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She leaned down to whisper something in my ear, but I thought she was coming for a kiss so I tried to plant one on her. She flinched back, then seemed to think better of it and gave me a light peck on the lips. “Chris,” she said softly. “My brother, Asher, is here. Please try not to mortify me any more than you already have.”
I shot upright. “You have a brother?”
The fancy guy I’d noticed approached. He was tall, well-groomed, and had a little edge of “I’ll shoot your knees out if you cross me” about him. I decided I liked him, so I stuck my hand out. “I’m erect,” I declared. I blinked. That wasn’t right. “I’m Chris,” I said, trying again.
Belle’s brother’s hand had been extended toward mine, but he hesitated. With a grimace, he shook my hand. “I’m sure it would be a pleasure to meet you under different circumstances.”
“Circumcised? Uh, yeah, I am. Why?”
Belle did a full facepalm behind him. It looked like she briefly considered leaving the room but forced herself to stay put.
Some distant part of my brain could sense that I was making a mess of things, but my thoughts were coming to me sluggishly. I also felt way too amused by everything, including the little fort of pillows shielding my erection while a nearly full room of people watched me.
I tried to lift my right arm and noticed for the first time that it was oddly stiff. I looked down and saw all the bandages. “Oh,” I said. “What’s going on here?”
Then it came back to me in little flashes of memory. I got obliterated on a blitz. I’d been carted off the field, then promptly drugged up.
One of the doctor’s stepped forward. She took a moment to look disapprovingly at the little boner fortress Belle had built for me. “You’re going to be out for at least two weeks while your shoulder heals. You… blah, blah, blah.”
I blinked, trying to figure out if I was really hearing the woman say “blah blah blah” or if the drugs were playing tricks on me. Nope. She was definitely talking, and I was tuning her out. Then, completely out of nowhere, I felt myself dozing off.
The last thing I saw was Belle watching me with mingled embarrassment and amusement.
I gave her a crooked smile. That was my wifey. Or was she my pretend wifey? Or… shit. I really couldn’t remember.31BelleI had dinner with my brother after visiting Chris in the hospital. According to the doctors, the injury wasn’t really that serious. They claimed they hadn’t even given him that high a dose of the sedatives and painkillers, but Chris had seemed drugged out of his mind as far as I could tell. Then again, I had to admit the difference between sober Chris and drugged Chris might not be the sharpest line in the sand to draw.
Asher took a bite of his sandwich, then dusted his hands off on his napkin. The restaurant was quiet, with only a handful of occupied tables and what looked like one waitress taking care of all of them. It was too late for normal people to have dinner and too early for the night owls, I guessed.
“I didn’t like him,” Asher said.
“It was hardly a fair time to get a first impression.”
“You said this was supposed to be a fake engagement, right? Why did it seem like he thinks you two are a real item?”
I worked my mouth to the side, trying to decide how to answer. I’d breached my little contract by telling Asher the truth about my deal with Damon and Chris. But he was my brother, and I figured it was probably a given that I’d tell him. “Because maybe things have become less cut and dry than calling it all pretend.”
Asher leaned back, furrowing his eyebrows. “Did you sleep with him?”
“Yes.”
He nodded, like he’d suspected as much. “What kind of man pitches a raging erection like that in a full room, anyway?”
I couldn’t help snorting. Even Asher looked a little entertained by the memory. “That’s kind of what you get with Chris. There’s rarely a dull moment. And I don’t know, maybe that’s what I like about him?”
“So he makes you happy?”
I sipped my milkshake, thinking the question over. Oddly enough, it wasn’t something I’d never really stopped to consider. “Yeah. He does.”
“Then what are you two going to do? Break off the marriage once your obligation is through and start over after? It’d be a story for your kids, wouldn’t it? The time mom and dad got married, divorced, started dating, and then got happily married in the end.”
“Easy there. Nobody said anything about kids. Or re-marriage. I don’t know, Ash. This isn’t exactly covered in any kind of handbook I know of. But we leave for Blackshire House in two weeks.” I sat back, letting that sink in. “Two weeks and the biggest wedding I’ve ever planned is going to take place in front of thousands of people. No big deal.”
