Page 108 of Friends Who Fake It

“Are you hurt?”

She blinked, turning to face him, and then shook her head. “Just … tense.” And then, “I’ll be fine.”

He ignored her statement, moving to her and lifting his hands to her shoulders. She was frozen at his touch, but didn’t pull away. He massaged his fingers and palms over her tense neck, teasing her.

A moment later, his voice gravelled, he asked, “What else did we talk about that weekend?”

“I can’t see that it matters.”

Damn it, she closed up, just as he’d known she would. So why did he ask the question? Because he needed to know.

“It matters to me.”

“Why?”

“Because you know things about me and I knownothingabout you,” he said impatiently.

“Then ask me what you want to know,” she volleyed back, shaking free of his touch and turning to face him. There was steel in her eyes; determination too. “I’m not the same person I was four years ago. Describing what we shared wouldn’t help. I’m different. You’re different. None of this is the same.”

ChapterTwelve

“FINE. YOU WANT ME to ask you questions?”

“Not particularly,” she muttered, unable to look away from the fierce mask of determination that sharpened his features. He was magnificent like this – so completely focused that he was breathtaking. “But if you seriously want to know me, don’t focus on what I was like that weekend. That girl’s dead.”

“This isn’t about what I want. We’re going to marry. We have a son together. And yet you are a stranger to me.”

Her cheeks flamed pink as she thought of all the ways in which they were, most definitely,notstrangers.

“Sex is one thing, but it is not what I’m talking about,” he said, and her blush deepened. How could he so easily comprehend exactly what she was thinking? “All that I know is that you raised my son and neglected my rights.”

“That’s not precisely true,” she was pushed to defend. “You know that I love him, and that I went through hell and back to raise him, losing my family and my career prospects, all because I wanted to save your damned marriage. In fact, of the two of us, I was apparently more invested in your marriage than you were.”

His jaw clenched. “You don’t know anything about my relationship.”

She snorted. She couldn’t help it. “I know that you cheated. Undoubtedly multiple times.”

His skin was ashen beneath his tan. “I cannot believe that to be true.” He braced his palms on the bench. “I admit that you were obviously an indiscretion –,”

“Gee, thanks,” she muttered, angling her face away from his.

“But not that I made a habit of doing that.”

Oh, how she wanted to believe him! “You were too good at it for me to have been the first.”

“What do you mean? In what ways was I ‘too good’ at it?”

“The hotel, the seduction, the promises without being explicit –,”

“Such as?”

“Oh, I’ve analysed it so many times.” She sighed as the past dragged at her, threatening to suck her under the raging current of her recollections. “I was sure you’d told me that you loved me, but you hadn’t. You talked about love, and you talked about…” the words physically hurt her to say, so she had to regroup for a moment, banking her eyes shut and sucking in a deep breath before continuing. "You talked about a future without placing me in it. You talked about a life and I thought you meant a life with me…”

“It was one weekend,” he said cynically, easily rejecting and shutting down all of the childish dreams she’d foolishly fabricated, four years ago.

“I know that now.” Her voice was stiff. “I was young and naïve and completely overwhelmed by how I felt. I wasn’t exactly firing on all analytical cylinders.”

He jerked his head in acknowledgement of her defence.

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