Gray eyed the smug woman sitting next to him somewhat apprehensively. He knew she had a plan but wasn’t sure what it entailed. Why invite the Hales over to their place? They had literally only been there once before.

“Care to explain what that was about?” he asked, returning to his normal voice now that there was no one to act around.

“I will,” Mandy promised with a laugh. “But first, do you really use that voice all the time? Doesn’t it hurt your vocal chords?”

A little, but he had gotten used to it over the years. That voice had attracted people to him far better than his old accent had. It made him seem powerful and charming, neither of which had been the case when he was growing up.

Gray shrugged. “I’m used to it. You have no idea how hard I had to work to get rid of my accent in college. Sounding refined suited my needs better at the time. You’re actually the first person who has heard my natural voice in decades.”

She snuggled up against him with a sigh. “Well now you’re depressing me. But I have a plan to confuse your family even more. All we have to do is dress up in a bunch of different outfits and take pictures in places all over New York. We’ll put up picture frames and make it seem like we’ve been dating a lot longer than we have.”

Gray didn’t understand her point at first. Why bother doing something so silly? Then he realized that most people who were engaged or married did have family pictures all over their homes.

Aaron might not recognize her as the waitress from their last little dinner but he would certainly know they hadn’t been together for more than a week based on their conversation that day. Putting up pictures like they had been dating forever would definitely confuse him.

It would drive him crazy not knowing the truth; he knew that much. Aaron liked to be informed about everything around him, which was why he had originally hired genius hacker Aiden Quinn. Knowing something bizarre had happened but never getting a proper explanation would get his goat.

“You want to annoy him,” Gray surmised. “Why?”

Mandy smiled up at him innocently. “Well, he’s always barely polite to you when you actually care about him. The way I see it, it’s an eye for an eye. What do you say?”

His heart skipped a beat as the implications of what she said set in. She was put out that his brother didn’t treat him right and wanted payback. Nobody had ever been so mindful of his feelings before.

Had anyone ever been indignant about the way other people had treated him? He didn’t think so. This was definitely a first. A wonderful first.

Gray picked her up and moved her to his lap so he could hold her more easily. He may not know what love was supposed to feel like but if anyone had ever truly loved him, Mandy did. That much was clear as day.

And if he was even capable of loving someone else, he loved her. It felt wrong to say it now even though they were planning to get married. He had only met her again a couple of days ago. Insane.

“Let’s do it,” he replied.

===

Gray hadn’t pulled a prank since he was approximately twelve years old because one of his foster brothers kept pranking him and he wanted to get revenge. That had ultimately failed because his retaliation prank was a tad more severe than he had anticipated. His foster parents shipped him off to someone else immediately afterwards even though their son started it.

Mandy planned everything out herself so all he had to do was follow her lead. Wear this. Pose like that. She dragged him all over the city for the sake of a few pictures.

At least she was enjoying herself. She spent half of the time they were out laughing. He couldn’t entirely hate their little exercise because of how much he loved seeing her laugh but it was still exhausting. He never did anything like this.

“This is the last one, I promise,” she assured him as they headed into a photo studio.

Five minutes later, they found themselves in front of a green screen. He had a fairly good idea what she wanted to do with this. Mandy was most likely going to make the background be somewhere overseas and touristy that they couldn’t have possibly visited within the past week and made it back in time.

She threw her arms around his waist and snuggled close with a wide grin on her face in a stereotypical couple pose. Gray shook his head indulgently and hugged her back with a grin of his own.

Once they had a shot Mandy was satisfied with, the photographer showed them various scenery options they could use. The top of the Eiffel Tower…the Great Wall of China…the Sydney Opera House…all of these were pretty popular tourist destinations.

“What do you think?” she asked. “Which one seems least likely we could have visited since you saw Aaron last?”

Gray checked what the flight times were between all of those places and New York City. You could say a lot of things about him but when he committed to something he gave it 110%.

“Probably Australia. A flight from here takes nearly twenty-four hours,” he informed her.

Mandy clapped her hands together. “Great! Australia it is.”

An hour later, they were back at the apartment hanging up the picture frames. Mandy’s artistic eye had already decided how to arrange them and she had placed Gray in charge of the hammering. He had never hammered anything in his life so he hit his thumb more than once.

Each time it happened, she would grab his hand and kiss it ‘to make it feel better.’ That was something his mother did when she was alive. He hadn’t been kissed like that ever since.

Maybe it was a mom thing. Mandy did have a young grandson after all; it was probably a force of habit. But it still stupidly made his heart race.

Every minute Gray spent with her made him more and more reluctant to let her go. Not that he actually had. These days his empire building was done almost entirely from the comfort of his apartment. Since she quit her job, she had been glued to his side the past few days.

All these years he had been used to spending time by himself but he had been spoiled this week. He didn’t ever want to let Mandy out of his sight now that he knew how wonderful having someone special around could be.

Aaron’s clinginess where his wife was concerned made a lot more sense these days. At this point, Gray could see himself becoming just as desperate for his woman’s attention.

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