~ 1

❀ ✿ ❀  Chapter 1  ❀ ✿ ❀

~ Anastasia ~

Rule one of crashing a blind date: arrive first. Get yourself planted at the table before the poor man walks in, so he has the full, uninterrupted experience of dreading you from across the room.

I'd been holding down the corner table for ten minutes, and I was already the worst-dressed catastrophe in a restaurant full of rich people who judged my whorish dress and make-up.

It didn’t really matter knowing that they would never see me again, and even if they do, they would never recognise me because… this is all an act.

I looked like a warning label. Which was the entire job.

Nobody would look twice and see Anastasia Blake under all this. Good. This version of me didn't have an ex-boyfriend three miles away who still thought she'd cheated on her final year exams. This version of me didn't have anything to lose.

My phone buzzed against the tablecloth.

Hannah: Is he there yet?? Did the blind date guy show??

Me: not yet. But I am ready to make him run away with his tail between his legs, you are not getting married to a stranger, Hannah. I am going to make sure of that.

Hannah: I love you so much. Thank you for helping me for the third time. I am sure after tonight, my father would give up on setting up blind dates for me.

Me: After tonight, every potential suitor is going to reject every marriage proposal concerning Hannah Wells. See you soon!

I tucked the phone away. Half the money Hannah had paid me for filling in for her and making her date hate her, and never want to marry her was already folded into an envelope in my bag.

My laptop was on its last legs and I needed it more than I needed dignity. A programmer without a machine is just a person with opinions.

Not that the machine had done me much good. Three interviews this year. Three polite, identical rejections. Brilliant work, they all said, very impressive — and then the same gentle question, circling in like a vulture. And your degree is from…?

I didn't have a degree. As an expelled college dropout, my chances of getting hired as a developer were practically nonexistent. So I ended up working at the arena as part of the ice crew for the Frost hockey team, clearing snow from the rink while everyone else got to live the dream.

The team was two weeks out from the championship and they wanted the whole crew there Monday morning. It wasn't writing code. But it was a paycheck with my name spelled right, and I'd take it.

So: one more sabotage, one more thousand dollars, one more dinner ruined on purpose.

Hannah's father had a bottomless supply of "suitable men" and a daughter who would rather eat glass than marry one. I was the glass.

"Ms. Wells?"

The voice came from over my shoulder. Low and unbothered.

I turned around with my most obnoxious smile, ready to greet some sweaty old man.

The man standing there was not old. And he was very, very not sweaty.

He was, in fact, the most attractive human being I had ever seen with my own two eyes.

Tall. Dark hair brushed neatly away from his face. A sharp jawline that looked carved from stone. Pale blue eyes settled on me, seeming to see right through me. His suit fit perfectly, as if it had been made just for him. He carried himself with a quiet confidence and power that couldn't be bought or faked.

And somehow, he looked familiar.

My brain stuttered. I know that face. The cheekbones. The eyes. I'd seen him — on a billboard?

A magazine cover at the pharmacy checkout? My whole body went cold with the certainty that I was looking at someone famous. A hockey player. I was almost sure of it. One of the big ones, the ones who end up in tabloids more than on the ice.

Then I blinked, and the certainty drained right out of me.

‘No. Don't be ridiculous.’ The guy in the magazines had longer hair, shaggy and sweat-damp, half-hidden under a helmet. This man was clean-cut, polished, buttoned into a suit.

Famous athletes did not show up to arranged blind dates. They had women lined up around the block. This was just some rich guy who happened to share a face with a celebrity. A coincidence. A really, unfairly handsome coincidence.

"Hannah Wells?" he asked again, one eyebrow lifting.

‘Say a word. Any word. Stop gawking. You are Hannah Wells right now!’

"Yes!" I said, far too loud. "Yes… that's me! Hi! Sit, please, sit!"

‘Smooth, Anastasia Blake. Real smooth.’

He sat with a controlled, unhurried grace, every movement deliberate. His gaze swept over me — the dress, the makeup, the cheap gold hoops… and I caught the smallest flicker of surprise. Maybe judgment. Good. That was the assignment.

Damn, he's gorgeous but that doesn't matter. You have a job. Make him hate you. Make him never want to see "Hannah" again.

I dug into my purse, pulled out a stick of gum, and unwrapped it as slowly as humanly possible. The crinkle of the foil was deafening in the hushed room. I folded it into my mouth and started chewing.

Loudly. Mouth open. Wet, smacking, cow-in-a-field chewing.

A few heads turned. Irritated.

Across from me, the beautiful man went very still. His eyes widened, just a fraction.

There it is.

I leaned both elbows on the table and got straight to it. "Before we waste each other's evening — what are you worth? Ballpark. And is it liquid, or is it all tied up in boring things like property?"

His eyebrow climbed a fraction. "I'm sorry?"

"Net worth. I like to know what I'm working with. Your family has to be richer than mine" I picked up the bread basket, took the biggest piece, and talked around it. "I've got requirements. I figure we save time if we find out now whether you can meet them."

"Requirements," he repeated, perfectly even.

"A monthly figure, for starters. Non-negotiable. I don't cook, I don’t clean, I don't host, and I absolutely don't do that thing where wives pretend to like golf." I ticked them off on my fingers. "Separate rooms. Separate floors, ideally. And I keep my situation on the side — everybody's got a situation, don't look at me like that."

He didn't look at me like anything. He just watched, still as a held breath, those pale eyes fixed and unreadable. Most men would have flinched by now. He hadn't moved a muscle.

It threw me a little. So I did what I do when I'm thrown — I kept talking, faster.

"You've got a familiar face, by the way," I said, narrowing my eyes at him, going for casual cruelty. "Anyone ever tell you that? You look like that hockey player. Martineau. The one who can't keep his name out of the tabloids — new girl on his arm every other week, always some scandal." I clucked my tongue. "Tragic, honestly. All that talent, total mess of a man. You're better-looking than him, though. He always looks like a gigolo."

His jaw set for half a second before the calm sealed back over it.

"Is that so," he said.

Hit a nerve. Don't care. Keep going. I waved my bread at him. "So? Are we doing this or not?"

He exhaled slowly and reached into his jacket. He produced a sleek black business card and set it on the table between us.

I rummaged for Hannah's card. It read Hannah Wells, Kindergarten Teacher in tidy gold lettering. As he reached for it, I yanked it back at the last second.

"Oops!" I giggled.

His hand hovered in the air. His expression didn't move at all. He just waited.

I giggled again and finally pushed the card across to him.

"Sorry, sorry! Just messing around."

He took it without a word and glanced down, face unreadable.

Meanwhile, still chewing like a maniac, I picked up his card.

ZANDER MARTINEAU Martineau Holding Group

The gum dropped out of my mouth and onto the tablecloth.

I read it again. And again. Because there was no possible way.

Zander Martineau.

I knew that name. Everyone knew that name. It got shouted across arenas and stitched onto the backs of jerseys. Number nine. The face the whole league put on its posters. The hockey star whose love life had its own permanent slot in the gossip columns.

The man my supposedly-imaginary doppelgänger theory had been desperately trying to deny.

He wasn't a coincidence. He wasn't a lookalike.

He was him.

Oh no.

Oh no, oh no, oh no.