Page 34 of Love You Truly

“You okay?”

She blinks the creases away and forces a smile. “Yeah. Fine. Of course I trust you not to fall in love. We’re adults.”

I don’t know her well, but I know she hides something behind that smile. If nothing else, my inquisitive part intends to find out why she wears that mask. There is no reason our fake marriage can’t be a learning experience.

“Guess we should go places together whenever we can so we’re seen—we’ve already been together at the grocery store and Dark Horse. That works in our favor. How long do you think we’ll need to act like we’re falling in love before it’s reasonable to get married?” she asks, all business, taking her phone out to consult her calendar.

I’m impressed at her matter-of-factness, even if a tiny part of my ego deflates at how easily she treats our fake marriage like a fake marriage.

Yeah, yeah, I just heard it.

“Are you serious? You’re going to calendar it?”

Her gray eyes sparkle, but she’s all business. “Yes. And you should too. Let’s say I asked you out a couple of weeks ago.”

I laugh. “You did.”

She glares. “Yeah. Let’s include the part about how you blew me off at first. Also believable because plenty of women around here think you’re a pompous heartbreaker.”

Her characterization stings a little, but I’m not above acknowledging my reputation. More than a few women probably don’t have nice things to say about me.

“Fair enough,” I concede. “But then we did go out, and the attraction surprised us both. You saw another side of me than what you thought you knew.”

“Maybe you saw the same in me. It caught us both by surprise how we’d misjudged each other.”

“And the physical chemistry was off the charts.”

She laughs, and it softens her eyes. “Of course it was. Orgasms for days.”

“That’s how I roll.” I smile, wanting her to believe it. “Then I’d say we started seeing each other on the down low to keep prying eyes away from our budding romance. My siblings knew, of course, but we swore them to secrecy. We were worried that other people’s opinions would kill the intense feelings we couldn’t ignore.”

“Makes sense.” Her voice is soft and sultry, her eyes wide and clear. “So that puts us at, what, a month or so into a whirlwind courtship? That tracks with getting so swept up in our feels that we got engaged quickly.”

“If you say so. I have no experience in this area. I don’t do relationships.”

“Trust me, it happens. Maybe not to us, but it happens. So fast-forward to a week or two from now when we’re at a big event, and we just can’t keep our hands off each other despite the prying eyes.”

My eyebrows bounce. “Oh, I think I’ll be able to play that part quite convincingly.”

Mallory rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I’ll bet.” She looks at the ceiling, calculating something. “It’s perfect, actually. We have the gala for the new theater coming up next week. That’ll be the night. You can do something alpha and possessive because you can’t stand looking at me from across the room and not being able to touch me.”

I almost laugh at her passionate description and the careful scrolling through dates on her phone. “Sure. I can be possessive.”

Is it my imagination, or do her eyes heat at the thought of it? Well, game on, sister. If she wants an Oscar-worthy performance, she’s going to get one.

“Okay, sounds like a plan. So we arrive separately, but then we’re caught in a compromising position? Or you get possessive if another man gets too close?”

“You really like the idea of me being possessive.”

“I do. No one’s ever done that for me before.”

“Fools, all of them. And where are they now?”

“Exactly. Certainly not at the gala with a possessive hand on my lower back.”

The scenarios are getting me more excited than they should. The wood in my pants will give me away in another minute, and she’ll probably call the whole thing off.

I think about baseball instead. Boring baseball. A no-hitter on a brutally hot day when I’m miserable sitting on a plastic seat. That does the trick.

---