Page 33 of Going All In

Chapter 7

Jake:What’s your favorite color?

Darcy:Why?

Jake:We need to get to know each other if we’re going to pull this off and the guys are grilling me. You’d think they’d have something better to do on our flight, but they gossip worse than old ladies.

Darcy:Blue. Yours?

Jake:Green, I guess. Favorite food? Hey, did you see the post on Insta?

Darcy:Yes, you tagged me.

Jake:Thought your mom would like that.

Darcy:It’s a group shot.

Jake:But my arm’s around your waist and you’re snuggled up to me. She’ll totally catch that.

And he’d been right. Her mother had called her within five minutes of that picture going up. Like she was following Jake and had her notifications set to pop up when he posted something. It was creepy. Hell, Darcy had only started following Jake last week.

Her mother had also taken that opportunity to ask when Jake would finally come over for dinner. Darcy had been putting it off, but she didn’t know why since the entire purpose of this scheme was to convince her mother that she was blissfully happy and falling in love. Darcy had promised Jake would be there the next available Sunday night.

Poor guy.

She read through the text chain again. He’d continued to ask her questions during his flight yesterday in a get-to-know-each-other crash course. She now knew that his favorite food was Greek (thanks to a friend of his grandmother’s), his favorite color was green, he wasn’t a big movie or TV watcher, and he wore boxer briefs.

Not that she’d needed that last tidbit. And not that she’d thought about him in form-fitting underwear as soon as he’d sent that text. Or at least two dozen times since then.

Nope.

Because she wasn’t going to ever see his boxer briefs, or how they probably hugged his athletic thighs and his perfect ass.

Because this was a fake relationship. No hanky-panky. None.

God, she could probably bounce a quarter off his ass. Ally said it was a hockey thing.

Ugh. She did not have time to think about this. She should be focused on the class she was sitting in right now. It was her master’s seminar and it was important, dammit.

She stared down at her laptop, which was missing her notes because she’d been distracted, and now halfway through the class, she’d barely heard a thing.

Focus.

She rolled back her shoulders and turned her attention to the professor. She was so close to finishing her degree and she wasn’t going to let one glorious ass derail her.

And this was exactly why she wanted to avoid dating anyone right now. Even fake dating wasn’t safe.

She spent the rest of the class ignoring her phone and studiously paid attention to the lecture.

***

An hour later,with sufficient notes from the last half of the seminar, she headed to her mentor’s office. She fought back her yawn, wishing she’d grabbed another cup of coffee before walking over, but it was too late now.

Aside from the texts and thinking about Jake in ways she shouldn’t, she was still TAing, running a weekly study group for the class she was TAing, holding office hours, and working at the coffee shop. Add in hockey games and two trips to C&B, and she was exhausted.

“That’s contagious, you know,” Dr. Anna Maguire, her mentor, said, standing in her office doorway.

“Hi. Sorry. Grading, working, and trying to finish up everything this semester is a lot,” Darcy said sheepishly as she followed Dr. Maguire into her office.

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