The Fake Boyfriend and the Geek Read online

  The Fake

  Boyfriend and the Geek

  Gone Geek 6

  Sidney Bristol

  Website | Facebook | Mailing List

  Inked Press

  The Fake Boyfriend and the Geek

  Gone Geek 6

  All she asked for was a fake boyfriend. What she got was a whole lot more.

  The only woman Gideon Mackenzie has ever loved just so happens to be his former best friend. After watching her endure a brutal trial and near constant harassment from her ex, the last thing Gideon could do was lie to her. Which is why he walked away. But now Piper is knocking on his door and she needs a favor: play her fake boyfriend for a week.

  Piper Erin is a woman on a mission to heal herself. After launching a successful career, she's turning her attention to a more personal level. She's done watching her friends fall in love. Piper wants to become a woman worthy of falling in love with, but she needs practice going through the motions. The only person for the job is the one man she can't forget.

  What begins as a well-intended date quickly heats up as these two friends discover years of pent-up desire. They might click perfectly in bed, but that doesn't make years of hurt go away. They'll have to face their past if they want a future.

  Explore the whole Aegis world in these series...

  It all began with the Aegis Group.

  Dangerous Attraction

  Dangerous in Training

  Dangerous Games

  Dangerous Assignment

  Dangerous Protector

  Dangerous Heat (coming 2018)

  In Dangerous Games it continued with the Gone Geek girls.

  Beauty and the Geek

  Mr. Purr-fect and the Geek

  The Jock and the Geek

  The Gamer and the Geek

  The Adorkable Girl and the Geek

  The Fake Boyfriend and the Geek

  When the Seattle office of Aegis Group opened the Twisted Royals took the stage.

  The Origin Story

  Alpha Prince

  Her Prince

  Bad Boy Prince

  Noble Prince

  Within Aegis Group, special teams take on special jobs, beginning with the Alpha Team.

  Dangerous in Love

  Dangerous in Action

  Dangerous in Transit

  Dangerous in Motion

  Dangerous in Charge (coming 2018)

  Stay tuned for the appearance of the Lepta Team, Troy Team and Omega Team.

  For short reads, tune in this December for the Body of Danger novella series kick-off.

  Heart for Danger (December 2017)

  Mind for Danger (coming 2018)

  Soul for Danger (coming 2018)

  For Shawn. <3

  Time heals all wounds, Sam. Especially good times.

  ―DEAN IN SUPERNATURAL EPISODE “BABY”

  Table of Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  Epilogue.

  1.

  PIPER ERIN SAT ON the bottom stair leading up to her apartment, the empty parking lot spread out in front of her. Her car was packed. All she had to do was leave and this nightmare would be in her rearview mirror. She was tired of fighting to put herself back together, fighting her friends for a nanosecond of their attention. She didn’t want to fight anymore.

  She swiped her thumb across the screen of her phone, mulling over the very short chat she’d had with her therapist this morning.

  An exercise in challenging herself had turned into hiding things from her friends. It wasn’t right, and she was going to do something about it when they got back from their double date trip. If she didn’t get behind the wheel of her car and just—go.

  She propped her chin on her fist and stared out at the street.

  Sometimes she wondered if she was a magnet for situations like this, if being raised the way she had in a van with a hippie dad, traveling the country, meant she didn’t have what it took to function in normal society. Dad would, of course, tell her the problem was the world—not her. But this time, she didn’t agree.

  Piper was broken. She could feel the jagged pieces of her soul that hadn’t healed right poking at her, creating new wounds. Would she ever be whole?

  She leaned back against the stairs and gazed up at the wide, blue skies.

  Ten years ago her life had changed through what she’d thought was a routine break-up. She’d had no idea how deranged Carl had been or the lengths he would go to make her miserable. At first, it was the people. Her friends left her, siding with Carl, except one. Gideon. Back then, friendship wasn’t what she’d wanted from him, but he’d become her rock through the next chapters.

  The day she found out about the videos, Gideon had been with her.

  Carl had recorded their intimate moments for months. To get back at her for breaking up with him he’d uploaded them to the internet. She could still remember the shock and outrage she’d felt standing in the police station. They’d brushed her off and threatened to arrest Gideon when he blocked an officer from trying to walk away from her. Her lawyers hadn’t, and with their backing she’d gone after Carl.

  Maybe that was where her life took the turn for the worse.

  Carl’s fans had attacked her in public, at professional events, and a few even showed up at her apartment. She’d become a prisoner in her home, with one friend left by her side.

  If she had to guess, that was why this distance between her and the girls hurt so bad. She remembered the pain of losing Gideon after a few years, how it’d felt like her heart was carved out of her chest, and she didn’t want to go through that again.

  Which meant she had to get better. She needed to figure her shit out and make things right between her and her friends. But how? How did one broken woman make this mess better?

  Her therapist had suggested challenging herself by doing something out of her comfort zone while he was away. He’d left the what up to her, which had spawned her idea to flee the city and her problems.

  Piper blew out a breath.

