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I snicker, and Shane shoots me a quizzical look.
Tell you later, I mouth.
When I look back at Hanna, she’s watching me curiously.
“And we’ve set the dates for the bachelor and bachelorette parties,” she says.
Wait, what? We don’t need those, and Hanna knows it. We’re not swearing off sex with other people forever, just for a few months. It would have been easy enough to leave the parties off the list, to just let them go. But maybe Hanna thinks they’ll make the fiction more convincing?
She spools off dates and locations for the bachelor and bachelorette parties, which are next weekend. I blink at that. I knew the timeline was short…but everything’s happening fast.
“Quinn is hosting yours,” Hanna tells Shane and then turns to me. “Sonya is hosting yours. And since Sonya says you’re going to say you don’t know enough people to throw a bachelorette party, she said I have to tell you that she and I have that covered. You just show up. We’ll bring the fun.”
“Oh,” I say. “That’s—wow. That’s super kind of you.”
Hanna shrugs. “You’re one of us now,” she says.
I know it’s for Weggers’s benefit, but for a moment, I long for a group of women who actually feel that way about me.
“That’s it for today, folks,” Hanna says. “I’ll have Julia reach out to you to put another meeting on the calendar. And I’ll see you back at the ranch.”
Weggers rumbles to his feet. “Don’t think this is over,” he tells Shane.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Shane says, “but I know this isn’t over. It’s the rest of my life.” He slips an arm around me and tugs me close.
It feels ridiculously good to be sandwiched between his muscular arm and his hard body, and without quite meaning to, I lean my head on his shoulder and close my eyes.
It’s okay to enjoy pretending for just a few minutes, right?
I know what’s real, after all.
Still, I open my eyes and look up and find him looking back at me. Maybe he’s just acting, but there’s so much fondness on his face that I find myself hoping he isn’t. That at least he values the time we’ve spent together so far, the effort we’ve put in, how good we are when we work together—that he feels like we’re friends.
His arm draws tighter around me, and it feels like a yes.
He doesn’t release me until he has to let me go so I can climb into the car.
18
Shane
Ivy says, “I think that went amazingly well!”
“It did.” We couldn’t have given Weggers a better show. Acting across from Ivy is an absolute joy. I’ve had lots of leading women…but none I click with as well as Ivy.
Almost too well: When she stroked her hand from my back to my shoulder, my body didn’t think we were just acting. It was ready to grab that hand and shove it into my pants. Or to pull her down so she was straddling me and kiss the shit out of her.
I did none of that, of course, which is good because leading men who grope their leading women are a) assholes and b) these days—thank God—often out of a job.
“What are we going to do about bridesmaids?” she asks.
“Your sister. Your mom?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “She doesn’t know about this. Trying to keep it that way.”
“Won’t she find out? We’re not exactly flying under the radar.” No paparazzo yet, to be fair, although as Ivy and I were pulling away from her house earlier, I did think I spotted a lone operator in his ratty car.
“She’s in Spain, she’s madly in love, and she’s news averse, so I have a fighting chance.”
