Chapter One
“We’re really looking forward to finally meeting your girlfriend.”
Noah Stafford froze in the act of shutting down his computer as one word echoed around in his head.
Shit.
Outside of Jim telling him the company’s accountant had embezzled all of the business profits and fled to a small island in the Caribbean, leaving them all out of work, those were the last words he wanted to hear from his boss.
He didn’t actuallyhavea girlfriend for Jim and his fiancée to finally meet. That was a problem.
“We’ve heard so much about Carly,” Jim continued. “It feels like we know her already, and I think she and Emily will get along great.”
They probably would, right up until the moment Emily said something about Carly and Noah dating and Carly laughed at her.
Carly Randall was his best friend, and had been for their entire lives. But she was definitelynothis girlfriend.
And when the truth came out, the best boss he’d ever had—at his dream job no less—would know he’d been lying for the last six months. And then he’d be fired, two months before his one-year anniversary of working with the best architectural engineer in the region.
Jim had taken a chance on him. Noah’s degree wasn’t from a top school because he hadn’t been able to afford it, but he had the paper, talent and drive. And not having to move to a big city to make a living just made it all the sweeter. He’d worked there for barely two months before Jim put an addition on the building to give Noah his own office and started strategizing about how they were going to grow the business. Together.
He not only had the job of his dreams but his boss’s respect and now onereallystupid lie threatened everything.
“I’m not sure she’ll be able to get the time off,” Noah said. “We’re hoping she will, but it’s a busy time of year for her with the tourists in town and all.”
“It’s only a week and a half from now, Noah. And she works for herself, doesn’t she?”
“Uh.”Shit.“She owns a bookstore with her cousin, but they usually both work on weekends because it’s busier.”
Technically that was the truth, although Carly and Zoe had covered for each other in the past if one of them had something important come up. Whether Carly thought the predicament he’d put himself in was important was another thing entirely.
If it came down to it, he could always wait until it was time and claim Carly had come down with something. Worst case scenario, he claimed they were both sick and skipped the weekend entirely.
He didn’t really want to do that, though. Jim not only signed his paychecks, but they’d become good friends. And he liked Emily, her determination to hook him up with her sister notwithstanding.
“I’ll remind her about it this weekend,” he promised. “I know she wants to go and she was going to talk to her cousin about getting the time off.”
That was a flat-out lie, since she knew about the wedding but had no idea she was supposed to be his plus-one.
It wasn’t hard for him to picture her reaction to that, since he and Carly had been friends for so long neither of them had a memory of the first time they’d met. They’d just always been friends. He’d have trouble seeing her blue eyes, since she’d probably have her long, dark hair in a ponytail pulled through the hole in the back of a ball cap, but he could already hear her laughter in his mind. She was going to laugh her ass off when he confessed what he’d done.
But he had to accept his impending humiliation and make the confession. It was Tuesday and he had a date to go four-wheeling with Carly tomorrow after work.
Well, maybe date was the wrong word since he was going to be asking her to go on anactualdate with him. But fake. An actual fake date.
He’d put it off too long, unable to tell Jim they’d broken up or to find the words to explain it all to Carly. He kept telling himself he’d ask hernext time.
And now he was out of time andnext timewas tomorrow.
Something was bugging Noah. Carly had known it as soon as she showed up at his house, where he kept her ATV on the trailer with his since she didn’t have a place to keep it or a vehicle to pull it with. Since she never went riding without him, it was easier to leave it with him.
He looked normal from a distance. His dark hair was short, but since she occasionally trimmed it for him in a pinch, she knew it was deliciously thick. And soft, unlike his beard, which was also thick, but more coarse. One of his hands was shading eyes the color of chocolate pudding from the sun while the other lifted to give her a wave. But as soon as she’d parked her small car off to the side and joined him by the trailer, she could tell something was off. He was jittery, as if he’d drunk about two gallons too much coffee, and every time she looked at him, his gaze darted away.
“Everything’s in the truck,” he said, “so I’ve just gotta lock up the house and I’ll be ready to go.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, why?” he asked, not meeting her eyes.