  If she were really honest with herself, she envied her friend’s happiness. Seeing what they had was what had pushed her to going to Dr. Yun in the first place. If she wanted that kind of person in her life, someone to love her, she needed to be whole.

  She rubbed at her chest, that old ache throbbing. There was a time when she’d thought the man for her was already in her life.

  Maybe that was what she needed to do, resolve that relationship so she could move on.

  A plan clinked into place. A crazy plan, but it was a plan.

  Piper pulled her keys out of her pocket and got to her feet.

  Dr. Yun wanted her to challenge herself. The biggest throw-down she could think of was pushing herself to go on a date with the one man she’d thought she loved, the one who’d been with her through it all.

  GIDEON MACKENZIE HIT the bottom of the stairs and slid a good six feet in his socks across the bamboo floor. In less than ten words his whole world had spun out of control. He stared in horror at the state of the living room and kitchen. It looked as though he’d hosted a week of benders rather than coding nonstop for two weeks. This was how it got every time he was finishing up a project. He couldn’t be bothered to do anything except work, eat and drink. Letting the maid service in didn’t rate on his scale of shit to care about.

  At least not until Piper Erin texted to ask if she might swing by for a minute.

  That
was five minutes ago.

  He’d had to finish the email sending his project off to the clients all the while his mind was focused on that one event.

  Piper was coming over.

  He stared down at his legs. His bare legs. He’d managed to put on a shirt and socks—but no pants.

  Fuck.

  There were very good reasons he scheduled pizza to be delivered the week a project finished. His brain was so mushy he couldn’t do simple things like order food or remember pants.

  He ducked into the laundry room and grabbed the first thing out of the hamper. He was ninety percent certain that stuff was clean. Or clean enough so he didn’t answer the door in his fucking underwear.

  The last time Gideon saw Piper... He wasn’t sure he remembered when. It had been a while, partially by design, and because he’d landed back-to-back projects.

  “Okay...” He stared around the house at a loss for where to start. “Maybe she won’t notice the place looks like shit?”

  Piper would notice and she’d laugh at him.

  He did a quick tour of the kitchen, dragging a trash bag with him and removing the take out boxes and their days old stench.

  Why would Piper ask to come over now? Was something wrong? Had Carl done something?

  The idea of Carl breathing in Piper’s general direction was enough to make Gideon want to go get a tire iron and a ski mask. The shit Piper’s ex had done to her wasn’t something Gideon would wish on his worst enemy. There were lines of human decency, and Carl had crossed them without a care that he was hurting the woman he claimed to love.

  Gideon sucked down a deep breath. Thinking about that period and the many levels of frustration at being relegated to doing nothing wouldn’t help him out right now. Besides, it was unlikely that Piper wanted to talk about Carl. That whole series of events was years—almost a decade—in their past.

  Had he really known Piper almost ten years?

  Gideon stopped and stared out the windows giving a spectacular view of L.A. spread out below.

  He remembered the first time he’d met her. She’d still been with that piece of trash, though it was at the end of their relationship before things went nuclear. Gideon recalled the gut punch of jealousy he’d felt that a dick like Carl was with someone as fucking awesome as Piper. Back then they’d all been nobodies, barely lucky enough to score a ticket to an event. He and Piper had bonded over music.

  She was the daughter of a true hippie, raised in a van and traveling the country. Her father worked the audio for any number of music festivals. It was a unique way to grow up. He could spend hours listening to Piper tell stories about her life. She made everyone else boring by comparison.

  When she’d broken up with Carl, Gideon had seen his chance.

  There was chemistry. They had similar interests. They were both music junkies in the tech world. But then Carl happened, and it was all Piper could do to hold it together. She’d needed a friend, not a boyfriend, so Gideon had bottled up his feelings and done everything to be there for her.

  Three years of hell. There was nothing worse than watching a person he cared about be whittled away to nothing. He’d sat there, giving Piper a shoulder, listening to her cry, opening her mail, and even sitting in the courtroom while the jury had to watch everything Carl had uploaded to the internet out of spite, all the recordings of their private moments Piper never knew about. Through it all, he’d seen a change in Piper. The light slowly went out and there wasn’t anything he could do to protect her. No amount of hamming it up to get a laugh out of her or taking her somewhere no one knew who she was helped.

  That spark was still in there, but it was harder and harder to see. Piper was a fighter, but the war had changed her, hurt her, and he didn’t know how to help anymore while remaining honest about their relationship and what he wanted.

  There’d been a point that last Christmas they spent together where Gideon accepted that his motives for remaining close to Piper were self-serving. By being her friend, deep down, he wanted what he’d always wanted—to be with her. And that was why he’d taken a step back. He’d helped connect her to some other women in her field, prayed they’d be her support structure, then took steps back. He flaked on their plans. He stopped answering texts, chats, phone calls. He slowly but surely choked himself out of her life until they really weren’t friends anymore.

  So why was Piper coming to see him? Why now?

