Page 19 of That Kind of Guy

She stood, making her barstool scrape against the floor. “I’m not doing this.” She strode out of the kitchen, so I got up too and followed after her.

“Adams, come on,” I told her. “I’m happy to loan you the money. Is it a pride thing? No one will know but me, and I won’t even tease you about it.”

She shot me another withering look as she opened the door. “I don’t need your help.”

“You’re friends with the Neilsens, right?” Frank Nielsen owned the bookstore, and I had seen Avery with his daughter, Hannah, a quiet, soft-spoken woman about Avery’s age.

She looked guarded. “Yes.”

“Frank uses a CPAP machine at night to breathe. The morning after the last power outage, he wasn’t feeling well. I remember him saying he had a headache.” This was true, I was talking to him in the hardware store about it. “He probably had a headache because his brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen the night before. Next time the power goes out, he coulddie.”

“Oh, shut up,” she said, shaking her head. “Frank Nielsen isn’t going to die.”

I nodded solemnly. Yeah, I was reaching here, but she was putting up more of a fight than expected. “Frank might die, and then you’ll have to tell Hannah that it was your fault. But if we do this and I’m elected mayor, I’m going to upgrade the electrical grid, the power outages will stop, and Frank will live a long, happy life.”

“You are so full of shit.” She pointed at me and narrowed her eyes. “I knew it from the day I moved to town. You are so full of it, and no one can see past it but me. I wouldneverdate you.”

She closed the door and through the window beside the door, I watched her stride down the little path to the street.

Well, that didn’t go as planned. I rubbed my jaw. Why was she being so stubborn? I opened the door.

“Come on, Adams,” I called after her. “You know there’s no other way for you to get the restaurant.”

She stopped in her tracks, and I smiled at the back of her head twenty feet away. Fucking bingo. Her hands made fists at her sides, and I knew she was picturing terrible, terrible things happening to me. Maybe once she got home, she’d stab needles into a voodoo doll of me.

She turned to me and crossed her arms over her chest. The cogs were turning in her head. She was running through every single scenario she could think of, any possible option other than giving me what I wanted. Finally, her chest rose as she took a deep breath.

“I’ll figure it out,” she told me, and fire flashed in her eyes. My eyebrows went up. There was something in her expression that turned me on a little, the fierceness, the determination.

Huh. That’s interesting.

“Well, when you do,” I told her, “I’ll be here waiting.”

She walked away, and I pulled out my phone.

“Yes?” Div answered.

“Cancel the actors. I have a better idea.”

5

Avery

The next morning,once I had glanced around the street outside the restaurant to make sure no one was watching, I flipped my middle finger at the billboard of Emmett’s face as I passed.

I still couldn’t believe what he had asked me to do. The ego on him was unparalleled. I laughed out loud at the idea of us pretending to be a couple. I pictured him trying to put his arm around my shoulders while I gagged and pulled away. A snort escaped me. I didn’t have the acting skills to pull this off.

Even if I was willing to step into his radius of sickening charisma, no one in this town would believe that I would date him.

No one.

In my office, a yellow sticky note sat on my computer screen.Call Keiko!

My stomach sank. If Elizabeth knew about me not being able to get a bank loan, Keiko probably knew, too. Was she calling to tell me she had found another buyer? Anxiety rippled throughout me at the idea of not only losing the restaurant but someone else owning it.

Emmett’s words from last night replayed in my head, and my hands clenched. That guy. I thought about him and his stupid, cocky, knowing grin from the second I got home last night until the moment I fell asleep. I had a terrible sleep, thinking about his stupid deal. There was no way I’d ever agree to play his girlfriend so he could win an election. The thought was revolting. No one would believe us. He’d have better luck convincing people by lugging a blow-up doll around town and naming it Avery.

Not to mention, we would be lying to the entire town. I couldn’t do it.

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