Лорен Блэйкли - Big Rock

“No. I was proving to myself that I could pull off being your fiancée,” she says with a wicked grin, bumping me with her hip. The look in her eyes is a cocktail mix of pride and amusement. “I wanted to see if we knew each other well.” She pauses before she says the next thing, lowering her voice. “And intimately.”

Then she steps into the panties.

In front of me.

With her heels on.

Over one ankle, then the other, then she slides them seductively up her smooth, strong legs. My eyes track her the whole time. I couldn’t look away if I tried, and I’m beginning to accept that I’m just gonna be sporting wood even more than usual during this next week. I figure that’s normal, right? What red-blooded man could be in close proximity to a gorgeous woman who’s putting on a pair of see-through—

My brain stops processing words. I swallow dryly.

The panties are over her knees. They’re gliding up her thighs. Making their way to her bare—

“Close your eyes,” she whispers.

And because I’m a gentleman, I do. I see black and silvery stars behind my lids, but I’m picturing everything I’m missing right now. Yup. Round-the-clock pocket rocket. Just resign myself to perpetual wood. Can’t fight these things. No need to even try.

“You can open them,” she says, and I oblige. She points to the toilet seat. “Take a seat, partner. Let’s debrief as I do my hair and makeup.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

We review the vitals.

She’s a sheet-hogger. I sleep naked. She doesn’t like sharing the bathroom sink at the same time. I couldn’t care less if she spits out toothpaste while I’m brushing. She has more than two dozen different lotions from The Body Shop and wears a different one each day of the week.

“Obviously, I don’t use lotion,” I say, gesturing to the silver bathroom cart full of orange blossom, honey vanilla, coconut island, and every other flavor of body rub under the sun. “And again, I don’t think anyone will be quizzing us on whether I know what kind of lotion you wear.”

“I know that,” she says as she plugs in a hair dryer. “But the point is, I want to feel like we know these things about each other so it will be believable that we’d be engaged. For instance, it takes me five minutes to dry my hair.”

I set the stopwatch on my phone and read a chapter in a thriller as she blows out her hair. Something about this moment feels very domestic. Like we really are a couple, and I’m waiting for my woman to get ready to go out.

Hmmm.

Maybe because that’s precisely what’s happening.

Except the part about us being a real couple.

When the buzzer sounds, she’s done, so I put my phone in my pocket. After she winds up the dryer cord, she snaps her fingers. “We forgot one very important thing.”

“What’s that?”

“How did we know?”

“How did we know what?”

“Duh. That we were in love.” She says it so sweetly, so convincingly, that for a second my mind goes blank. I forget we’re rehearsing, and I simply stretch back in time and try to pinpoint. Then the reality smacks me, and I laugh to myself. We’re not in love. We’re playing pretend. So as we leave her bathroom, I tell her what I told my dad this morning about how we came together.

“That’s not enough,” she says, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor as we cross the short distance to her sliver of a kitchen.

“Why not?” I ask, as she grabs a cold pitcher of iced tea from the fridge and I take two glasses from the cupboard. She’s particular about her iced tea. Makes it herself with these tea bags from Peets that she orders on Amazon, since Peets isn’t in New York.

“We need more details,” she says as she takes a drink. “I bet Mr. Offerman’s daughters will be the first to sniff out a lie. Girls are smart like that, and if his daughters catch on, you bet they’re telling Daddy. We need this solid. So, it was one night at the bar when we supposedly realized we had it bad for each other, right?”

“Yes. Just a few weeks ago. It all happened quickly.”

“But how did it start? Specifically? What was that one thing that started our romance?”

“Charlotte, it was my dad I told the story to. He didn’t ask.”

“But women will,” she points out, then wiggles her bare fingers. “Once I’ve got that ring on, all the women will be cooing over it and asking for the details of how we fell in love. Probably tomorrow at dinner. We need a story,” she says emphatically as she paces in the small kitchen. Then her eyes light up with excitement. “I got it! One Thursday night at The Lucky Spot, over a glass of wine after closing time, you made a joke about how everyone thinks we’re a couple, and I said ‘maybe we should be one.’ And then there was an awkward pause in the conversation,” she says, her tone softening, as if she’s reminiscing about that fateful night.

I go next, picking up the Mad Libs thread of our make-believe love story. “Only it wasn’t awkward. It was simply right,” I say, shooting her my best love-struck smile. “And we admitted then that we had feelings for each other.”

“And we had the hottest kiss ever. Obviously.”

I scoff. “Not just the hottest kiss. We had the hottest sex ever,” I say, because I have to up the ante like that.

She blushes, stays silent, and finishes her iced tea. I take another drink of mine and then place both glasses in her dishwasher, lining them up neatly on the top row, just like she prefers.

“Then to keep it simple, let’s pretend you proposed to me at the bar last night, since that’s where it all started. You proposed after everyone left. You got down on one knee and said you couldn’t even wait to get me a ring, but I had to be yours.”

“Perfect. Love it. Easy to remember.”

I close the dishwasher, and she meets my gaze. Her brown eyes are soft and sweet. “Spencer. Thank you.”

I give her a look like she’s crazy. “For putting the glasses in the dishwasher?”

“No. For putting up with all that.” She waves in the general direction of the rest of her apartment. “I was kind of putting you through your paces now. But I needed to feel like we could pull this off.”

“Do you now? Do you feel like you’re on your way to becoming Mrs. Holiday?”

She laughs. “That’s funny. Those are two words that we’ll never hear together again,” she says, running her hand absently down my arm as we leave the kitchen. “You’re the avowed bachelor for life.”

I nod, confirming my status. Total playboy. One hundred percent swinging single. No need to lasso this free bird. “Absolutely.”

She reaches for her purse on her living room table. “Wait. There’s just one more test.”

“You’re going to make me jump through another hoop? Sheesh. You are a pistol.”

She huffs. “I hardly think selecting my panties is some Herculean task. But be that as it may, this test is for me. It’s the final test to make sure I’m ready to walk into your dad’s store in our first public appearance as Mr. Holiday and his bride-to-be.”

I cross my arms, waiting to see what she’ll do next.

She looks me right in the eye, her lips a straight line, her expression starkly serious. “I need you to try to tickle the truth out of me.”

I arch an eyebrow skeptically. “For real?”

She nods. “Absolutely. You know it’s my weakness,” she says, backing up to her soft gray couch, and flopping down amidst a sea of pillows in blues, reds, and purples. She loves jewel-toned colors. As she lies across the cushions, the golden blonde strands of her hair fan out over a royal blue pillow. “Do it,” she commands. “I need to know I won’t cave. I need to prove to myself that even the torture of tickling won’t make me give up the secrets of my best friend.”