“Ohhh.”I don’t think she realized how porn-worthy her hum sounded.“Hmm, hmm, hmm.”She wiggled a little in her seat. It looked like anticipation. “That’s it,” she murmured to herself, unaware of the lull in the conversation.“That’s what I’m talking about. Every girl’s favorite c-word.”
Matt choked on a mouthful of his wine.Is she serious?his look seemed to ask. Fin’s glance was more in the vein ofYou lucky fucking dog.
“Cake!”she’d suddenly spluttered, noticing our silent exchange.“Oh, my God, you guys are such perverts!”
Guilty as charged. And I would bea lucky fucking dogif I hadn’t agreed to this arrangement without the benefit of sex. It was all I could think about as she closed the menu, insisting she’d changed her mind. That she was calling it a night.
We stood as she did, and then she slid her arms around my neck, bringing her body flush with mine.
“I think I aced it,” she whispered only for my ears.
She was right.
She even had my cock fooled.
We all watched her leave. Strange, but it felt almost unnatural not to leave with her, probably because we’d been doing the pretend-dating thing for a couple of weeks now.And that’s all it is—pretend,I remind myself. Eve is a lot of lovely things, but she is, ultimately, a means to an end.
“So, do we have to guess, or are you going to tell us what tonight was all about?” Fin asks lazily as he puts his glass to his mouth.
“About?” I bite the word out, not yet ready to forgive him his unwitting part in that stupid photo.Which makes me an even bigger idiot than him.
“About Eve.” He swallows his drink, then sets it down, his movements deliberate and slow. “How can I put this?” he begins, pressing a pondering hand to his chin. “Whatever that charade was about, I don’t believe it.”
“I’m flattered you’re so invested,” I reply, swirling the whisky in my glass, watching the light turn the liquid a fiery shade of amber.Broad-shouldered fuckwit, more like.
“Invested. That’s a very particular word.”
“Lads, come on,” Matt, the peacemaker, interjects. “Why does it have to mean anything beyond a pleasant meal with friends?”
“Because everything he does has an angle.” Fin points a finger gun my way. “Some kind of payoff. He hasn’t suddenly taken a shine to Eve in the natural way of things.”
“Natural?” I repeat coolly. Conversely, my blood boils.
“She’s not your type.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. People change. Fashions, weather, hairstyles.” My lips twitch as I think of Eve uttering those very words.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Fin exchanges a glance with Matt.
“I’m merely offering the notion that nothing in life is static.”
“Okay, Socrates.”
“I think that one was Buddha,” Matt puts in.
“Whatever. Eve is too good for him.”
It’s true. She’s far too lovely to be caught up in my plans. But there she remains, snared. I say none of that, of course. “I do wonder where this sudden display of impassioned offense springs from.”
“You don’t fuck with women who don’t know the game. Someone you meet in a coffee shop or who you bump into outside of the office. The one that takes your breath away, the one you can’t stop thinking about.”
“What bollocks are you talking about?” Matt looks at Fin as though he’s grown another head. “Sounds like you’ve been bingeing a load of sappy rom-coms.”
“The one you want so bad you pin her down by sliding a rock onto her finger,” Fin continues regardless. “Not like in the movies but inreal life—other people’s lives. Don’t expect me to believe real is what just happened here.”
“I haven’t proposed, if that’s what you mean.” But it sparks an idea. Quite a cruel one at the culmination of my plans. I couldn’t.Could I?
“Stick to your models and socialites. They’re more your type.”
