Page 11 of Faking Ever After

“I figured that out,” I said loudly over the blasting soundtrack, but Finn was already filling his lungs with air to sing his butt off again. Though every sensible shred I had screamed at me to avert my gaze, I found myself grinning at this joyful guy who moved his hips left and right and back and forth as if that towel wasn’t hanging by a thread.

I couldn’t look away from the alluring perfection of his torso, even as I told myself he was the very last person I should look at this way.You’re doomed to share a bed for two goddamn weeks. Do not get any ideas, Percy. But ideas were fickle things, coming and going on their own. The clear lines of his rounded pecs made me wonder what it would feel like to drag my fingertips over them. The hard abs tensing with the odd dancing exercise he was performing made me almost able to guess what his skin would taste like if I licked it.

“I was thinking,” I said, dialing down the volume only to spark a devastated expression on Finn’s attractive face. “Would you like to have dinner with me down by the harbor?”

“Mm, now that you mention it, I am starving,” Finn said, smoothing away the hurt over me ending the party so soon. “Let me get dressed.” Finn turned away from me and bent down to lift his backpack. We really had to find an excuse for his lack of luggage, but those thoughts faded out of my mind as my gazelanded on the big, round, peachy bottom and the curvature of Finn’s lower back.

Politely, I looked away, but his ass, with nothing but a towel hiding him, burned itself into my long-term memory.Oh, Kim, I thought desperately.Could you have found a better-looking boyfriend for me?It was like she had set out to make this as miserable for me as she could. Now that I was able to look at Finn without the panic of falling from the empty sky, I realized more and more that pretending to be intimate with him was going to be the sweetest kind of torture.

I hated it.

Finn straightened after digging through his backpack. In his hand, he had a pair of denim shorts, a cream shirt, and a pair of light gray boxer briefs. He walked toward the bathroom, his hair still dripping over his broad shoulders, and a few drops of water trickled down the length of his spine. I gazed at the space between his shoulder blades until he was out of sight, and then I released the deep breath of air I had been holding.

My face heated up, my stomach hollowed, and the flutters of anxiety filled me.

I narrowed my focus on the most important things. Like the algorithms Richie and I had created in college, I followed a complicated path of situations and assigned them tags that opened up new paths inside my mind. By the time Finn returned in casual attire, and we headed out, I had something resembling a list of things we needed to discuss.

Finn let out a soft, pleased sigh as we crossed the sprawling front yard and gazed out at the blue speck of sea beyond the white-painted town. “This truly is Heaven on Earth.”

“Just wait until you see my little corner of Naxos,” I said. There were few places I loved more than our small estate on the neighboring island. Mykonos drew all the tourists to this side of Naxos, and Santorini did the same to the south, making mybeautiful island a tranquil place with just enough people to make it lively but never overcrowded.

The breeze lifted off the sea and made my half-unbuttoned shirt billow. I glanced at Finn, whose hair had dried messily and flew in all directions. His curly locks made me think of running my fingers through them. “We sail in the morning, just the two of us,” I explained, distracting myself on purpose. “So we better have a story ready for when we get there.”

Finn nodded and gazed out at the horizon, deep in thought. “How about this? A year ago, you threw a big party, and that’s where we met?” I opened my mouth to say it sounded perfect, but Finn ran straight over me. “I had been harboring dreams to go to this party for weeks, and I even had a small horde of animals help me make a perfect dress, but my evil stepmother set her daughter to ruin my night, and all was lost, but…”

“That sounds a bit too familiar,” I said.

“That’s the beauty of my plan. We already know all the details without having to think,” Finn concluded with pride.

“What if you were Kim’s plus one at a charity gala I did in New York last Christmas?” I asked.

“Boring,” Finn said. “How about we were business enemies? The rivalry between our families has lasted generations and I came to your gala with only one mission in mind: to outbid you at every turn and be the biggest donor of all.”

“Let me guess. We fell hopelessly in love, but the feud between our families made our love impossible, so you faked your own death, but I never received the letter in which you explained the details of your plan.” I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously.

Finn had the nerve to make a surprise expression as if he’d assumed I’d never read Shakespeare. The fucker even slapped my shoulder. “Look at you go. That sounds great.”

“There’s just this problem of us appearing at the party after our deaths forced our feuding families to reconcile. Also, my parents would have noticed sworn enemies if they had any,” I pointed out with parently patience. “So, back to my plan. Kim introduced us to one another and I got very interested in…um…what do you do?”

“I’m a rocket surgeon,” Finn said gravely. “It’s a very niche occupation. I earn a stupendous amount of money.”

“This could actually work,” I said, my brain racing. “I mean, ideally, we’ll be in and out before anyone even notices us…”

“Is this your plan for our wedding night, or?” He shot me a teasing look.

Heat rose to my face but I blamed the setting sun’s brilliant rays. “What I’m trying to say is that we should keep a low profile because you’re, erm, shy, let’s say. But if all else fails, you can just be downright silly and we’ll call it a trait that attracted me to you.”

Finn pouted and let out a contemptuous sniff. “That’s all nice and fine, but what attracted me to you, then? If it’s not the looming shadow of death and the sweetness of forbidden fruit, why did I pick you?”

I swallowed my laughter and poked him in the ribs with my elbow. The truth was, I didn’t want to think why he would have chosen to be with me. I really wasn’t that special. “You’re with me because you love cats. So when I told you about this network of shelters my foundation runs, you were swept off your feet.”

“Cats?” Finn glared at me with an overly hurt expression. He grabbed his chest in haste. “First you call me a hooker and now you tell me I look like a cat person. When will these attacks stop, Percy?”

Finally, I threw my head back and laughed out loud. He was not a serious person and I was going to pay the price, but at leastI’ll pay it laughing. “Fine. Dogs, then. Your love for dogs softened you for me, so when I asked you out, you gave in.”

“I askedyouout,” Finn corrected me. It made sense. “In fact, I didn’t ask. I told you. That fits the bill, I think.”

He was right. Nobody would believe me if I said I had pulled my nose out of work for long enough to ask someone out.

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