Page 46 of The Loophole

“Last night. I’ve been so nervous all week that I haven’t slept much.” He opened another container and tossed a homemade, bone-shaped treat to Dusty, who caught it and wolfed it down.

Next, he unpacked three small stockings fastened to a long, red ribbon. Embry stood up and draped the ribbon over the frame of the landscape painting above the bed, so they hung in a swag. The stockings were hand-embroidered with our names and Dusty’s.

Embry yawned and flopped onto the mattress. “I need a nap. Please wake me up if I’m still asleep at five, so I have enough time to get cute before dinner.”

“I think I’ll try to nap, too. You can have the bed, I’ll sleep on the floor.”

I started to get up, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me back. “That’s silly. This is a king-size bed, and there’s no reason we can’t share.”

I couldn’t argue with that. We hadn’t shared a bed in Las Vegas because we’d been virtual strangers, but we were friends now. This didn’t have to be weird.

He moved the tote bag to the top of the dresser and took off his jeans before climbing under the covers. I felt self-conscious though, so I remained fully clothed.

Embry curled up on his side facing me and shut his eyes. After a moment, he murmured, “You know what I realized when I was embroidering those stockings? That our names start and end with the same three letters. How would we ever have a cute couple nickname, like Bennifer or Brangelina? We’d end up with Bry-Bry, or Em-Bry, which is just my name put back together again and mispronounced.”

“There’s always Em-Son.”

“That’s not cute, though. Emson is a boring kid who wears a bowtie to school and carries a portable chess set everywhere he goes.”

I grinned at that. “Poor Emson. You think he’s a dork.”

He grinned, too. Soon after, he fell asleep with that little smile lingering on his lips. I watched him for a few moments before rolling onto my back.

I put my glasses on the nightstand and scrubbed my hands over my face. What had happened earlier? We were supposed to be putting on a show, but I’d felt something when we kissed. A lot of something. There’d been a jumble of emotions, and… longing. For what, exactly?

I’d never found men attractive. Hell, I barely even wanted to be friends with most of them. Generally speaking, they were loud, aggressive, overly competitive—which was very unappealing.

Embry was none of those things, though. He was the sweetest, kindest, most thoughtful person I’d ever met, and he’d quickly become very important to me. He was also undeniably beautiful, inside and out.

I desperately wanted to kiss him again.

It was confusing, to say the least. I’d never imagined feeling this way about a man.

And there were so many ways it could go wrong. What if I tried to turn what we had into more than a friendship, but he wasn’t into it? All of this could become painfully awkward, and he was stuck with me for the next year.

Maybe I should be reminding myself this was just pretend, instead of believing the story we were trying to tell my family.

13

Embry

Bryson’s great uncle lived in a giant Olive Garden. Okay, not really, but there was a definite resemblance.

The house sat on a hilltop, surrounded by endless rows of dead sticks that apparently weren’t as dead as they looked. We pulled into a circular driveway and parked with a bunch of Mercedes and other expensive cars. I already felt out of place.

About a minute after we arrived, my brother-in-law confronted us. Fallon and Bryson looked a lot alike—or they would have, if Bryson was a douchebag. I didn’t know why Fallon thought the three-piece suit, slicked back hair, and aggressively white teeth were a good idea, but I wasn’t impressed.

It seemed Grandpa Baudelaire had spread the news of our elopement after we got off the phone with him, and this jack wagon wasn’t buying it. Fallon was obviously right to be suspicious, but I hadn’t expected him to be all up in our faces from the get-go.

For some reason, he assumed that if Bryson failed to get his inheritance, it would mean more money for him. That gaveFallon a lot of motivation to prove this marriage was a sham. We’d really have to be on our toes around him.

I thwarted his first attempt at undermining us by planting a big, wet kiss on Bryson. I didn’t know what else to do. Words definitely weren’t going to convince Fallon we were a real couple, but maybe actions would.

Bryson played along in a big way. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was actually into it. He was so good at making it seem convincing that for a minute there, I forgot it was pretend and started kissing him for real. Some tongue might have even been involved.

When I finally came to my senses and took a step back, my head was spinning. Then I was immediately introduced to Bryson’s grandfather and his great uncle. I’d been hoping for two cute, little old men. Instead, Edmund and Charles Baudelaire were pretty intimidating. They were both tall, with thick, white hair and square jaws, and while they were friendly enough, I definitely got the impression they were sizing me up.

I hugged my dog and clutched Bryson’s hand as we went into the huge villa. I was fully prepared to follow Bryson everywhere, even to the bathroom, instead of being left alone with his family for even a minute.

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