Page 7 of Fake Hearts and Kisses

The tension in her spine seems to loosen. “Ah, my father will like that.” She leans back in the chair and meets my eyes. “You’re absolutely perfect to be my fake boyfriend.”

I can’t help myself. I laugh. Definitely not perfect. Daisy wouldn’t think I was perfect if she knew who I was. She’d think I was the opposite of perfect. Utterly, unequivocally un-perfect. But as long as she thinks I’m just a regular businessman who’s good with computers, I’ll take it. “Your father has an interest in software security?”

“He does.” She glances at her hands, so I don’t ask further.

Of course, I already know about her father. A chill ran through me when I found out who her father was. I’m not sure if it was a good chill or a bad chill. I have tried to keep a low profile. I’ve tried really hard to keep my nose clean. Knowing who her father is should mean Daisy is off-limits. But once I watched her? Once Iknew? I decided there was no way I could stay away. It’s like, when I saw her, all reason faded, and everything became about Daisy. Life became nothing but me sitting in a coffee shop drinking shit-brown water every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, waiting for Daisy.

“I’m a teacher at a private school downtown,” she says. “Preschool, so it’s only part-time.”

I smile at her.I know.I know she likes apples over pears but will choose strawberries over apples. She likes two creamers and one sugar. “You must have the patience of a saint.”

“Not really,” she says, crossing her legs. They are long and lean. Even though she isn’t tall, she is leggy. “Little kids are fun when you only have to deal with them for half a day.”

“What do you do with the rest of your day?” I ask.

“I work afternoons in a bookstore.”

I almost nod but stop. She doesn’t need to know I’ve dug into her private life. Part of me wants to tell her to change her passwords and consider not posting her whereabouts on social media, but I remind myself that she is a Conner. As much as she complains about her sister and her family, they live in the spotlight. Even Daisy isn’t immune. She’s just as active on her social media accounts as her sister and their mother. Heather has some sort of video class she offers. Yoga, I think, and is constantly posting pictures and videos of herself in various suggestive poses. Heather is beautiful, Daisy takes after her mother, so I’m a little biased, but she’s had some work done. Her face has that slightly unmovable, tight look. It’s obvious she takes her profession and her image seriously. The entire family thrives on attention, except the dad. George lies low and lets the ladies in his life shine. He probably thinks it’s better that way.

“You must like to read,” I say. Daisy also writes, but again, I can’t know these things. She’ll get freaked out if she knows how long I’ve been watching her. I don’t want to scare her. She’ll never agree to this weekend with me if I give off stalker vibes.

Note to self: Check your stalker vibes. Don’t creep her out by knowing too much about her.

She nods, but leaves her response to my statement at that. When I saw her in the library, she checked out one of those romance books. The ones with all the dirty talk. Maybe she thinks that I’ll somehow disapprove. I won’t. I don’t. I’ve read a few that someone had smuggled in. It gets boring sitting in a cell all day.

It was thanks to those books I discovered I really like dirty talk.

“What do you do when you’re not hacking into banks?” she asks.

I nearly choke, but I cover up my surprise at her word choice and reach for the keyboard on my desk, tapping theFkey a few times to center my thoughts. “I have many hobbies.”

“Fishing? Whittling?” she asks, her brows furrowing.

“Whittling?”

“You could enjoy whittling.” She shrugs. “I’d like to know what my fake boyfriend does in his free time. It would be more believable if we knew about one another beyond our jobs.”

I think about that for a minute.What do I like?There are many things I like, just nothing I can confess. “I read too,” I say finally.

“Nice and vague,” she says. “So, what will you do after I leave here today?”

I glance at my computer. Obviously, I can’t tell her what I’m really going to do, which is make the phone call to inform my parole officer I have to leave town, so I give her my usual routine. “I will walk home—”

“Walk?” she cuts in. “Do you not drive?”

I open my mouth to tell her I’m not allowed to drive, but I say instead, “I live close, and I like the exercise. It clears the mind.”

She nods, accepting my answer.

“Then I will cook—”

“Do you like cooking?” she cuts in again. This little habit of her interrupting me would be annoying if it were someone else, but it’s like she’s so curious she can’t seem to help herself.

“I enjoy cooking,” I tell her. I don’t mention that if I had not learned how to cook early on, I’d have starved. How cooking the few items the elderly neighbor brought me when my father decided to leave town again saved my sanity and saved me from the horrible hunger pains of neglect. How, by thirteen, I had a job in a kitchen so I could feed myself when my father went off on another binge. “I’m also very good at it.”

“What’s your favorite meal to cook?”

“Calzones,” I say immediately.

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