Crazy for Your Love (The Boys of Jackson Harbor #5)(30)

He reaches for the bottle, but I snatch it off the counter before he can dump it too. “I want to try.”

He folds his arms, watching me as I bring the bottle to my lips.

I take a sip, then cough. “Dear Lord. It tastes like vinegar.”

“I was trying to be gallant and save you.”

Pursing my lips, I shove the bottle at him. “And not even good vinegar.”

“Agreed.” He dumps the bottle down the sink. “I thought we should make bourbon, but Brayden did a market analysis and insisted the market for wine is better for our clientele.”

“I have beer in the fridge.” I return to the flowers while Carter rummages through my fridge to find us some drinks. By the time I’m done arranging them in the vase, he’s opened a bomber of the Jackson Brews Blueberry Sour and poured us each a glass.

“Much better,” he says, sighing.

I take a sip and nod. “Don’t you all have enough to do without adding wine to your offerings? What’s next? Buying a vineyard?”

“That would be awesome, but no. We’re all big thinkers. We can’t help but imagine new opportunities for the company.” He shrugs. “But I’m not here to talk about the family business, ligament.”

I cough on my beer. That might be the worst one yet. “Why are you here? Other than to call me seriously disturbing pet names?”

“Your family arrives tomorrow.”

I nod. “We’ll head over together after lunch if that’s still okay with you.”

“It’s great.” He pulls a stool out from under the island and sits on it, settling his glass in front of him. “But if we’re going to be convincing, I figured we should make sure we have our bases covered in terms of information. I need to know everything I’d know about you if we were truly involved.”

I lean back against the opposite counter and study him. “Don’t we already know each other pretty well?”

“As friends, sure, but I don’t know you intimately.”

“After Saturday, you certainly know me more intimately than most of my friends,” I mutter. When he shoots me a mischievous grin, I roll my eyes. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

“Well, first we’re going to need to explain why we told Rich we’d been together two months a year ago and then I told everyone on Saturday that we’d been dating for two months.”

Crap. He’s absolutely right. It’s obvious, and yet I’d been so relieved to know Carter would be by my side that I hadn’t given that explanation any thought. “Okay, we were dating last year for a couple of months, but things were getting serious and you didn’t want that.”

He gapes, pressing a hand to his chest. “I didn’t want it? Do you want to make me look like a commitment-phobic asshole?”

“What if I broke up with you because you called me really obnoxious pet names?”

“How about saying it was mutual? Things were getting serious, and neither of us was ready for that.”

I consider, running it over from a couple of angles in my head before nodding. I don’t want either of us to sound like a jerk in whatever story we concoct. “That works.”

“Though I secretly was ready,” he says. “I just didn’t want to rush you because I understand that my job was part of the reason you were afraid to get too close.”

I flinch. They say the best lies are based in truth, but that one feels like it’s too close to home. So close it’s knocking on my damn door. “My sister would certainly buy that.”

“But then we started dating again a couple of months ago,” he says. “This time I’m determined to make you fall as hard for me as I’ve fallen for you.”

It’s weird to have this conversation and weirder to stand here wishing this weren’t pretend, that we were describing our history instead of manufacturing it. I take a long pull from my beer and sigh. It’s so good that I want to drain my glass, but I’ve made that mistake with this one before. “I haven’t eaten much today,” I tell Carter. “I should probably find some food if I don’t want this to go straight to my head. Are you hungry?”

“I could eat.”

I open the pantry and frown at my pitiful selection. I eat out too much and hate cooking for one, and that’s completely obvious by the lack of food in my house.

Carter comes to stand behind me. “You’re worse than Shay. At least she has whole-wheat bread and stuff for sandwiches most of the time.” He pulls open my freezer and fridge, then nods to the stool. “Sit. I’ll cook, and you can fill me in on the lesser-known details of Teagan Chopra.”

I open my mouth to protest then decide not to. I don’t know if Carter is any good in the kitchen, and that does seem like something I should know. “Okay, you know I have one sister, younger. Her name is Saanvi.”

“And her fiancé?” he asks. “Leroy?”

“Liam.” I’m honestly impressed that he’s even that close. I don’t remember talking about Liam, but I’m sure I have. He came to Jackson Harbor last spring to help Saanvi finalize some wedding details, but I’ve never had the chance to introduce either of them to my friends.

Carter nods as he pulls a package of chicken breasts from the fridge. “And you like Liam?”