Fix Her Up (Hot & Hammered #1)(34)

Her face transformed with feminine outrage. “That’s cold. You know we can’t lie to her.”

“And she could never say no to me.”

Georgie shook her head. “The old square-jawed smirk. It’s a one-two punch.” With an eye roll, she turned on a heel and stalked off down his hallway. “Where do you keep your Advil?”

“Nightstand. Bedroom.” Travis followed Georgie in that direction, hitting an invisible wall in the doorway to his bedroom. Leaning forward over his nightstand, Georgie’s shape took on a whole new meaning when silhouetted next to his bed. A wave of her hair fell off its perch on her shoulder, making her lips stand out against the dark backdrop. Last time she was in this room, he’d still considered her kind of a pest. Stephen’s sleepy little sister. Now? She’d become the sexy temptation in his bedroom at an alarming rate. That curve of her ass pressed to the skirt zipper, leaving nothing to his imagination. He wanted to drag that zipper down and find out what her butt felt like in his hands. Against his tongue. Wanted to learn the secrets of her body and pleasure more personal ones out of her mouth. And this definitely marked the first time in history he’d been eager to get inside the head of a woman.

“Here.” She straightened and offered him two Advil. “Take these. Promise you’ll call the doctor if it still hurts in the morning.”

He took the pills and tossed them back dry. “You’re not getting out of telling me.”

Georgie groaned up at the ceiling. “The Just Us League, okay? We started a club.”

Travis absorbed that. “You came up with the name, didn’t you? Clever.”

“Right?” She beamed up at him. “I thought so.”

“Seriously,” he rasped, a pill obviously having gotten stuck in his throat. Right? That had to be the reason he sounded like a wrench scraping on concrete. “I love it.”

They smiled at each other for a few seconds before Georgie shook herself. “We all have goals, you know?” Pink spread on her cheeks. “We’re just helping each other reach them.”

“What’s your goal?”

“Why?”

“Maybe I can help.”

She rolled her lips inward, leaving them twice as full when she freed them. Goddamn. “I want to expand my business from a one-woman operation to a full-fledged entertainment company. But first,” she rushed to add, before he could respond, “before any of that is realistic, I need people to stop treating me like a child. If my own family—this town—can’t take me seriously, I can’t expect . . . I can’t . . .”

Travis waited for Georgie to continue when she trailed off, but she seemed to be hypnotized by something over his shoulder. He raised an eyebrow. “You in there, baby girl?”

“I have a crazy idea,” she whispered. “‘Maybe you just need a different way to make them listen.’ Isn’t that what you told me?”

Yeah. He recalled the story he’d told her during their apartment cleaning session. He’d definitely said that. Apparently she’d taken it to heart. He didn’t know whether to be touched or regretful.

“You need the television network to believe you’ve gone family friendly. Travis, that’s me. I’m so disgustingly nonthreatening, I get noogies in the tampon aisle. Too much information, I know, but hear me out—”

“Georgie . . .” Caution crawled up his back. “Wherever this is going, it sounds like a no.”

“If you pretended to date me—”

“No.”

She clapped a hand over his mouth. “Just long enough for the network to think you’re settling down and definitely not going to swagger out of Britney’s hotel room—again. What would it be? A couple of weeks? Tops?” Excitement made her eyes a bright sea-glass green and he couldn’t look away. “We’d be killing two birds with one stone. You get the commentator gig. My family—this whole town—would stop thinking of me as the pesky youngest Castle kid.”

Travis grasped her wrist, tugging her palm away from his mouth, surprised to find his pulse racing, his breathing unsteady. “Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“Because, Georgie,” he blurted out. “Your stock will go too far in the opposite direction. You won’t get taken seriously. You’ll be labeled as another one of Travis Ford’s flings. People will be disappointed, thinking you had your head screwed on tighter than that.” He jabbed a finger at her. “You want to look like a grown-up? You will. One that makes bad decisions.”

“Wow,” she whispered. “You have a pretty low opinion of yourself, don’t you? Are you just worried about people thinking I’ve made a bad decision . . . or do you believe it?” Whatever she saw on his face made her eyes go soft. A little sad. “And here I thought you were cocky.”

He brought their faces close, listening to Georgie suck in a breath. “You don’t know a lot of things.”

“I could.” A beat passed. “You could tell me.”

With a concerted effort, Travis stepped away, swiping a frustrated hand along the back of his neck. When had this conversation gotten away from him? Suddenly this girl thought she could call him out? Attempt to examine him? No. Fuck that. He didn’t even have the nerve to examine himself. Bottom line, this ruse she’d proposed wasn’t happening. Not a chance.