Page 35 of Four Steps to the Perfect Fake Date

“I’m not following.”

“You saw our audience at Mickey’s. They were loving the tension. The more I denied things between us—and, by the way, the more you played into it, which I didnotappreciate—the more everyone in town wanted to talk about it. I think if we pretend to be lovey-dovey with each other”—she paused for emphasis, and Calvin could very clearly picture the narrow-eyed look she’d be giving him if they were facing off with each other—“temporarily, then we can stem the worst of the gossip.”

“An interesting hypothesis, Ms. Davis. How very academic of you.”

“I truly despise you, you know that?” Daphne asked, but there was no heat to her words.

Calvin bit back a grin. “So, what? We reconnected last week, and now things are moving quickly? We’re infatuated? The honeymoon stage?”

“Too juicy. We need to make this boring. It’s anti-gossip. Maybe we’ve been chatting for months. The job openings were the perfect opportunity to reconnect in person.”

“I don’t see how that’s any less juicy. The new sheriff hiring a consultant he’s been banging?”

“We havenotbeen banging.”

“Cupcake. Come on.”

He could hear her footsteps, rhythmic and echoing. She was pacing. “Okay. Did you have anything to do with me getting hired for the consultant job?”

“The decision was made before they brought me on board.”

“Hmm. All right. That helps, but it still doesn’t look good. We wouldn’t have cleared the relationship with anyone, and it’s got just enough spice to keep people talking. We might have to go back to your original idea, as terrible as it was.”

“That we met on a desert stretch of highway, I pulled you over, and we’ve been tangled up in each other’s bedsheets ever since?” Calvin let his voice drop, but he didn’t expect his pants to get tighter at the images his words conjured up.

“Do you want me to go to this event with you or not?” Daphne snapped.

That tone of hers wasn’t helping the pants-tightness situation. He was discovering just how much he loved it when she got snippy with him. But there was only one answer he could give to that question. “Yeah, I want you to go.”

“Fine. So stop saying ridiculous things.”

“What was ridiculous about what I just said?”

“It was—the bedsheets—I’m not—” She stopped talking abruptly, and Calvin wondered whether she was blushing. Her pacing had stopped. She took a deep breath. “We’re taking things slow. Okay? We can go with the ‘reconnecting after you pulled me over’ thing, since everyone knows about the traffic stop already.”

“Can I ask why you’re doing this? Wouldn’t it be easier to just let this gossip die on its own? People will stop talking eventually.”

“Maybe I’m trying to be nice and do you a favor.”

“Hmm,” Calvin mused. “Nope. That’s not it. Try again.”

He could’ve sworn Daphne’s answering huff was almost a laugh. “I think we can make the gossip peter out quicker this way. I’m not a very exciting person. And besides ...”

“‘Besides’?”

“When we break up, it’ll give me an excuse to leave the island.”

Calvin blinked. Frowned. Stared at his coffee table until her words made sense. “You’re leaving? You just got here.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing, but I do know that getting my family to understand my desire to go will be hard enough without having a valid excuse. They’re ... worried about me.”

“Why are they worried about you?”

“They think I’m still hung up on my ex.”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

---