Page 30 of Never Say Yes To Your Fake Husband

“No, one cannot wish. We are going to do so much better. We are not doing any stooping. None whatsoever. We’re going to figure this out.” I wish we had a secret handshake. One of those best friends finger dingle, palm smacking, up high and down low, spin around and touch the ground deals. We don’t, though, so all I can do is give a watery smile that is nowhere near reassuring, and all Sterling can do is take out his phone and start to make calls.

The rest…we have to figure out.

Together.

And then we have to actually put it into action.

Together.

Chapter fifteen

Sterling

Two days and two sleepless nights later, I think we’re both going out of our minds. We’re no closer to a solution than we were when we stood in front of the door outside and then inside the house and plotted to make things happen.

Yes, plotted. That’s what I’ve been reduced to. A plotter. I don’t want to be a plotter. I never wanted to be a plotter. I feel like plotting reduces me to a level I don’t want to be at. It reduces me to the cousin level. Okay, so I went there, but to be fair, I also hadn’t had any sleep for two nights, and before that, sleep was sketchy at best. It’s starting to wear on me, and yes, all of this is because of my three cousins, so also, yes, I feel a tad bit surly about the whole thing.

“Maybe we’re going about this all wrong.” Weland pours us both a cup of coffee that smells like she literally dumped in a whole bag of coffee beans and used a thimble of water to make it.

I sip at my steaming mug across the table from her. It’s strong enough to put hairs on the old chest. Just the way we both need it, what with our red-rimmed, bloodshot, bagged-out eyes.

Beans happily munches on his crumbles. He’s been having good sleep. I know because I’ve been sharing the couch with him. He’s been having wild dreams that seem pretty happy. His favorite thing to do is grunt and cry in his sleep, twitch like he’s dying, and then boot me a good one right in the face, belly, or crotch. He teabagged me approximately three point six times last night. The point six was just the last one that he only got halfway to my groin before I managed to block it. At this rate, I’m not going to have any nuts left to make this marriage real if that’s the direction we decide to keep going with.

“Oh?” That’s about all I can muster up this early in the morning. We haven’t even walked the dog yet. It’s so early that if we were catching a redeye flight, we’d still have time to spare.

Weland points to the window behind her. She’s shut all the blinds tightly, drawn all the curtains closed, and pulled down every shade there is to pull. The condo doesn’t have a ton of windows, but she’s made sure no one can see in. Smitty found someone to do security right away—the kind of guy who is burly enough to scream ex-military and rough enough around the edges that my cousins won’t mess with him when they discover he’s real and he’s watching the place.

“Yeah, I mean, we want to put on a show for your cousins, but that’s exactly what they expect. I think the last thing they’d ever see coming is if we just went about being us the way we were being us before. That means hiding and not being discovered. It means valuing our privacy. It means me keeping up with my students and my teaching and you going about…well, how you would normally be, which is minding your own business because you like to fly under the radar.”

She’s been keeping up with her teaching. I went down to the basement when she had students over the past two days. It’s unfinished down there and slightly creepy, but I did love listening to the guitar and Weland’s soft voice giving gentle and patient instructions.

Honestly, Weland amazes me. She’s tough. She’s ready to fight for me even though we’re not even a real couple. At this point, I have way more to lose than she does, but she cares. She cares about all those people who work for me and all those artists who could lose their jobs and their contracts if my cousins get their hands on the company and break it up. We’ve been existing in the same space for two days now, and it’s been pretty awkward but not as difficult as I thought it would be, mostly given that we’ve been too tired to even interact with each other. Still, Weland gives those guitar lessons like the world is ending, and it’s the last thing she’s ever going to do, and she wants to go down doing it well. In the sleepless hours of the night, it’s made me wonder what it would be like to have this woman in my life all the time. Someone who has my back. Someone loyal, smart, fierce, strong, and lovely.

What would it be like to have someone like that love me?

I can’t say I’ve ever really known a love like that. Not from friends or family either.

“Hmm.” I’m slow at catching up this morning. “What do you propose?”

She slurps her coffee and gets a devious smile that makes my teabagged bags throb in an entirely not-so-bad way. “We crack the curtains and the blinds like it’s an oopsie afterthought or like we’ve gotten cocky and overconfident in being in here and having security working outside. And then we tell Mr. Muscles to go and take a break every now and then. Long enough to let the Greedy Gretchens get video footage or peeks of us in here being all…loving.”

“Loving?” Dear god, I think I might actually be having a cardiac arrest. Either that or this strong-ass caffeine is finally hitting hard.

“Being mushy.”

Okay, that does it. It makes me tingly in the groin. Weland’s cheeks go a little pink, which makes my chest feel hot and tight.

“Like…” I mumble.

“Kissing. Hugging. Snuggling on the couch. Making breakfast or lunch together and doing things that regular couples who live apart and have missed each other and are making up for lost time would do.”

“Do regular couples get distracted by their dog watching?”

“What?” She whips around and finds Beans studying her from the other side of the kitchen. Her hand flies up to her mouth. “Dear god. I don’t know.” She tries to block a giggle, and it comes out as a snort. “We’ll wait until he’s sleeping. He does that a lot.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Oh goodness. Is your sleep on the couch that bad?” She frowns. “Well, the cousins definitely shouldn’t see you doing that. You need to come and sleep in my bed. They’ll no doubt have binoculars or something sneaky like that. We need to, uh, keep the blinds up there open just the smallest amount so they look closed, but also so they can see shadows when we have a lamp lit, and we need to…um, make it look real.”

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