Faking It Read online

  Cover Copy

  Haven't you ever told a little lie in the name of love?

  Vivia Grant couldn’t be happier. She has her dream job and is about to marry her dream man. Does it really matter that she’s led him to believe she’s a virgin? After all, being in love makes every experience feel like the first time anyway! But an unexpected encounter with an ex-lover is about to expose her embarrassing lie…

  When Vivia’s fiancé discovers the truth, he ends their engagement—via text—and uses his connections to get her fired. Unemployed and heartbroken, Vivia begins planning her new future—as a homeless spinster. But her best friend has a better idea. They’ll skip the Ben & Jerry’s binge and go on Vivia’s honeymoon instead. Two weeks cycling through Provence and Tuscany, with Luc de Caumont, a sexy French bike guide. Too bad Vivia’s not a big fan of biking. And she’s abysmal at languages. Will she fib her way through the adventure, or finally learn to love herself—and Luc—flaws and all?

  “Leah Marie Brown has a wily way of bringing her stories to life with sharp dialogue and drop-dead sexy characters.”

  --Cindy Miles, National Bestselling Author

  “Prepare to laugh, to sigh, to turn pages fast! I want a one-way ticket to Vivia's world.”

  --Kieran Kramer, USA Today Bestselling Author

  “A funny, romantic, fast-paced, all-expense-paid pleasure read through France and Tuscany you don't want to miss.” --Gretchen Galway, Bestselling Author of This Time Next Door

  “When it comes to crafting clever, intelligent, wonderful escapist fiction with a heroine every woman wants to know, Leah Marie Brown is a new voice to watch. Prepare to fall in love!”

  --Renee Ryan, Daphne du Maurier Award-Winning Author

  “Audacious, adorable and addictive! Faking It is a one-sitting read!”

  -Catherine Mann, USA Today bestselling author

  Visit us at www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Books by Leah Marie Brown

  The It Girl Series

  Faking It

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Faking It

  The It Girl Series

  Leah Marie Brown

  LYRICAL PRESS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Copyright

  Lyrical Press books are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2014 by Leah Marie Brown

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund- raising, and educational or institutional use.

  Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Special Sales Manager:

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Attn. Special Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  Lyrical Press and the L logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  First Electronic Edition: May 2015

  eISBN-13: 978-1-61650-809-8

  eISBN-10: 1-61650-809-4

  First Print Edition: May 2015

  ISBN-13: 978-1-61650-813-5

  ISBN-10: 1-61650-813-2

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” Marcel Proust

  I am fortunate to find myself surrounded by many charming gardeners who make my soul blossom with their wisdom, support, humor, and love. Three, in particular, deserve my unswerving, eternal gratitude.

  Cindy Homberger, my cord twin, you know how we joke about being blue haired old women and racing around on our motorized wheelies? If we both live one hundred winters, it still will not be enough time to thank you for your friendship. You kicked my butt, lifted my spirit, and inspired me to write this book. You said, “Girl, you are funny. So write funny.” I hope I delivered.

  Lisa Marie Reed, I am convinced we were born to the same mother and separated after birth. Someday, the family closet will creak open and the skeleton will come tumbling out. Until then, thank you for being my cousin, dear friend, and most eager reader.

  Last, but not least, thank you to my dearest friend, Stéphanie Gaveau Mounts, for providing the inspiration for Fanny, patiently correcting my French, and willingly accompanying me on some of my most memorable adventures. Tu es le plus charmant et aimé jardinier.

  Author’s Foreword

  Although this novel is a work of fiction, I based several of Vivia’s outrageous adventures and mishaps on my own outrageous adventures and mishaps. All of the characters in the novel are figments of my over-active imagination. Any similarity to those I have known/loved is merely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Saint or Sinner?

  All right, I’ll admit it; I have told more than one man he was my first lover. I don’t know why I started lying about my sexual history, but I think it could have something to do with my name.

  What’s in a name? If you’re looking for the poetic answer, check out Shakespeare. If you want a real-life example of the importance of a name, of how it helps shape the personality and sexuality of an individual, read on.

  I’m Vivia Perpetua Grant. I know what you’re thinking. What in the hell sort of name is Vivia Perpetua?

  I’m a little shaky on the details, but apparently old Vivia Perpetua was a noblewoman who lived a thousand years ago and was imprisoned because of her faith. I’m not sure if she was known for her modesty or her virtues. Either way, my grandmother—God rest her soul—raised my mother to believe that Saint Vivia Perpetua had been the superlative woman, someone who knew that chastity and humility paved the road to Heaven, just as wantonness paved the road to Hell. Saint Vivia Perpetua spent her last few morally-correct moments on earth in a Roman amphitheater being torn limb from limb by a boar, bear, or leopard. I don’t remember which wild animal mauled the martyr, but that’s not really the point.

  My mother named me Vivia Perpetua because she believed naming me after some long-dead, mostly forgotten saint would motivate me to spend my life collecting unused eyeglasses for the blind or doling out mosquito netting to malaria-plagued Africans. Not that there is anything wrong with those efforts, but please. Even more important than my mother’s desire to raise a socially conscious do-gooder was her desire to raise a young woman who would guard her chastity until matrimony.

