Page 16 of Long Hard Road

“No offense, angel, but no one in my social circle would care. The only person who would care is my niece and I don’t tend to gossip with her about my neighbors.”

“Okay. Good.” I took another sip of bourbon and savored the slight buzz that was settling over me. “Are you annoyed that I wasn’t upfront about my past?”

“It’s not like I asked if you were a global superstar and you said no. You just didn’t talk about your past. That’s fine. I didn’t tell you the sordid details about mine either.” His gaze left my body and focused on his drink and his jaw clenched.

“Are you also a global superstar?” I teased.

“I’m not talented nor pretty enough for that.” He finished his drink in one big swallow and stood. “I’m going to check on the stew and get a refill. You want another?”

I nodded and handed him my glass. The sudden shift in his demeanor was a bit blindsiding. He’d gone from being surprisingly relaxed when discussing my history to putting up a wall at the mention of his own. It was beginning to occur to me that Nate might not be the easy-going, helpful guy I had initially thought him to be. It was clear he had a darker, more complex side.

“It’s looking good, but we should let it simmer for a while. It helps bring out the flavors.” Nate handed me a glass with twice the amount of bourbon that I’d been pouring. He noticed me noticing that. “My recent bartending job has given me a heavy pour. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’ll just drink slowly. I’m sure you don’t want to spend your night off taking care of a drunk girl.” Not to mention I didn’t trust drunk Madison not to say something horribly mortifying. I was embarrassing enough when I was sober.

“You can’t possibly be as bad as my sister. I swear that girl has two beers and she can’t stay on her feet.” This time when Nate took his seat on the other end of the sofa, I took a moment to appreciate the sight of him, long legs spread before him and the glass looking too small in his large hand. The scruff on his jaw hadn’t been there just a few hours ago and it made him look impossibly sexy. He was a magnificent specimen of maleness.

“Are you single?” I asked bluntly.

“Uh, yeah.” He chuckled nervously. “That obvious?”

“No, I just figured you wouldn’t be spending an evening with a random woman if you were in a relationship.” Then a logical thought occurred to me. I’d just assumed that the looks he’d been giving me implied a preference for women, but maybe I’d misunderstood. “Unless you, um, date men. They probably wouldn’t be threatened by me.”

“My life would be so much easier.” Nate wasn’t at all offended that I was addressing his sexuality. “I understand men. Women… not even a little bit. Hence still being single.”

“Right. Makes sense.” What was I saying? That it made sense that Nate was single? Because that made absolutely no sense. Nate was a nice guy who fixed things in his sister’s bookstore and fixed random women’s cars and made them dinner. He was unbelievably attractive and didn’t seem to know it. Nothing about a man like that being single made sense. “Since you understand men so well, maybe you can explain them to me.”

Nate’s feet shifted wider until the one closest to me was almost invading my space. It was a smaller sofa, but he was also a large man. “You don’t expect me to believe that you have trouble with men,” he scoffed. “A couple of weeks ago, Emma was telling me all about your breakup with some musician.”

“Mason?” I shook my head and laughed. “That wasn’t a real breakup. It wasn’t even a real relationship.”

“What? Then what was it and why was my niece so invested in it?” At 32, Nate had perfected his grumpy old man look.

“It was a PR relationship. We have the same agent and it was good for our brands.” I had been reluctant about the whole thing, but my agent had talked me into it.

Mason West was famous for being a good singer and a serial dater. He hooked up with a new semi-famous woman almost every week. That reputation had started to lose him some of his younger female fans. That demographic happened to love me, so our agent had set it up. I still wasn’t entirely sure what had been the benefit for me except that interviewers stopped asking me who I was dating as their first question. That alone was probably worth it since I hated answering that question.

“How does that work? You just lie and tell people you’re dating?”

“It’s more subtle than that. Our agent set up a public outing for us and then made sure the paparazzi would be there. Mason and I held hands on our way into the restaurant. He paid for the meal. Opened a car door when we were leaving and planted a kiss on me inside the car. Photos circulated and… boom. We were a couple.”

Nate grimaced. “That sounds so…”

“Transactional?” I nodded. “It felt that way the first time, but I’m used to it now. It’s just part of the job. Almost like an acting role. I just act like I’m the current guy’s girlfriend.”

“How far do you have to take it? You don’t sleep with them, do you?”

“That’s personal.” I narrowed my eyes. “Why shouldn’t I if I want to? Do you have a problem with casual sex?”

“No, but that’s not what we’re talking about. It would be more like… well, I don’t know. It just seems weird to me.” He frowned deeply as he stared into his drink again. “You deserve better than some boring sex with a fake boyfriend.”

“Who said the sex was boring?”

“I’ve seen that Mason guy. He looks like a human-shaped loafer. There’s no way he knows how to make a woman come.” When Nate looked at me, there was a dark anger in his gaze. “Am I wrong?”

“I wouldn’t know. I never slept with him.”

Nate nodded slowly. “Good. So, how many fake relationships have you had?”

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