The Decoy Girlfriend(42)
Jesus, he needs to lock his shit down, and fast.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Our Instagram post got more likes than Jennifer’s,” Freya says around an enormous yawn, padding into Taft’s kitchen the next morning with a laptop under one arm and her phone in the other. She flashes him the screen, covered in a wall of messages. “Mandi’s thrilled—” She breaks off in another yawn.
She doesn’t cover her mouth, which is sweetly endearing, until he realizes her tank top has slid up a few inches. He catches a tantalizing but all-too-brief glimpse of a toned stomach before she drops her arm.
With supreme force of will, Taft drags his eyes back up to her face. “I made breakfast.”
“The amazing smell woke me up,” she admits. “I’m still so exhausted I could have slept until— Shit, it’s already noon?”
Her sleep-rough groan goes straight to his cock. “Okay, not a big deal. Call it brunch.”
“No, I had plans.” She sinks into a chair, propping her elbows up on the kitchen table.
“If you’re talking about you-and-me plans, we’re good until this evening.”
“Are you sure we can’t get out of going to Phoebe’s ‘cerebral’ thing tonight? I mean, she called it art house, but let’s be honest, it sounded like a home movie.”
Taft slices into the still-hot Spanish omelet—filled with potatoes and a little onion—and plates it, along with ripe raspberries and a few sprigs of mint from his windowsill. “How is it that you’ve known Mandi’s friends all of five minutes and you’re already just as petty about them as she is?”
“I’m not— Sorry, am I?” Freya winces. “Phoebe’s lovely. Really. I suppose I just had an idea that this would feel less like, well, work. Which I already had quite a lot of, frankly.”
“Hey, no skin off my nose,” he replies easily. “Mandi’s friends, not mine.”
She pushes her laptop away to make room. “Do I get to meet yours next?”
“Uh.” He thinks about Connor and the other castmates he hasn’t caught up with in person for a while. Weeks. Months? What kind of adult man doesn’t have friends? “Maybe,” he hedges.
If she noticed his brief hesitation, it’s forgotten the second he slides her plate over. Her eyes widen with delight, and she immediately lops off the pointy tip of the omelet with her fork.
But unlike him, she doesn’t eat it first.
“The tip of literally everything—cheesecake, frittatas, cake—is the best part,” she explains, pushing it to the side of her plate when she sees his curious, amused smile. “I want to save it for last.”
“Just call me the nonjudging breakfast club,” he jokes. She’s fucking adorable. Saving it for last. Hell, he’d chop off the tips of all the other slices and serve it to her if she wants. Should he offer? Would that be weird? “Er. Brunch club.”
Impish humor lights up her eyes. “That movie had nothing to do with breakfast, but I won’t quibble with any man who makes me potatoes for breakfast.”
He hides his smile with a strategic sip of fresh-squeezed orange juice. “And I know better than to even attempt verbal sparring when my partner uses ‘quibble’ in normal conversation.”
“I have a vast vocabulary, and I refuse to be verb-shamed,” she says, straight-faced.
“Yeah, I’m familiar with your particular lexicon,” he drawls. “You were swearing up a storm last night. Did you manage to get out of your dress okay?”
Freya pinks immediately. “You mean you didn’t take it off? I’m a little hazy.”
She’s eyeing him so worriedly that while his first inclination is to tease her, he knows they’re nowhere near there. Yet.
“You asked me to help undo the back zip,” says Taft. “Then you changed your mind and said something about setting boundaries.”
Relief blooms over her face. “Oh good. That I remember.”
“Then you tried to kiss me.” He smiles at the memory. “You fell over.”
She blanches and drops her full fork on her plate. “Those damn heels.”
“May have had more to do with the champagne fountain,” he says wryly.
“I overdid it,” she realizes, covering her mortified face with her hands. “I swear, I meant it when I cut myself off. I just got so nervous with everyone asking questions about us, and obviously there is no us, or rather there is, but—” She takes a deep breath. “I just kicked one bad habit, I don’t need to add another. I promise it won’t happen again.”
“Freya, you’re not in trouble,” he says a little incredulously. “I left you to it and eventually—after a lot of cursing, and at one point I think you stubbed your toe—you clearly wriggled out of the dress.”
He wonders if it’s puddled on the floor next to his bed. Not quite the way he’d wanted to divest her of it, but still, the idea of Freya fast asleep, his sheets wrapped around her, is heady.
“We didn’t get back home until after two a.m. You were wiped but not that drunk. Eat, it’ll all come back to you. You didn’t lose sight of our game plan. We did a good job.”
She nods and sits up a little straighter. “Oh, I didn’t realize until I woke up that you gave me your bedroom. You didn’t have to do that, I can totally take your guest room.”