  It didn’t work.

  I never dabbled in drugs—not even a puff on a joint, despite the fact one of my friends promised me smoking pot would make me popular and increase my breast size—but in high school I cranked Aerosmith and had sex. I’ve been out of high school for ten years now. I still like rock and roll and I still like sex.

  In fact, I love sex.

  My mother could have named me something more normal. I could’ve been one of a million Jennifers or Amys, and it wouldn’t have made one bit of difference. But no. She had to saddle me with Vivia Perpetua and a load of baggage about sex. I have more baggage than the Louis Vuitton flagship store on 5th Avenue in New York City, which I visited once with my best friend Fanny Moreau who works as a Regional Merchandiser for LVMH. Fanny is gorgeous, smart, talented, and has sophistication oozing from her otherwise immaculate pores. She’s French, so I’m
pretty sure the sophistication gene is hardwired into her DNA. Fanny never lies about her sexual history. She is confident and blunt.

  Like when I first met her. She told me her name was Stéphanie Elise Girard Moreau, and I told her mine was Vivia Perpetua.

  “How horrible,” she gasped, as if I had just confessed to having been born one half of a blind and deaf Siamese twin. “I cannot call you this name. To me, you shall be Vivian.”

  She pronounced the name in such a seductive way it made me wish my name was Vivian.

  “Like Vivien Leigh?”

  “Exactement.” She smiled. “Only less tragique.”

  We were best friends from that moment on. We talk every day, and we share all of our secrets.

  The first time I told her I’d lied to a lover about my sexual prowess, she said, “Honestly Vivian,” pronouncing the end of my name with her charming nasal accent, “I do not understand why you lie about such things. If a man won’t accept you for who you are, he is not worth the Dior Gloss.”

  Fanny and I are addicted to Dior’s Addict Ultra Lip Gloss, but at $25.00 a tube, we’re careful to use it on only the most delectable and Dior-worthy dates. It has become our code-phrase.

  “Was he Dior-worthy?”

  “I thought he would be, but he spent sixty-eight minutes talking about his ex, suggested I pay half of the bill, and then tried to use a Groupon to pay for his half.”

  “Chérie, I hope you saved the Dior.”

  Fanny is obsessed with Christian Dior. Not the conglomerate, but the couturier. She even quotes him.

  “Remember Christian’s mantra: ‘The tones of gray, pale turquoise, and pink always prevail,’” she once quipped, in an effort to persuade me to wear an absurd fuchsia bubble skirt.

  But I digress.

  I was supposed to be telling you about my pathological need to portray myself as a virgin, why it is my mother’s fault, and why I am now in the eye of the maelstrom that has destroyed everything I once cherished.

  Maybe I should start at the beginning….

  Chapter 2

  Losing My Virginity

  I lost my virginity when I was seventeen to Leo Crandall, a gangly cello player who lived down the street from us. My mom fell in love with Leo from the first time he rode his Little Fire Chief Big Wheel up our driveway and declared he was “on duty.” She proclaimed his mop of blond hair, wide brown eyes, freckled nose, and slight lisp “blooming precious” and insisted we play together often, even though I complained he used his Transformer to crush my Strawberry Shortcake doll. As he grew, Leo became more studious, earnestly practicing his cello while other boys his age were perfecting rad tricks on their BMX dirt bikes.

  In our junior year, we both worked at Sonic Burger. Sometimes he would give me a lift home. Leo was sweet and dependable, like a sad-eyed basset hound, but he didn’t raise my pulse. If Steven Spielberg ever wanted to turn my life into a movie, Leo’s part wouldn’t be played by Ryan Gosling or Brad Pitt. Leo did not have leading man appeal. He was more of a supporting character, like Harry Connick, Jr. in Independence Day.

  I had sex with Leo because I was angry that Jason Thomas asked Carrie Stemokowitz to the prom instead of me. Jason had been the subject of my preteen fantasies ever since he’d blocked a dodge ball from hitting me in the face during fourth grade PE. Carrie was my arch nemesis. Petite, popular, pretty, and the captain of the pom-pom squad, she was my polar opposite.

  I was angry with my mother for insisting I go with Leo to the Prom and for making me wear one of her vintage store finds, a ruffled gown in a shade she called delicate daffodil. I disagreed, saying it was more of a junkie jaundice yellow, which prompted my mother to cross herself and my father to peer at me over the top of his tortoiseshell glasses. My dad, a professor of Religious Studies at UC Davis, could make a lecture hall full of self-impressed students tremble with a single disapproving glance.

  I was angry at Leo, too. Why’d he have to ask me to the prom? Why not Carrie Stemokowitz? After all, Carrie was the one with the super-huge crush on Leo. Not the silently-suffering, worship-you-from-afar kind of crush I had on Jason, but a creepy stalker-like pseudo-obsession that reminded me of that Glenn Close movie—the one where she has an affair with Michael Douglas and then becomes unhinged when he won’t leave his wife. I’m not saying Carrie would have killed someone over Leo Crandall, but if pushed, I think she could have been a bunny boiler.

