The Chemistry of Love(71)

“I’ll show you.” He leaned back in his chair. “We should count shoulders.”

“What?” Had I misheard him? I thought he was going to do something else.

Marco touched his right shoulder with his left hand. “One.” Then his left shoulder. “Two.” He touched my right shoulder. “Three.

“Don’t punch me in the chest, okay?” he said. Then he had his hand on my left shoulder. “Four.”

Only he kept his hand there. He had his arm around me. “Cute, but that seems like a lot of effort. Did women actually fall for that?”

That I was falling for it was beside the point.

“Like a charm.” He stayed where he was, his arm in place, watching the movie with me, sharing food and laughing at the on-screen jokes like we were a couple.

It wasn’t the hand-holding I’d been hoping for, but I’d take it.

I hoped the paparazzo was getting some good shots.

And that’s how Marco acted for the entire following week. Like he was my actual boyfriend. He asked me out every night and I said yes. Every single time.

It was all under the guise of getting to know each other and being more comfortable together, and that’s what I repeatedly told Catalina, but I knew it wasn’t true.

So did she.

Marco took me axe throwing, and it turned out I was pretty good with the smaller axes. But every time someone said the word axe, which was a lot, he would turn and give me a mischievous grin.

We went mini golfing, to a sci-fi/fantasy trivia night at a local bar, to a concert, to dinner at fancy restaurants. Everywhere we went, our picture was taken. Catalina put an alert on her phone and would forward me a link every time a picture was posted. If what Marco had said about Craig’s assistant was true, there was no way Craig didn’t know about his brother and me.

I wondered if Craig had said anything to Marco, but Marco never indicated that he had. I was dealing with my own family drama—once my grandmother realized that I was going out every night with Marco, she said, “I don’t know if I like the idea of you two spending so much time together.”

“I am twenty-six,” I reminded her. “I can decide who I want to spend my time with.”

It was obvious she blamed him for the makeover thing, but that wasn’t even his fault. I mean, technically yes it was his fault because he’d arranged and paid for the whole thing, but I hadn’t done it for him.

I also had never really seriously dated someone before. Men were always secondary for me after schooling and my job. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be in a relationship—I very much wanted to fall in love and have my own romantic fairy tale like my parents and grandparents. I’d just never made it a priority before.

I was proud of myself for sticking to my resolution in going after what I wanted and trying to be happy.

Marco and I finished out our week by going to an art museum for the debut of a new collection. There was a red carpet, and one of the Minx publicists was there to introduce us to the press.

“This is Marco Kimball,” she said as we walked up to the first photo stop. I hoped I didn’t look awkward and that there wasn’t too much glare from my glasses from the flash. I felt pretty confident in how I looked, given how closely I’d followed Jen’s diagrams, and I was wearing a sleek full-length black dress.

I was a long way from my Arwen debacle.

Someone asked who I was, and I expected the publicist to introduce me as just his date, but she said, “This is Anna Ellis, an up-and-coming cosmetic chemist. You should keep an eye on her.”

Marco’s hand squeezed mine. He had done this. He’d had her say that. No one here cared who I was or about my job.

It was things like that—those little things that he would do and say that made me think I was important to him.

I’d been worried that Marco was going to push Craig out of my heart, and I could feel it happening. I tried to conjure up that fantasy of Craig, walking together near the water, sitting on that bench, but it was always Marco’s face that I saw.

Like I’d gotten over Craig completely.

And while Marco was attentive and fun and everything you could ask for in a fake boyfriend, it shouldn’t have made my feelings change.

Because he hadn’t done or said anything to make me think that he might feel the same. He called me his friend or his buddy often. He brought up Craig. Where I had once been desperate for any information about Craig and his life, now I found it annoying.

I had to keep my heart locked up. I just needed to spend time with Craig again. Let myself feel those feelings, remind myself why it was that I had fallen for him in the first place. Of course I was going to feel this way about Marco when I spent all my free time with him doing so many fun activities. Wouldn’t I feel the same way if I’d spent that time with Craig?

Craig would find out that Marco and I were “together,” he’d get jealous, end his engagement, pursue me, and it would be done.

I’d get everything I ever wanted.

And as I was having that thought, and ruminating about all the time I’d been spending with Marco in the past week, a timer went off. I was in my grandparents’ kitchen, baking my lipstick and daydreaming about seeing Marco again tonight.

I took my mood ring lipstick out of the oven.

It was perfect. The texture, the appearance, the smooth glide against my fingertip. I had done it. I set a timer to let it cool, and it was the longest half hour of my life.