Page 88 of Just My Fake Husband

“Okay, I’ll be better about putting my face wash and stuff away if you’ll put your leftovers in a real container with a lid.”

I click my tongue. “When have I ever not done that?”

“Every single time we get takeout. The Styrofoam lids keep gaping open and making the rest of the fridge smell like a garlic press.”

I give a feathery kiss across her earlobe. “You love the smell of garlic.”

“Ew! I do not.”

“Then why did you eat my leftovers from the noodle place?”

She gasps and steps back. “They’d been in there for two whole days. I can’t let a perfectly good white sauce go to waste!”

“I was saving them.”

“Then write on it with a marker. ‘Do Not Eat.’ It’s not hard to communicate these things,” she says.

“I think communication is a very good thing and we should do more of it.”

Her bottom jaw slides to one side as she considers this. “You want to talk about communication? I’ll bring up communication. You can be more open about your feelings for me.” She places a chaste kiss on my cheekbone. A loud smooch. But I grab her before she pulls away and tug her close.

“You want me to communicate my feelings?” I ask, letting my gaze wander over her.

She shudders, grabbing her bottom lip between her teeth. “Uh huh.”

“You asked for it.” I place a kiss on the hollow of her throat. “This thing.” I rake my hands up and down her sides and then fist the fabric of her bathrobe. “Drives me insane. I want to put up a wax figure of you in it in a museum, it’s so hot on you.”

“My old bathrobe?” Her voice squeaks, but she clears her throat. “It’s falling apart. But it’s sentimental to me.”

“You have no idea what it does to me, River,” I say, my lips sweeping over her earlobe.

I sense she’s biting back a smile. “It’s hardly fair.”

“What’s hardly fair?”

“The thing that drives you insane about me is an article of clothing. One of the biggest things that draws me to you? It’s not something you can take off.”

“So your weakness for me is something more permanent, huh? There are plenty of traits of yours that I can’t remove.”

She nods gravely. “And it’s terrible. Genetics are such brats.”

I nip at the skin in that place between her shoulder and neck. “Are you going to tell me what it is?”

“If I do, you might wield them as a weapon.”

“Sounds fun to me.”

“Me too! That’s the whole problem.”

“But how is it a problem? Now that we’ve established we . . .” I pause for emphasis. “. . .likeeach other for real, maybe we don’t have to hold back.”

“Oh but we do. It’s because . . .” she pauses to give me three slow kisses on the other side of my face. “We still need to go on our first real date, buddy.”

“Please say you won’t start using ‘buddy’ as a nickname.”

She gives up a delicious laugh. “Fine. But that doesn’t mean I can’t come up with pet names for you in the future.”

“Since we’re starting today . . . as day one of our actual relationship . . . how about we hold off on the pet names and see what comes up naturally?” I laugh as my lips slide slowly across her hairline.

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