Page 37 of Friend Me

“I’ll show you hard,” I muttered under my breath as I stepped out into the hallway and almost collided with a broad chest in a faded green Donkey Kong T-shirt. Crap, why’d he have to catch me coming out of Cooper’s office?

“Sorry,” I squeaked, pulling up short.

Tyler’s jaw tightened for a second, but then he smiled. “Hey, glad you made it back. How wasBattlestar Galactica?”

“Good. Sam had a lot of opinions about it. We had fun.” It wasn’t like hanging out with Tyler or Alicia, but making new friends was a good thing. Especially after you’d kissed your friend at your other friend’s wedding.

We turned together and walked toward the conference room, talking about the weather, sci-fi, anything except how we’d almost ruined our friendship by taking things too far.

He settled into a chair while I set up the presentation and got it up on the screen. After a few minutes, Cooper strode in. “We good to go, Marlee?”

“Ready. Just click the call button.” I scanned the room one more time. Everything was in order.

Just as I prepared to slip out, Tyler leaned back in his chair. “Marlee, did you bring in my jacket?”

My blush was natural as I shot a glance at Cooper. “It’s at my desk. Thanks again for letting me borrow it.”

“Anytime.” Tyler infused his gaze with heat, and it fed the fire in my cheeks. He was so good at this fake-dating thing, he was making me good at it.

Easing the door closed behind me, I gripped the cool handle for a second, trying to slow my pulse and stop glowing like a red giant. We were back to playing the game, that was all.

An hour later when everyone emerged from the conference room, I had Cooper’s schedule organized, color-coded, and both printed and updated to his phone. I’d blocked out an hour for “Lunch with Marlee” every day he was unscheduled. I wasn’t kidding about the lunches. I was going to make the most of my three weeks with Cooper. With Alicia and Jackson’s side-eye gone, I’d finally get up my nerve to show Cooper how I felt about him, and lunches away from the office—and takeout dinners working late—were the perfect opportunity.

Tyler made a big show of picking up his jacket as he passed by my desk, and he gave me one of his Texas winks. But a colleague waited for him at the door to the stairwell, so he didn’t linger at my desk.

Instead of going directly to his office, Cooper rested a khaki-clad hip on my desk. He held up his phone. “Thanks for syncing my calendar for me.”

“No problem. Jackson also likes a printed copy, so I put that on your desk. Let me know if you don’t want a printout going forward.”

“It’s fine, thanks.” He glanced over my shoulder at the door to the stairs, where Tyler and his team member stood, talking. In a low voice, Cooper said, “He looks exhausted. Is that your fault?”

My fault? He looked better than he had Sunday morning. He’d even given me that flirty wink. “What do you mean?”

“Did you keep our boy up too late?” he asked, staring pointedly at Tyler’s suit jacket, draped over his arm.

Sweet Sir Isaac Newton.

I reached for my bottle of water but missed and tipped it across my desk. Shooting up from my chair, I grabbed a roll of paper towels from my drawer and started blotting up the mess.

“I can’t believe—” I said, much too loudly, before Cooper gave me a “simmer-down” gesture. I continued in a whisper-shout, “First, it’s none of your business who I—” Though I wished it were. “Second, we arenotsleeping together.” The door to the stairwell slammed behind me, and I winced.

“Really.” Cooper’s voice was flat, skeptical.

Fake-dating was one thing. Fake-sleeping-together was a step too far. Cooper was too much of a gentleman to break up a serious relationship. “Really. We’re casual. Seeing if we want to be more than friends.”

“It looked like you two hit it off with all that dancing.”

Was that a gleam of jealousy in his eye? Had Operation Prince Charming actually worked?

“We, ah, we’re taking it slow.” That was true. I hoped we could forget how I’d tried to screw it up by turning our fake kiss into a real make-out session. I couldn’t let that happen again.

He shrugged. “You looked happy.”

Cooper was giving me whiplash with his don’t-date-coworkers speech followed by “You looked happy.” But had I been? I still hadn’t sorted through my emotions from the weekend. They lay jumbled inside me like the photos on my phone, unreviewed. I threw the soggy paper in the trash and glared at him. “Don’t presume.”

He grimaced. “Marlee, you know I—”

My phone rang, and a glance told me it was Jackson’s line. I held up a finger and picked up the receiver.

---