  Every time he saw her, a bit more of that brightly burning flame was back. Time was healing her, but she didn’t want him. Not like he wanted her, and to pretend to be friends would only hurt her, and that was one thing he’d never do. He’d watched her suffer enough to ever allow himself to be a source of her pain.

  His phone buzzed.

  Gideon glanced at the screen and the single, ominous word.

  Here.

  He swallowed and closed his eyes.

  They were friends, just like they’d always been.

  One of the nice things about when they were together was how easy it was. They always seemed to fall right back into that same familiarity, which was why even a casual friendship was too much. He desperately wanted to soak up time with her, but that would only feed his desire for more.

  Screw it. He needed this fix, and then he’d figure a way out like he always did.

  A shadow stretched across the entry, the figure clouded by the frosted glass.

  He sucked in a breath and steeled himself.

  The doorbell resonated through the house and vibrated his phone. It was a little extreme, but if he was working he often didn’t remember what a knock sounded like.

  “Be cool. You are cool. Everything is cool,” he muttered.

  Gideon strode to the door and pulled it open before he could talk himself out of it.

  Piper rocked back on her heels. The afternoon sun made her blonde hair seem like tendrils of spun gold stroking her face. She smiled one of those wide, easy grins of hers.

  “Hey. Deadline time?” She nodded at his shorts.

  “What?” He glanced down—at the boxers he’d put on over his other boxers. “Shit.”

  Gideon stepped back out of the view from his neighbors and closed his eyes.

  “I like the blue. That’s a good color on you.”

  “I thought I was grabbing shorts. One sec.” He darted into the laundry room and this time found a pair of jeans. There was a bit of something suspect on one leg, but at least he wasn’t wearing more underwear.

  “I’d ask what you’re working on, but I know you can’t tell me.” Piper’s voice drifted further away, then closer. She must have taken a right through the dining area, around the kitchen and into the living room.

  Properly dressed, Gideon emerged from the laundry room and stepped into the kitchen.

  “How badass is the thing you’re working on?” Piper leaned on the kitchen counter and propped her chin in her hand.

  “On a scale of one to ten, I think it’s a solid eight. A lot will depend on how it’s implemented, used and marketed.” He gestured at the fridge. “Want a drink or anything?”

  “No. I can’t stay long.” Piper gripped the edge of the counter and stared at the surface.

  “What’s up, buttercup?” He didn’t like how she wouldn’t look at him.

  Gideon circled the bar and leaned against the chair next to her to wait her out. Sometimes Piper needed a long pause to sort out her words. That just gave him another precious moment to commit the vision of her to memory.

  “This is going to sound super crazy, which is why I didn’t know who else to ask.” Piper peered up at him, her lower lip pinched between her teeth.

  “Is this let’s-fly-to- São-Paulo level of crazy—”

  “No. Yes. Maybe?” She shook her head and chuckled. That trip... it was the moment he’d realized the precarious situation he was in. They’d followed a party, gotten too drunk to find their way back to the hotel, and so they’d sat on a curb until some other tourists helped get them to the hote
l.

  “São Paulo was fun. Hit me with it.” Gideon slid onto the stool and faced her.

  “I’ve been seeing a new therapist.” She gripped the edge of the counter as though she needed it to anchor her there.

  “Okay.” He was aware she’d had a steady shrink to work out her PTSD from the fallout with Carl and the resulting tidal wave of hatred aimed at her.

  “That’s not the full truth. I’ve been seeing a therapist who focuses on...relationships, intimacy...” Piper’s cheeks tinged pink.

  “Okay.” Gideon shrugged.

  “Sometimes I forget that nothing fazes you.” She sighed and slid onto the stool next to him and turned to face him.

  “This is L.A. Everyone’s seeing a head doctor for something or another.” And considering how badly Carl had hurt and betrayed her, it was no wonder she had problems with relationships of any kind.

  “Long story really short, I got a little annoyed that my therapist was taking notes from Tamara’s sessions and talking to me about it. It seems like we talk about the same thing over and over again without any progress. So I found someone new.”

  “I have so many questions. I don’t know where to start. Does he coach people on how to have better sex?”

  “Maybe?”

  “Is it working?”

  “I’m not having sex.” Piper’s cheeks were a pretty shade of cherry red, but at least she was smiling.

  “I’m going to need the long story I think.”

  “I don’t have time for that. I’m supposed to have a lunch meeting here in a few.” She checked her phone and then sat up straighter, gaze locked with his. She wasn’t backing down. That was the Piper Gideon wanted to see again. “Right, short story even shorter. Dr. Yun challenged me to do something out of my comfort zone while he’s out of town. I want to go on a date. Not a real date, obviously. A fake, going through the motions one. And I thought of you. I know I sound crazy, and this is really strange, but I need to ask someone who knows me. I want to stop being half the person I used to be. I don’t always like who I am now. I have to quit burying myself in work and ignoring everything else, you know? You don’t have to, but...you came to mind first. If I was going to ask anyone to help me out it should be you, right? And I’m rambling.”