Page 14 of Bodied

He arched an eyebrow expectantly. “And? You keep telling me how it feels. How does it look? I’m not going to crush on you, however badly you may want me to.” She clenched her teeth at him, and he seemed to have been wanting that exact reaction out of her. “Let me know what to do to be a convincing madly-in-love-with-you date, and I’ll do those things. Otherwise, you’re just going to have to be satisfied with my bad performance. That or get your mother to assign someone else the job.”

Lauren shook her head. “Once she’s made up her mind about something, you’ll have a hell of a time trying to talk her out of it. I doubt she chose you randomly, and I doubt even more that she’d be willing to consider someone else for the job.”

She paused a second, and then decided to just woman up and do what needed to be done. “So, if I were sitting next to my crush like this, and he’d recently admitted he liked me back, I’d probably sneak closer a little at a time.” She moved closer to him. “I’d sort of touch your hand, hoping you’d want to hold mine. And depending on how busy it was around, I might lean into you a bit.” She leaned closer to him and tried not to think about how good he smelled. “That’s an invitation for you to put an arm around me.”

He did, and she couldn’t stop herself from nuzzling into him.

“Then what?” he asked, his voice wavering a little. Lauren had to wonder if he was possibly feeling the same way she was, if his heart was pounding just as much as hers.

“Well, we’d just sort of… stay like this I guess. The point is to touch each other as often as we can because, you know, we can’t keep our hands off each other. The whole rest of the world seems to fade away when we’re together, and all that matters is the other person.”

“Interesting,” he murmured.

“We’d probably kiss now if that was allowed, but it isn’t, so we’ll just have to learn to be extra touchy feely.” He was cracking — she could almost feel it. Now it was her turn to fluster him.

But then he pulled away and stood. “I think I’ve got the gist of it now. And my shift’s about over.”

“Ah, no fair,” she said without thinking. “I was going to get back at you a little.”

He straightened his suit and collected his coat from the chair he’d draped it over on his way in. “I think we should keep the improv to public excursions to maintain a professional working relationship.” He smiled quickly. “As fun as it would be to compete to see who can out awkward the other person, and as confident as I am that I would win?—”

“Not a chance,” she cut in.

Wesley grinned. “I think we should avoid any potential misunderstandings. So, the rules are, when we’re in public, we’re dating. I’ll try to be as grabby as you need me to be. This little training session was fine, but from now on, we’ll be professional in private to avoid potential miscommunication or confusion.”

“I’m not the one in danger of becoming confused,” Lauren said, punching him lightly to add some believability to her obvious lie.

He didn’t seem to buy it. “Sure.”

She walked him to her door. “Well, goodnight I guess.”

“Goodnight,” he said cooly. But as he was walking down the hall she heard him quietly add, “princess.”

* * *

Lauren’s head was still spinning an hour after Wesley had left. She was supposed to be the one messing with his head, not the other way around. She’d been determined not to let the fact that he was positively gorgeous get the better of her. But keeping her distance seemed to be more of a lost cause than she’d originally assumed.

She needed to talk to someone, but she hadn’t spoken to her father since she was a child, and she didn’t dare call her mom about this, considering her involvement. Needing to confide in someone and realizing just how few people she had to confide in was depressing in and of itself.

Well, there was someone. She just hated to call him about something like this. Jesse was an ex-boyfriend, but they’d dated and broken up when they were so young, it hadn’t even made a dent in their friendship. At some point, they had just realized they worked way better as friends. It was probably the most amicable breakup anyone’s ever had, and she’d advised him through later dates and relationships as they both grew into adults.

Lauren poured herself a glass of wine and texted him.Do you have time to talk?

He responded immediately.Sure, babe. Give me five.

The beauty of Jesse was that no matter how long it had been since they last spoke, they always seemed to pick up right where they left off.

“What’s up?” Jesse said when he finally called. “Your mom again?”

Lauren took a gulp of wine and fell back into bed. “Yes and no,” she said. “She’s assigned me a bodyguard.”

“Really?” His voice was so familiar. For Lauren, it was more like talking to a brother than a friend. “Why’d she do that?”

“Rumors.” She half sat to take another sip before falling back again. “She’s being overprotective as usual. But this guy is… I mean he’s always around. Like always. He follows me everywhere.”

“Can’t you just ignore him?”

She groaned. “He’s really hard to ignore.”

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