“No.”
“I went to a fun party. It was a masquerade ball. I dressed up as Annie Oakley.”
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. His knuckles were white.
“You’re quite the conversationalist. At least tell me this, why Montana?”
“What kind of question is that? Because you’re here. So here am I—we—are.”
“Yeah, but to take such a long trip out here?”
“Had we met in New York, I would have had to board an airplane anyway.”
“So, you were in England?”
“Yes.”
That made it even more unbelievable, not to mention illogical. She would have thought logic was embedded in this man’s DNA.
“You haven’t answered my question, but maybe that’s the point. Again, it’s something you don’t want to tell me. You could just lie, which is what most people do when they don’t want to tell you something.”
She watched a vein rise to the surface on his neck as his pulse throbbed.
Lying isn’t his style. As Pixel said—too honorable.
He sighed. “I wanted to get this over with, like yanking a wisdom tooth. I didn’t want it hovering over me as we get closer to the start of the season. I would imagine you feel the same way. You should be thanking me. Would I have preferred we meet in New York rather than Cornhusker, Montana? Yes. Without question. But upon further reflection, I realized that this is probably the ideal place. We won’t have to worry about press or fans with their phones catching us on the street or in a restaurant.”
“It’s Cornhole. Not Cornhusker. And isn’t that the whole point of this thing?”
“What do you mean?”
“This deal. You know, what you and Roxanne hope to get out of this.”
“What deal?”
“You and me—dating. But not really dating—fake dating. So you can get some press.”
He swerved to the side and slammed on the brakes.
“Will you stop doing that?” she cried. “You almost sent my head through the window. Again.”
“There is no deal. You outbid everyone else, so you won the date. And here we are. That’s it.”
“Okay, this date, yes. When you were lying unconscious on the bathroom floor—”
“Because of you!” he interrupted.
“Because you got in the way. If you hadn’t, the asshole would have been lying on the floor instead of you. Problem solved.”
“That’s how you solve problems?”
She shrugged. “Some problems. In any case, I told Roxanne what happened, and she asked me to bid on you in case no one else did.”
“Why the hell did the two of you think you needed to come to my rescue? Why would you think nobody would bid on me?”
“Probably because of that black eye. You’re just not the kind of guy one expects to see with a black eye. Rocco Vittori—maybe. Ian Anker—definitely. But you? No. Never. People were stunned. In case you’ve forgotten, there were long stretches of silence when no one was bidding. So I promised her, given I was maybe partially responsible, that I would step in and bid.”
“So you didn’t decide to bid on me yourself?”
