Page 14 of Mismatched Mates

“But he won’t like the fact I’m a bear, I’m guessing.”

I smiled wider. “Precisely.”

“Ah.”

“Sounds like we both want the same things.”

She brought the wine to her lips and sipped. “Sounds like we do,” she murmured, her voice lowering into an timber entirely too sensual for a public place. But before I could reply in kind, the server returned with our orders. Steak for us both. This wasn’t an only-order-salad-on-a-date kind of woman.

I respected it.

“So,” she said as she cut into her t-bone. “We need rules.”

Of course. She thrived on following strict rules, and despite myself, I found it delicious. “Such as?”

“We need to let people see us together. Before the gala and wedding. When’s your gala, by the way?”

“Two weeks. When’s the wedding?”

“A month.”

A month. I could handle a fake relationship for a month. Especially if there were only a handful of events we needed to be seen at.

“We’ll need to be seen together before the wedding,” she went on, toying with the words as she said them, as though wondering about their necessity. “Not loads, but enough that the relationship feels authentic. My ex still lives in Pine River, and he’ll hear everything that’s going on. If we were to meet him…”She pursed her lips but her eyes brimmed with sudden mischief that made me like her more. “Well, you’d just have to pretend to be madly in love with me.”

“Challenge accepted.”

“He’ll be so mad, this entire farce would be worth it for that alone.”

“Charming. Happy to deliver so much value,” I said.

“Anything you want to put on the contract?”

“Contract?”

“You don’t think I’m going to enter into a fake relationship without a contract, do you?” She snorted like this should’ve been obvious. “We need defined terms and acceptable conduct, an established end date, and we both need to sign it.”

“This sounds like you’ve done this before.”

Rolling those expressive doe-eyes, she took a napkin from the table and dug in her bag for a pen. “Any business woman knows never to commit to something without a contract,” she said, cursing when the napkin—unsurprisingly—proved to be awkward to write on. “Any other necessary sightings on your end?”

“Just one where someone takes a photo of me.” I waggled my eyebrows at her. “Shouldn’t be too much of a problem. So long as they sell it and someone prints it.”

“Right. Physical contact?”

“Up to you.”

She chewed the lid of her pen as she thought. “We have to make it believable. A kiss should be adequate to sell the relationship.”

“Works for me,” I agreed, and my wolf hummed with pleasure. Kissing her would not be a problem.

“There,” she said, shoving the napkin toward me. “I’ve signed it.”

I printed and signed my name beside hers. She’d put the end date as the day after the wedding, I presumed. “Done.”

JANE

The candlelight flickered across Grant's face, softening the sharp angles of his jaw. I took another sip of my wine, letting the flavor roll over my tongue as I studied him.

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