Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)(43)

I suggested this on purpose to give him a chance to decompress before we joined the group again. I could tell immediately it was the right thing. He let out a breath that sounded relieved and nodded for me to follow him.

The house was enormous. I got the feeling it was the family hub. It was built for entertaining. The basement had a full bar and so did the pool. There was a water slide and a pool house with a nice outdoor BBQ. They had a movie room and a very comfy, very large living room where the twins were playing on a PlayStation. A big dining room with a table that seated twenty and lots of guest rooms.

“Did you ever live here?” I asked as we strolled past the open door of a guest room strewn with the twins’ toys.

“I grew up here.”

“Ohhhh,” I said, turning to smile at him. “Show me your room.”

“It’s not the same as when I was a kid. Dad uses it now,” he said.

“I still want to see it.”

I stopped at a bookshelf off the hallway. There were framed photos tucked in with the books—a picture of Jacob in eighth grade. His hair stuck up every which way and he had braces and an overbite.

Damn. Puberty hit this man like a bus. The glow up was unreal.

“Oh, look at that,” I said, spotting a book I knew. “Love Shows Up. I read this.” I tapped the spine.

“Mom wrote that.”

I froze. “What?”

“She’s a couples counselor and sex therapist. Bestselling author. She has a PhD in clinical sexology. She’s also a board-certified OB-GYN.”

I turned slowly to stare at him in horror. Then I hustled him into the nearest room and closed the door behind us.

“Please tell me you’re kidding,” I whispered.

He blinked at me in confusion.

“Your mom is Dr. J. Maddox? A world-renowned relationship expert? Are you serious, Jacob? You didn’t feel like this was something you should have mentioned?”

He looked positively baffled.

I shook my head at him. “It is literally her job to call bullshit on us.”

“I told her we were new—”

“Jacob, I don’t even know what your penis looks like.”

“Well, I’m not showing it to you—”

“I’m not asking! I’m making a point!”

I put a hand to my chest. “I thought I was gonna get here and your dad was going to call me Brenda or Bianca the whole time and they’d make small talk with me and then I’d go home and we’d have three more weeks before the engagement party to perfect our act. And instead we’re in a two-hour couples-counseling consultation with a bestselling sex expert. She’s going to take one look at me and know I’ve never seen you naked. She’s gonna see it all over my face!” I looked at him bleakly.

He seemed to mull this over. “Maybe we haven’t had sex yet. Maybe we’re taking it slow.”

I shook my head. “No. No way. We’ve definitely had sex. You supposedly moved to Royaume to be closer to me and we haven’t even slept together yet? How is that in any way believable? The whole point is to make them think we’re super into each other. How are you going to be over Amy if you’re not having hot, kinky sex with your new girlfriend?!”

He started smiling.

“This isn’t funny!”

“It’s a little funny.”

“No! And what is this room?!” I asked, throwing my arms out.

A thousand marble eyes stared out at me. It was full of taxidermy. FULL. And it was weird.

A squirrel in a cowboy hat and chaps riding a turtle. A white mouse dressed in a wizard robe and glasses reading a book, a rabbit with antlers, a ferret in a little bathtub scrubbing his back with a loofa. A dead coyote dressed like Flo from the Progressive commercials. She had the bouffant haircut and red lipstick and everything. It was pretty hilarious, but still.

“This is my old room. This is Dad’s stuff,” Jacob said. “It’s where he keeps his novelty pieces.”

I bounced back to the problem at hand. “This is a catastrophe, Jacob,” I whispered. “What if your mom sends me a friend request on Instagram? There’s not one picture of us together. It literally looks like I didn’t exist until today.” I shook my head. “We just walked in here like renegades. I don’t know enough about you to pull this off. I don’t even know how old you are. Do you sleep with the fan on? How do you take your coffee? Do you snore?”

“I’m thirty-five. I sleep with the fan,” he said calmly. “Decaf when my anxiety is high, cream and sugar, and not that I am aware.”

I shook my head at the gorgeous, oblivious man standing in front of me, who was totally not getting the gravity of this situation. “You said your mom knows Jessica?” I asked.

“Yes. And Zander and Gibson.”

“We’re going to have to be together in front of everyone. We’re going to have to maintain that we’re dating at work. I’ll have to tell Benny. We’ll need to disclose the relationship to HR.”

His face fell.

“It’s fine, I’m okay with it,” I said. “It’s just bigger than I thought.”

Hopefully Jessica didn’t talk to Joy too much and the jump from I Hate Him to I’m in Love with Him didn’t come up.