CHAPTER ONE.

Her suitcases were lost.

Of course they were.

"Thank you," she muttered to the woman she had been talking to, although it sounded more like a grunt.

Cinder could have grunted, if she wanted to, because she didn't only have to pass the entire week with her horrendous stepfamily, but to wear her sister's clothes, those awfully tight jeans and shirts. And hear her stepmother babbling about how forgetful was Cinder and how messy was her life.

The woman gave her a card with a number—the company the plane she had flown with was—and smiled. Cinder grimaced and turned around to sit on a chair, covering her face with her hands; she could have cried, and she felt like she was going to, when a girl not far away laughed, cheerfully. She wished to be that girl, happy, with what seemed to be her boyfriend.

She looked away; Cinder hated that girl for being so happy, she didn't want to be her. She stared at the clock on the wall, and noticed how late it was. She had been waiting for her lost suitcases almost two hours since her plane had landed, which meant…

"Oh, crap," she muttered to herself, picking up her phone from her bag and turning it on. Cinder bit her lower lip and waited, anxiously, until its screen brightened and, after tapping the password, she cursed again under her breath.

Four missed calls from home. Two missed calls from Pearl, and two more from her mother. She had a lot of messages.

Cinder read the last one, from Pearl, sent about an hour before; it said that she had been waiting for too long, so she had gone home.

How was she getting home now?

She tried to call them, but neither Pearl nor her mother, Adri, answered. They were eating dinner, sure. Too busy to answer Cinder, who was now stuck on that airport, without clothes, without money, without anything.

"Miss Linh?" Called the woman Cinder had talked before, and her smile wasn't as bright as it had been. She closed her eyes for a second, took a deep breath, and said, "Your suitcases are still in France. There was a misunderstanding. Toulouse airport will send them back here tomorrow, maybe in a few days, I am afraid. I will call you personally when they arrive."

Now she was definitely going to cry. And sob. Loudly.

She whispered an almost audible 'Thank you' and rested her head on the wall behind her, shutting her eyelids. What was she going to do? Cinder only had a few dollars, since the rest of her money was in one of her suitcases, and her mother's house was so far away. She couldn't pay a taxi. And there were no buses that late, and no one picked up her calls, and she didn't have anywhere to go and she was totally screwed.

"Okay," she muttered a few minutes later, opening her eyes again. She had been through a lot, and that was not going to turn her down. She looked down her contacts list in her mobile and found Thorne, but he was probably somewhere in the U.S.A. flirting with some girl he had just met, so he was out; Scarlet and Wolf were in France, so they were out, too; Cress and Iko sure were with Thorne, so out. There were really not much people left.

Cinder needed to go out more.

She got up, stretching her body. She could buy something to eat, but if she did all her money would disappear; food in airports were more expensive than food in a fancy restaurant, and in New Beijing it was worse. It was a costly country.

Her stomach roared, and Cinder went to the nearest coffee shop. She definitely had to eat something.

But before she could get there, someone grabbed her by the arm, turning her around, and now she was facing a very tall man with a very black beard and a very angry face and a very tall woman with a very raised eyebrow. Cinder gulped and stared at the person who had grabbed her, a guy around her age with messy black hair and eyes and olive skin. He was almost the same size as her, so she didn't feel that small.

"Um," Cinder said, forcing a smile. He looked at her like he was going to die at any moment. "I think you've grab the wro—"

He kissed her so suddenly Cinder forgot what she was talking about the second his lips touched hers. She gasped again and stood on her tiptoes, because he was a little taller. It had been a while since she had kissed someone and, when she realised that the guy she was kissing was a stranger, she pushed him away and looked at him wide-eyed.

"What do you—"

He put his arm around her waist and Cinder separated immediately. What was he doing?

She said, "Sorry, I've got to go to the bathroom," and then flew away.

Cinder heard the guy calling after her, but she ignored him. Did he want to kidnap her?

The moment she reached the bathrooms, she hid in one of the cubicles and waited until the speakers announced the New Beijing-Paris embarkation would soon start; she wasn't going to pick any flights in an entire week, but Cinder supposed that the kissing guy was no longer there.

Why had he kissed her? Was he some creep that liked kissing strangers in the airport or something? That sounded ridiculous, but there was a lot of crazy people out there. Maybe he was really out of his mind. Or maybe he was drunk, or maybe some friends had challenged him. Could the woman and man that were beside him be his friends? They seemed a little bit old, but it wasn't impossible.

She hoped he was no longer there.

To her dismay, Cinder found him right in front of her eyes when she left the bathrooms, sat in a chair like a normal person, looking at his phone. He was crazy, sure.

Cinder sighed and tried to walk away from there as quietly as she could, but thanks to her shoes., since the tapping of them against the floor echoed through the empty hall, he noticed her right away and was by her side in half a second. "Geez, get lose," she snapped out, and he rolled his eyes and tilted his head.