  The way she always stared at Leo was kind of disturbing. She twirled a lock of her wavy hair around a finger and batted her long, curly eyelashes at him. Once, in Chem class, Leo’s Chap Stick dropped out of his pocket and rolled across the floor without him noticing. Carrie picked it up. Later, I saw her pop the lid off, sniff it, and then rub it over her lips. She had this weird look on her face, a bit like when Buffalo Bill tossed the bottle of Jergens down to his victim in Silence of the Lambs. I half expected her to moan, “It rubs the Chap Stick on its lips.”

  If Leo had asked Carrie to the prom, I think Jason would have asked me to be his date. So my first sexual encounter was the product of this bizarre love triangle fueled by molten teenage anger.

  I liked Leo, but I didn’t love him. And that’s all I could think about when we fumbled around in the back of the rented limo. Why aren’t I doing this with someone I really love? I’ll bet Jason Thomas wouldn’t be so awkward.

  I didn’t have sex again until my senior year in college. I was too busy trying to keep my GPA up and my waistline down. Freshman fifteen? Try freshman forty. The night I met Travis Trunnell, I was uncharacteristically hammered. My then-BFF, Grace Murphy, had lured me to a cheesy bar called the Tijuana Yacht Club.

  “The servers wear tight speedos and dance on surf boards,” she’d said.

  “Speedos and surf board dancing? Are they straight?”

  “Vivia, seriously! You can’t study all of the time or you’ll die an old maid, like Mary Shelley.”

  I was into Gothic literature at the time, and more than a little obsessed with Mary Shelley, so her comment was like a jugular shot.

  “Mary Shelley experienced one of the greatest love affairs of all time. She did not die an old maid,” I argued.

  “Are you sure?” Grace squinted. “Because I am pretty sure Professor Atkins said she died a virgin.”

  “Mary Shelley did not die a virgin! She was Percy Bysshe Shelley’s wife. When they were courting, they would meet at her mother’s grave and Percy would recite poetry.”

  “Eww!” Grace grimaced. “Is that what you want, Vivia? To marry an effeminate necrophiliac who recites poetry as foreplay?”

  Unable to argue with such logic, I slipped into my tightest jeans and followed Grace to the ramshackle bar with sand on the floor.

  I had just slammed my sixth Hawaiian Punch Shooter and stumbled onto the dance floor when I noticed a tall, muscular beach boy staring at me from across the bar. My stomach flipped and I had a sickening vision of me hurling all over his feet. I thought I looked so cool, gyrating to 2 Live Crew’s old school anthem, “Me So Horny,” but when Travis Trunnell stared at me, I suddenly felt lame.

  I was grinding away to the climactic moan backtrack when I caught my reflection in the club’s mirror, hips rotating, booty shaking. Years later, Grace described my smooth moves as a sad epileptic white girl’s imitation of a twerk. Harsh. Could anyone look sexy dancing to lyrics that include “Sucky, sucky. Me sucky, sucky”? I don’t think so.

  Travis waited for me until the song ended, a slow, easy smile stretched between his dimpled cheeks. I must have stopped breathing because he leaned down and whispered in my ear.

  “Breathe, baby, breathe. You don’t want to pass out here. You’ll wake up with your pretty face buried in a sandbox.”

  I don’t remember what I said. I just remember looking into his blue eyes and thinking I would die if I didn’t have sex with him. I didn’t know his name. Didn’t know his story. But I had to have him. Grace, the psychology major, c
alled it primal lust.

  Travis ordered me another Hawaiian Punch Shooter, and beneath the glow of neon palms, we pretended to be interested in each other’s lives when all we really wanted to do was drop and have dirty, sweaty sex.

  Travis attended UC Berkeley on a full ride football scholarship. The more we talked, the more I liked Travis. His slow, sexy drawl and his hand on the small of my back made me feel fuzzy all over.

  I still wanted to have nasty sex with him, but I also wanted something more than a bar hookup/bootie call connection. I didn’t want him to think I was a slut. I summoned the last vestiges of my common sense and told him I would have to call it a night.

  That’s when I realized Grace had encouraged me to dance with Travis and then slipped out the back door. She even took my purse. Clever bitch.

  No Grace meant no ride home.

  Do you believe in serendipity?

  I do.

  I don’t believe everything is preordained. I doubt our higher power involves Herself in every detail of our lives. If you had the universe at your disposal and an infinite amount of time stretching before you, would you fill your days deciding whether Nancy Jones should have Caesar Salad for lunch? Probably not.

  I decided Fate had brought Travis to me. A higher power was telling me to abandon my no one-night stand rule and go home with the sexy Texan. After all, when the universe gives you a tall, handsome gift, you don’t give it back.

  We went back to his place, a third floor apartment with a frat house vibe. He offered me a warm Corona and put on a slow jazz CD. I hate jazz. All of those horns. It’s like someone handed out musical instruments at an asylum and ordered the patients to play whatever came to mind. He had a fake mink blanket on his bed. That’s about all I remember: jazz, warm beer, and a cheap blanket.