Page 78 of The Love Wager

“Why do you have to ruin everything for me?” he asked, his voice teasing in the quiet darkness.

She touched her hair and said, “How are we going to exit the closet without looking like a couple of horndogs?”

“That’s easy. Just step out with authority, like we had every legitimate reason to be in here.”

Hallie touched her lips and then remembered she’d been wearing red lipstick. “Crap, can you see my face?”

Jack’s face moved closer. “A little...?”

“I might have makeup smeared all over my face. Shit.”

“Here.” Before she could stop him, he raised his phone and took a picture from point-blank range, and the flash was blinding in the tiny closet.

“Gah, what are you doing?!”

“Trying to help—”

He didn’t finish the sentence, because he looked at his phone and started laughing. The display illuminated his face, and when he couldn’t stop laughing long enough to explain, he turned it around and showed her.

The picture of her was positively garish.

Her eyes were half-open, her lipstick was smudged, her nostrils were flared, and the photo was so up close that you couldn’t see more than her eyes, nose, and upper lip. She looked like the ghost of a drunk clown.

“I’m not laughing at you—” he tried, but couldn’t finish.

“I know,” she said, looking at the picture and losing it. She started belly laughing with him, and neither one of them could stop. He rested his forehead on the door above her while he tried to calm down, and she could feel tears ruining what was left of her smoky eye as she cackled.

She almost couldn’t breathe.

Every time she tried to stop laughing, she pictured it again.

She screamed when the door flew open behind them, dropping them both out of the closet and onto the lobby floor.

A housekeeper stood there, blinking at them with her hand on the doorknob.

Hallie quickly scrambled out from under Jack and into a sitting position as the bright lights assaulted her eyes. She looked at him, lying on the hotel floor with red lipstick smudged all over the bottom of his face and hair sticking up everywhere. He looked as shell-shocked as she felt.

He sat up, and then he looked at her.

That grin crawled all the way up his face before he threw his head back and started laughing all over again, even as the hotel employee stared blankly at them.

That was the moment she knew.

Chapter

TWENTY-ONE

Jack

“So it’s cigars and scotch on the east patio for the gents and cosmos on the west patio for the ladies.”

Jack watched Hallie’s sister put the microphone back on the stand, and he thought it was interesting how different they were. Lillie seemed great, but Hallie was just so...Hal.

“Are you freaking kidding me?”

Speak of the devil.

He turned around as Hallie approached, looking put together again. No more eye makeup smears, no more red lipstick all over. He missed the mess. He played innocent on her remark and said, “Pardon?”

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