Page 195 of Charming Deception

He didn’t put her first.

“But you don’t really know me.” Her face scrunches a little, thoughtfully. “Do you?”

That’s cute. She’s asking, like she doesn’t actually know.

I try to think of something definitive to prove that I do know her. I know her better than I’ve ever known any woman, even my sister, and I’m close with my sister.

“I know you wish we lived in the house across the street.”

She looks at me. “What?”

“The house with the big gate diagonally across from mine. The one with the huge, flowering cherry tree in front. You sigh every time we drive past it.”

“I do not.” She chews thoughtfully on her lip. “Well, just imagine how ridiculously beautiful it is when it blooms in spring.”

It is. I’ve seen it. “You take a picture every time you see a rainbow.”

“You got that from Instagram,” she says, unimpressed.

“You’ve donated an uncomfortably high percentage of your life’s earnings to the little animal shelter at the veterinarian’s office here in Crooks Creek. You desperately want to bring Daisy out west with you, but you haven’t yet because you’re afraid you’re too unsettled. And you haven’t asked me if she can come live with us because you’re afraid it will be an imposition or something.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you sigh whenever you see a puppy, too.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “I meant the money thing.”

“You pretend your favorite song is ‘Sweet Caroline’ but it’s actually ‘Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.’”

Her jaw drops.

I shrug. “You sing them both under your breath when you’re getting ready to start the day and stuff. You’re a Pisces, born on February twenty-ninth on a leap year. Every year that isn’t a leap year, you stay up to midnight on February twenty-eighth to celebrate your birthday in the moment between eleven fifty-nine and twelve o’clock, where February twenty-ninth should be. When you were a kid, your brother told you your birthday didn’t come at all on the years there was no February twenty-ninth, so you didn’t get any older, and it drove you crazy.”

“Hey. You got that from Cole.”

“You pretend you like plants better than people, but deep down, you desperately want a few people in your life who you can trust with your life, you want to be a mom one day sooner than later, and you want a Prince Charming. You’re a hard-core romantic. You don’t realize that you’ve been writing an epic love story for four damn novels already, but you not only believe in happily ever afters, you want one so badly, sometimes you wake up in the night and it’s the first thing on your mind… the fear that you won’t have one.”

We’ve completely stopped walking as I talk, and she draws a shaky breath.

“How do you know that last part? That’s scary.”

“Because I have the same fear.”

My heart beats hard and fast as we stare at each other.

Megan twists her lip between her teeth. “That’s stupid.” The insects are louder than her voice, creaking and buzzing in the overgrown weeds of the ditches around us. “Why would someone like you have that fear?”

“I could ask you that same question.”

“How did you find out all those things?”

“A combo of drilling Cole for information and my keen observational skills when I want something.”

“Stop talking and kiss me.”

I kiss her.

But two seconds after I’ve lapped my tongue over hers, a mosquito pricks my neck. I slap it. “Fuck. Mosquitos can fuck off and die.”

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