Page 50 of The Pucking Fake Boyfriend

Brit is silent. She rests her head on my shoulder. “If he finds out about my garbage, he’ll never forgive me.”

“That you’re an actual breathing person who has needs and wants?” I say, looking down at her. “He’s going to get over it. He cares about you way too much to hate you for that.”

A small smile forms on her lips. “Yeah, maybe we should be more worried about what he’ll do when he finds out we hooked up.”

Hooked up. I detest the use of the past tense, the suggestion that we’re done doing it.

But I don’t bring it up. “Maybe you should tell him about why you sparked a media frenzy by kissing me first. You know, before we blow his world apart.”

Britney giggles, the brightest, cutest sound. “I’ll think on it,” she says. She looks up at me, laughter in her eyes. “Who knew we could actually talk like this. Like we are friends?”

I grin back. A tiny alarm bell goes off in my head, but not fast enough for me to not say the words forming on my lips. “Maybe because that’s what we are,” I say. “Friends.”

“Great.” Another cute giggle escapes her. “Because over the next few weeks, I’m going to need you to help me figure out this shit.”

Without thinking, I wrap an arm around her and brush my lips across her forehead. She snuggles closer to me before she starts flipping through the channels again. I stare at the screen, not really seeing anything.

Half of my brain is eclipsed with pleasure, but the other half has a series of alarm bells going off.

Somehow, I love and hate being needed by Brit at the same damn time.

CHAPTER 17

BRITNEY

Instead of staring at him starry eyed, I should be focusing on his words. My eyes take in every sharp angle on his face, the smirk on his lips, the light reflecting in his brown eyes, rendering them almost green.

It would be impossible to ignore how damn gorgeous he is. Even being around him for two whole weeks while riding buses between LA, San Jose, and Las Vegas wasn’t enough time for me to get over how attractive he is.

“Britney?”

I blink, and it takes me a second to remember I’m in my father’s office, seated on the same sofa I’d been sitting on about three months ago when he asked me to go to a party at the Furmans’.

In retrospect, that day started everything.

“Are you even listening?” His voice cuts through my thoughts for the second time.

I look up at his face. He’s trying his hardest to stay calm, but there is fury in his eyes.

“Um,” I start.

He lets out a repressed grunt of frustration as he turns hislaptop back toward himself. Then, with another groan, he replays the video he asked me to watch a few moments ago, after he’d summoned me into his office. A clip of Alex talking about me during a recent interview.

I watched it a hundred times this morning already. And even as I was walking to my dad’s office, I’d been thinking about Alex’s words.

But I watch it one more time, trying not to focus on Alex’s handsome face.

“I know you prefer to maintain your privacy, but I’d be fired if I didn’t ask you a question about your relationship with Britney White,” the interviewer says.

Alex gives the woman a lazy grin. “Well then,” he says. “Shoot.”

“You were the playboy of the NHL, the one who dated and moved on from dozens of the most beautiful women. And now, you’ve gotten tied down by a small-town girl you grew up with. Isn’t that a little strange?”

“Maybe it would be strange,” Alex says, “if you don’t know Britney.”

“Well then,” the interviewer says, “tell the viewers about her. How do you go from dating drop-dead, stunning international models to a townie?”

Alex flashes another grin her way. “Maybe because townie or not, Britney is the most beautiful woman in the world.”

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