That annoyed her; she should be the one rolling her eyes! He had kissed her without her permission, waited for her, followed her.

That sounded pretty much like a stalker.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I shouldn't have kissed you or grabbed you, but I had to."

"You had to?"

She wished that there was more people there, so she could pretend to know one of them and keep that creep at bay.

"No. No, no, no. No, that came out wrong. Listen, I heard that woman saying that your luggage is still in Toulouse. I was not stalking you," he clarified when Cinder shot him a glare. "But I'll offer you a deal."

"A deal," she repeated, crossing her arms. He nodded furiously, and Cinder looked for the man and woman she had seen before, but they were nowhere to be seen. She sighed. She didn't have anything more interesting to do, and hearing him wasn't going to hurt her. "What deal?"

He smiled brightly. "Well, I'm passing this week with my parents. They were there when we— um. They have been pestering me about having a girlfriend for months, and I told them I was going to bring one this Christmas. But I obviously don't have one, and I was going to tell them, but then I saw you, all alone, and…"

And now Cinder was his fake girlfriend. Oh, she had seen that in a lot of movies, but normally upside down; a girl, desperately to have a date for Christmas because everyone had a date, or because her parents pestered her indeed, picked up a handsome guy and asked him to be her fake boyfriend. He would say yes, obviously, and they would fall in love and then have a fight and then confess their love for each other and live happily ever after.

She had never, ever imagined she would be in that position. A completely stranger asking her to be his fake date? Whoa, impressive. She smiled a little, thinking about what the guy should have seen in her to ask her such a thing.

It was a little bit disappointing, since he was not as handsome as the men in those films, but still.

Pretending she was not astonished—because she really was—Cinder grimaced and said, "I don't even know your name."

He didn't try to cover his enthusiasm, though, when he said, "Kai. My name's Kai. And yours?"

"Cinder."

"That's a pretty name. Anyway. Ehm. I presume you had already guess what I'm talking about?"

Cinder took a while to answer, because she was still thinking about being his fake girlfriend; she didn't know if she would have to stay at his house, like in the movies, or if the man and woman she had seen before were his parents because if they were, they were scary people. Scary, tall people. That wasn't what bothered her the most, however. It was the fact that she would have to say Adri that she wouldn't be able to pass Christmas with her and Pearl.

They were the only family she had left, but they didn't feel like family at all. They blamed Cinder for her stepfather and stepsister's death, even though she had nothing to do with it. Pearl and Adri treated her like a slave, so if Cinder decided to pass the entire week with them, she would be cleaning bathrooms and furniture and making breakfast, dinner and every meal they wanted.

If she didn't, Adri would throw her away. Again.

Plus, she was twenty-four now, she could do whatever she wanted to.

Cinder stopped walking and faced the guy. Kai. He was smiling, and seemed like a beam of sun, while Cinder, with her black and green clothes and brown hair seemed more like a beam of darkness. She wondered again how could he have chosen her, since there were a lot of pretty girls in the airport. But then she realised that maybe the girls were with someone else, not like her, all alone—like he had said— and found the answer to her question.

He had seen her like an opportunity, not a girl at all.

"You want me to pretend I am your girlfriend," he nodded, although it was not a question. "And I guess you want me to meet your parents."

"They are outside."

She tried to ignore it. "You want me to stay in your house?" Before he could answer, she shook her head and fixed her eyes on his. "I will. I don't care if I have to sleep on the floor. Now, what was that deal you were talking about?"

Now he didn't beam anymore. Kai looked at her like she had just said something weird and unbelievable; he started chewing on his lower lip, and Cinder almost did the same. She let her arms fell at her sides.

"Well, the deal was giving you, um, a place to stay. And clothes. And everything you need, really. But you just asked for it, so…"

Now she felt embarrassed; he could pick other girl, because sure there were a lot of lonely girls who didn't have anyone to pass the week with. Cinder actually had someone to pass the week with.

She felt her cheeks hot as she murmured, "Okay. I will pretend to be your girlfriend, if you still want me to. But I can't just meet your parents without any backstory. How did we met? It was love at first sight? Have you met my family? Have we already—"

Kai laughed, and he looked more handsome when he was not worried or serious. He was even cute. "It's all right," he managed to say and, somehow, Cinder managed to understand him. "We can figure it out later. I would tell them you are pissed because of the suitcases and that was the reason you— well, why you ran to the bathroom before. Stay here for a sec."

He turned around, but Cinder called, "Kai?"

"Yes?"

"You are not pretending this so you can kill or kidnap me later or something, are you?"

He laughed again, "My parents are going to love you."

Thanks to lunarchroniclesandcockatiels for being an amazing beta and thank you for reading! Reviews are always appreciated!