees and manicured hedges, nobody could see how I pulled Nicole against my lap. Nobody would ever know how divine it felt to have her long legs straddling my waist. There was no getting past it.

I couldn’t stop my hands from brushing along the lace of her sleeves just as Nicole let herself get lost in my kiss. She was looking for someone to help her forget her pain, and I wanted to be that man. Even if it killed me, I wanted to belong to Nicole for one fleeting moment.

“Is this what you want, Nicole?” I asked, giving her the chance to walk away.

“Yes, Jason,” she breathed between kisses. “I’ve wanted it for a while now.”

Hearing those words from her lips was enough to drive any man wild. My chest rose and fell with want as Nicole’s hands tugged at the buttons of my shirt. Her fingers traced along the scars across my skin, but she didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t shy away from the echoes of battle wounds. If anything, it only drew her closer, her lips trailing away from my mouth across my jaw.

It wasn’t long before her fingers wandered down to my black leather belt. She didn’t take long to unclasp the silver buckle and push past the fabric. Whatever she wanted, Nicole could take from me. This night was hers to claim. I focused on memorizing the outline of her curves, my grip pushing up the fabric of her fitted skirt to feel the bare skin of her thighs.

I ached for so much more than just the pieces I found, but Nicole wasn’t mine to steal away. I couldn’t leave fingerprints on her skin or write my name along her back. I only had her in my grasp for as long as she allowed.

“Nicole,” I grumbled as her hand wrapped around my hardening body.

The mild night air blew across my exposed skin, and a tingling heat crept up my spine. It possessed me to lock my hands around her waist. Pushing her underwear aside, everything else melted away as our bodies connected, my grip helping Nicole find purpose in her hips.

Nothing felt like enough. Even with Nicole trapped against me, there was something unsatisfying about not having her skin against mine. I wished I’d carried her into the bedroom and convinced her to stay the night, but I couldn’t ask for things I should never have wanted in the first place.

Her rocking motion coaxed me toward release. Still, I couldn’t give in. I refused to let go until I felt her fingers dig into my neck and her spine arched towards me. Nicole’s nails scratched down my bare chest as she claimed her satisfaction, and I finally let go.

“Jason,” she gasped my name like a prayer and curse.

Her arms wrapping around my neck, I didn’t know which would be worse. I couldn’t think about it too much. I only had the energy to focus on Nicole’s body clinging onto me with a desperation I didn’t understand.

When she finally pulled away, Nicole murmured, “So that’s what it’s supposed to feel like.”

She was still a little drunk, and I didn’t think she meant to say that aloud. When our eyes met, Nicole looked a little surprised.

“What do you mean?”

“Huh?”

“What’s it?” I furthered.

“Oh,” she sighed, her eyes glancing towards the dying fire. “Um, how do I put this…? I’ve rounded some bases plenty of times, but I’ve never hit a home run.”

“You mean… that was…?” I realized faintly, my mind still reeling from what just happened.

She nodded. “Yeah, but don’t worry, Jason. It was nice, and, right now…, I could use all the happiness I can get.”

Nicole’s hands wrapped my arm, while her head leaned against my shoulder. There was so much I wanted to say, but it was all getting lost in my tired mind. I’d been up at dawn making sure the house was ready for guests. It was now late into the night. Between Nicole’s perfume and the glow of the fire, the warmth all around me was lulling my eyes shut.

When they opened again, the fire had burned out. The night had grown cold, and Nicole was gone. Part of me began to wonder… had she ever been there at all?

GET SEAL DADDY NOW!!