Big Rock(13)

She furrows her brow. “That’s all it takes for you to bow out? I thought you wanted and needed me to be your fiancée?”

“I do. I absolutely do. But you cannot go out without underwear on. You cannot waltz around New York stark naked under that skirt. Put these on,” I say, thrusting them at her.

Her lips quirk up in a grin. The corners seem to twitch back and forth. I swear her eyes say I told you so.

I hold my hands out wide. “Okay, Cheshire Cat. What canary did you eat?”

She takes the panties in her hand, grabs my arm, and tugs me into the bathroom. She points at the mirror. There’s a note on it, written in red lipstick. Spencer will make me put on the white bikinis.

And I crack up—deep, big chuckles that come from the very heart of me. I point a finger at her. “And you said you weren’t a good liar.”

She drops her jaw, then places her hand on her chest. “I wasn’t lying. That’s the truth, written in red lipstick two minutes ago, and I was right. Admit it.”

“You were playing me.”

“No. I was proving to myself that I could pull off being your fiancée,” she says with a wicked grin, bumping me with her hip. The look in her eyes is a cocktail mix of pride and amusement. “I wanted to see if we knew each other well.” She pauses before she says the next thing, lowering her voice. “And intimately.”

Then she steps into the panties.

In front of me.

With her heels on.

Over one ankle, then the other, then she slides them seductively up her smooth, strong legs. My eyes track her the whole time. I couldn’t look away if I tried, and I’m beginning to accept that I’m just gonna be sporting wood even more than usual during this next week. I figure that’s normal, right? What red-blooded man could be in close proximity to a gorgeous woman who’s putting on a pair of see-through—

My brain stops processing words. I swallow dryly.

The panties are over her knees. They’re gliding up her thighs. Making their way to her bare—

“Close your eyes,” she whispers.

And because I’m a gentleman, I do. I see black and silvery stars behind my lids, but I’m picturing everything I’m missing right now. Yup. Round-the-clock pocket rocket. Just resign myself to perpetual wood. Can’t fight these things. No need to even try.

“You can open them,” she says, and I oblige. She points to the toilet seat. “Take a seat, partner. Let’s debrief as I do my hair and makeup.”





CHAPTER EIGHT


We review the vitals.

She’s a sheet-hogger. I sleep naked. She doesn’t like sharing the bathroom sink at the same time. I couldn’t care less if she spits out toothpaste while I’m brushing. She has more than two dozen different lotions from The Body Shop and wears a different one each day of the week.

“Obviously, I don’t use lotion,” I say, gesturing to the silver bathroom cart full of orange blossom, honey vanilla, coconut island, and every other flavor of body rub under the sun. “And again, I don’t think anyone will be quizzing us on whether I know what kind of lotion you wear.”

“I know that,” she says as she plugs in a hair dryer. “But the point is, I want to feel like we know these things about each other so it will be believable that we’d be engaged. For instance, it takes me five minutes to dry my hair.”

I set the stopwatch on my phone and read a chapter in a thriller as she blows out her hair. Something about this moment feels very domestic. Like we really are a couple, and I’m waiting for my woman to get ready to go out.

Hmmm.

Maybe because that’s precisely what’s happening.

Except the part about us being a real couple.

When the buzzer sounds, she’s done, so I put my phone in my pocket. After she winds up the dryer cord, she snaps her fingers. “We forgot one very important thing.”

“What’s that?”

“How did we know?”

“How did we know what?”

“Duh. That we were in love.” She says it so sweetly, so convincingly, that for a second my mind goes blank. I forget we’re rehearsing, and I simply stretch back in time and try to pinpoint. Then the reality smacks me, and I laugh to myself. We’re not in love. We’re playing pretend. So as we leave her bathroom, I tell her what I told my dad this morning about how we came together.

“That’s not enough,” she says, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor as we cross the short distance to her sliver of a kitchen.

“Why not?” I ask, as she grabs a cold pitcher of iced tea from the fridge and I take two glasses from the cupboard. She’s particular about her iced tea. Makes it herself with these tea bags from Peets that she orders on Amazon, since Peets isn’t in New York.

“We need more details,” she says as she takes a drink. “I bet Mr. Offerman’s daughters will be the first to sniff out a lie. Girls are smart like that, and if his daughters catch on, you bet they’re telling Daddy. We need this solid. So, it was one night at the bar when we supposedly realized we had it bad for each other, right?”

“Yes. Just a few weeks ago. It all happened quickly.”

“But how did it start? Specifically? What was that one thing that started our romance?”