Page 10 of Wedding or Not

“I’m not worried about other people misreading. I’m annoyed because you were acting like you were above it all when you’re right down in the muck of this with me.”

He makes a huffing noise. Maybe a soft, breathy laugh.

Natalie clears her throat. “If you’d like to continue this back-to-back conversation in private, I can take another table.”

“Sorry,” I say. “Wes is here to work, so we’re going to pretend he’s not there.”

Natalie’s eyes are laughing. “Good luck with that. I’m just saying, if you don’t want to continue this farce, you might try to stay away from each other. Look what just got posted.”

My heart jumps as I reach over to take her phone and study the screen.

Shit.

Someone here must have just now filmed me and Wes having our back-to-back conversation.

It’s just a few seconds before I pass the phone back to Natalie, but it’s long enough to see the short video in a flash of objectivity.

And I can suddenly understand what everyone else sees. Both our heads were angled toward each other but resolutely not looking behind. And our mouths were moving in turn as we talked.

It did look like a scene from a romantic comedy.

“Who filmed that?” I ask. “Did you notice?”

“What?” Wes asks from behind me in a different tone. This one is gruff. Defensive. “Did someone here just get us on camera again? Who the hell⁠—?”

I reach back to grab his arm to keep him from standing up. “Don’t make a scene. You’ll just draw more attention to us.”

Wes has never appeared prone to listen to what I say, but he does this time. He sits back down with a resigned sigh. “A new, ridiculous interest needs to catch people’s attention online. Fast.”

“It will,” Natalie says, smiling at me sympathetically. “These things come and go quickly.”

“Hopefully. How did you find that so fast?”

“I set up alerts on keywords and am following hashtags so I can track what’s happening. The whole thing is snowballing.”

“Well, it needs to snowball right over a cliff.” I slump, still flushed and embarrassed. Exposed.

Like everyone is seeing me when I’ve spent my entire life mostly unseen.

“It probably will. Although…” Natalie trails off again, this time intentionally. Her beautifully manicured eyebrows arch at me.

“What?”

“I had an idea. Since the notoriety is helping business, and the refinancing isn’t going through, and we really need this kind of boost… I had an idea.”

“What idea?” I’m getting frustrated because I’m nervous again. Not just fluttery and excited. Deeply, immediately anxious.

“We could… If you agree, we could string this along more. Hold on to public interest for longer than just a few days.”

“How?”

“You guys could… play along.”

I gulp. “Play along how?”

“You could keep doing this sort of thing. And if the interest continues, you could act like you do end up together. You could even plan a wedding at Blossom Park so we could show off the gardens and all the event spaces. I don’t know for sure if the world is going to care about this thing for that long, but they might. And can you imagine a better opportunity to build back our business? Already we can increase our prices. If it blows up even more, we can increase them a lot. I know it won’t last forever, but we don’t need forever. We just need enough time for everyone in this region to remember how special Blossom Park is. So maybe you could… play along. Act like you’re falling in love.”

I swallow hard again since my mouth and throat have gone dry. My heart is pounding so loud I’m sure Wes must be able to hear it. “But… But…”